Pricing is always a delicate issue, because if you charge too much people won’t buy, but if you charge too little, people might perceive that what you are selling has no value.

You should start out by looking at other information products that are similar to yours and examine their sales pages thoroughly to get an idea of what they offer and how much they charge for their product.

You don’t want to charge too much more than the other people in your field.

However you want to see what they have to offer versus what you have to offer.

If they are just selling a 20 page ebook on puppy training and you are selling a 100 page ebook on dog training from puppyhood through adulthood, along with a set of step by step videos…then of course you should charge significantly more.

The puppy ebook might sell for anywhere up to $17. The dog training ebook plus videos might sell for up to $67.

Or, you could offer the ebook at a cheaper price, say $37, and then offer the videos as an “upsell”.  They might cost and additional $30 or so.

You may have noticed that the prices quote here end in seven. There have been numerous internet marketing studies on this and oddly, prices ending in seven outsell other prices ending in the traditional .95 - $9.95, for instance.

That holds true even if the number ending in 5 is several dollars cheaper.

A product that sells for $19.97 has been shown (in some instances) to outsell a product that sells for $15.95.

Another thing to consider is whether you want to give the product away to start building a list.

This method can work very well if you have back end products that you want to sell.

In the dog-training example, you could offer a free five-day course to teach people how to housebreak a dog, or how to handle a dog’s excessive barking.

Each day you would mail out the day’s lesson using an autoresponder service like Aweber, Getresponse, or Constant Contact.

In each email you would have a link at the top and at the bottom of the email, offering people a chance to click on the link and order your product. Then, you give a helpful, well-written lesson about your subject, again without giving away everything - just enough to show that you know your stuff.

If it’s a video or audio that you are selling, you could give away the first video or audio recording in the series to show the quality that the customer will be getting - in exchange for their name and email so you can use it to build a list.

Now, you need to start planning out the sales page for your product.

Again, one of the best things that you can do is study the sales pages of your competition.

You don’t want to copy them, of course; you want to see what they offer and make sure that you present a more compelling offer.

For instance if someone is selling an ebook about dog training you want to emphasize that your ebook comes with videos to actually demonstrate what you are talking about.

If someone is selling a video series about painting a landscape, you want to make one that is more thorough or that offers some type of free bonus like a video on how to paint a portrait.

You also want to get an idea of how sales pages are structured.

Starting at the top,  you will see that sales pages often have large, attention grabbing headlines. Many websites use this type of headline because - simply - it works.

The headline needs to be about the benefits that your product delivers. It needs to tell the customer what relief they can expect from buying your product.

It could say something like “Cure Your Dog’s Bad Habits Faster Than You Thought Possible!” or “Trim That Extra Tummy Flab In Weeks!”

or “Supercharge Your Metabolism With These Superfoods!”

Notice that sales pages do not have long unbroken blocks of text. Under the headline you want a photograph, a paragraph or two about your product, and then a “sub-head”. You need to make it easy to read. The clip art in this book serves the same purpose - it breaks up chunks of text and makes it easier on the eye and easier to read.

You want a series of paragraphs and subheads.

At some point a list of bullet points is also helpful. They should summarize your products benefits or highlight how it’s better than its competitors.

Example:

This product DOES NOT rely on:

• Expensive exercise equipment that’s impossible to put together!
• Fad diets that make you sick!
• Gross food supplements that taste horrible!
• Hours of torturous exercise!

This is good because it mentions negative points about your competitors and what they offer - subtly, of course, without naming names - and thus by contrast highlights the good things that you have to offer.

Customers have most likely tried many of those things before and have obviously failed or they wouldn’t still be dieting, so they will be eager to find a product that offers them something different.

You also want a clear “call to action” which tells the customer what to do, and you want it to be prominently displayed in several places on your sales page.

This is very important. If the customer can not easily figure out what to do next when they come to your sales page, they will hit the back button and you will likely lose them forever.

The call to action would say something like “To lose that excess tummy flab NOW, click here to place your secure order via paypal.”

You can also throw in a time element to make it more urgent, or a scarcity element.

If you are using a time element you would say something like “For the first 48 hours, we are going to offer a free downloadable cookbook of low calorie recipes to each person who orders…” et cetera.

You must cut this off after 48 hours and remove that statement from the sales page when the bonus offer expires,  because if you don’t, people will not take you seriously any more.

Remember, you are building brand loyalty here. You can’t do that if you show people that you make statements that aren’t true.

For scarcity,  it helps if you have a physical object that you will mail to everyone who orders from you. It’s hard to claim that you have a limited number of ebooks to give away as bonuses because everyone knows that’s not true. You can give away an infinite number of ebooks.

You could also offer something like a free one-hour consultation with you, if the information product is appropriate to that type of offer. You could offer it to the first 10 or 20 people who order.

And finally, on your sales page, you need to offer customer testimonials.

‘Wait’!, you say.

How do I get testimonials?

I haven’t even started selling the product yet!

Here’s what you do: you give away copies of the product to a few people in exchange for their honest review.

Most people are going to say something nice about your product. If you get a lot of criticism, then honestly, you should rethink your product and probably make some changes, especially if they all mention the same thing, such as “It wasn’t explained clearly enough.”

If you don’t know anyone personally who you feel will provide a good testimonial, you can go on an internet marketing forum and explain that you are creating a new product and would like to provide free copies to the first ten people who contact you, in exchange for their honest testimonial on it.

(You can’t ask that they only say good things about it, but if you have created a quality product, rest assured that most if not all of the comments will be positive.)

Digitalpoint Forums and The Warrior Forum and Webmaster World have very active internet marketing communities. It’s worth joining just to learn about how to promote products online.

In fact before you ask for a testimonial it’s worth posting a few times, introducing yourself, and contributing to the conversation so that people can get to know you a little bit before you request a favor out of the blue.

Do this for a couple of weeks and you will learn a lot, make good connections, and when you do ask for those testimonials you will be much more likely to get a bunch of people responding favorably.

Click here to download how to price your information product ebook.