Episode 422: Pricing and More Pricing With Andrew Palmer

Hey, everybody, Rob Cairns here again. I’m here with my good friend, Mr. Andrew. I should say Arnie Palmer, how are you today, Andrew?

Very, very well. Yeah, it’s good. It’s a nice Tuesday afternoon in the UK. Day. Weather it’s not actually raining. It was spitting lately, but we’ve been having weeks and weeks of rain and a couple of days of sunshine, but yeah, it’s pretty warm and it’s nice.

And in Toronto, it is warm and sunny. We’re at like 28°C today. If anybody cares, so it. Is hot so. I didn’t get so. One. So we were kind of talking in before we went to record and you and I have many a conversation in many a group and many a an ex Twitter chat and this came out of a tweet that you posted a couple of weeks ago and you were talking about not. Doing your pricing and fighting the race to the bottom, and we’ve all been there, we see it in WordPress space that we see it in business in the retail space. Days I think the only one that succeeds fighting the price to the bottom is the dollar store discount store type of place, cause that’s what people expect. And I was thinking coming into this, I walked into my Barber shop. On Friday last week for my first haircut in four months. And I was in the Barber chair. Believe it or not, 12 minutes at the cost of $40 Canadian. By the time I was. Yeah. And my mom looked at me after and said 40 bucks for 12 minutes, and I looked at her and said it’s not the 12 minutes. It’s what got done, how it got done and the proper way. It got done. So the expertise involved, what do you say to that to open the show?

I think the tweet, if I’m remembering correctly, was I I stupidly locked my car keys in the back of my in the boot of my car, and I’d instinctively locked my car, which was crazy, and I’ve only got. I’ve only got one set of keys, which again is crazy as well. But that’s like the key for my car.

Yes. Yeah.

300 lbs. And ironically, the total cost of me getting my key, recut and fact, you know, or getting a spare key cut and getting back into my car. Was nearly 400 lbs, so you know if I. If I’d been sent to would I’d have had a spare key and somebody could have brought me the key. But the my point was, is that it took the guy.

Yeah.

10 minutes to get in and that’s in between chatting and all that kind of stuff. To break into my car. And it took him about 15 minutes to cut the car key and the total cost was 398 lbs.

No.

I was willing to pay that one because I was in the SH1T and two because. He’s got a skill that I don’t have built up over many years. And so it’s value based pricing. What’s the value of of getting back into your car when you can within 90 minutes, you know, made a call, he came within 90 minutes, 10 minutes later, I was in my car. And and where we are in the web world and creative world and and I see it all the time with a a particular creative a guy called Vic Lee who does these fantastic murals and they’re thousands of pounds. So you know, agencies come to him and say, ohh, how much and they say, oh, we can’t we can’t go with you, they’re thinking, you know, three or four hundred 500 lbs But these these are real skill based stuff. And I think where we are in society is that we’re not willing to pay people for their level of skill, partly because we don’t know their level of skill until it’s done. But we have we’re lucky in the web world cause we have a portfolio and we can say, OK, well, here’s our best websites or here’s our best work or whatever, because we’re never gonna show our worst. And and that’s the proof. You know, we’ve got social proof with people telling you, you know, giving us reviews and things like that. But people still aren’t willing to pay, and part of the issue around WordPress and websites and web hosting and everything. That. Is it’s it on the face of it, it’s cheap. It’s cheap to build a website, you know, build a website for freewebpress.com, build a website for free, host it for free. You know, as long as you don’t have your own domain name connected to it. So we’ve we’ve actually working towards devaluing what we charge. So therefore I said I’m going to charge. More and I was referring to my web building business, you know, ironically to as of today, Tuesday the 4th of June, I’ve halved the price of Bertha because we’ve we’ve had now two months of seeing what our LM’s are charging us and saying, OK, well, they. Our costs have reduced. We’re going to pass them directly on to our clients. So you’ve done a 50% reduction, which I think will will keep keep going there. So because and that’s a that’s software as a service really it’s a plug in and Chrome extension every but it it’s software as a service. So we’ve got fixed costs, we’ve got fixed developer cost, fixed costs around LM’s and stuff like that or really good pricing around LM’s. So we’ve we’ve got value based pricing pricing there and and obviously making it accessible to everyone around the world. It’s 10 bucks a month. It’s a cup. It’s the price of a cup of coffee. I’m really talking about. The physicality of doing work for someone where. A website really is worth 5 grand because you’re not paying for the you. You know I can. I can build your 5 grand website in a week or three days or even 2 days landing pages. Couple of grand for a landing page, whatever it may be. But the reason I can do it in that time and the reason I can do it well in that time is because I’ve got 30 years experience in marketing. You know, 20 years experience in building websites and. Thousands of websites behind me. The reason I can fix your server or or fix your your hacked website is because I’ve got 10 years of going through the mill. And knowing how to fix a website that’s got malware on it so. That’s what you’re paying for. It’s the old story, isn’t it? Where the guy goes up to the the ship that’s not working. And they’ve spent thousands of dollars on it trying to repair the engine. And he goes, he goes along and hits it three times in a particular place with a hammer and says, right, that would be 10 round please and said, well, you hit it three times. And the with a hammer, he said. Well, you’re paying for the fact that I knew where to hit it, you know, and all that kind of stuff. You know, you’ve got all those kind of. Pricing situations around that, and because we’re so used to not paying a lot. For our, for our food, you know, food has gone up. But what we don’t appreciate is that it’s gotta be transported to the it’s got somebody’s gotta buy it. Somebody’s gotta grow it. Somebody gotta buy. Here somebody’s gotta stock it on a shelf. Get it? Get it there and somebody’s gotta put it on a shelf. So you’ve got all this train of experience. The experienced buyers, the experienced farmers, the experienced suppliers, the bakers, the the you know, the Candlestick makers, all of these this experience goes into your loaf of bread that. Cost you $1.20, right? You know, we we we don’t appreciate what’s gone into making that loaf of bread or getting that that wardrobe built for you. You know, you go into IKEA, you can buy a fairly decent wardrobe.

