Pricing

17 ideas for charging more

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I wanna write a new book about the art of charging higher prices:

How to overcome your own mental blocks around charging more…

How to make the technical changes that need to be made to your offers and positioning…

How to get people to happily pay you at new and higher prices.

I don’t know yet how I will organize this book. But I do have a bunch of ideas for the content to include.

Since one of my ideas for charging higher prices is to give away stuff for free in certain circumstances, here are 17 ways to charge higher prices, for you to use and profit from today:

#1. Just double your prices right now, without waiting, and then make whatever changes this new price forces you into

Yes, ​it can be done​.

#2. Specialize

People will pay more for an all-black German shepherd than they will for a mottled mixed-breed mutt, even if both ultimately have two ears, four legs, one tail, and the ability to bark.

#3. Sell an outcome, not deliverables

In other words, ​sell the house, not the hammer​.

#4. Deliver a more complete outcome

(I heard this advice from a “sales closer agency” that takes people’s $5k offers and turns them into $50k offers, and makes their clients and themselves tens of millions per year.)

Example: if you sell a live event, then instead of selling just entry to the event and what’s inside, sell a package that includes a hotel room, a flight, transportation from the airport, and maybe dinner at a fancy restaurant with the organizers of the event. And charge a premium on top of each.

#5. Sell a bigger outcome

instead of helping people get a client worth $1k, help them get a client worth $10k. Instead of helping them close one $1k client, help them close three $1k clients.

#6. Guarantee the outcome

My $31k auction went to $31k ​in large part because of the guarantee​.

#7. Sell something scarce vs. something common

You might have something legitimately scarce (“the last five copies ever that will ever be printed”) or you can have something artificially scarce (“only five spots open this entire year”).

#8. Sell yourself vs. selling your solution

If you have an audience and your audience likes you, you can sell yourself first and foremost. This is a special and easy kind of scarcity that nobody can take away from you or challenge you on.

As an example, consider the dozens of “how to write emails” courses that popped up over the past 2-3 years. Many of them sold, and well — to the audiences of the person creating the course, and to nobody else.

#9. Go after the Maverick segment rather than the Goose segment of your market

For more on this distinction, ​check here​. Or ​read this​ to see where I first got the idea.

#10. Go to a richer market

Example: ​people wanting to learn improv comedy vs. trial lawyers​. Who will pay more?

#11. Position yourself as the premier solution

A few examples: ​Rolex, Harvard, Jay Abraham​.

#12. Offer “real-world value” bonuses vs. “valued at” bonuses

The information in this email is “valued at” $10,000, by me personally, based on my extensive research and deep introspection.

Do you think I could use this “valued at $10k” email as a bonus for a legit $10k offer, and make the $10k offer feel effectively free?

No?

You don’t think so?

Well, maybe you will, after I take this information and turn it into a 4-week cohort I start charging $10k for, and start selling over and over to my list.

#13. Ask for future money rather than present money

The most money I ever made while working as a freelance copywriter came to me after I asked a client to let me write emails for them for free, on commission only.

They agreed, and offered me 20% of the profits made.

In this way, it became routine for me to get paid $500 for an email it took me 15 minutes to write, and $1k per email was not unheard of either.

There’s no way the client would have agreed to pay me such rates out of pocket. But out of profit? Different story.

#14. Get your prospects thinking what it costs not to buy rather than what it costs to buy

This is ​a classic lesson from sales trainer David Sandler​.

#15. Reframe or repackage your core offer into something valued more

I once put on an entire $197 training about this… but for just one example, ​take a look here​. (Just don’t write me asking for the offer at that link.)

#16. Charge for things you do for free now.

Research… replying to emails… sales calls…

… who says you have to do them for free?

Charging for such things automatically pushes everything else up also. Your perceived value rises. Plus you now have something you can anchor your other offers to, or offer as a real-world-value bonus.

(On the other hand, it can be better to give things away for free than to discount them. I’ll just leave it at that for now.)

#17. Change format

Books sell for $-$$. A one-evening Zoom training sells for $$-$$$. A course sells for $$$-$$$$. An in-person training sells for $$$$-$$$$$.

Same info, same outcome, but the format affects how people value that info, and what they are willing to pay for it.

