Every day I get questions about pricing. When I did the course with the Havinator, I dominated the week four money call with a half hour rant on pricing, and I could’ve gone another six hours. I have much to say on the topic of pricing. (See pricing for service providers and should you sell on price? to get caught up.)

Anyway, so I’ve finished Online Business School and I spent a LOT of time thinking about pricing. (Speaking of price, if you’re on my advance discount list you get the option to buy it presale for 75% off. Just saying.) I haven’t seen anything really like it, so it was damn hard figuring out what to price it at. Monthly? One price? Price it based on how much money it’ll make people? Price it based on the fact that everybody’s already broke? Tough stuff.

I got in this big ass talk with Jamie and he’s looking at me all “You’re preaching to the converted, honey” and I realized I should probably blog about this.

Conceptually speaking, there are a lot of considerations that go into setting your prices. But practically, there’s really only one.

You need to know your market.

Here are some examples:

The Havinator sells change your habits stuff. It’s beautifully put together and once you own it, you know it — no need for follow up stuff. She has a bunch of products, but my favorite is her Emergency Calming Techniques. (When your entire family’s future depends on your ability to not fuck up an online business, well, you need the calming, you know?) She sets a one time payment at less than $80 because that’s what her market can afford to spend on something relatively unknown.

They have the faith from her freebies that she can solve their problems but if for some reason they hate it and she’s struck by lightning at the exact same time so she can’t issue them a refund, well, it’s not the end of the world. One time $77 for Emergency Calming Techniques? Easy. (Someday I will write a review for this. Today is not that day.)

Mark has two main products. He has the book, Unveiling the Heart of Your Business, and then he has the Heart of Business mastermind group of awesomeness (this is actually called The Business Oasis). Both are reasonably priced, but the value on the latter is KILLER. Because that’s totally fucking obvious, anyone and their mother tries to get in. But they can’t.

He’s set up the group so that only people who are on board with the Heart of Business beliefs system can get in. You gotta buy, read and dig the book before you can get into the mastermind group of awesomeness.

He has positioned it as a monthly fee, but you buy it yearly. His audience has an existing small business, and small business owners often don’t like making repeated payments. (Because there’s always the possibility we might be homeless by next Thursday.) Pay once, get it over with, and get on with the palm trees, says Mark’s people.

Then you have SimplWeb. They make websites for people who suck at making websites but need one anyway. They’re generally also targeting small business owners, but they’re really there to help the new people. New people don’t have any money. They’re also not going to MAKE any money until they have a website. Conundrum, yeah?

This is why THEY charge monthly. Twenty bucks a month anybody can do. (Well, anybody seriously planning to get a website, anyway.) A few grand to drop on a website? Probably not. Twenty bucks? No problem.

So yeah. Know your market. Don’t just know what they can afford — that’s easy.

Know how and when they like to pay.

And get on my advanced discount list so I can sell you Online Business School for less than $100 and a quarter of what the other losers are paying.