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Pricing Strategies for Spreadsheets
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Video Transcript
00:10 But I will tell you that if you are pegging your price at around $5 to $10 or $15 or $20 I think you're under pricing.
00:16 In yourself this probably due to looking at Etsy and seeing that templates and trackers are going for about that. But I think that if you're adding some automations which I do suggest you do or I am in any app script or even any integration with other applications.
00:32 Uh, you should definitely be considering $50 or more. Uh, doing things also in your sheet or giving away things that you do yourself for consulting is a great way to increase the value of your spreadsheet.
00:48 Thank you. Maybe, uh, it's resources that you usually give away in say some consulting service. Usually people are paying you 1 to 2k or 5k a month.
00:58 You're roughly doing anywhere between 10 to 40 hours over the course of that month. Um, and start thinking about your per- hour pricing for consulting.
01:06 Again, if you're doing consulting uh around the 100, 200, 300 dollars an hour. Um, consider pricing your spreadsheet at that.
01:15 Say something like hey, uh when I do clients and I give them you know 10 hours of my time for 1500 dollars.
01:21 I'll give them this sheet but you can buy the sheet without getting the consulting and it will only cost you one hour of my time which is roughly you know something like a and fifty dollars.
01:30 Um, and I would say do that and also give away maybe a free or a lesser version for a half.
01:37 But I will tell you that a multi-tiered approach is a road to ruin if you are starting out that way and I will talk about that in a future video.
01:47 But we were pricing considering creating some kind of pro version or a very like idealized version. Or around anywhere between $50 and $99 I would say.
01:57 It's a very good price for a google sheet. That either does something that you can't do. Or if you've even if it replaces a app that you would spend anywhere between 9 and 20 or 25 or 3.
02:09 $30 a month for and you're doing this in a google sheet. When you show them you know there's some videos on how to use this google sheet instead of this 10, 20 dollars a month service.
02:22 Uh. Consider looking at the yearly price. Thank you. That of that 10 dollars a month, look at people are spending about 120 or even with a discount around $90 per year for this application, this software as a service and you have created this in a google sheet and you're only going to charge them one
02:39 time. Maybe you've include lifetime. . I definitely would recommend in the 50 to 99 dollar range making sure that people know that they can get a lifetime of updates or if you do know that you're going to be adding a lot of really cool features over the next few years, maybe even pricing it at a little
02:57 bit lower like 50 dollars and um on the lower end of that and saying hey this allows you to get updates for the next year when you want if you will ever want to upgrade next year when we create a new version of this will give you 50% off the new version.
03:13 Thank you. Uh this is really how software used to be sold not software as a service where you just pay a monthly fee but you pay one time fee and then you get upgrades for a certain amount of time maybe a year or no upgrades you get what you have and then if you buy the next version you get maybe a discount
03:29 . And I would do that. I would definitely consider selling spreadsheets like that like old software used to be sold. So again that's like charging $50 today to get the version you can get today.
03:42 In a year we'll be releasing version two versions or whatever the next upgraded version and you'll get 50% off of that version when we release it.
03:51 This allows you to ship a sheet very quickly. Right now test the market and then if you do decide to continue putting development resources time and energy and even money if you pay for someone.
04:02 Else to develop the app script. Umm. You can then choose to based on those sales and knowing that some percentage is going to upgrade in the next year and buy that next version.
04:13 Umm. One way that I think you can also max to maximize your price is by adding things other than spreadsheets.
04:22 So this is very easily done in gumroad or with automated, uh, sales pipelines. If you do it in stripe it's a little bit harder but you can definitely set it up with like convert kit or something.
04:33 is one price for your template, say $50 and then have a $99 extra which is literally the more than double which is like add $99 for a one hour onboarding call.
04:46 And what this does is it gets you the maximum of a new per person. For someone who's like hey I would love to use this template but I also don't necessarily want to spend 2-3 hours setting it up or I may not know how to set it up particularly great.
05:02 What I usually do when I sell a spreadsheet especially when it needs some setup is I will give away the videos for free.
05:08 Here's a sheet. Here's a bunch of videos. Umm. And then adding this one hour call or onboarding call even if you want to charge $20 for a half hour call do that or charge your normal consulting fee.
05:22 If it's $150, $200, add that to the price and get a one hour onboarding call. This is great also to talk with your customers, talk to your users.
05:32 Hey why did you buy this? Hey what else would you want this to do that it doesn't do now? These are two questions you can ask during that call.
05:38 Very easily and it's not getting in the way of actually giving them the value right? Why did you buy? So I know what to expect and what you expect from this.
05:47 What else would you like so that I can build it and add this in the future right? These are all benefits for the user.
05:53 It's not taking away from the time that they're. Uh paying for. Umm. Some more things you can do to increase the value is an increase the price that you sell at.
06:07 It's talk about the value talk about as I said before. Uh I charge you know usually two to three thousand dollars consulting fee for a monthly client and you can get all of these things that they get, you can get for $100.
06:20 customers. One huge caveat of all of this is market expectations. Uh understand what is the market buying? What is the customer looking for?
06:32 What are they resources you may want to. Use that I use to build this and have you know maybe it's a Udemy course on spreadsheets or it's a Udemy course on whatever your expert thesis that you've built into this Google Sheet, share those and say, hey.
06:59 You could spend 15 hours learning this uh investment strategy totally fine or this market calculation, but I've embedded this calculation immediately into my sheet, right?
