Are You Getting Enough For Your Stuff?

Chances Are You’re Undervaluing Yourself

I rarely get a direct rapid response when I ask the question, “Are you undercharging and over-delivering for what you offer out in the world?” Not coming to terms with that issue may be the single largest factor in some people’s limited financial success. It all has to go back to one’s core self-esteem. “Am I worth it?” “Is what I produce worth it?”

A Useful Bit of Market Research

So here’s a question to ask some of your clients and customers. And ask it in this way: “Your rate for my stuff is going to remain constant, no matter what I do with the price in the future. But I would like you to think about it and come up with your honest assessment of what you would charge for it if you were the one producing and marketing it.”  Now if everyone you ask says they would charge two or three times as much, you’ve gotten a clear signal it’s time to consider a price increase. On the other hand, if the majority says they would charge exactly what you do, then you’re probably in the right ballpark. And if they say they would charge less than you are now charging, it’s time to examine what you’re delivering to people, and probably hire a coach for help in upgrading your material.

One of The Core Ego Issues In Life

We cannot underestimate the importance of this issue in determining your level of success in the world. Your ability to produce valuable stuff, and to value the stuff you produce, is paramount. And a lot of it starts with your belief in yourself and your ability to produce, to create, to deliver something of value to the world.

I started thinking about this when I recently announced a price increase for the Moneylove Club monthly audio subscription. I did this on the advice of my Internet marketing mentors–tho I’ll admit I didn’t raise the price as much as was suggested by some experts in the field. You may know I’ve been charging $27 a month for this service. All along, I have mentioned to subscribers that they are grandfathered in at that rate no matter what it eventually goes to. And this feels right in the context of my prosperity consciousness, even though I know a lot of them would be happy to pay double or triple the price just based on some of the results they’ve been reporting back to me. (I’ll confess here that there are times I feel I should be paying them for the great testimonials they are providing, not to mention some case histories I can used in the revised, annotated new edition of Moneylove I am planning to publish next year.).

And right here, I would love your comments and opinions on why so many Internet marketing masters seem to have an almost obsessive attachment to the price of $97. This was the figure most often mentioned as the ideal one for me to charge for my monthly membership fee. Instead, risking the wrath of the Internet gods, I went for $47, which seemed a reasonable fee, and one that would allow me to share the profits with some affiliates as my market and audience experience a great surge in numbers over the coming months, with some major media exposure. It also will make it very easy for me to stick to my commitment to deliver to my subscribers “more than their money’s worth.”

Raising my price, even though I knew I would have to eventually do it, brought up some of my issues in this area. The comments and compliments I keep getting about this audio series, as well as my old Nightingale-Conant Moneylove tapes, help me immensely in this area. I don’t have to just rely on my own belief system about the value of my stuff, but I have many other people telling me this, and often letting me know that they think my stuff is even more valuable than I think it is. So I know I still have some work to do on this issue. How about you?

Time And Money Intertwined Forever

As I explore new horizons in the area of prosperity thinking, I come more and more to the conclusion that it has not only to do with our attitudes about money, but our attitudes about time. The person who values every minute as something precious and immensely worthwhile, will tend to strive for impeccable excellence in what he or she puts out into the world. I’ll probably do several blog posts on this specific subject in the coming months, but for now I think it is useful to look at your basic way of seeing the relationship between time and money.

If you are undervaluing your stuff–undercharging and over-delivering, chances are it has to do with the time you spend producing what you deliver. If you’re a consultant and you charge $300 for an hour, and you see five clients each day, $1500 seems like a good return for a day’s work. But is it really?  Not if it took you years of study and education and practice to get to the point where you can get $300 for your hour. And not if that hour enables your client to go out and make a lot more than that amount. People often base their fees on the “going rate,” but I would like to suggest this archaic system can be very limiting to both parties in any such exchange.

I would suggest you see what you charge for products or services as the “going further rate”. In other words, what you are offering, should your client or customer put it into use in his or her life, will allow them to expand their lives and their income further than current levels. I had a client recently,  after a $197. coaching session with me, get an unexpected $50,000 consulting contract. Of course, neither of us had any idea this would happen. But what would I have charged and what would that client have paid if either or both of us knew that would be one of the results? I might ask you to take a leap of faith and consider charging what you would charge if you knew everyone you charged that amount had a result equal to the most amazing results anyone ever achieved using your stuff–your ideas, your products, your services.

And, by the way, I have no present intentions to raise my coaching fee. Which may mean I believe in delivering a valuable service at a reasonable price–or it may mean I have some serious work to do on my own prosperity consciousness and core belief system. What do you think?

Jerry