How to sell more digital products with pay what you want pricing

Perhaps one of the most daunting parts of being a creator? Pricing your products

Deciding what to price your products can seriously hold you back from selling your work simply because you’re afraid of wanting to charge too much or too little.

But what if your customers could choose how much they want to pay instead? 

With ConvertKit Commerce, your customers can choose their price when you set up your product with pay-what-you-want (PWYW) pricing! 🎉

This is a great option if you’re just getting started with selling products or don’t know how much people would be willing to pay you (hint: it’s probably more than you think). 

The great thing about PWYW pricing is that you can potentially earn more money than when you set a fixed price. For example, let’s say you sell an ebook for $5. You can’t make more than $5 on that product with a fixed price. But with PWYW pricing, your customers might think it’s worth more than $5 and pay you $10 instead. Sweet deal!

If giving your customers free rein of the price makes you a little nervous, don’t fret. You can offer a minimum price, so you don’t have to worry about people only paying you $1 for the product you’ve put so much work into.

Let’s explore an option where you might want to use PWYW pricing:

Example: Offer your digital product to beta testers

Let’s say you’ve just finished writing the rough draft of your ebook. You want to get some feedback on it from your ideal customers before promoting it everywhere.

At this point, you’re not sure how much to sell it for. But don’t get anxious just yet.

Let’s use PWYW pricing and run your ebook by some beta testers. Not only will you get great feedback, it will give you a chance to see what people are willing to pay for your product. If there seems to be an average price people are paying, you can use that to set the price for the full launch.

How to do this:

1. Set up your PWYW product. 

PWYW pricing is super simple to set up. Learn how here.

Once your product is set up, your customers will see the option on the checkout page to choose how much they want to pay:

2. Find your beta testers.

Wondering how to find beta testers? Try sending a broadcast to your subscribers (or a targeted segment of your list), or post on social media asking if anyone would like to read through your ebook in exchange for their feedback.

What’s in it for them? 

  • Some people will simply be excited to help you edit and proofread your work
  • Others will love that they’re getting early access to your product
  • Everyone will feel like they’re getting a good deal because they’re buying your product at a potentially lower price than what you’ll officially sell it for

On social media, or via a ConvertKit broadcast, you can send them a direct link to your product and let them know they’ll be able to set their price in exchange for the ebook. You can also let them know that you’ll send them the final copy once it’s ready.

3. Launch your product.

After you’ve received feedback from your beta testers, you should have a good idea of what to price your product. Make any necessary changes to your product, and then send your beta testers a finalized copy!

The only thing left to do is to create a new version of your product in ConvertKit Commerce with your official pricing and promote it to everyone you know!

How will you use pay-what-you-want pricing?

We hope this post shows how easy it can be to set up a PWYW product in ConvertKit. Your audience wants to pay you (we promise)...so let them! If you’re interested in learning more, read about the feature on our blog.

Are you currently using PWYW pricing to pre-sell a product? How would you use this pricing for your products? Any ideas that come to mind? 

Comment down below with your ideas and any questions you have about this feature!

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