07:09 This is uh again something I mentioned earlier in this course about how you can add value perceived value to this sheet by talking about all the learnings you've done and in that user's mind they're trying to decide should I go along the path of uh understanding this myself and learning it and take the
07:29 time and invest the time should I invest the money and when you say something like oh it may take 15 hours to complete this course and you may also have to buy that course for $20 but you can buy this template for 20 bucks don't have to take the course and enter your few numbers and get some calculations
07:43 done. Fantastic. Great. Umm talk about automations. Uh if you're adding automations I would highly recommend that if you're not adding automations I would recommend adding automations but also calculations and also in internal knowledge that you have that you've embedded into the sheet either through
08:01 some custom functions by the way. Uh if you haven't yet heard of this if I haven't mentioned it in other videos, adding custom functions that are just sort of simple calculations that you know that you want to embed in Google sheets add to the Google sheet formulas.
08:15 It's one of the easiest ways to add a really cool value to sheets where you've created this custom formula they can use out of the box immediately.
08:24 Uh and it's really awesome. Also go check out like my Google sheet add-ons where you could create a free Google sheet add-on that adds maybe a couple of these functions as a free teaser and be like hey download this and then if you want actually 20 more calculations done for you by this template right
08:39 you can do that very simply. Umm but I will repeat here what I've repeated and what I said at the beginning of this video which is that pricing is definitely an art.
08:51 You can always change your pricing. Uhh, I will talk about this a little bit more in marketing but basically any price that you peg it at, even if you feel like that is too high and people are not buying because it is too high, you don't have to immediately lower the price.
09:05 You can, again everything is, uhh, change level. Almost all business decisions you make with selling spreadsheets are reversible or changeable in the future.
09:15 So if you price it at $50 and you get zero sales there is another way other than just market and that's creating coupons or instantaneous promotions that have some scarcity either time wise are going to expire or there's a certain number of them.
09:31 You can always test the price by offering. Uh and this is not just like a 10 to 20% off. I'll talk about how you can do really cool coupon codes that essentially only one is created for like 99% off.
09:46 One is created for 98% off. You can do these kind of really special promotions. Uh almost all you're around. You can definitely do it around Black Friday.
09:56 You can definitely do it around. Keep it key. Uh dates in your niche. Like if you're creating a yearly planner for a certain type of person around the end of December or even in January, you can still launch a yearly planner January February March and be like, Hey, we only have 75% of the year left.
10:16 So I'm pricing this at 75% so here's coupon for 25% off. Um or even 75% off. You're like, Hey, I have two coupons for 75% off and five for 25% off.
10:26 Use them as you wish. You can always test the lower prices that way. But I would recommend you test higher prices first with that perceived value adding your consulting, adding on boarding call.
10:39 Um adding more resources bundling is very easy to increase. So you can test that maximizing that revenue. Um but definitely it is an art.
10:51 Try a lot of things I would recommend. Uh your market, your customers are going to be very different than say uh mine or someone else's.
11:01 So enjoy, try a lot of uh different things and let me know if you have any uh questions about pricing that are very specific to your uh sheet that you're selling.
11:11 I'm happy to answer them.
Courses
Selling Spreadsheets Course Introduction
SECTION 1 - You Are The Sheet
Coupon Code Maker Updates February 2024 - New Dashboard
How to Make Good Looking Spreadsheets
Curate Google Sheets Easily - Automatic Bookmarklet Maker
Explore Your Spreadsheet Selling Options
What you know matters
Who you are matters
How you think matters
Why you think it matters, matters
Surprising Things about Selling Spreadsheets
SECTION 2 - Your Spreadsheet Blueprint
Easiest Sheet Ever to Sell
Problems Everywhere, and the Spreadsheets that Solve Them
The #1 Mistake Spreadsheet Sellers Make and how to Save People Time
Customer’s Context Is King
The Two T’s: Turn Templates into Tools
Create a Branded Lead Magnet from Qualitative Data
Tracker Tactics
SECTION 3 - How to Make a Spreadsheet
Ask Questions
Quality Curation
Fabulous Filters
Wield Wizardry
Automatic Calculations
Automate Emails
You Must Double Duplicate (If you're selling a sheet you use)
Different Kinds of Automation
How do I prevent people from sharing my spreadsheets by making a copy?
SECTION 4 - Spreadsheet Sales Mastery
Write The Sales Page
The Strangest Secret to Selling a Spreadsheet
The F Word
Reciprocity Rules
Pricing Strategies for Spreadsheets
Upselling and Cross-Selling Techniques
Avoid A Multi-Tier Approach
SECTION 5 - Marketing Mastery
Where to Sell Spreadsheets - Marketplace Marketing
Customer Service is Marketing
Six Figure Secrets
How to Sell Spreadsheets on AppSumo Marketplace
Protect Your Spreadsheet IP
Lock Your Sheets with OnlySheets
Weird Idea: Find a Great Sheet Domain Name
A Few New Spreadsheet Business Ideas
SECTION 6 - Spreadsheet Breakdowns
Maximize Spreadsheet Sales to Startups
A Spreadsheet CRM: Automation at work
How to Make Better Lead Magnets
How to Turn a Simple List into an Epic Lead Magnet
The Art of the Sell: Breaking down a Free Title Generator
How to Make an AI Integrated Freebie Spreadsheet