True.

For you know, a few 100 lbs. But you have to put it together yourself. You then pay another 50 lbs to to get someone to put it together. So we’ve got we’re in this kind of. Cheap mindset. We need to get out of it. We need to be able to, you know, see the value that we’re we’re purchasing and that’s what that tweet was about is that there was value in what this guy gave me because of the of his experience, you know, and it’s. And it’s doubly doubly person because I actually got the AI out. I’m a member of the A and they came out and they charged me 75 lbs and couldn’t get into the car. But I still have to pay the £75 you know so. Took it way over the 400 lbs and it cost me to to put in even though I’m a member of the A that’s still drives me to come out because it’s not covered. Lost keys, you know? So that’s what I’m that’s what I’m rabbiting on about, frankly.

1. I agree with you. I did. I did a scary thing in January and I’ll share it with you. I went to all my. Clients. The end of December and said, by the way, I’m increasing all my rates by 25% across the board everything and not only. Yeah, I’m getting rid of all the nonprofits out of my life. So if you’re a nonprofit, you can keep your contract in force. Otherwise, you can disappear. I’m not taking on anymore. And not only did I do that. I killed all my grandfathered in pricing, so any clients on old pricing had all disappeared. Everything I just said, I’m done. And I had 4 objections. And out of those four, three of them or clients have wanted to get rid of anyway. So that solved that problem. Easy, right? They went away. Nobody else has objected and the beauty is because they realize costs have gone up in the last year. I hate to tell you, living costs have gone up, heating costs have gone up, Internet costs have gone up, posting costs have gone up, everything’s gone up in the last year. So why should I absorb all that? Straight.

Exactly. Exactly. No, I agree. And it and that’s coming to that. You know, I’ve got a client that I’ve that I lost through that they went to a person that was. But. And they’ve come back to me to actually it hasn’t worked out because they haven’t done a they’ve done an awful lot. So I’ve got them back, but. You know, I looked at it and I thought, well, there’s. It’s going to cost me this much to do, and then I’ve got that and blah, blah, blah. It’s gonna be this much. And it was more than double of what they were paying the the cheaper guy. And I said, well, you know, I’m not. I’m not gonna do it for less than that. And it’s that’s just the the way it is. And I’ve got it. I’ve got the contract so. It’s. It it’s tough to say. It’s just like when you charge up front as well because you you it’s very hard for people to think about justifying charging up front. I you know in my view, if you’re selling a website or selling anything, if the client isn’t prepared to pay you upfront, that kinda tells me that they haven’t got the money in the first. You know, because they haven’t. They, you know, they’re trying to do it out of their own cash flow. So you can’t. And I’m always willing to help people with payment plans and things like that. But at the end of the day, you have to pay for everything that you go out and buy, you know, you buy a car, you need you may you may need a loan. You might be lucky enough to be able or fortunate enough in your planning to be able to have saved for a full car.

Yep.

For 30 round or 40 round or whatever it is when you buy your food, you have to pay it straight away. When you buy anything. These days you have to buy it straight away.

