"Charging more" is directly related to your confidence

“Charge more” is easy advice to blurt out. It’s not that I disagree with it, it’s just that there are so many nuances at play. Creating a business is not so black and white as the advice that is often thrown around online.

I’ve been thinking about how I’ve priced things and I have thoughts.

Bear in mind that my experiences related to subscription / membership / content / communities, not SaaS.

I started by charging less

At Ministry of Testing it turns out I did quite well with newsletter sponsorship.

It’s funny how our memory fails us. This tweet is a good reminder of when I started a weekly newsletter, roughly 2014. Considering I started the community in 2007 and conferences in 2011…what took me so long? (I really don’t know!)

My approach was to keep the community up to date not just about the community, but to curate and share what other testers were talking about. Creating a newsletter that people wanted also gave me the opportunity to consistently share (and sell) what we were doing in the community.

As I became consistent with my newsletter, I got enquiries to advertise and the journey roughly went something like this:

• I started selling individual slots (which was a total pain in the arse).
• Starting selling price was £200 a slot
• I gradually increased prices, my highest price point was £650 per slot
• the more I sold, the less I sold individual slots,
• I started working towards getting commitment upfront, there was a time when I had a year booked out in advance
• not needing to focus on constantly chasing sales was a godsend
• I created upsells - sponsor the conference, get thank yous on social, and generally kept the customers in the loop about opportunities.

Mostly I kept existing customers on lower prices and every time a new potential customer enquired I would “charge more”. I had gained confidence. In delivering. In the process. And in the value I offered.

In time, I felt like I kinda knew what I was doing.

Charging less creates less stress

When I charge more money, I feel I have to deliver more. I realise money is different things to different people. What is expensive to one person or company is just a drop in a bucket to others.

Regardless, this is more about how I feel as a business owner. There is more at stake when I charge more. And it’s not that I don’t want to charge more. It’s more that I want to be confident delivering a good thing.

To gain that confidence I charged less to then work towards charging more.

Charging less to get practice and create proof

Sometimes customers naturally appear on your doorstep when they see what you are offering in action. This is especially true when it comes to marketing, advertising and sponsoring type stuff in communities.

Once people start seeing their competitors being visible in online spaces, then they want a part of that too. Creating proof of sales and getting other potential customers seeing it in action makes the whole sales process so much easier.

Of course, you can still ‘charge more’ to create proof, but it makes me feel better to charge less and get some customers to feel special that they got in on a good deal.

Infact, this is happening to me right now. Half of my current MRR comes from business membership. I started at $250 per month to be listed as a sponsor and get mentions in my newsletter. I felt scared to charge that at the beginning, but now that I have 8 paying customers, I feel confident to adjust the offering slightly and start charging $500-$1k per month.

Could I charge more than that? Probably, and perhaps in time I will.

Charging more can make things inaccessible

Sometimes in business I feel we can get carried away with being purely profit driven. Businesses have so many nuances to them and I feel the human nature side of them is often discarded as not important.

There are communities, memberships and learning spaces that charge anywhere from roughly $50 to $10k per year. Obviously, the price dictates who can join.

Then there are things you can offer on top of membership (like sponsorship offerings) that can vary wildly. What you charge will largely depend on the industry you are in and the reach you have.

The consideration here is not to simply charge more, but to think about who to charge more to. Maybe sponsorship ends up subsidising membership fees or the ability to create free things.

I was tempted to raise my prices at Rosieland, instead I feel better about charging more for sponsors to come onboard. It feels like a slog to get people to sign up to Rosieland at the current $150, I’d rather see if I can make it more sustainable with sponsorship revenue. Especially in the current climate.

Charging more to one customer gives me the confidence to charge less to others.

Business is not so black and white

I write this because I feel like so much of the advice out there is so black and white with little consideration for the humanity or context of the situatuion.

It’s disheartening the number of times I’ve heard ‘charge more’ as the solution without real consideration of the journey that is needed to get there. There are so many human aspects that really need to be considered when we build businesses.

Whatever you charge, it’s an opportunity to build a relationship and discover new ways of serving your people.