… and that makes 17.

Did I miss anything? Do you have extra ideas for how to charge more?

Let me know, and maybe I will include your ideas in my new book, and put your name up in the “acknowledgements” marquee, with lights shining on it, right at the front. Thanks in advance.

How to charge more by selling treats

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Long-time readers know I am a fan of the podcast What It’s Like To Be. I only know about this podcast because it’s hosted by Dan Heath, author of the book Made to Stick, which I believe is one of the best texts about crafting persuasive messages.

In the What It’s Like To Be podcast, Dan Heath interviews people who make their living doing different jobs.

Sometimes it’s inherently interesting — a speech writer, a baseball player.

This week though, it was… a baker. I had to force myself to listen to it. I’m glad I did.

It turned out that this interview about what it’s like to be a baker is very relevant for folks who have or want to have a small online biz, maybe writing or teaching or coaching or having an audience.

There are lots of parallels and business insights from the baker, someone who works in a surprisingly similar to what I do, but in a different sphere.

I’ll include the link to the whole podcast at the end here if you wanna check it out. For now though, lemme share one specific and interesting thing I heard.

Dan Heath asked the baker, how do you price your bread?

This led the baker into a discussion of what would be reasonable in theory:

Figure out her cost of ingredients… put in margin on top of that to cover fixed expenses like rent and employees… and add an extra margin on top of that for profit.

In reality, the baker said, what she does is she looks at what other bakeries are charging, and charges something similar. When margins get too tight, she raises prices.

And then came the really interesting and insightful part wanted to share with you:

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And and then if like our overall margins are starting to feel too tight, then I try to put more of our price increases on our pastry because I feel like pastry is a luxury good, and bread is like a staple food and should be as affordable as possible.

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Dan Heath asked if this a commie-like desire to make sure everyone can afford the staples of life? Well, yes. But it’s also a capitalist calculation about what people are willing to pay. The baker explained:

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It also lines up with how people spend money. Like, people are going to balk at spending $12 or $15 on a loaf of bread in a way that they won’t at spending, like, $7 on a slice of cake or, like, $3 on a cup of coffee. People’s mental calculation is so different for things that feel like treats, whether it’s like sugar or alcohol or snacks than it is for something that feels like grocery, that feels like a staple good.

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My point today is exactly what the baker says in this second block.

There’s one mental calculus for things that feel like necessities and staples. There’s a different mental calculus for things that feel like treats or splurges.

You can apply this insight the way the baker did, by simply offering two lines of products, one staple-y and one treat-y, and using the treats to be able to charge more, and to support the other parts of your business.

You can also benefit from this insight without launching a new line of products, simply by repackaging your dutiful and reasonable products in a new gift box that suggests indulgence, enjoyment, or fun to your prospects.

I’ll have more to say about that “fun” element tomorrow.

For now, if you wanna hear what other business insights the baker had to share, you can find the link below. Highly recommended, even if you have no interest in baking, and only want to run an online four-hour-workweek-style business:

https://www.whatitsliketobe.com/2246914/episodes/18563714-a-baker

Really great price on coaching

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I talked to a dude recently who has made a new coaching offer to his list, with 1-1 access to him, in various formats, for a full year, at a really great price.

Nobody bought.

Now here’s a marketing and psychology truth that took me embarrassingly long to learn:

If you offer people a really great price on something they don’t want to buy, the really great price won’t make them want to buy it either.

That’s why discounting fails to drive sales in so many situations. Discounting only works when people want the thing being sold, and they value it at the full price you claim for it.

But back to coaching.

As I’ve been croaking about for a few weeks now, nobody really wants “coaching.”

Yes, some people manage to sell “coaching” because they have so much status, authority, and relationship with their audience. In those situations, their coaching clients are effectively buying the coach, and the relationship with that coach, rather than the coaching itself.

That’s definitely a nice position to be in.

But what if you don’t have that level of status, authority, and relationship with your audience yet?

The fix is simple, and can be executed quickly. It’s to sell people something they actually want to buy, and which they value at the price you ask for it.

This is how you go from trying and failing to sell “coaching,” which people don’t want even at a really great price… to having a $1k+ offer, which you can make 3-5 sales of each month, and which is both easier to sell and deliver than “coaching.”

