5 Uncommon Thoughts on Pricing

“Even if you were offering everything free, the majority would be disinterested.”

In the last week I’ve had 4 separate questions about pricing.

Everyone wants to get paid well, nobody knows what “paid well” actually means, everyone’s concerned with what their peers are charging, and everyone’s convinced nobody will hire them if they’re “expensive”.

In response to having no answers to these things, a bunch of creatives throw their hands up in the air and just “wish money didn’t exist” or “wish they had a better job and could live off that income to do art” or some variation of “why can’t we just freely make art and not charge?”

Well, you can, but I have a horrible news flash –

The above quote is true. You can give away everything you make – but besides a lucky few of you, most of the world won’t care. Even most of your target market won’t notice. Worse than that, even a large number of your pre-built fan base won’t respond.

How do I know this?

I’ve released 3 ebooks completely free – and relative to the number of people they could reach, they’ve hit small numbers.

It’s not that they haven’t done significant things for me – but most of them did less than I imagined they would.

Even if you could live by giving away everything free – most people wouldn’t give a shit. And that is truly what you’re after, right? You just want people to care – you want to affect them.

Well that, and make a good living.

Here’s a few things for you to chew on in regard to that.

To get paid well – you actually need to know what you want to get paid. At least know what an average income in your area is and strive to be above that, at least.
The definition of “paid well” is entirely manufactured by you. Nobody else sets your prices or creates your products for you.
What other people charge is completely irrelevant. That statement is going to upset a lot of you, but it’s true. People who are interested in being and living above average (or “normal” – whatever you perceive that to be) are completely unconcerned with what others are doing and charging with one exception – to make sure that’s not what they are doing.
Charging bargain basement prices is the equivalent of calling yourself a bargain basement retail store. Wal-Mart is already cheap – and every store cheaper than Wal-Mart that you walk into is a dumpster fire and often trashed. Super high end expensive retail establishments are often immaculate, and specialize in a specific thing. Just like the “famous” or super respected creatives you look up to – you also have no idea how those high end retail stores got established so well and stay afloat. But I just gave you a really big clue.
The easiest way to raise your prices is to provide big value to others.

Before the year is up, I’m entertaining writing a guide for you on what I know about pricing. That’s one way I can raise my value with you.

I’m also giving you a big way to raise your value with your clients if you’re interested in game audio implementation and programming. My first video course, C# Implementation with Wwise and Unity, is coming out in 7 days (October 29th).

That’s right – a week from today you’ll see a message here telling you it’s available.

If you’ve ever really wanted to know how to easily make sounds from Wwise work and play back in Unity by using C# code – this course is everything I can give to teach you how.

You’re not going to be writing your own complete audio systems by the end of it, but you’ll sure as hell raise your value with your clients, audio teammates, and engineers on your team.

I was told this week by a preorder customer who got a sneak preview –

“I’m going to sound WAY less stupid when I talk to my programmers now… this is going to make my life so much easier!”

If that sounds appealing – the course is for you.

It won’t be permanently open, there will be a limited number of copies available. I’m trying a new system I’ve never done before and I want to make sure every customer gets handled well – that means not everyone can buy it because I’m a one man operation.

Yes, it will go on sale again, but I can’t tell you when or how much I’m going to charge.

We both know I’m appealing to your inner FOMO – but here’s the truth:

If you’re unsure, or you can’t afford it – don’t buy it.

Even better – if you have a question and you want me to confirm it’s not for you, email me or reply to ANY of my emails. I’ll be happy to tell you not to buy it if you shouldn’t.

But if you should, you probably know.

And I look forward to helping you out on Monday.