Charge What You’re Worth As A Female Entrepreneur
As a female entrepreneur, do you ever feel that you’re not charging enough for your products/services?
Here’s a quick way to tell if you need to address the prices you charge:
- You constantly sell out of your products.
- You are up to your limit with numbers in your group or 121 packages.
- It’s getting really hard to manage the volume of people buying from you.
- You’re not making any/enough profit with the products or services you sell.
- You’re broke.
If any of these scenarios apply to you. It’s time to address your pricing strategy. Many female entrepreneurs fear charging enough for their products or services. However, it’s imperative that you do so to make sure you earn profit (and enough profit), for the things you sell.
I hopped over to Etsy (popular selling platform), to take a look at some products being sold there.
The findings were interesting.
I searched Etsy for greetings cards. Low ticket items that require high turnover to make enough profit, and to make a business viable.
I found was there are three different ‘categories’ of sellers that for the sake of this post I’ll label:
- Cheap As Chips
- Middle Of The Road
- Harley Street (if you’re not in the know, Harley Street is a road in London full of businesses who charge BIG prices for their services)
The ‘cheap as chips’ prices I found was a pack of 12 greetings cards at £10.00. The cards were handmade with drawings of dogs on them.
The ‘middle of the road’ prices I found were a pack of 12 greetings cards at £15.00, again handmade.
The ‘harley street’ prices I found were a pack of 12 greetings cards digitally printed for £34.99.
In terms of quality – I thought the cheapest cards looked the best quality. Each seller had around the same number of five star reviews about the products they were selling.
The only real difference between the three levels of cards (other than design), was the price.
One – cheap as chips – 12 cars for £10.00
One – middle of the road – 12 cards for £15.00
One – harley street – 12 cards for £34.99
Here’s the math:
Cheap as chips – 83 pence a card
Middle of the road – £1.25 a card
Harley Street – £2.91 a card
I also looked at 121 coaching services in my local area, and found coaches with 121 sessions ranging from £30.00 an hour to over £200.00 an hour.
There’s this real fear that if you charge what you’re worth, you’ll lose business.
That’s not the case.
Over the 20 years that I offered 121 coaching, I raised my prices many times, rarely lost a client, and always had more clients come on board.
When you charge what you’re worth. The right people will find you.
If you choose to feel the fear, let that define the prices you charge, you’ll have to work more hours for the same level of income that a similar business who does charge what they are worth, will get with half the amount of work you have to do.
I know I’d rather have 5 clients paying me £225.00 for a 121 session.
Than 10 clients paying me £22.50 a session to reach the same income level.
You’ll ALWAYS find an ocean of people charging peanuts for their products and services. That doesn’t mean you have to join them. The cheap as chips sellers will struggle to grow a really successful, revenue earning, profit making, life changing business.
It takes balls to charge what you’re worth. It takes being able to ignore the people who say “I can get it cheaper at…… “. You have to remember those people are not your ideal client. Let them go and move on…
When you sit and take account of the costs of creating your product or service in terms of your time, materials, marketing costs, packaging…, you SHOULD at the end of the day be able to add a sufficient profit on top of costs to make it worth your while.
Otherwise – what’s the point? If you’re not making enough profit on top of your costs for every product or service you sell – what you’re effectively doing is giving your goods away for free, or worse, you are paying people to purchase from you.
You need to review. To take stock and check you’re making profit. Remember – it’s never going to serve your business well to compete on price. Compete on quality of service, level of service, commitment to your customers, giving real value in ways that aren’t associated with cost. Be the best female entrepreneur in your niche.
Middle of the road is where a lot of female business owners end up. They figure it’s a safe place between cheap and chips and harley street prices.
There’s an ocean full of people trying to sell at middle of the road prices. The competition is much higher and harder. Not many female entrepreneurs have the balls, risk taking or confidence to sell at Harley street level – that’s why there’s a lot of people out there waiting to spend at that level, if you hunt them down.
Are you running your business with fear based pricing? Do you need to review and change your prices, to become bolder about charging what you’re worth and have the self belief that you have the right to make a decent living out of the products and services you sell?
You can ALWAYS charge more. This is your business, your life. You can charge whatever you want, test the waters.
You can choose to up your prices and test the market and keep upping your prices to find your ceiling. OR you can stay small and have to keep working twice as hard to make ends meet.
Perhaps it’s time for you to stand out? And charge what you are worth.