How to price what you sell so people stop asking "how much" and start saying yes — 13 short lessons, a few minutes each.
By Lucas Jansen and Gabriely · JansenLucas.com
25+ builds delivered across 12 countries
You already have customers. You already do good work. The one number that decides whether this month was good or bad almost never gets touched — the price on the invoice.
Most owners treat price like it's fixed: what the market pays, what competitors charge, what feels fair to ask for. It isn't fixed. It's the single lever you can move today, for free, on the customers you already have, and it changes profit faster than any new ad campaign or referral push ever will.
This isn't a course on charging more for the sake of it. It's thirteen specific mechanics — where to add a line, where to cut a tier, where to let urgency do the talking, where to stop answering a question with a number. Each one costs nothing to test. Each one is already proven on real offers.
Read one a day, or read all thirteen in one sitting. Either way, pick the three that cost you the most money right now and change them this week.
Free, live, and we audit real websites and real offers on screen. Pricing is one of the levers we walk through in the room.
Every card fee you absorb is margin you chose to give away.
Every card processor charges you 2.5 to 4% to take a payment. Most business owners just absorb it, quietly, on every sale, treating it as an unavoidable cost of doing business. It isn't. It's a line item you're choosing not to show.
Add it to the invoice instead. Customers already pay processing fees everywhere — at the pharmacy, on their rent portal, on their insurance bill. A small line item next to a total does not make anyone hesitate, and it does not change whether they say yes. It only decides whose pocket that money ends up in.
A $600 water heater install runs at a 20% margin. Add a 3.5% card fee as its own line: "Card processing fee: $21." The customer pays $621 instead of $600, the job still closes the same as before, and the company's margin on that job climbs from 20% to roughly 24% — for adding one line to a template.
This costs nothing to test and changes nothing about how the customer decides. Every fee you absorb instead of itemizing is profit you handed away on purpose.
Same buyers, same close rate, a few more dollars kept on every sale.
Price endings used to be a religion — end in 7, never in 9, because "9 feels like a discount bin." Tested at real scale, it makes no difference. $X7 and $X9 convert identically, at every price point checked. So there is no reason left to leave money on the table by rounding down.
The fix costs nothing: end every price in 9, and round any .00 up to .99. Nobody notices the two dollars. You keep them anyway.
A driveway package priced at $197 moves to $199. Nothing else about the offer changes. The same number of customers say yes at $199 as said yes at $197 — the extra two dollars on every job was simply sitting there unclaimed.
This isn't persuasion, it's an uncollected few dollars on every sale you're already making. It matters most on the offers you sell often, where small numbers multiply fast.
Price the middle close to the top and the top starts looking like the deal.
When you sell a cheap thing and an expensive thing and you want more people to buy the expensive one, don't add a middle tier halfway between them. Give the middle tier features roughly between the two, but price it only around 10% below the top — not evenly spaced.
$150 — a basic lawn mow, no extras.
$900 — the full seasonal package. Priced right under the top tier, not halfway to it.
$1,000 — full property care, everything included.
Compare that to $150 / $500 / $1,000, spaced evenly. That middle tier reads as "the safe middle choice" instead of a stepping stone to the top — and most buyers stop climbing right there.
Buyers anchor against the nearest-priced option, not the cheapest one. A middle tier priced close to the top makes the top look like the deal, not the splurge.
One quiet charge a year away, and by the time it lands nobody leaves over it.
If you run anything membership-based or recurring, add a one-time annual renewal fee on top of the monthly charge — roughly one to three months of the monthly price. It doesn't touch what a new customer sees when they sign up, because it's a year away. And by the time it actually hits, the customer isn't likely to cancel over it.
The advertised price stays exactly $49/month. Once a year, on the signup anniversary, a $129 renewal fee posts automatically. Annual revenue per member goes from $588 to $717 — a 22% lift — without changing the number a new member saw before they joined, and without a renewal conversation that risks losing them at the door.
Raising the advertised monthly price instead hurts signups today. A renewal fee a year out doesn't — it's invisible at the point of sale, and in a 20% margin business, that revenue bump can add up to half your profit with zero added cost to deliver.
Small jumps do nothing. Five times the price doubles the tier.
Don't price the next tier 10 to 20% higher than the last one. Buying behavior barely moves at that gap, so all you've added is complexity. Price each new tier at roughly five times the previous one instead. About 20% of customers will take it — and at five times the price, that 20% doubles the revenue from that tier alone.
| Tier | Price | Customers | Revenue |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base | $100 | 100 | $10,000 |
| Upsell | $500 (5x) | 20 (20%) | +$10,000 |
| Upsell again | $2,500 (5x) | 4 (20% of 20) | +$10,000 |
Example: a marketing agency's base package at $100/month, a managed tier at $500/month, and a full strategy retainer at $2,500/month — sold to the same client base, not a new one.
Roughly 20% of any customer base has about five times the buying power of the rest. Small percentage bumps between tiers don't reach that group. Pricing to the real gap does — and it can triple revenue from the same base without finding a single new customer.
Set price from the value you deliver, not from what the competition charges.
Price your services to hit over 80% gross margin from day one. If you charge $1,000 a month, your all-in delivery cost should sit under $200 a month. That's the floor to start from, not a stretch goal for later — you expand margin further from there by over-delivering and getting more efficient, not by pricing yourself into the gap.
The one common exception is recurring, hourly-labor businesses like security staffing, where margin structurally runs lower.
