How to price when you have no idea what to charge

There are three ways to arrive at a price that isn't a guess. Cost-plus: what it costs you to deliver, plus margin. It's the weakest method, but it sets your floor — sell below it and volume actively hurts you.

Market-anchored: what comparable things sell for. Useful for orientation, dangerous as a target, because you end up competing on being slightly cheaper than someone whose costs you don't know.

Value-based: what the outcome is worth to the buyer. If a template saves ten hours a month and that person values their hour at fifty dollars, you're arguing about a rounding error when you agonise over charging twenty-nine versus forty-nine.

Underpricing is not the safe choice people assume. A price that's too low reads as low quality, attracts the most demanding customers, and leaves you no margin to improve the product. The buyers who complain most are almost always the ones who paid least.

Practical approach: set the price you can say out loud without flinching, sell ten units, then raise it. Repeat until you feel genuine resistance in the market — not in yourself. Your discomfort is not market data.

And never retroactively raise on existing customers. Apply new prices to new buyers. Everyone who bought early keeps what they bought, permanently. That's how you build the kind of reputation that sells the next thing for you.