A-Z Systems Marketing Blog

Posted by Alexei Zoubov, October 25th, 2008

I’m not sure I’m doing the right thing writing about this issue.

After all, I am a marketer and a marketer’s goal is to make money. Some money - good. Good money - even better. Lots of money - fantastic. So, it took me some time to decide that it would be good for everybody if I make¬†public¬†my thoughts on the subject of pricing the offers.

The last push I got today. When going through my daily emails, I found one from a well known to me Internet marketer, whose list I was subscribed to for a long time and found his advices and hints reasonably helpful. As other owners of all the lists I’m subscribed to (and there are at least a dozen of them), this gentleman often recommends ebooks, advertising programs, seminars and such. The idea for him is, of course, to make some commissions on these offers - nothing bad about that!

Yes, there is nothing bad about that, this is a normal business practice.

Provided, of course, that the price (or fee) charged is not ridiculously high - as in the case of the last offer ¬†that was recommended to me. This was a “training program” that costs $1997 (yes, one thousand nine hundred ninety seven dollars).

Could it be worth it? I doubt it very much. In the past I purchased some of these highly recommended expensive programs. Most of them have about 10% worth of really useful information, the rest is added mostly to create volume and make the offer impressive enough to convince the prospect of the supposedly great value.

Usually these programs are “circular” or, as programmers say, “recursive” - you are taught exactly the same methods that the author is using to sell the offer to you. The novice usually gets way too much information to digest and loses all hope to implement the described methods. The professional may find some good hints, but in my experience, it would be possible to find the same information for free, or almost for free on the Internet, if you put some effort in it.

Please understand, that I express my personal view when I say that this practice of overcharging for the product doesn’t agree with me at all. Yes, I know that some of the marketers using these methods make millions (and some just say so). Probably because I refuse to follow these methods myself, I’m not “filthy rich”. But I live a comfortable life and my conscience doesn’t bother me at night (although I don’t think that the marketers that overprice their products lose any sleep over that).

There is a short story by O Henry, where two “gentle grifters”, his usual characters, find themselves in a small town on an island created by flood. The town is populated by ¬†very heavy drinking folks and there are only two bars there. Our grifters immediately see a great business opportunity, buy both bars and start charging about ten times the usual price for drinks. (There is a very funny ending to this story, you are advised to read it.)

Quite a few years ago I attended a seminar on selling, where one of the people in the auditorium asked a question about the product pricing. The host responded: “Charge as much as you can get away with!”

So, this O Henry’s grifter was a great businessman, it follows. Well, I beg to disagree. For me, good business is to provide the product or service for what it is really worth, and not more. And I understand that I belong to a minority.

This is supposed to be a marketing blog, so what is the value that you get from this post, is there any information you can use to make money?

I guess, this post is mostly about saving money (as they say, penny saved is penny earned). Here is some advice, you may wish to follow it or not.

• On the Internet, anything that costs more than $100 ¬†should arouse your immediate suspicion.
• If you see a program costing several hundred dollars or even more than a thousand, there is a good chance the price will go down pretty soon. It will go down faster if we don’t fall victim to all these great marketing technics and just wait.
• If you see that one of the reasons you have to buy now is because the price will go up soon, there is more than 99% chance that the increase will never happen. I’m speaking from many years of experience.
• If you see dozens of free bonuses¬†attached to the offer,¬†that are supposed to have enormous value ¬†- this is an old ¬†marketing trick. ¬†Try to figure out the value of the product sold, don’t pay any attention to free additions.
• Read my post on One Time Offers¬†They are supposed to work like a dream - I’m personally ¬†just annoyed by them¬†most of the time.

You may be interested in my other post, on the concept of Affordable Wealth. I have now several programs that provide me with a very comfortable living. I think that my total investment in them was below $200. ¬†Plus investment of time and effort into learning and promotion, of course. I think I had a very good deal without buying any “training programs” for $1997.