Maybe you’re interested in how to implement this fix, which I claim is “simple, and can be executed quickly.”

I’ve prepared a 1-page overview of how to do it, a process I’ve guided a few people through already.

I’m begrudgingly willing to share this 1-page overview with you.

If you like what you read, you’ll have the opportunity to work with me directly in February, to implement this for yourself and your own list.

Or of course, you can just run with it yourself.

In case you’re interested in the 1-page overview, hit reply, tell me you want it, and I’ll get it to you.

If you move your tail for clients, but they don’t appreciate it enough

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Yesterday, because I am thorough in my research, I was watching old TV commercials from the 1970s, including one for the long-gone Continental Airlines.

It featured a bouncy jingle that’s still playing in my head:

We live to make you happy

We’re out to make you pleased

You’re flying Continental

Your flight will be a breeze

We’ll hop to make you happy

We’ll skip to prove it’s true

On Continental Airlines

We MOVE OUR TAIL FOR YOU…

… and then the refrain comes in, with a cross-section of all Continental employees — pilots, stewardesses, luggage handlers, admin personal, even the chefs who prepare the delectable meals — bleating “WE MOVE OUR TAIL FOR YOUUUU” over and over.

I looked it up, and back in 60s and 70s Continental really moved their tail to make their customers happy —  larger, cushier seats, full meals (the commercial shows a chef preparing a giant salad), and complimentary drinks (alcoholic and soft), as well as additional perks like amenity kits, pillows, and blankets, all for free, all at no extra cost.

Today, of course, that’s unimaginable. So many of the things that airlines offered for free back in the 60s and 70s are now available and then some on a flight – but you gotta pay:

– checked baggage

– meals

– alcoholic drinks

– seat selection

– pillows and blankets

Continental Airlines no longer exists, at least under its own name (it was gradually absorbed into United). I guess Continental’s customers didn’t sufficiently appreciate all the tail moving to make this a viable long-term strategy.

Maybe there’s a lesson there? Maybe? In any case, I will share my idea, and you can decide if it could possibly be useful:

You can charge for what you offer for free now, or for what everybody else offers for free.

This doesn’t mean offering worse customer service, or turning yourself into the RyanAir of your industry.

But the fact is, “FREE” is a norm — whether it’s checked baggage or “free strategy sessions” or simple “let’s talk and see if we can benefit each other calls.”

Maybe that norm is one that’s working out for you. But if not, it’s one you can change, because norms are not rules of nature, but simply habitual ways of doing things.

I’m gonna write a new book one day, expanding on this idea.

For now though, I’ll just point you to my latest book, the “10 Commandments of Con Men, Pickup artists, Magicians, etc.” This book is not free, but I really did move my tail to make it both fun and valuable for you. If you haven’t read it yet:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

Why close down a successful info product business?

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Yesterday, I wrote about guy who is closing down his successful info product business (and who got me to instantly pony over $500 to get a clearance bundle of his courses.)

I didn’t share the guy’s name in my email. This predictably drew a higher-than-usual number of responses from readers.

For example, long-time reader and customer Sean Clark wrote in to ask:

“Do you know why he’s shutting it down vs letting someone else take it over or license the content, etc?”

According to the sales page for the clearance bundle, the info marketer in question has simply decided to retire from teaching, and to go back to doing full-time.

But that still doesn’t really answer Sean’s question.

My suspicion:

The guy in question, being highly sophisticated in business generally and in direct marketing specifically, knows that the majority of the value of a course lies not in the course itself, but in the relationship the buyer has with the person selling the course.

In other words, if he’s really planning to step away from the info business 100%, then the value of his courses will soon drop to a feather over 0, whether he hands it over to somebody else or not.

Don’t believe me?

Then ask yourself, what would you pay for the magnificent and life-transforming courses by sales trainers and personal development gurus of years past, such as J. Douglas Edwards or Og Mandino or W. Clement Stone?

No?

Names don’t ring a bell?

You wouldn’t pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to learn from these dead masters?

