I do the invoicing for our business, both the UK side and the US side. I see every price we’ve ever set, and every price a customer thought was fair enough to pay. What I notice, more than anything else, is how rarely the two numbers match the one the seller first thought of before their nerve failed them.

Somebody spends weeks, sometimes months, building something worth having. Then they price it as though they’re apologising for asking money for it at all. I’ve watched affiliates undercharge for a guide that deserved a far higher price. I’ve watched students do it with the product that took them longest to finish.

The number on the page rarely reflects what the work is worth. It reflects how brave the person felt on the day they typed it in.

You may have put a smaller figure in a price box than the one you first thought of. If the bigger number felt too uncomfortable to look at, that’s underpricing your work in its simplest form, and this one’s for you.

The Number You Already Know Feels Too Big

You know your own price better than anyone else does. That’s the problem.

You remember every hour it took to build. You remember the version you scrapped and started again from nothing. All of that sits quietly behind the number, making it feel bigger than it really is.

Picture two people looking at the same course. One priced it low because she doubted whether anyone would pay more. The other priced it fairly because she knew exactly what result it delivered. The buyer never sees the doubt behind the first number, or the confidence behind the second. All they see is a number, and a decision to make about their own problem.

Your customer carries none of that history. They see one thing: whether this solves the problem they’ve got, today, for what you’re asking.

A price only feels too high to the person who set it. Everyone else simply decides whether it’s worth it to them.

Where The Fear Comes From

I think underpricing your work isn’t really about the market at all. It’s about comfort.

A lower number feels safer to type in the moment you’re setting it. Nobody regrets a gentle price the day they choose it.

They regret it three months later, once the bank statement arrives. By then the sales haven’t quite covered what it cost to build the thing in the first place.

I’ve written about this kind of hesitation before, in other articles I have shared recently. But pricing is where it shows up most stubbornly, because the decision feels so final the moment you click publish.

A price that flinches protects your nerves, not your sales.

Borrowed Prices Are Still Borrowed

I see this often with licensed products and PLR. Someone buys the rights to something, then simply copies the price the last person charged, without asking whether it’s right for their own audience.

That’s the same mistake wearing a different coat. It’s still someone else’s decision, sitting on your page, with your name attached to it.

Say a licence changes hands three or four times before it reaches you. Each seller before you copied the number from the one before, and none of them stopped to ask whether their audience even resembled the one the original price was built for. By the time it reaches your page, the number has nothing to do with your customer at all.

Your price should reflect what the thing does for the specific person you’re selling it to. It shouldn’t reflect what felt safe for whoever priced it before you got hold of it.

What I See In The Invoices

Every month I reconcile invoices across both sides of this business, and the pattern repeats itself. Products priced with confidence sell steadily, month after month.

Products priced apologetically get quietly discounted within a year, because the seller never quite believed in the number to begin with.

I once watched two nearly identical products sit side by side in the same catalogue, priced ten dollars apart for no reason either seller could explain. The higher one sold just as often. The only difference customers ever mentioned was which one looked like it had been priced on purpose.

I don’t think that’s a coincidence. A customer can sense hesitation in a price the same way they can sense it in anything else you write. If you don’t believe your own number, why should they?

This isn’t really about greed, whatever the wingers and whiners of this market like to suggest whenever anyone raises a price. It’s about matching the number to what the thing does for the person buying it.

The Room Where Everyone Has Already Decided

Picture a room full of buyers rather than sellers. Every person in it has already made their own decision about what something is worth to them, long before they hear the number.

The seller is often the only person in the room still nervous about the price. The buyer isn’t thinking about the seller’s confidence. They’re thinking about their own problem, and whether this fixes it.

Confidence in a number tends to hold. Discomfort in a number tends to slide.

The Difference Between Cheap And Fair

Cheap and fair aren’t the same thing, though it’s easy to confuse them when you’re nervous about a launch.

A fair price reflects what the thing is worth to the person buying it. A cheap price reflects how worried you are that nobody will.

I’ve seen this with our own products more than once. A small increase, made properly and for the right reasons, rarely costs the sales you’re afraid of losing. Underpricing your work usually costs you something else: your own discomfort, for about a week, until the new number starts to feel ordinary.

One Small Change Worth Testing

You don’t need to double a price to put any of this to work.

Pick the next product you’re about to price, or the one you’re tempted to discount out of nerves. Choose a number that makes you slightly uncomfortable, not one that makes you panic.

Try it with something small first. Add a modest amount to a product that’s been sitting at the same number for a year, without a good reason behind that number. Give it thirty days before you judge the result, rather than panicking after the first quiet week.

Then watch two things closely: how many people still say yes, and how much you earn from the ones who do.

That second number is usually the more interesting one.

Where This Leads Next

If pricing properly is the piece you’re missing, the harder part is usually what comes after it. That means building a steady, ongoing income around products you’ve already priced with confidence, rather than starting from nothing with every new launch.

Nick James runs a monthly program called Serious About Six Figures. It’s built for information publishers who already have a first product out and want a clear plan for growing what happens next.

It’s not about finding another new idea. It’s about building steadily on what you’ve already priced properly.

If that’s the stage you’re at, it’s worth a proper look.

You don’t have to fix every price in your business this week. Pick one. Type in the number that makes you slightly uncomfortable, and leave it there for a month before you touch it again.

Your work was never the problem. The number sitting underneath it usually is.

Best wishes for now,
Kate

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