How to Price Digital Products and Actually Make Money
You’ve finished your digital product and now you need to decide what to charge for it.
Easy.
Just type a number into the little price box.
Except you’ve been staring at that box for 23 mins.
$9 feels insulting.
$47 feels like perhaps you’ve become a person with a yacht.
So you check what everybody else is charging.
Excellent idea.
One person is selling something vaguely similar for $3.82, somebody else wants $67, and a third seller has apparently bundled every digital product created since the invention of Wi-Fi for $1.49.
Not helpful. Now what?
There isn’t a secret Correct Price hiding somewhere on the internet. You’re trying to find a price that makes sense for this product, this buyer and the business you’re trying to build.
And yes, we can be considerably more scientific about it than:
Hmm. $17 feels nice.
Let’s figure it out.
First, Stop Pricing Digital Products by Page Count
This one drives me slightly nuts.
You’ll see things like:
50-page workbook: $12 Okay. Why?
Are we paying by the page now?
Because I can make that workbook 97 pages by increasing the font size and adding several unnecessary worksheets nobody asked for.
Did I just double its value?
Of course not.
The size of a digital product can help a customer understand what she’s getting, but more pages do not automatically make something more valuable.
Imagine 2 spreadsheets.
One is a simple monthly expense tracker.
The other helps a freelancer enter her costs, desired profit and working hours, then calculate what she needs to charge.
Both might technically be “one spreadsheet.”
They’re doing very different jobs.
That’s what I’d think about first.
What Is Your Digital Product Actually Helping Someone Do?
This is a much better place to start.
Ask yourself:
What becomes easier, faster, clearer or more organized after somebody uses this?
- A printable grocery list solves a small problem.
- A wedding-planning system that helps somebody manage a $30,000 event solves a considerably bigger one.
- A set of Instagram templates saves someone design time.
- A business pricing calculator could help somebody make decisions about what to charge customers.
- The format doesn’t tell you the value.
The job the product does gets you much closer.
This doesn’t mean you should decide your spreadsheet is worth $497 because technically it helps businesses make money.
Behave. 😂
We’re still going to look at the market.
Yes, You Should Look at What Competitors Charge
Looking at competitors is useful.
Copying their prices is not.
Because you have absolutely no idea why Brenda chose $12.
Maybe she did extensive market research.
Perhaps $12 gives her exactly the margin she needs.
Or Brenda stared at the ceiling and thought:
Twelve feels nice.
We don’t know Brenda.
So instead of finding one similar product and copying the price, look at a range of comparable products.
And comparable is doing some heavy lifting there.
If you’re selling a detailed business planner designed specifically for photographers, comparing it to a generic $2 printable daily planner isn’t going to tell you much.
Look for products serving a similar customer, solving a similar problem and offering roughly similar depth.
Then start noticing what changes as prices go up.
Maybe the higher-priced products include calculators, instructions or additional resources.
Perhaps they’re more specialized.
Some may be bundles rather than individual products.
Others simply have much stronger branding and presentation, which absolutely can affect what buyers are willing to pay.
You’re trying to understand the market.
I saved you the stress and made a free calculator you can use: Calculate what you should price here for free.
Don’t Automatically Try to Be the Cheapest
This is where digital products can get weird.
The cost of creating another copy is basically nothing, so it’s VERY tempting to think:
I’ll make mine cheaper and then everybody will buy mine.
Will they?
If your customer sees similar products at $19, $24 and $27, then yours appears at $3…
She might think she’s found a bargain or might also wonder what’s wrong with it.
Price is information.
It helps people form an opinion about what they’re looking at before they’ve even bought it.
And competing primarily on price means there’s always somewhere lower to go.
Eventually you’re selling a 72-page business toolkit for 84 cents and wondering why you need the population of Ohio on your email list to make $5K.
No thank you.
Do the Math Before You Pick the Price
This is the part I REALLY want digital-product sellers to pay attention to.
Because a price isn’t just something your customer sees.
It determines how many sales you need.
Let’s say you’d like one product to generate $1,000 in revenue.
| Product Price | Sales Needed for $1,000 |
|---|---|
| $5 | 200 |
| $10 | 100 |
| $20 | 50 |
| $25 | 40 |
| $50 | 20 |
| $100 | 10 |
That’s revenue, obviously. Fees, taxes, advertising costs and other expenses haven’t wandered into the party yet.
But look at the difference.
Selling 200 units and selling 20 units are 2 VERY different marketing problems.
That doesn’t mean higher is automatically better.
It means you should stop choosing prices as though they have nothing to do with the rest of the business.
If you price something at $5, cool.
Now ask:
Can I realistically get enough buyers at $5 for this product to be worth selling?
THAT is a useful question.
Should You Start With a Low Price Because You’re New?
Not automatically. Your customer isn’t buying your years of experience as a Digital Product Seller Person.
She’s buying the product. If you’ve made a genuinely useful $27 resource, it doesn’t suddenly become a $7 resource because this is the first time you’ve sold one.