That’s my point. These folks influenced and helped hundreds of thousands of people, including today’s gurus, or gurus who trained today’s gurus. The ideas from these old-timers would be as sure to help you as, say, Russell Brunson’s or Tony Robins’s ideas. Maybe more so. And yet…

Before you you think I’m trying to drown you in the impermanence of human existence, there’s a flip side to this depressing truth, which is much more positive.

That flip side is that, if you build up some sort of relationship with an audience, they will want to buy from you and only you, and will be willing to pay a premium far above what the information itself might sell for otherwise, at least while you still choose to be in business.

And so let me remind you that today, Thursday November 13, is the last day to sign up to my Daily Email Habit service at the still ridiculously low price of $1/day, aka $30/month.

Daily Email habit helps you start and stick with showing up in people’s inboxes, every day, with something relevant and interesting to say.

This habit, practiced for weeks and months and years, leads to a relationship and to standing with an audience, so they want to buy from you or hire you, even if hundreds or thousands of equally good alternatives are out there.

If you want to get started building your standing and authority today, and benefit both from taking action sooner and from not suffering from the price increase:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

How to get me to pay you $500 in 90 seconds flat

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Today I was on Facebook — don’t ask why — and I saw a post from a dude whose email list I’ve been on for the past two years.

The dude was announcing that he’s shutting down his info publishing business and that he’s making all his courses available in one heavily discounted bundle, which will presumably go away some time soon.

About 90 seconds later, I had entered in my credit card details and paid the dude $500 for this heavily discounted bundle.

Point being:

Discounting works great — IF people already value what you’re selling at the full value.

The dude above has been emailing for years, practically every day.

I didn’t read all his emails, but I read a good number.

He has been building up the case for buying his various courses.

He made the case over and over for the value of knowledge inside… he showed results that people who were applying this knowledge were getting… he kept digging and prodding into soft spots in my flesh, making me suspect that I’m missing out on something really important.

I grew to believe what the dude was saying, and I grew to want what he was selling.

My “no thank you” defenses were good enough to resist his sales pitches while I thought I still had time, while the offer was basically “Get started today OR tomorrow OR the day after if tomorrow doesn’t work.”

But once this became a last-chance matter, and once there was also a significant discount over what these courses had been selling for previously, I saw myself involved in an instant, almost involuntary action to pay the guy $500.

So discounting can work great.

As can launches, promos, and special offers.

But none of them will work unless people in your audience have grown to want the thing you have, and have grown to value it above and beyond the offer you will be making on it.

How do you get people to that point?

Well, I told you above.

Email every day, or practically every day. Make the case, over and over, for people buying what you’re selling. Tease, provide proof, and dismiss alternatives.

Do this over and over, and then, when you make a special deal and you give a deadline for it — you don’t have to close down your entire business, or bundle all your stuff for $500 — people will buy, instantly.

And on that note, let me remind you:

The price for my Daily Email Habit service is going up this Thursday at 12 midnight PST, from a modest $30/month to the Martin Shkreli-like $50/month.

Daily Email Habit helps you start and stick with consistent daily emailing, so you can gradually move people to wanting what you have to sell, and so you can get them to value it at the price you sell it for.

If you wanna get started today, and start moving people to where you want them to go, before the price goes up:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Announcing: Martin Shkreli-like price increase for Daily Email Habit

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This Thursday, at 12 midnight PST, I will be increasing the price of my Daily Email Habit service to an unheard-of $50/month.

Daily Email Habit puts an email “puzzle” in your inbox each day, to help you start and stick with sending daily emails.

Daily Email Habit currently sells for $30/month, which means you can get a daily email prompt and ongoing education in how to expand that prompt into a fun and valuable email for just $1/day.

On Thursday, I’ll be increasing the price of Daily Email Habit to $50/month because my accountant, warehouse manager, and mother-in-law have all been beating me over the head and yelling at me to do it for days now.

Apparently the price of digital paper and digital ink have risen dramatically over the past few years, as have the labor costs of the little elves we use deliver Daily Email Habit puzzles to inboxes worldwide.

The fact remains that the price of Daily Email Habit, old or new, is a tiny fraction of what you can make regularly, each month, if you do start and stick with the habit of daily emailing.

