How to Price Your eBook so that it Sells and Still Makes a Profit!

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by Greg Spence

INTRODUCTION So you have written your book, converted it into an ebook ready to sell from your website. But hang on a minute....

....how much do you charge for it!

Too much and it won't sell, too little and you will have to sell thousands of copies just to break even.

Wouldn't it be great if you could arrive at a price that is right for your customers, so right in fact that they buy your book in droves whilst making you a handsome profit.

Every customer has his or her personal price for your ebook, the price they would be willing to pay. Do you know what your customers ideal price is? Do you know how many would not pay more than $10, $20 or $50 for it?

Better still would you like to know how many consider $30 to be a fair price?

If the answer is yes, then this article will be of interest to you because I am going to explain how you can arrive at a price that will make your ebook sell.

I will also mention at the end a unique product I found that will do all this for you automatically!

A CRASH COURSE IN PRICING

Finding the right price for your ebook is critical, it can make or break your profit and can mean the difference between double or triple your income.

How to find that price is one of the most difficult aspects to selling your ebooks online. Know doubt you have been surfing the web and found ebooks that range in price from $2 up to $200. You are told that "How to" ebooks sell for more than fiction so you should be able to charge more if your ebook is a "How to".

But how much more?

Typically the way ebooks (and most products online for that matter) are priced is by trial and error. If the author finds a competitive ebook he/she will price just below it on the basis that the customer will go with the lowest price every time. This has been proven not to be the case. The customer buys also on product quality, brand perception, and many other variables as well.

Alternatively the author will price the ebook at the lowest possible price on the basis that millions of people are online so the ebook is bound to sell in the millions of copies. Again a common misconception. Ebook purchasing is still in its infancy.

Many online marketing guru's advocate testing your product price by selling at a high price initially and eventually lowering it until the floods of sales start coming in. This has a potentially negative impact on your customers. If you had bought a book at $50 to find a week later that it was selling for $29.95 you would not be too happy would you!

All of these methods are hit and miss and less than scientific in their approach.

There is an amazing amount of information on the Web about all forms of online marketing. The one subject they do not cover is pricing.

HOW TO SET A PRICE THAT WILL SELL YOUR EBOOKS

Before you set your exact price you must decide upon a suitable pricing model. There are two basic models in existence today.

1. Price to Penetrate. Here your goal is to penetrate the market by selling your ebooks in volume. This means you should price your product low compared to the competition. The balance here is to find a price that maximizes profits AND number of ebooks sold.

Use this strategy to acquire as many customers as possible. Some authors even price their ebooks at a loss to get a high number of customers.

Why? Because they understand the lifetime value of a customer. An existing customer is more likely to buy from you again. In fact, it is not uncommon for more than 80% of first time customers to buy a second product from the same source as the first. This is especially true if the first product they bought was deemed by them to be of exceptional value.

If you want to establish market dominance with your ebook then pricing to penetrate is a good strategy although your profit level will be low at the expense of acquiring a large number of customers.

2. Premium pricing - price to skim. With this strategy you price your ebook high and every sale brings a much larger profit at the expense of fewer customers, and therefore a smaller market share.

If you are pricing high on the net your ebook had better be unique and covering a subject that everyone wants to know something about. Even then you are begging for someone to come along and undercut you on price.

The most valid reason for using this strategy is that your ebook covers something new, maybe a new technique for doing something, which is not yet common knowledge.

Don't stick with this skimming strategy forever as your ebook sales will eventually peter out to nothing. It is important you determine in advance how long you will use this strategy before you switch to a different pricing model.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PRICING

Setting the right price is also a matter of psychology. There are several well established "rules", which pricing should follow to be successful, as follows:

a) End your price with a 5, 7, 8 or 9. NEVER end in a 0 or 1. Doesn't $19.99 sound better than $20? Isn't 99 cents much cheaper than a $1?

Don't forget humans buy on emotion first and then justify that buying decision with a rational explanation afterwards!

b) Something for nothing. We all love to get something for free. Many times on the Web you will see free bonuses offered with an ebook.

If you have purchased my latest ebook "How to Search the Internet" (from http://www.search-help.net) you will have received free bonuses to the value of $148!

Other ways of building in perceived value is to bundle several ebooks together for a single price. This price must be lower than the price of all ebooks added together. For example if you offer two ebooks that normally sell for $19 each, selling them together for $29 would make them a perceived bargain and more attractive to a customer.

IN SUMMARY

I have only scratched the surface of the ins and outs of pricing. Unfortunately pricing can be something of a black art and very difficult to do properly. Hopefully this article has put you on the right road pointing in the right direction.

Whilst I was researching this article I came across a unique product that takes all the mystical properties of pricing away. It is called "Make Your Price Sell" and I am now using it to price all of my books and services.

If you want to take a look at it and try it for FREE go on over to http://www.getpub.com/myps/ . You will not find anything else on the net that does this.