#016: How I Set the Right Price for My Workshop
Avoid my mistakes and refine your price test: What worked, what didn’t, and why.
Happy Saturday fellow Price Crafter!
Last week, I hosted my first paid workshop on Effective Communication. It was a super fun experience, and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive.
But beyond testing the content, one of my big goals was to test the price point.
As promised, today, I’ll share what I learned from the process so you can avoid the mistakes I made.
Why an Effective Communication Workshop?
Many of you follow my newsletter for pricing content, and I probably owe you an explanation of why there is a workshop on effective communication.
As I began my "self-promoting" journey on LinkedIn, I realised how crucial communication skills are.
After all, what people think you know matters more than what you know (I know, we all wish it's the reverse).
I took a couple of online courses from well-known influencers, which helped me sharpen my delivery (vocal foundation, body language, and all that technical stuff).
But here’s what I noticed:
Delivery can boost your perceived confidence, but people will forget what you say if your content is weak.
Surprisingly, neither course focused deeply on content structure - the foundation of any impactful presentation.
Given my corporate background in training Pricing teams on business storytelling and experience running workshops on similar topics for HSBC, I saw an opportunity.
I designed a workshop focused on content structuring to solve a common problem:
How do you structure content for maximum impact?
But beyond testing the workshop content, I also wanted to see how much value people placed on it.
I set out to test both:
The solution itself (the workshop content).
The price point (the value participants placed on it).
Testing Round I
I ran a one-hour online workshop with four trusted LinkedIn connections.
After the session, I displayed a QR code and asked participants to complete a short survey.
The survey asked:
On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this workshop?
→ Scores of 7 or below were directed to share their concerns.
→ Scores of 8 or above were asked how much they’d pay for a 90-minute version of the workshop (see below).
After they shared their theoretical price, I offered them the chance to "gift" the workshop to a friend via a purchase link. The idea was to match their stated value with action.
However, this price test didn’t work out as planned for two reasons:
I displayed the purchase link without clear instructions, and everyone missed it. (I tried to avoid paying for Typeform’s redirect functionality, a mistake many of you might relate to when juggling multiple software costs.)
Gifting the workshop felt unfamiliar to participants, making it less appealing.
Testing Round II
Based on the above and other non-pricing feedback received from the first round, I made two major changes:
Extended the workshop to two hours, adding group discussions and exercises.
Replaced the gifting idea with a "Pay what you think it's worth" option at the end of the workshop.
I've also fine-tuned the check-out journey by adding a description of the payment link (yes, I still refused to pay for the Typeform upgrade).
You can see how it's presented below:
I didn’t do heavy marketing, just a single LinkedIn post, which generated about 2,000 impressions. I got nine sign-ups, but only five attended.
Here’s what I learned:
When something feels free, expect low commitment.
→ Offering a price driven entirely by the outcome doesn’t work when the audience size is small.
Despite adding more context to the payment link, most participants missed it.
→ Now I understand why Typeform charges for that seamless redirect functionality! The checkout journey needs to be clear and smooth.
"Do You Have a Price Point or Not, Claire?"
My sample size is too small, and the price range offered by participants was too broad to draw a concrete conclusion from these tests. But the feedback helped me set a floor and ceiling for pricing.
I also started comparing my offering to competitors.
While I'm sure there are people offering similar things out there, I haven't quite pin-pointed what those offers are.
So, I'm comparing workshops in a similar domain but with a very different focus (communication delivery instead of content).
The market rate seems to be around USD 100/hour, but those are from big influencers with at least 80k followers.
In addition, despite the hourly rate, the starting price point for purchase is around USD 500 (after discounts).
Testing Round III
As I always say, there’s no perfect pricing, only continuous iteration.
My next test will be a two-hour workshop priced at USD 120, with discounts offered to my newsletter subscribers.
Let’s see how it goes.
Takeaways for Testing a New Product
If you’re planning to test pricing for a new product or service, here’s my advice:
Test the content first
Ensure your product solves a real problem and refine it based on feedback to make it super relevant. Forget about testing for price points at the same time.
Test the price point with revised content
Once your content is solid, test price points with a small focus group using your actual offering.
Complement price tests with competitor analysis
Once you gather customer feedback, compare it with what’s already on the market before setting your price. Don’t rush a large-scale launch—you risk leaving money on the table or damaging trust.
That’s it for now!
DM me if you have thoughts to share.
The next workshop is on October 30, and if you’re interested, ask me for a discount code.
Cheers,
Claire
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