Maybe a higher price will lead to higher commitment, at least in some people (a lower price certainly won’t). And ultimately, more commitment and more consistency is the goal of this entire service.

If you are currently signed up to Daily Email Habit, of course you will not be impacted by this dramatic and shameless price increase. You will keep being grandfathered in at whatever price you signed up at.

And if you are not yet signed up to Daily Email Habit, the same is true for you if you sign up today. The price goes up on Thursday for others… but you only have to pay the current rate, and the same in the future, whenever I decide to hike up the price again (say, in case the elves unionize).

If you want the full details on Daily Email Habit — including a sample of the fine printing job we do, which explains why we are so sensitive to rising digital paper and digital ink costs — so you can decide whether you want to join before price goes up:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Pricing quiz

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See if you can spot the pattern among three of my recent culinary purchases:

1. Last week I bought a bag of roasted chestnuts from a seller on the street. The smallest bag was 4 euro, the middle 7 euro, the biggest 14 euro.

I got the 7 euro bag, and was thinking how expensive everything has gotten when a middle-sized bag of chestnuts costs that much.

But when I got the bag — about the size of a futsal football — I couldn’t even be mad.

2. A few days ago, I sat down with my friend Sam for a beer on the Rambla de Catalunya, Barcelona’s most touristy street.

The beers arrived and each was the size of a fishbowl, I’m guessing 1 liter of beer or more.

I was wondering how much we’d get ripped off for this. I was pleasantly surprised when the bill arrived that the huge beers were only 9 euro each.

3. Today I had lunch beneath Montserrat, a mountain close to Barcelona.

The lunch was a fixed menu including appetizers, a main course, and dessert. The price was 30 euro, which frankly is outrageous for the kind of countryside restaurant this is.

The way they justified it — again, I couldn’t even be mad — was that along with the single main course and the single dessert, each menu included not one but five separate appetizers.

So can you see the pattern?

If you’re not 100% sure, or you simply want to hear me pontificate on a Sunday afternoon:

Marketing guru Jay Abraham, also known as the “$75 billion man,” for that’s as much business growth the man has supposedly created, likes to say there are only three ways to grow a business.

The first is more customers, which is what everybody focuses on, until they get it, and realize that it’s not what they really want.

The second is to increase the frequency of purchase, and its logical conclusion, continuity offers. This sounds like the dream, and is no doubt good for some people, but comes with issues of its own.

The third is the least discussed, and it’s to increase the transaction size. There are various ways to do increase transaction size, but a simple way is simply to sell a barrel rather than a bucketful, a giant bag instead of a normal bag, a fishbowl of beer rather than a glass, 5 appetizers instead of one.

That’s something to consider if you too sell things and are looking to increase your prices and grow your business.

I’m considering it because today marks the end of the first week of my revived Daily Email House group, where the core promise still remains, “Use your email list to pay for a house.”

It’s hard to pay for a house with an email list selling $27 offers.

It’s fairly easy to do if you’re selling $2,700 offers.

It’s an afterthought if you’re selling $27,000 offers.

I had something to say about this inside Daily Email House, and I’ll have more to say, and hopefully some of it will help some of the folks inside the group. If you want to join them:

https://bejakovic.com/house

If nobody wants your profit-making offer, give it away

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Yesterday I organized a Zoom call for a few list owners.

One of these, a successful copywriter and marketer, was asking how to price, or how to persuade businesses to take him up on, his newfangled sales machine.

“Is $15k a year a good offer? The sales machine is super valuable, and has produced great results for the businesses who have used it. But it’s been a hard sell.”

I thought it was instructive that a successful copywriter and marketer was asking this question.

My answer was, if this thing produces sales so well, why not package up the results into a nice gift box, and sell that gift box instead?

In other words, instead of persuading business owners to buy a gizmo that costs $15k a year and promises to produce sales… why not persuade them to accept new money in the bank, which they can pay you a finders fee for?

In the words of marketing legend Claude Hopkins, who became the modern equivalent of a billionaire using little more than a typewriter:

“In every business expenses are kept down. I could never be worth more than any other man who could do the work I did. The big salaries were paid to salesmen, to the men who brought in orders, or to the men in the factory who reduced the costs. They showed profits, and they could command a reasonable share of those profits. I saw the difference between the profit-earning and the expense side of a business, and I resolved to graduate from the debit class. “

“Yes,” I hear someone saying in the back, “but business owners should already know that a sales gizmo isn’t really an expense, because it will help them make money. They should be smart enough to see a profit-generating solution when they see one. They should they should they should.”

