Today we’re going to talk a little about the psychology of pricing. Volumes have been written on this subject, and I definitely don’t pretend to know everything. I doubt most people with a psychology degree could even speak that confidently on the subject.  I include this in our pricing discussion because cheaper isn’t necessarily the ‘best’ price for you. I’ve been on the internet for over 12 years. I started because I created a website. A website of course is just a page on the web that does nothing if you have no traffic. I like a challenge so I started to research and learn everything I could about how to get traffic. Slowly but surely I started to figure it out and began to get some nice traffic numbers. Someone asked for some help so I helped them for nothing. This continued until one day someone offered to pay me… and I had no clue what to charge.
About a year later I was talking to one of my mentors and they told me I should increase my prices… in fact I should double or triple my prices. He said that my prices were so low that people thought I was trying to scam them. I had never thought about my pricing in this way. Either I was trying to scam them, or what I was selling them didn’t work. I doubled my prices and tripled my business.
When you’re thinking about what to charge for your tutor services you need to keep several things in mind. If you’re helping someone to pass their law exam or nursing test you would definitely charge more than you would when you’re teaching a grade schooler their multiplication tables.
If you’re just starting your tutor business I would take the middle ground. Yesterday in my research I found results that ranged from $10 / hour to $45 / hour. My suggestion would be to take the middle ground. One of the biggest things you’ll need to think about is how much your time is worth.
Friday we’ll talk about the different ways you can price your tutoring. Tomorrow will be our newsletter day so stay tuned.
If you would like to learn more about selling I would highly recommend the book “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” by Robert Cialdini, and excellent book.
Patricia S McNeil says
FUNNY THAT YOU STARTED OUT THE SAME WAY THAT I HAD INTENDED…FOR FREE, SIMPLY BECAUSE I ENJOY TEACHING, THO’ I HAVE NO FORMAL TRAININ G, IT’S JUST, I BELIEVE TO BE A GIFT FROM GOD.
GOOD NITE