How to price what you sell without guessing (or going broke)

Ask an owner how they set their price and the honest answer is usually: they looked at someone else's and went slightly under. It feels safe. It is how businesses end up working very hard for very little.

Start from your costs, not their price

Write down everything one sale actually costs you:

• What you paid for the item, or the hours you put into making it
• Payment processing fees
• Packaging and delivery
• A share of your fixed costs — data, transport, subscriptions
• Your own time, at a rate you would accept from someone else

That total is your floor. Below it you are paying for the privilege of working. A surprising number of popular products sit under this line, which is why a busy month can still end with no money.

Then ask what the outcome is worth

Costs give you a floor, not a price. The ceiling is what the result is worth to the buyer.

A course that helps someone earn an extra ₦50,000 a month is not priced against other courses. It is priced against the ₦50,000. Sell the outcome and you are no longer in a race to the bottom with everyone selling something superficially similar.

Charge more than feels comfortable, once

The most common pricing mistake is not overcharging. It is undercharging for years and never testing it.

Raise the price on one product by 20% and watch for a month. Usually volume barely moves and margin jumps. If sales do fall, you have learned something real and you can move it back — that is a cheap experiment.

Make the price easy to say yes to

Three things reliably lift conversion without touching the number: showing the price in the buyer's own currency, offering more than one payment method, and not surprising anyone with fees at checkout. On SalesGit these are handled for you — local currency and local payment methods are the default rather than something you configure.

Revisit it on a schedule

Costs move, especially here. Put a recurring reminder in your calendar to re-check your pricing every quarter. The businesses that quietly fail are often the ones still charging 2023 prices against 2026 costs.

Related reading: why most small businesses fail.