E-Book Pricing Strategy?

Thanks Eleanor

There are currently no similar e-books or competition in the field. Many don't offer this information in an e-book as it would cut off their main business model which charges a very high price for the service. I did however see a somewhat similar half-baked product that came with a 1 hour consultation which was priced at $300 but it wasn't an e-book just some garbage as the fee was mainly for the 1 hour phone call.

I'll test out some digital download/e-book cart options over the next fee days to see what works. I want to keep it secure so people can't pass on a url to friends to download the e-book and so on.

Disagreed

I love your posts.

But. I definitely don't think that is always the case.

Think of it this way.

Growing up with infomercials and still seeing them nonstop all the time on TV we see 19.95 all the time and 19.99 or 3 easy payments of 24.95 and so forth.

It's annoying as we know the real price is $20 (we round up).

So.

Instead test out different pricing for different products/services.

I find that $17 or $47 works magic because the price point is $2 about the $5, which means people tend to round down to the closest $5 increment.

So they might view that as $15. It's not scamming people. It's giving them a decent deal and not making them think too hard about it

These are just my opinions, as usual. But I do disagree with the "always" part.

If your market will buy at $80, they will buy at $97 and **may**even buy at a higher price point.

What about putting together two offerings...

1. A $97 ebook
2. A $197 ebook + 10-minute or 15-minute consult with you (since you really know your stuff) to get a question or two answered. Alternative to the phone call (which you can control by allocating one day and having your customers schedule during that day each week) you could instead provide 1-week's email consultation at this higher price point.

By offering two alternatives, the $197 will get those who really want more than just an ebook while the $197 will make the $97 ebook look like a steal.

Assume by the way that you will title this a system, course, solution, etc...instead of ebook to give it the proper positioning.

Finally - at these price points there seems like a good opportunity for partner promotion/affiliate promotion, especially if this field is expensive to advertise into, affiliate programs can work very well. Reason I bring it up is you want to think about that when you setup your payment system. Going with someone like 1Shoppingcart can help you manage your affiliate program.

Jeff

I can see this line of thinking, but I don't think it's accurate. If a one page ebook saved you tens of thousands of dollars somehow would it really be worth less than $7? On the other hand someone could give me 50 videos for $97 and if they were full of gibberish or incorrect information, they'd be worth nothing.

Don't price based on the format of the information, base your price on the value of the information.

I often wonder where the line is between a book and an information product / course. Today I was looking at the content of a series of ebooks that I recently bought. It's a course, and it's 5 separate books. But treating it as one book, these are the details of what's in it :



* Number of pages : 130 (a few pages here and there are partly blank)

* Number of words : A very rough guess is 5,000 to 10,000 words, because I couldn't copy and paste them because it's pdf.

* Number of diagrams : Very few, probably 2 or 3

* Number of links : 5

* Audio : 51 clips of audio, total time : 9.5 hours, most of it doesn't really add much value or anything that isn't already mentioned in the text. It's mostly chit chat. The only value that it seems to add is just the fact that it gives you a break from reading. But that's about it. And 2.5 hours of it is from a conference call, and you can't really hear it that clearly, and again it's mostly chat.

* Video : 5 videos, 2 hours in total (but only 1 video is by the author and it's only 4 minutes long, and it's just chat)

* PRICE : £97 ($162). But it is advertised as having previously been £300 ($486).



The same info for the book that I'm working on, bearing in mind that it's not done yet, so this is a fairly good guess :


* Number of pages : 60 or so

* Number of words : 7,000 probably

* Number of diagrams : so far just over 100, all of them very necessary and useful

* Number of links : none

* Audio : none

* Video : If I add video, it could realistically amount to, on average, one 30 second video per diagram, so that's 100 short videos, 50 mins, let's say 1 hour in total. However I recently calculated it to be 3 hours, although I don't know how I came to that figure. But let's say at least 1 hour.



At first I thought I should charge £5 ($8.36) for my book, and then I thought maybe it could be £10 ($16.72). But now, looking at the figures above, I don't see why I can't charge at least £50 ($83.60).

Am I being realistic?

So would you say that splitting up an ebook into lots of emails would justify charging more? I suppose doing it that way would give the customer enough time to absorb each part, and therefore benefit more from it than they would if they had the whole lot in one go, and look forward to the next installment. I guess that would increase the perceived value, especially if they can think of it as a course over a period of time. Actually that's what the product that I bought was. It was 5 emails.

Ok I could do that.

What is better, charging the most that I think I could get away with and then reducing it if necessary, or, charging very little at first and then increasing it as much as possible?

I definitely don't want that. I think my book is very good. But I've never seen anything quite like what I'm doing, which is why the first 3,000 words is a step by step explanation of how my idea works and why it makes sense.

The price of a product is somewhat determined by your business strategy. I don't mean "I want to make 5 figures a month". I mean the actual plan, the strategy for your entire business, your system.

How much is this system going to cost you? You have a number of costs such as:

• Websites
• Graphics
• Content
• Copy
• Advertising
• SEO
• Product Creation
• Living expenses

This is what we call Overhead and it's the cost of setting up and running a business. To turn a profit, your total revenue needs to exceed your overhead.

It's important to create a business plan because you need to have an idea about your overhead and investment costs. If a system costs $1,000 to set up, for example, and your product is priced at $10 then you'll need to sell 101 copies to turn a profit. If your product is $100 then you need to sell 11 copies.

Keep in mind, however, that the market is what sets the price for goods and services. Simply put, if people won't pay $X for something then it simply isn't worth that much money.

It might seem like a good idea to price the product at $100 so you cover your overhead in fewer sales but is there a market for your product at that price point?

You may find that people are more receptive to your product at a lower price. If this is the case, you know you'll need to sell more copies of that product to create a profit. This, then, will determine how much traffic you'll need, what sources of traffic to use, and what sort of budget you'll need to generate it.

So the price of a product is an important consideration but it's generally decided by external factors, not by a desire to make $X.

I would suggest focusing on your business plan and letting that tell you how much to charge for your product. Once you've done that, you can try to even things out with great cover art, powerful copy, testimonials, and a massive web of traffic generation.

I know this isn't really the answer you're looking for but it's an honest one.

I agree that the price of the product is secondary and a person should focus on making sure they offer value, but eventually price will become a factor soon after.