Pricing to Sell vs Selling Yourself Short

A friend of mine suggested I read Dan Kennedy's The Ultimate Success Secret, a great motivational marketing book. One passage from it stuck with me:

When I first started in the "success education business," one of the few people in the country who was consistently effective at selling self-improvement audiocassette programs direct, face-to-face to executives and salespeople, gave me what turned out to be very, very good advice - he said: "Don't waste your time trying to sell these materials to the people who need it the most. They won't buy it. You should focus on selling to successful people who want to get even better."

Over the years, I've demonstrated the validity of this to myself a number of different ways. And I've developed an explanation for it. There is what I now call "the self-esteem Catch-22 loop" at work here: in order for a person to invest directly in himself, which is what buying self-improvement materials is, he has to place value on himself, i.e. have high self-esteem, but if he has such high self-esteem, he is probably already doing well and does not have a critical need for this type of information; he will get marginal improvement out of it; but the person who needs it most does not place much value on himself, i.e. has relatively low self-esteem, which prohibits him from buying, believing in or using self-improvement materials.

To some SEO forum members who spend 10 hours a day on free forums polluted with spam offers, EVERYTHING is overpriced (outside of a listing in THEIR directory). But is their opinion relevant?

Anyone selling "how to" advice, consulting services, or productivity tools is selling self help information. Price yourself too low and enter a market for lemons, enjoying fraud daily, selling to people who fear investing in themselves, while scaring away worthwhile prospects with a negative attitude and/or prices that eat away at your credibility.

Meanwhile, people who know less and sell a lower quality product may price themselves higher on the value chain and attract the right kinds of customers. Is it fair? Nothing is, and so you must increase your prices as your knowledge improves and your market grows. Anytime you can have half as many customers and still make the same income you are heading in the right direction.

If you are going to sell cheap then just give that idea / product / information away free and then look for a way to bolt on a higher value product or service. Price yourself at a fair value to get the right customers, build the profit margins to reinvest into building a higher value product or service, and help the people who are already successful become more successful.