Yes, they should.

But they don’t, just in the same way that the successful copywriter above should have remembered the century-old lesson that turned Claude Hopkins into a billionaire, but he didn’t.

The fact is, we have limited time and attention and energy, and doing the work of translation — of turning what we have into what we could possibly have, of what we buy into what it could do for us, of what we sell into what people really want — requires time and effort.

You can argue against this aspect of reality. Or you can work with it, and simply translate what you sell into a result that people care about, and that they can take you up on without risk.

Moving on.

I recently got a bunch of feedback from my readers, and I found that a large number of people list, as their #1 goal, getting consistent with emailing daily.

Maybe you too feel you should should should be writing consistent daily emails. But you still don’t do it.

If it’s not happening, and if it’s important to you, maybe it’s time for to take a different tack:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

How to 3x your price and have clients say it’s still too cheap

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Inside my recently resurrected Daily Email House community, I ran a poll asking folks if they have ever made an offer for $1k+.

I got a response to that from Jordan Parker, who owns Parker Labs, which from what I understand is a kind of boutique agency that provides operations support for online creators. Jordan wrote:

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I have the dumbest story on this from 2 years ago:

Decided I want to practice downsells… but in sales calls.

And I SUCK at sales calls.

(I’m too eager to solve problems and forget to, you know, sell)

So, I intentionally threw a few extra things in & offered my typical $10k offer for $30k – planning to have this cool moment where I scratch the extra features off on one side as I scratch off the price & write a lower price on the other.

Perfect plan. Perfect visual anchor for the downsell.

Except…

The person just said “yes” instantly, and I didn’t even get to try my plan.

(he actually said it’s too cheap)

Sure, $30k isn’t that much for most businesses (and my IT agency’s usual deals had at least 1 more zero), but for some reason when I was the person closing it felt like a LOT. I was pretty surprised after.

(and just mildly annoyed that I didn’t get to test my system 😅)

But if you want to up your prices, give it a shot – list a bunch of stuff and get ready to cross out some of it. Many people will want everything. Getting everything feels nice.

And you always have an out and your old price as a “backup”

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Upsells — addons you make to your core offer — are often seen as allowing your customers to spoil themselves, or maybe a play to their inertia.

The typical example is buying a new car, when a customer ends up agreeing to the the “nitrogen-filled tires” or “key replacement insurance,” simply because they are not thinking right at the moment.

But that exploitative way is not the only way to do upsells.

There’s a good chance people need your upsells to actually get value out of your core offer.

Your prospects can sense this on their own. Or maybe, they are simply eager to solve their problem completely, and so they put themselves into your hands, since they have decided to trust you.

My point being:

Rather than asking “What’s the amount I’m most likely to get my customer to pay,” ask yourself, “What’s the amount that’s most likely to fix their problem fully?”

If you ask yourself that, and if you bundle all of the resulting upsells and downsells and crosssells into a single sale, you can 3x your price, like Jordan did above, and still have your prospect say it seems too cheap.

In other news:

When people ask to join Daily Email House, I ask them what their #1 goal is right now.

A buncha people have replied something along the lines of writing emails consistently, even daily:

#1. “Learn to write engaging and persuasive daily emails”

#2. “Get back to writing consistently”

#3.”Mail daily”

#4. “Consistency”

If writing emails better and consistently is your goal, then I have my simple Daily Email Habit to offer you.

Every day, you get a prompt to write a daily email, which is based on my own experience writing thousands of sales emails, both for clients and for myself.

Every day, you also get 2-3 “hints,” which are really a steady drip of how-to info on influential and persuasive writing.

When you combine this with any email software (​Beehiiv​ works fine) and the ongoing support inside ​Daily Email House​ (free), you have most of what you need to succeed.

One thing that’s still needed is your own commitment. Only you can provide that.

If you have it, and you want my help in getting consistent with writing daily emails:

https://bejakovic.com/deh