The Three Pronged Pricing Technique
(Templates, Examples, and a Generator)

The first time I charged a mid-sized company to do work for them was in college.  I was buying a scooter from a Ducati Motorcycle dealership, and somehow my nerdy self started telling the owner of the dealership how his SEO sucked and it was hard to find him online.  

He was intrigued.
He wanted me to help him with it.
He asked for a proposal.
He wanted to know an actual price.

“I’ll charge him $500!” I thought to myself. That was SOO much money to me back then. Totally worth it for a few weekends of work!

I told my mentor about this pricing plan, and if it were legal, he would’ve slapped me across the mouth for charging so little to such a big business.

“You need to charge TEN TIMES that amount!” he said.
“$5,000 for some SEO work? Are you insane?” I protested.

He then showed me several ways to figure out how to charge a business more money for your work, without scaring them off.

One of my favorite ways he showed me to price something called Three Pronged Pricing.  

 

Here’s how Three Pronged Pricing works:

You have 3 different options which people can pick from like this:

This is a super-safe way to make sure you still get the business at your normal rates, but drastically increases the chances of you getting a WAY bigger contract.

In my case, I went from getting $500 for the gig……to them happily paying me $5,000 for the gig.

So lemme show you some real examples and give you a template you can use for your own Three Pronged Pricing:

This pricing structure actually adds a helluva lot of value to your client….because often they DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY NEED.

So in one simple chart you show them what they can get for different prices. They also feel like they have a choice, not like they’re getting strong-armed into some scam.

See how they can CHOOSE whichever option is best for them and fits their budget?

So if there’s someone like me who is charging $500 but doesn’t know what the client's actual budget is…..then I can throw in a “Super Awesome Rockstar Package” that costs $5,000.

If the client scoffs at that price, you know it’s too high. But you’re still safe because you have the low price.

And it seems most often people go with the mid-range option because they don’t want to lose out on some of the extras they get.

This pricing structure works well for products, services, and especially consultant rates.

You can see examples of this Three Pronged Pricing Technique all over the interwebbers:  

Tiered Pricing Examples:

 

SquareSpace Example:

 

 

CrazyEgg Example:

 

KingSumo Example:

 

MindMeister Example:

 

WPEngine Example:

 

Price Intelligently Example:

 

GoAnimate Example:

 

InformationStreet Example:

 

Years ago when I sold my first-ever digital product, I used this Tiered Pricing technique, and it worked great!

I was offering a product for $99 and then for $167 they could get the product AND a half-hour call with me. So I had a “Two Pronged” pricing structure.

It looked like this:

Back then my time was worth like $2/hour, so I was ecstatic when about 30% of the people who bought selected the more expensive option!!

I made so much more money than I ordinarily would have just charging for the product alone.

If I was smarter back then, I would’ve even added something like a $1,200 version where I would help them fully set up their first store in a day or two.

So the point of this article is:

"If you’re trying to get more money for a product or service, try this Tiered Pricing Technique to show your clients you have more to offer for more money!"

I’ve gone ahead and created a template you can fill in to see how your pricing structure would look when you present it to clients.

 

 

Try out this Three Tiered Pricing Generator:

  Here's a Three Tiered Pricing Structure for Neville's Copywriting project:

Basic Package:	Advanced Package:	Professional Package:
$500	$1,200	$5,550
This is the cheapest package.	This is the optimal price to charge.	This is the "Hell Yeah!" package!
[See Basic Pricing]	[See Advanced Pricing]	[See Professional Pricing]

 

Neville's Basic Copywriting Package: $500

Neville's Advanced Copywriting Package: $1,200

 

Neville's Professional Copywriting Package: $5,550