🏷️ Money · Guide
What Should I Charge?
A method for pricing a digital product without guessing
A practical guide
What Should I Charge?
A method for pricing a digital product without guessing
Your name
A4 · this is a layout preview in the “Worksheet” design. When you generate, the studio writes every chapter in full, paints the cover and chapter art, and composes a downloadable A4 PDF with your name, bio and store link on it.
Nobody can tell you the right price for your work, but there is a better way to arrive at one than picking a round number and hoping. This guide walks through six decisions, in order, and ends with a price you can explain to a buyer in a sentence. It also covers the part most people skip, which is what to do three months later.
What's inside
- 1Start with the job, not the fileYou describe the job the buyer is hiring your product to do, in their words rather than yours, because that job is what sets the ceiling on price. After this chapter you have a written statement of value that is about outcomes rather than page count.
- 2Three prices, not oneYou write down the price you would be embarrassed to charge, the price that feels comfortable, and the price that makes you slightly nervous. The exercise shows you the real range you are working in, and the nervous number is usually closer to right than the comfortable one.
- 3What your buyer is comparing you toYou find the things your buyer already pays for that sit next to your product in their mind, from a paperback to a half-day workshop, and place yourself among them deliberately. This chapter replaces competitor spying with a clear map of the alternatives on your buyer's desk.
- 4Anchors, bundles and the middle optionYou learn how a second and third option changes what the first one feels like, and how to build a bundle that is genuinely worth more rather than padded. By the end you have a simple two or three option layout with a clear recommendation.
- 5Test the price, not the productYou run a short, honest test with a real audience and a fixed end date, and you learn to read the difference between no interest and wrong price. This chapter also covers what to do when the test is inconclusive, which is often.
- 6Raising the price without losing the audienceYou set the rules for your next increase in advance: when it happens, who keeps the old price, and how you tell people. After this chapter a price rise is an announcement rather than an argument.
A sample from chapter one
The file is not the product
Buyers do not price your PDF by the page, any more than they price a hammer by the gram. They price the job it does. A forty-page template pack that gets a wedding photographer through a busy season is worth more than a hundred-page book of general advice, because one of them removes a specific problem on a specific Tuesday and the other one does not.
So write the job down before you write the number. One line, in the buyer's language: what they are stuck on now, and what they can do once they have your product. If that line is about your effort rather than their result, rewrite it. Effort is why the work exists. Result is what people pay for, and it is the only part they can feel before buying.
- Write the buyer's job in one line before you write any number down.
- List three things your buyer already pays for that solve a similar problem.
- Note the price you would be slightly nervous to charge, and keep it visible.
- Decide what is deliberately not included, so the price has an edge to it.
Key takeaways
- A price is easier to defend when you can name the job the product does.
- The comfortable number is usually the one you have already outgrown.
- Deciding your next price rise in advance turns it into an announcement rather than a debate.
The studio writes every chapter from this outline, paints the art and hands you a PDF you can sell the same afternoon.
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