If you follow me on social media, you’ve likely seen all the images to know that I spent last week running my conference in Cabo, called CaboPress. While there, one topic came up often among product owners – pricing.
The default approach that many plugin owners take, when it comes to pricing, is to create multiple offerings based on how many sites a customer plans to use their product.
The problem with this approach is articulated in the title of this post. Most people only run a single site. What that means is that the majority of your customers will buy your cheapest offering.
Now, you’ll likely respond that your targeted buyer isn’t the end user or owner of the site. You’re selling to the freelancers and developers who will use your product on multiple sites.
I get that. Trust me, I understand the dynamic.
But let me highlight why that’s a problem. I’m writing to you developers / product owners right now.
How many times have you looked at another product and thought, “I’m not paying that much for that. I can probably code that in a couple of hours”?
Multiple times, right?
Because of the skill that you have, it’s easy to underestimate how much work will actually be required.
And if you’ve ever tried to build your own version of some other product, you’ve slowly discovered that your estimate was off and that it was worth spending the money.
But that’s what your freelancer and developer customers think about your product.
And that’s why I recommend taking another approach. An approach that focuses on site owners. They won’t fall into the underestimating trap. It’s a better audience to develop and sell to.
But that means you don’t use site count as the way you adjust your price points. Instead, shape your product offerings to have different features. Features that map to different micro-segments that have different pain points and are happy to pay for the right version.
Because even if that customer only has one site, they may need the features of a more expensive offering, and that will be better for you and your business.