Six steps, in this order

The order is load-bearing. Doing step five before step two produces a number that flatters whatever you already wanted to charge.

1. 1

   Find what the problem costs the buyer per month, in their units

   Not in yours. If they lose four hours a month, price against four hours of their time, at their rate, not yours. If they lose money directly — a late invoice, a chargeback, a no-show — find the actual amount and write it down with its source.

   A designer billing $60/hour who loses three hours a month to chasing invoices is losing $180 a month. That is the ceiling of the conversation, and it is a much better anchor than any competitor's price.

2. 2

   Take between five and fifteen percent of that

   This is the band where software that removes a specific, measurable cost tends to be bought without a business case. Below five percent you are leaving money on the table and signalling that the problem is trivial. Above fifteen and the buyer starts doing arithmetic, which means a decision, which means a delay.

   $180 a month of lost time puts the band at $9 to $27. This is a heuristic from watching where small tools cluster, not a law, and the band moves for products that touch revenue rather than time.

3. 3

   Check the two nearest incumbents on their own pricing page, today

   Open the page. Read the entry tier. Note the date. Prices change quietly and a comparison built on a remembered number is worse than no comparison, because it is confidently wrong.

   You are not looking for a number to undercut. You are looking for the shape of the market: whether it is priced per seat, per volume, or flat, and whether the entry tier is real or a decoy for the tier above.

4. 4

   Decide whether you are cheaper, dearer, or elsewhere

   Cheaper is the worst of the three and the most popular. It invites a price war you cannot win and attracts the buyers most likely to leave. Dearer requires a reason a stranger can repeat in one sentence. Elsewhere — priced on a different unit entirely — is usually where a small product should live.

   "Flat, not per seat" and "per project, not per month" are both elsewhere. They make direct comparison awkward, which is the point.

5. 5

   Write the number, then write the sentence that defends it

   One sentence, no adjectives, addressed to a sceptic. If you cannot write it without using the words powerful or comprehensive, the number is not defensible yet and the copy is doing work the price should be doing.

   A working example: "Twenty-nine dollars a month, flat, because it replaces about four hours of manual reconciliation and four hours is worth more than that to anyone who has the problem."

6. 6

   Add a founder price, and hold it

   Roughly half, offered to people who commit before the product exists. It is the only thing you can honestly promise pre-launch, because it costs you nothing today and it is entirely within your control to honour.

   Hold it for the life of the account rather than for twelve months. A twelve-month founder price is a discount; a permanent one is a reason to sign up now, and the difference in signal is large.

Six steps, two of which are just reading a competitor's pricing page carefully. It takes an afternoon.

The arithmetic, run on four of the ideas on this site

Each row is a real idea listed on this domain, with the number it was priced at and the reasoning that produced it.

Source: Cost figures are our own estimates built from the hourly rates and dispute values cited on each idea's research page. They are not survey data and should be read as order-of-magnitude.

Two of the four sit below their own band. That is a choice, not a mistake — but it is a choice that has to be made deliberately and written down, or it becomes a habit.