Read Time: 8 mins
(or upgrade to listen to this issue)
When people subscribe to my newsletter, they’re invited to complete a survey. It helps me get to know them better, along with their goals & challenges.
Since launching the newsletter, 151 people have completed the survey.
One of the survey questions is: What's your top challenge or question with productizing?
In today’s post, I’m answering the most popular challenges / questions.
📌 If you’d like your question answered next subscribe here. Complete the survey and tune back in next week.
Question #1: How should I price my products?
First off, pricing is a two-way door decision (not a one-way door). Meaning, you can and should change your mind about it.
Also, let’s be real. You and I run tiny companies. We launch products to relatively small audiences. We’re not Nike or Apple. We don’t need a complicated pricing strategy.
My strategy?
20% benchmark > 40% intuition > 40% experimentation
20% Benchmark
First I consider what I’ve spent on similar products:
Similar effort: Is this a guide or 3-part email sequence I built one afternoon, or a comprehensive toolkit with high-quality production?
Similar depth: Did I create a simple checklist or Notion template, or a comprehensive online course with multiple modules + workbooks?
Similar results: Am I helping my customer through one thorny problem, or enabling them to go from start to finish?
The products I’m comparing to will come in a range of prices. This is where I turn to my intuition.
40% Intuition
Next I ask myself what feels like the right price for the thing I’ve built.
Because I do my upfront research, I’m able to focus on creating products that solve my customer’s unmet needs. That helps me develop a sense for how important my solution is to their problem.
I pair that gut feeling with my benchmarking. Then I choose a price that feels like the sweet spot…
I never want to be the cheapest. Being in the bargain / race-to-the-bottom game is not for me. And if you also see yourself as an expert (you should), it’s not the game you want to play either.
Some of my most successful products (value served and revenue generated) are 25-300% more expensive than the mean.
But the truth is, in the end, I pick a number that feels good to me. From there, I use experimentation to adjust accordingly.
40% Experimentation
If you’ve been following along, you know that I treat everything like a prototype — test, refine, and iterate continuously.
That goes for my individual LinkedIn posts, to products, to entire businesses. The pricing of my products get the same treatment.
Once I launch, I test and iterate by interviewing my prospective customers — ones that have shown signals they’re interested in buying. If I’m way off, plus or minus, I adjust.
But honestly, benchmarking + intuition have never failed me.
Instead, my product’s pricing changes organically, as my business grows and evolves.
Today, I have one product that costs $199.
In a year from now, that product may become a $50 upsell for my future products, programs, and services.
In 2-3 years, when I’ve created the next generation version, this one may become a $0 lead magnet I use to grow my email list.
Or maybe, once I hit product maturity, I’ll shift to a price hike strategy. (have you heard of this?)
Truth is, the prices of most of online products were inked based on an informed guess.
So I get why this question comes up so much. But it’s also far less of a science, and probably, much less important than you’re telling yourself it is.
Reply