Chris Guillebeau has an amazing blog. Go, read, sign up for updates, enjoy.
Last week, he launched his ebook, “Unconventional Guide to Discount Airfare.” He talks about the process, his pricing, the response he’s had and what he did wrong in this post.
Chris, fair warning: I’m one of those internet marketing guys that is obsessed with understanding the price-value formula and how to maximize profits from selling information. I’ve been doing this since 1997 and have made a few dollars from getting the formula right.
Chris, here are a few things I’d do differently:
- Your title sucks. I didn’t even finish the title before I was lulled into a daze. Where is the punch? the fire?
We need to grab folks by their neck and get their attention.
Great titles do two things: they make an amazing promise and they spark our interest in a way that has our brain creating a fictional narrative. That’s human hacking at it’s finest.
You want people to read the title and immediately see themselves in a plane flying to Rome. That resonates to people’s emotional core.
Here’s my quick attempt at a title. The huge, amazing promise: “See how I’ve flown to 83 countries on 5 continents in the last two year for less than the payments you are making on that 2005 Toyota Camry in your garage.”
And a possible sub-title that fires those story-telling brain cells, “And I’ll show you how you can travel to every country you’ve ever wanted to visit, for less money than you can imagine and without making any of the mistakes I’ve made.”
- Your price sucks. I understand why you went for $24.97. It’s that comfortable price in your gut. But you are doing a big disservice to yourself and your project at that price point.
With that $24.97 price point, you squarely anchor yourself as “just another travel guide”. Bah, how boring. I can get a sandwich and fries at any joint in town.
The anchoring problem is amplified because folks are great at comparing apples-to-apples. People go down to Borders and snag a book for $14.95. People’s brain know how much books are. You’re selling a book and that’s the mental reference people have.
The human hack we used to kill this problem: de-anchor people’s brains and sell apples-to-oranges. How?
Books sell for $15. We all agree on this.
Question: what does a travel kit with an ebook, audio and video sell for? Ah, no immediate answer, right? Bingo, that’s where we insert the wedge.
Our brain has no baseline for the value of that object (”the kit”) and we are given the flexibility to push the price all around the gameboard.
Bundle it with a 30-minute audio of you reading the book. Or an hour of equally interesting thoughts you’ve had during your travels. What are we up to now? $49?
Bundle it with an hour of video sitting in front of a Buddhist template talking about some of your experiences and the things you’ve learned. Where are we now? $97?
Find a software developer and have travel tracking software created and added to the kit. Can we push it up to $197?
Another brain hack is this: by increasing the cost the perceived value immediately goes up for the product. Humans automatically will increase their value attribution for an object that has a higher monetary cost. A $80,000 car simply must be better.
The mental dialogue goes like this: “$197?! Holy cow, if this guy is selling his travel kit at that level, it must be good!”
When I launched my first ebook, “Software Secrets — Exposed!”, I was going to launch at $49. The night before, I moved the price up to $97 and added some bonuses.
Because I made the decision to increase my perceived value simply through price and bonuses, I’ve made a small fortune in the last few years.
- And don’t forget this: you aren’t just selling information. You are selling access to Chris Guillebeau. You are opening your kimono for folks willing to pay.
You are selling Chris to fans of his blog. Raving fans want more of Chris and don’t mind paying a few more dollars to get that.
You aren’t just selling to the traveling crowd surfing the web. Don’t forget this.
Don’t worry about offending price sensitive folks anyway. They tend to be the people who are constantly emailing you with problem after problem. And are the ones who are first to ask for refunds.
- And don’t forget the most powerful hack in all of this: you think you are selling information, but you are really selling a dream.
Who doesn’t want to travel the world, see Paris and London and Hong Kong?
Dream selling is one of the most lucrative businesses in the world.
Do you think late night informercials are really selling information on how to sell real estate? Heck no, they are selling people on the idea that they can own a yacht and a mansion and live the “lifestyle”.
- “I will also be providing free updates for life to all buyers.”
No, no, no. One of the biggest errors is to offer anything for a lifetime. This will always catch up with you.
It paints you into a corner you can’t get out of. What if you want to offer a 2009 guide?
If you feel compelled to do this, give away a year of updates. (Now that you’ve already sold the product, you can still do this by grandfathering existing buyers. You can actually make an event out of the situation: “Lifetime updates to this guide if you buy in the next 3 days. After that, you’ll pay for yearly updates.”)
That ability to create new editions will be a windfall for you. The moment you push your email’s send button to tell buyers they can now buy next year’s edition will put tens of thousands of dollars into your bank account. Why kill that goose?
In fact, instead of giving anything away, you should be creating a membership club and plugging your raving fans into a recurring monthly program for $9/month or $19/month.
Sell the dream, sell the dream, sell the dream. You have one of the best dreams anybody is selling these days.
A couple other bits:
- Nuke the sample. Your guide is best sold through the sales page. I’ve rarely been sold based on a sample. I want to be sold on the dream.
- On extending the length: don’t do it. Make it a selling point that you’ve edited it down to 29-pages. Celebrate the fact that folks will get zero fluff, all meat. People don’t have time for fluff, and remind them of that.
Chris, good luck man. I just got back from staying in Amsterdam for three months, and love the idea of working from anywhere on Earth!
Hi! I'm BenJamin Prater. You caught me. I'm obsessed with helping businesses give their customers an extraordinary (and authentic) experience with their website. 
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Hey bro, thanks for the review. I don’t mind the strong opinions at all. But keep in mind, I’ve been doing this for a while too - with higher-priced products, recurring subscriptions, etc. There is in fact a method to the madness.
I definitely agree with you about price sensitivity - and the selling the dream bit as well.
This is the first of what I hope will be many guides. I can’t guarantee to follow all your advice, but I think you’ll like where we’re headed.
Again, thanks for taking so much time with the analysis. Best of luck with your business and life!
Chris
Great article, Ben. Your points as I understood them…
1. Sell the sizzle, not the steak.
2. When writing your title, try to sell your book by its title and nothing more.
3. Add perceived value to increase the price instead of lowballing the price (we talked about that in a previous blog entry). That’s why when I grabbed the resale rights to software secrets exposed I recorded 5 hours of my OWN videos to add to it.
You have definitely opened my eyes about not offering lifetime updates, which I have been doing up until now. From a copywriting standpoint, “365 days worth of updates” or “a full two years of updates” sounds more impressive than simply “lifetime updates.”
And from a sales standpoint… where would Microsoft be today if they offered “free lifetime updates” on Windows in the early 90’s? They’d be missing out on $250 million per year, minimum.
Hey Chris — thanks for stumbling over here.
It was a fun project to analyze!
Keep up the great work on the blog and with future products. I’ll be around to watch how you launch them!
Robert, excellent points.
And you are right, adding value can come in a variety of ways. It amazes me that companies are so blind to easy ways they can pump up the value and, in turn, the price.
Maybe the slumping economy will give business owners a chance to sit down and take an objective look at the way they offer their products. And ways they can increase their value!
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