You're underpriced

Here we go again with the doom’s predictions.

Substack’s dying. The subscription model doesn’t work. We’re too late.

Good thing Sarah Fay, PhD wrote about it or I would’ve missed the memo and the funeral.

Over the past few weeks, many prominent Substack writers declared Substackers are in serious trouble. People have no money to support multiple newsletters, so how are writers supposed to make money?

All that talk made me think of pricing.

Why is pricing relevant in this situation?

Say you want to make $60,000 per year from paid subscribers. (It’s a random number, you can apply the same math to any number).

If you charge $60 per year, you need 1000 paid subscribers to get to that.

If you charge $120 per year, you need 500 paid subscribers.

If you charge $150, you need 400 paid subscribers.

Well, first of all, the people who need you, want you, love your work, find it helpful and want to support it, they don’t mind paying extra $100 per year to be your subscriber.

$100 per year is less than $10 per month.

That’s not a big difference for someone who likes what you do.

The difficulty in attracting new subscribers has less to do with price than you think. It’s just as difficult to get 400 paid subscribers with the $60 price tag as it is with the $150.

It’s not that I don’t have a healthy respect for money. A dollar is a dollar. It’s that I know how I think when I want to buy something—I want to buy it and I figure out a way. I’ve bought courses and coaching for thousands of dollars not because I had thousands of dollars laying around but because I really wanted it.

And here, we’re talking about 3 digits over a year. Common!

So the question shifts from how do I get paid subscribers to how do I make my newsletters something people really, really want to pay for.

And, funnily, the answer starts with increasing your price to a level that makes you giddy.

Then, often automatically, you start thinking about all the cool things you can offer that would justify that price.

And if you really think the economy is bad right now and people are struggling, fine, run a promo from time to time. Give people who really love your work but struggle financially the chance to lock in the lower price.

At least you have scarcity baked in: the promo runs for a week, buy it now or lose the opportunity.

If the price is really the problem, you should have an influx of new buyers.

To get access to the Price Calculator as well as many other strategies for earning more as a solopreneur, consider joining the paid community.

This applies to all solo businesses.

FORGET! competing on price. Here’s why:

Let’s think about solopreneurship the way I do—as a craft-based model. We’re solopreneurs because we love what we do and we want more freedom to do it our way.

We don’t want to build and escape the business (like entrepreneurs do) or to execute on someone else’s vision (like employees do).

And when have craftsmen ever been cheap or even affordable?

If we love what we do and we have a lot of experience doing it for multiple clients, within multiple industries, for many years; if we can triangulate a problem from 100 perspectives or write a story you can’t stop thinking about, do you think we should be the cheap option?

The only logical way for a solopreneur to build a sustainable business is to charge good money. I’m not saying we should aim for impossible pricing right off the bat, but most solopreneurs actually do the opposite. They stay underpriced for WAY too long.

Because:

• If things aren’t going great, “I can’t raise my prices, things aren’t going great as it is.”

• If things are going great, “I can’t raise my prices, things are going great right now, I don’t want to ruin it.”

If you’re still scared to raise your prices, think of it this way: pricing is flexible. You can always change it up or down.

But if you don’t test the waters, you’ll never know what might work better.

It’s counterintuitive but sometimes higher prices attract more buyers, and it always attracts better buyers.

But you’ll never know what’s possible until you try.

Lowering your price during a downturn seems like the right move. Here’s why it’s a bad idea:

• It hurts your brand. I can guarantee the big players in your industry don’t lower their prices during bad economy—they use some of these strategies instead. If you lower your price during a tough economic situation, you’re saying “My offer isn’t really worth that much, I just figured I could take more money from you when you had it.” That’s not you!

• It attracts the wrong crowd. Lowering your price will attract people who aren’t the right buyers for your product. They feel it’s a bargain and now’s the time to “try it”. Then there are refunds, people not using the product at all, poor testimonials from the wrong buyers. It will destroy your confidence and state of mind, and without that, you can’t be a successful solopreneur.

• It lowers your income. The whole point of adjusting for an economic storm is to keep or increase your income, no? You think lowering your price will bring in so many new people that it will compensate for the loss in profit per unit, but it usually doesn’t. If you have the same distribution, the same exposure to the same crowd, it doesn’t. So all you’ve done is lower your profit from the sales you do make.

We live in the age of AI so instead of me taking you through a long research process, I created a simple Pricing Calculator for Solopreneurs.

It’s designed specifically for solopreneurs in that it considers our types of offers instead of the industry as a whole. Yes, it gives you pricing for newsletters and memberships, too.

It asks you a few questions about your business and specific offer, does research in the background and gives you a price range.

It even gives 2-3 specific steps to take if you want to be able to charge more.

Paid subscribers can access the Pricing Calculator for Solopreneurs below.

For your business to work, the math should be mathing. Stop underpricing and then complaining that there aren’t enough clients. Look at maximising your profit per unit.

Speak soon,

Maya

Join the paid community to unlock the Price Calculator for Solopreneurs below. ⬇️