My info product pricing strategy in a nutshell
March 30th, 2018 by Bob Bly
Subscriber GK writes:
“Many of the big guns in info marketing believe in the concept of
charging very high prices, which sometimes annoys me with their
greed.
“On the other hand, Bob Bly, you make ongoing offers of
inexpensive info-products which seem to recur about every few
weeks.”
“Why do you do what you do? And which should I sell — big-ticket
items or less expensive programs?”
I can’t tell GK what to do. But let’s take a closer look at
strategic pricing of info products for greater ROI and maximum
customer satisfaction.
There are a couple of reasons why many info marketers, both the
top and others, charge what may seem like almost usurious prices
for their courses.
The first is obvious: to make more money.
If a guru has a $3,000 course on Topic X — and I cover the same
material in a $30 ebook — I have to sell 100 units to make the
same 3 grand he makes with just one sale.
The second reason these gurus give for their high prices is:
“Charging a lot of money is the only way to motivate customer to
take the information seriously.”
And to a certain degree, they’re right: If you pay only $30 for
my course on X, then get busy, put it aside, and never return to
it, you haven’t lost much — at least not much money paid for a
product you didn’t really use.
But if you paid 3K for Mr. Big Guru’s program, your large
investment makes you more likely to pay attention to it. Right?
Conversely, when you or I give someone free advice, that person
values our info based on what he or she paid for it: nothing.
So, why don’t I jump on the bandwagon and bring out a line of
super-expensive info products for my readers?
For these 5 good reasons:
>> First, one can argue that, in particular when selling to
first-time customers, it is better to make $3,000 in revenues by
selling 100 units of a $30 items vs. by selling just one unit of
a $3,000 item.
Reason: With the first order, you acquire 100 new customers
instead of just one, building your list 100X faster.
>> Second, with reasonable pricing, it is easier to deliver value
many times in excess of what the customer pays for the product.
Fred Gleeck says the info products you sell should be ideally
worth 10X or more the list price.
Well, creating a $30 ebook that delivers $300 or more in value is
an achievable goal for me and you.
On the other hand, it’s more difficult to create a $3,000 program
that you can honestly say is worth at least 30 grand.
>> Third, many consumers perceive, rightly or wrongly, that some
of the higher-priced info product marketers are really in the
“money extraction” business more than they are the value delivery
business.
So many buyers, like GK, feel they are being treated as a mark
rather than a student or valued client.
As for me, I want a reputation of delivering real value as well
as never ripping people off.
>> Fourth, big-ticket products — such as conferences, boot camps,
coaching, masterminds, and multimedia programs — are usually more
complex to produce than low-priced ebooks, DVDs, or audios.
Orchestrating the creation, production, delivery, and marketing
of big-ticket items takes a lot of time and effort.
That works if you are a full-time info marketer, especially if
you have a team to help you.
But for a little operator like me, for whom info marketing is a
spare-time income, the simplicity and ease of producing and
selling books, audios, and other lower-priced items is more
appealing.
>> Fifth, most big-ticket info products these day have live
elements, such as webinars, mentoring, meetings, or coaching.
For that reason, they are not purely passive income, but a mix of
active and passive.
And again, as a small operator who already had a full-time job
(in my case, freelance copywriting), I want my info products to
be purely passive, requiring zero time on my part to deliver and
support.
Which is why ebooks, DVDs, and other one-shot products are right
for me.
That being said, the best strategy in online information
marketing is to offer an extensive line of products covering the
full price spectrum:
Low … medium … and high-priced items.
That doesn’t necessarily mean all of these programs have to be
YOUR products: some can be those of other marketers, which you
offer as their affiliate or JV partner.
That way, you get a share of the profits from someone else’s
expensive info products — without doing the work!
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