NOTE: If you’re a brand new customer of mine – I send out a new tutorial every week about running a solopreneur business and copywriting. There’s nothing for sale this week.
This week we’re talking all about simple pricing hacks that, if you implement in your business, will lead you to make a LOT more money.
I recognize that a lot of people are genuinely uncomfortable charging premium prices for their products. (In my mind, “premium” starts at $297 and goes up from there.)
There are a lot of reasons for this:
- They still have scripts from childhood (picked up from their parents) that say, “If I charge any amount of money for a product, especially ‘premium’ prices, then I’m a scammer”
- They genuinely don’t think they (or their products) are worth that much
- They worry people are going to think poorly of them if they charge a lot
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And on, and on, and on
I get it. I’ve been through all of it.
So I want to talk a bit today about the mindset that helped me overcome it.
Pricing Hack #4: How To Justify Your Prices
The first thing you need to understand and accept is that many, many, many people WANT to spend “higher” amounts of money to solve their problems.
The reason is simple: time is money.
And when this group of people (people who value their time and energy more than anything else) have a problem, they just want a shortcut to the best possible solution.
They don’t want to spend endless hours/days/months/years trolling YouTube and Reddit “for free” for thousands of options they could try.
Because that time spent researching “free” solutions costs them money.
The longer they go without a solution to their problem:
- The poorer their sleep (because the problem & frustration keep them up)
- The less time they have with family (because they’re spending so much time researching)
- The less time/energy/focus they have to put into their work/business (because the problem is sucking up so much of their mental space)
- The more grey hairs they have (because they’re stressing over, “Why can’t I just solve this one simple problem!?”)
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The more “hazy” they feel throughout the day (because they’re not sleeping, because they’re stressed, because they have to waste time worrying/focusing on this problem for so long)
…and so on.
Some of these reasons might sound dramatic, but if you’ve ever had a problem you just couldn’t solve, you know exactly how the frustration compounds until it consumes pretty much every waking thought you have.
And if you value your quality of life (plus you value your time), it ends up costing you far, far, FAR more than $297 or $497 or whatever price a “better” solution costs.
In fact, many customers who value their time also know (from experience) that “cheaper” solutions often cost a lot more than the “expensive” solutions – because you have to cycle through so many cheap solutions that just don’t work, until you finally bite the bullet and just go for the higher-end solution.
So they develop a simple shortcut: just buy the expensive solution first.
Like I said, they WANT to pay more money for their products.
If it’s cheaper, they simply don’t trust it.
And there are an extraordinary amount of customers out there who are like this. Enough to easily and comfortable make a top 1% living from.
In this case, your price becomes a feature of the product.
But these customers also aren’t dumb. If your product sucks, they’ll refund it – and there are certain “tells” that will prevent them from buying in the first place, if they know you aren’t going to deliver on your price tag.
So how do you pass their radar?
First, you need to be operating in a space where people’s problems truly keep them up at night – and cost them more than the price of your product.
We talked about this on Monday but simply put, you should ONLY be operating in spaces where there’s lots of competition and “premium” prices are not abnormal.
Only work where the money is already flowing.
You should also be solving the big problems that keep people up at night.
That requires a bit more effort on your part to actually get good at solving those problems, but the world isn’t going to reward you handsomely for being lazy.
So if you’re trying to solve a big problem that’s not already costing your customers a ton of money (either literally, or because of lost time) then you’re dead on arrival – and will struggle with your pricing.
Second, you need amazing free content OUTSIDE of your sales letter to “prove” you’re truly an expert.
The copywriting on your sales letter is maybe one of the biggest “money levers” there is in any business. It’s a direct connection to the money a business makes.
But a sales letter should not be where you do all your selling.
Ideally your customers are pre-sold before they hit your letter.
The easiest way to do that: provide MASSIVE amounts of high-quality, should-be-paid-but-it’s-not FREE content that shows off your expertise and that you know how to solve people’s problems.
I do that in my business through this newsletter – every week I send out high-quality, in-depth daily tutorials on a subject that allows me to show you that I know what I’m doing.
Others do it through YouTube videos, or blogs, or TikTok, or Instagram, or whatever.
The people who happily pay “higher” prices for products, also need proof that you’re not just going to waste their time. This kind of content does that.
This will also make you feel more comfortable about charging higher prices because you’re still helping a ton of people for free and giving back – as long as your content is truly so high quality and deeply opinionated that it actually helps people, instead of being yet another time waster.
Third, cover your sales letter in testimonials.
Again, the people who happily pay higher prices typically do so because it saves them time – and ultimately, time is money to them.
Time is what they value more than anything else.
That goes for your sales letter too – they’re just looking for proof they’re not going to be wasting their time by using your product. (If you’re selling a service as a freelancer, the same principle applies.)
And the easiest way to demonstrate that is with testimonials.
If someone said I could just have one element on a sales page, I’d ask for high quality testimonials. They’re like magic.
What’s a “high quality” testimonial?
- It’s just 1-3 sentences – obviously sometimes a testimonial can be longer, but in general, you want it to be as quick and easy to consume as possible
- It speaks in clear, simple language – be careful using “copy speak” in your testimonials (in other words, “Holy s@%t, this actually WORKED” is 100x more powerful than, “This product opened up a world of opportunity that left my heart and my mind sizzling with possibilities”). It is perfectly fine to rewrite the testimonials people give you if they’re weirdly-worded (as long as you get their permission to publish the rewrite).
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It speaks from the perspective of your ideal customers – before writing a word of copy, you should always know exactly who your ideal customers are and what they’re struggling with… and your testimonials will simply be from people who match that ideal customer profile (so you end up with simple testimonials like, “Holy s@%t, I’ve spent the last six months doing HIIT workouts with just a little bit of fat loss and this actually WORKED to strip off the last bit of fat”)
If you can cover your sales letter in testimonials like this, you will see sales of your product shoot up – again, including if you’re selling a service.
It’s social proof that you’re the real deal – and not wasting your customers’ time.
And again, for the people who pay premium prices, time is money.
Become so good that your solutions TRULY solve their problems – and then go out and charge what you’re worth.
But hold up – I know the whole idea of “make a product that truly solves their problem” is a little bit vague.
So I want to touch on that tomorrow – with my final hack for charging what you and your products are truly worth (and being completely comfortable doing so).
— Derek