A $1,000/month contract targets a delivery cost under $200/month — labor, supplies, everything included. Once that floor is hit, the next move is tightening the $200 further and over-delivering on the service, not dropping the price to look more competitive against the next quote.
Price from the value you deliver, not from competitor benchmarks. Most competitors are underpriced themselves — match their number and you import their margin problem straight into your own business.
Kill the cheap tier and the whole business gets more expensive.
Kill the budget tier entirely. Show only three premium options, and jump the floor up as a clean break, not a gradual creep upward.
Basic $1,000 · Standard $2,000 · Premium $3,000 · Elite $5,000
Advanced $3,000 · Premium $5,000 · Elite $8,000
Dropping the $1,000 basic tier entirely means budget shoppers disqualify themselves before a call ever happens, instead of taking up the team's time and then negotiating down anyway.
A budget tier doesn't just add budget customers — it pulls price-insensitive customers down into it too, because "why wouldn't they" take the cheap option if it's sitting right there on the menu. Remove it and the floor rises for the whole business, not just the bottom.
A higher front-end price filters for a better customer, not just more cash.
A higher front-end, low-ticket price doesn't just make more money at checkout — it filters for a customer whose lifetime value compounds. When you're deciding your entry-level price, test it up, not down.
Split-testing a $97 front-end offer against $49, on an identical funnel: cost to acquire a customer was nearly the same at both prices. But the $97 buyers were worth $891 more per person by day 180 — they upgraded more, refunded less, and needed less support along the way.
Price is a filter, not just a paywall. Cheap buyers behave like cheap buyers later too — more support load, more refunds, more resistance to the next offer — even though they cost you the same to acquire as anyone else.
If people are fighting for a slot, that slot is underpriced.
If demand isn't flat across time, price shouldn't be either. Charge more for the slots people compete for, the same way a gym charges more for 5 to 7pm access than for a Tuesday at 11am.
End-of-month weekend slots get booked out weeks in advance, at the same price as a random Tuesday. Pricing those weekend slots 15 to 20% higher costs nothing extra to deliver — it's the identical job — and it either earns more on the slots people are already fighting for, or nudges some of that demand into the slower days that actually need filling.
If people are competing for the same slot at the same price, that slot is underpriced. Worst case, raise it and nothing changes. Best case, you make more doing exactly the same work.
Make them choose, then hand over both, right when buyer's remorse hits.
Right after signup, offer a choice between two bonuses — "would you rather have A or B?" — let them pick, then surprise them with both. Splitting an existing bonus into two parts costs nothing extra, because you were giving all of it away either way.
Right after a customer signs, the installer asks: "Would you rather have the free doorbell camera or the free smart lock?" The customer picks. Then: "Actually — take both." Same bonus package that was always included, just split into two and delivered with a choice attached, right at the moment buyer's remorse usually shows up.
People remember the emotional peak and the ending of an experience, not the average of it. A small choice creates a small stake, and reversing it into "take both" creates a genuine delight spike — at zero extra cost, since the value was always going out the door.
Urgency is information about value. Price it, don't apologize for it.
An urgent request is a pricing opportunity, not a favor. Build a published speed ladder: standard price, double for double speed, triple for triple speed. Post it openly, no apology attached.
| Speed | Turnaround | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | 5 business days | $200 |
| Rush | 48 hours | $400 |
| Same-day | Same day | $600 |
Example: a sign and print shop posts this ladder openly on its order page. A job that used to get quietly rushed for free "to be nice" now has a published price for speed, and nobody has to ask twice.
Urgency is value a client is already telling you they have. Price it plainly instead of absorbing it as a favor or apologizing for charging it — worst case they choose standard speed and you make the same money either way.
Front-load the discount. Layer the reasons to stay on top of it.
Structure any membership as three stacked benefit layers instead of a flat monthly charge.
The biggest discount on day one, not the second visit. Immediate credit, free delivery, extended refunds.
Delayed rewards — an annual gift, a milestone gift, the option to skip a month with no penalty.
Early access, behind the scenes, member-only pricing on anything new.
The best discount lands on the very first visit instead of being "earned" over time, and members can skip a month with no penalty instead of a rigid monthly booking. Product credit never expires, so it never feels like a countdown clock.
Most membership programs delay the best discount to "reward loyalty" and force a rigid schedule — it starts to feel like a tax. Stack the biggest reward on day one, then layer delayed and exclusive perks on top, and the reason to stay compounds instead of fading.
Never answer a price question with a number. Answer it with a question.
When a prospect asks for a price before you've built any context, don't answer with a number. Respond with "It depends on your situation — what made you reach out today?" and let them talk. Their answer supplies the context that justifies the price you give them later.
Prospect: "What's your rate?" Rep: "It depends on your situation — what made you call today?" Prospect mentions the system has been struggling for a year and the energy bill keeps creeping up. Rep quantifies it: roughly $2,400 wasted over the year. "The replacement is $3,000, and it pays for itself in fourteen months." The same number that sounded high a minute earlier now sounds like the obvious move.
A price with no context is always "too expensive," because the prospect has nothing to compare it against. Getting them to state the cost of their problem first turns your number into an obvious return instead of an abstract expense.
Thirteen lessons is a lot to hold at once. You don't need to change everything this week. You need to change the two or three that are quietly costing you the most, right now.
Free and live. We audit real websites and real offers on screen — the same framework behind 25+ builds across 12 countries. Bring one price you're not sure about and we'll look at it with you.
Results referenced in this course are drawn from real tested offers and are not a guarantee of your own results. Your outcome will depend on your market, your margins, and your existing customer base. Nothing here is financial or legal advice.