Now, you might deliberately use a lower introductory price.
That’s different.
Maybe you want early customers, feedback or testimonials. Perhaps you’re testing demand before putting more time into the offer.
Fine.
Just know why you’re doing it.
“I’m new and feel weird asking for money” is not really a pricing strategy.
It’s a feeling.
And feelings are allowed.
They just don’t get admin access to the checkout.
What About $7, $17, $27, $47 and All Those Internet Prices?
You do not have to price your digital product at a number ending in 7.
The internet will continue functioning.
There are arguments for psychological pricing, charm pricing and keeping prices below certain thresholds.
But I wouldn’t spend 2 hrs deciding between $27 and $29 while ignoring the fact that your product page doesn’t actually explain what the product does.
Pricing matters.
So does the offer surrounding it.
A customer who doesn’t understand why she wants the thing is unlikely to be rescued by the final $2.
Your Product Presentation Affects What You Can Charge
Here’s something people don’t always like hearing.
You can make a useful product look cheap.
You can also make a relatively simple product feel incredibly well considered.
The difference is often presentation.
Imagine you find 2 budgeting spreadsheets.
The first has one blurry screenshot, a vague description and a title that looks like somebody emptied a bag of keywords onto the page.
The second clearly shows the dashboard, explains who it’s for, walks through what it tracks and lets you see exactly what you’re getting.
Which one would you feel more comfortable paying more for?
Exactly.
This is why pricing and positioning are so connected.
If you’re trying to charge a premium-ish price while your listing looks like you uploaded it during a fire drill, we’ve got some work to do.
If that’s currently your situation, my Digital Product Listing Glow-Up Kit will help you sort out the listing side of it.
When Should You Charge More for a Digital Product?
I’d consider a higher price when the product is doing more meaningful work for the buyer.
That could mean it’s highly specialized, saves substantial time, helps with an expensive or important problem, includes multiple useful components or replaces something the customer would otherwise have to build herself.
A generic content calendar and a complete content-planning system for real estate agents aren’t automatically the same offer because both happen to contain a calendar.
Specificity can increase value.
So can convenience.
And bundling related products can make a higher price much easier to justify.
Which brings us to…
Bundles Can Change the Pricing Conversation Completely
Let’s say you sell a wedding budget spreadsheet for $17.
You also have a vendor tracker, guest-list manager and wedding timeline.
You could sell those separately.
Or you could bundle the related products into a larger wedding-planning system.
Now the customer isn’t comparing your $49 bundle directly with another $17 spreadsheet because she’s buying a different offer.
This is one reason I like building small, logical product lines instead of tossing random products into a shop and hoping they become friends.
Your bundle should solve a bigger chunk of the customer’s problem.
That’s the point.
Putting 37 unrelated templates in a folder and yelling $947 VALUE!!! is something else entirely.
We’ll get into the actual strategy in How to Bundle Digital Products.
Should You Discount Digital Products?
Sure.
Just don’t turn your regular price into decorative fiction.
If your $47 product has been “on sale” for $17 since the Obama administration, $17 is the price.
Customers aren’t stupid.
Discounts work best when there’s a genuine reason for them.
A launch offer makes sense.
A limited promotion can make sense.
You might give existing customers a special offer or discount a bundle for a particular campaign.
What I wouldn’t do is train people to believe they should never pay your regular price because another 60%-off sale will be along before they’ve finished lunch.
Your regular price needs a chance to be regular.
What About Really Cheap Digital Products?
Cheap products aren’t automatically bad.
They can be useful entry offers.
A $7 checklist, $9 mini-template or $12 resource can be an easy first purchase for somebody who has only just discovered you.
But cheap products need volume.
And volume needs traffic.
This is where people get seduced by the idea of:
I’ll sell a $5 printable 1,000 times!
Okay.
How are 1,000 buyers finding it?
That’s the part I want to know.
If you’ve already got a huge audience or you’re selling somewhere with substantial marketplace traffic, a low-priced product can work very differently than it does on a website receiving 63 visitors a month.
Price doesn’t live in a vacuum.
How Do You Price PLR or Resale-Ready Digital Products?
This is where I want you to ignore what you originally paid for the source product for a minute.
If you bought a PLR workbook for $15, that doesn’t automatically mean your finished version should cost $15, $30 or any other number based on what YOU paid.
Your customer isn’t buying your PLR file.
She’s buying the finished product you created from it.
So look at the end product.
How substantially have you customized it?
What problem does it solve?
Who is it for?
What does the finished market look like?
What else have you added?
And, obviously, make sure the license actually allows what you’re planning to do.
If you’re new to all of that, read PLR Digital Products: What They Are & How to Actually Use Them.
You can also read Digital Products to Resell Without Creating Everything From Scratch if you’re interested in using resale-ready products as a faster way to build your catalog.
Here’s a Simple Way to Choose Your Starting Price
By now you’re probably thinking:
Lovely. Can you just tell me what number to put in the box?
