Is the price right?

You’ve heard this before, but how you price something tells people a lot about it — even if it’s subconscious. 

I’ve seen this for myself…

When we first launched The Website Owner’s Manual, it was just a free opt-in. Matt and I were super excited about it, as we had been testing it in our own agencies and seeing success. 

But the response was pretty weak… After a month we had gotten less than a hundred downloads.

A couple of months later, we decided to try out making it a “product” by slapping a price on it. At the time it was just $15, but just 30 days after making it a paid product we had sold over 1,000 copies. 

I honestly believe the only difference was the perceived value. 

When it was free, it seemed like it was worth less than when it was $15.

Whether we realize it or not, clients are making the same kinds of judgments about our services. 

I’m not suggesting you should start artificially inflating your prices — but I do think it’s worth considering what end of the market you want to serve.

There are people who will always buy “whatever is cheapest” — usually the people who don’t place much value on something or are new to the market and don’t know the difference between cheap and quality.

And others who would never buy the cheapest option — usually people who have been burnt before, or place more importance on the product/service.

Are you set up for volume, like Walmart? Where you can have smaller margins but serve more customers to make up the difference?

Or are you focused on giving a smaller number of people a premium service that the deep-discount alternatives could never compete with?

Neither way is wrong — but I do think knowing where you are in the spectrum can help answer a lot of the questions you have about your strategy moving forward.