This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
How do you price your first workshop? Let's say you're going to host a workshop, whether in person or online. How do you decide how to price it? Naturally, you want to price it as high as you can so that you can profit as much as possible, but still within a range that your customer or client is comfortable with. You want to find that sweet spot between what they're willing to pay and what is best for you.
This question comes to us today from Olivia. She's in South Carolina and is in fact gearing up to host her first workshop. I'm not sure what the topic is. Maybe she'll tell us, maybe not. But the point is she's not sure how to price it. So if you've ever been unsure about
how to set a price for a new service or a product, you're like, I've got a great idea for a side hustle, but I have no idea what it should cost. Well, hopefully this episode's going to help. Let's talk about some strategies for making this decision and for finding that optimal price point. How do you in fact price your first workshop? That's today's question.
Stay tuned. Hey, Chris. This is Olivia from Charleston, South Carolina. I'm planning on hosting my first workshop, but I'm completely lost when it comes to pricing. I want to make sure it's accessible, but I also need to cover my costs and make it worth my time. How do I figure
out the right price for my workshop? What factors should I consider to make sure I'm not undercharging or overcharging? I really want to do this work, but it feels confusing to me. Hey, Olivia, I totally respect that balance of wanting to make sure your workshop is accessible, but also making sure that it's worth your while. I think Olivia also mentioned here needing to cover your costs. Well, that's a good first step. First step is what are
your costs for hosting this workshop? Now you might think, well, I'm just hosting this workshop online, so it doesn't actually cost me anything. Nevertheless, the workshop that you were teaching, presumably you're sharing about some topic or some specific thing that you have knowledge or expertise in, most likely there are some costs. If nothing else, there's your time cost of the preparation and choosing to do this project as opposed to something else. So there's nothing wrong with doing things for free, but when you're thinking about a business model, I think it's important to think, what am I actually communicating?
What am I sharing? Hopefully I'm creating some sort of transformation through this workshop, so it's not just passing on knowledge, but it is creating positive change. All of that has value. So yes, let's start with your costs, all of your costs, and then maybe research the market a bit, see what people are charging for similar workshops, look at competitors, consider your audience. You might want to start with a pilot workshop, so if you're unsure what the final price should be, consider running a smaller pilot version of this workshop at a lower price, get some feedback, and then use that information to adjust your pricing for the full version. You can be flexible, you can offer different pricing, so you could
include like here's the price for the workshop itself. This is a relatively low cost, it's $39, $79, $150, whatever it might be, and there's a premium tier that's going to include some additional support. That could be one-on-one follow-up if you have capacity to do it or just an additional call or workshop, again, depending on whether it's online or offline and so on. You could also do early bird pricing. This is something that's great when you're trying to keep things accessible, but you want to also consider your profit margin while you encourage early signups by offering a discount for those who registered before a certain date. That helps you gauge interest and get people committed, and then you raise
the rate for the final X days or weeks before the actual workshop. Great strategy, very effective. So there's lots of things you can do. Hopefully that gives you a little bit of a framework. Start by calculating your costs, all of your costs, see what other people are charging, consider your audience, and then ask yourself, "What is the best structure that works for my goals? Do I want to do this pilot thing first or should I just go for
it?" Really, if you just go for it, I think that's also great, too, because everything is a pilot, right? You can think of it like that. I'm going to start this workshop and we'll see what happens, and I can always charge a different price the next time. So don't overthink it. That's my overall best advice for anyone in these situations. I try to tell
it to myself, too, just to be clear. Listeners, if you have a question or a comment, sidehustleschool.com/questions. Much more is coming up. We're in the final months of the year. I'm excited to bring you new episodes every day. Thank you so much for being out there. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is
Side Hustle School. from the Onward Project.