Fair.
I can’t give you one universal number because I’d be making it up.
But I CAN give you a much better way to arrive at one.
Start by finding several genuinely comparable products and note the price range.
Then look at where yours sits inside that market.
Is it simpler than most of them?
Comparable?
More specialized?
Does it include substantially more?
Once you’ve got a reasonable range, choose a starting price and run the business math.
If that price requires a completely unrealistic number of sales for the amount of traffic you can reasonably generate, that’s useful information.
Then launch it.
Yes, launch.
Because eventually your own customers are going to teach you more than another 3 hrs of staring at competitor listings.
Ive also made a free price ccalculator you can you. Grab it below.
How Do You Know if Your Price Is Too High?
This is tricky because no sales does not automatically mean too expensive.
Maybe nobody is seeing the product.
Perhaps the wrong people are seeing it.
The listing could be confusing.
Your product images might not be doing enough.
The offer itself may not feel compelling.
Or yes, the price could be the problem.
That’s why immediately chopping the price every time sales slow down can send you in completely the wrong direction.
Look at what happens before the sale.
- Are people clicking?
- Are they reaching checkout?
- Have you had sales at the current price before?
Do customers buy readily when you discount it but disappear at full price?
Now we’re getting clues.
“I didn’t sell anything yesterday, PANIC SALE” isn’t quite the same level of evidence.
Can You Raise the Price Later?
PLEASE. Yes.
Your first price is not a blood oath.
If you improve the product, add useful resources, create stronger positioning or simply realize you’ve priced the thing too low, you can change it.
You can also test different offers over time.
Maybe the standalone product stays at $27 while you create a $57 bundle around it.
Perhaps you add a lower-priced entry product.
Your pricing can evolve as the business does.
This is another reason I don’t want you spending 6 days trying to discover The Perfect Price before you’ve sold anything.
There isn’t one.
There is a sensible starting point and information you gather afterward.
A Quick Digital Product Pricing Check
Before you hit publish, I’d ask yourself:
- What does this product help the buyer accomplish?
- What are genuinely comparable products charging?
- Does my product sit at the lower, middle or higher end of that market, and can I explain why?
- How many sales would I need at this price for the product to be worth promoting?
- Does the listing make the product feel worth what I’m asking?
- Am I choosing this price because it makes business sense, or because asking for more money makes me itchy?
That last one has ruined many a perfectly decent price.
Need Help Getting the Rest of Your Digital Product Business Ready?
Pricing is one piece of the whole thing.
There’s still the small matter of getting the product ready, setting up your business, building an audience and actually launching it.
If you’d like somebody to put those pieces in a sensible order for you, grab my FREE Digital Product Business Launch Checklist.
It’s interactive, saves your progress and gives you somewhere to keep track of what you’ve done without relying on the current state of your brain.
Which, if yours behaves anything like mine, is occasionally a questionable business-management system.
[ GET THE FREE DIGITAL PRODUCT BUSINESS LAUNCH CHECKLIST]
GET THE FREE DIGITAL PRODUCT PRICING CALCULATOR
So…How Much Should You Charge for Your Digital Product?
Enough that the numbers make sense.
A price your market can understand.
Something you can support with the usefulness, positioning and presentation of the product.
That’s your starting point.
Then sell it and watch what happens.
FAQs About Pricing Digital Products
How much should I charge for a digital product?
There isn’t a standard price for all digital products. Look at comparable products in your market, the usefulness of your offer, who it’s designed for and how many sales you’d realistically need at that price.
The important bit is comparing genuinely similar offers rather than assuming every planner, template or spreadsheet should cost roughly the same.
Should digital products be cheap?
Not necessarily.
Low-priced digital products can work well when you have enough traffic or they’re being used strategically as an entry offer. More specialized or substantial products may support much higher prices.
Cheap is a pricing decision.
It isn’t a requirement of being digital.
Should I price my digital product lower than competitors?
Only if you have a strategic reason to.
Being cheaper can make an offer attractive, but constantly undercutting competitors can also make profitability harder and affect how buyers perceive the product.
I’d rather compete on usefulness, specificity and presentation than see who can get closest to zero.
Can I change the price of my digital product after launch?
Absolutely.
You can increase or decrease the price as you learn more about your customers, improve the product or change the offer.
Your launch price is a starting decision, not a permanent commitment.
How do I price a digital product bundle?
Start by considering the value of the complete solution rather than simply adding up page counts or file numbers.
A good bundle combines products that naturally belong together and solves a larger problem for the same buyer.
You can read [How to Bundle Digital Products] for the full strategy.
Should I offer discounts on digital products?
You can, particularly for launches, special promotions or customer offers.
Just be careful about discounting so frequently that buyers stop believing your regular price is real.
Can I charge more for a niche digital product?
Potentially.
A product designed around the needs of a particular buyer can be more useful than a generic alternative, which may support a higher price.
The important part is that the added specificity genuinely makes the product more valuable to that customer.
