Creating Digital Assets: A fixed price

👉 This is part of the Creating Digital Assets series.

Pricing is super tricky.

Maybe you’re comfortable with telling people what your thing costs, or maybe you struggle with it. I know for me, pricing has always been that awkward conversation I never like having, but know I need to.

One of the worst feelings I’ve ever felt was having an invoice questioned, and even though I could show what had been completed, it was a clear signal that something in the communication was missing. I never wanted feel that feeling again.

Fixed pricing can alleviate a lot of this.

As the service provider, if you don’t like having how-much-will-this-cost conversations, and can clearly outline what you’re delivering (your clear scope), you likely don’t need to have those conversations.

For your buyer paying your fixed price, there’s no mystery of being quoted an estimate, then paying significantly more when all the work has been done.

The win-win factor is pretty compelling:

For you: healthy profit, predictable workload, no awkward sales calls;

For your buyer: clear pricing, quality work, and knowing exactly what to expect as a deliverable.

Putting that price on a big “Buy Now” button on your website makes it even easier for people to skip over a potential conversation, and just buy it.

Simple right! I’d say it’s easier said than done, at first 🤪

It took me a long time to settle on a price for BrandPocket and make it available to buy… but I also know the price can, and likely will, change.

Something that helped: Since my digital asset is a service that requires me sitting at the keyboard, I have limited capacity to deliver them, so I’ve set a target of 5 customers at this price. When I hit that, I’ll bump the price a little, and keep doing that until something tells me to stop.

Between 2010-2016, when I sold brand identity design as a productised service, the last package I sold was almost 4x the first one… the scope changed a little over time, and they were always sold in-person (not through a buy button on a website) but the price bumps were mostly just experiments… can I sell one at this price? Cool, how about this price?

Looking back now, each one was a case of underselling on my part. By the last sale, I was getting closer to something both justifiable and financially sustainable.

But there was still a conversation to be had. With fixed pricing, they’re essentially a thing of the past (as are invoice disputes).

Tomorrow: Referability.

(Agree? Disagree? Just reply).