Mm-hmm.

Why not have the same attitude to website design or even consultancy or or whatever? So my? When I have a first client, I say it’s 100% upfront and I lose people from that, but I’m and I’m OK with that. Because I don’t wanna work with people that don’t wanna wanna trust me from the very, very beginning because.

Me too.

And there’s things you know. Shall we use an escrow service? And I did use one for a client cause it was a large amount of money, but they paid the money into the escrow service. You know. Yeah, it was. I knew the money was there. And of course, even with the modern banking systems.

Mm-hmm.

I deal with people in the States and they pay me by ACH. My banking day takes six days to clear that it appears on my account, my bank account. But it takes six days to clear. So who’s got who’s got ahold of that money? My bank, obviously. They just don’t wanna. They they they don’t want to take any risks, but it it’s it’s hard enough to get payment for anything and I’ve got. People that I charge, you know, old legacy prices of 125 a year for hosting and maintenance. From 10 years ago and they just will not pay more, and sometimes they even don’t pay at all. And you have to chase them and chase them. And, you know, back in the day, I didn’t have a contract to say that if you don’t pay, I’ll close you down. So I can’t close their websites down. I just have to. So send them a letter and say within seven days your your hosting service will cease, and then they you know, but it’s just annoying. I, you know, we need we need to get to a sit. I pay my bills on time.

So do I.

Every time. Right. So why can’t other people have that kind of attitude? It’s not a it’s not a big deal to pay people on time. You know, I’ve got one guy we did some leaflets for him, you know, three months ago. It’s £100. He said, yeah, yeah. I’ve, I’ve told my accountant to pay you. Three months or £100. So I went into his restaurant the other day and I had 150 quids worth of food. So you know, why not. Didn’t pay it. Rang me up and said what’s going on. I said well, you haven’t paid me, so I’ve taken my payment in food. And he’s saying, OK, whatever. Maybe that was his trick, but it’s just annoying that it’s. Yeah. For it’s the little amount, it’s the and this is what cost businesses money. This is what costs freelancers, sleepless nights because they’re not getting paid on time. You know, if you expect someone. I did a tweet or a LinkedIn post as well, be the best client you can be. Pay people on time. You know, as soon as you get an invoice. There’s literally nothing stopping you paying that straight away unless you haven’t got any money. And if you haven’t got any money, don’t ask people to do work for you.

Yep.

Right. It’s that’s. You know that’s, that’s all.

I want to go back to the paying up front for a minute in the WordPress space and a lot of spaces. People call that initial payment a deposit. And I don’t like that terminology at all, and the reason I don’t is that deposits suggests that they pay or will get some of that money back. I actually call that an initial payment towards completion or anything in my contract to avoid using that deposit. Word. What do you think about that?

I I totally agree with you, deposit kind of can almost mean it’s refundable because it’s a deposit, right? So unless you have your terms, I don’t, I don’t call it a deposit. I never have. It’s always an upfront payment. It’s a, it’s an initial payment. So it’s not none of my.

Yeah.

Payments to people are refundable apart from if I’m selling. Them as a. You know, if I’m selling them a digital product. Then yes, my, my you’ve got your normal laws that say that you you have to refund within whatever your terms are. If it’s a digital product, if it’s for digital services like building a website, no. I’ve done some work or I’ve paid someone to do the work. So therefore you have to pay me and you’re you’re not going to get any money. Like if you cancel it. Yeah. And you’ve accepted my terms and conditions all all every single client now gets a contract, and it’s a standing contract. It’s you pay your bills. What’s the?

Yeah.

You you pay up and and you pay on a. Well, I do. You know, if it’s something like if it’s £10,000 or $10,000 or something, I’m I’m happy to do a payment. You know I’m happy. You know, because. The first payment should really cover your costs, then the second payment kind of covers your your ongoing cost and the third payment is where you get your profit. But you you, your your cash flow is OK you know, because the and and the point is is that if you’re a freelancer. I think any freelancer that is actually doing the work. Can’t take on more than three websites a month. Can’t even take on more than two because how can they focus? On maybe just. Me, but I, you know, we do. We do multiple product projects because I’ve got multiple freelancers that work with me. But the you know the individual person that takes on three or four websites at a time, how can they possibly deliver those to a quality? That the client really wants. If they’re only charging a couple of grand or a grand or $1500 or whatever, they’ve got to charge the $5000, because that’s kind of the minimum living wage. Now. You know when you take off the cost of the business. The tax and all that kind of stuff, $5000 is is not a lot of money, you know, especially. You know, you gotta pay for your own health insurance and stuff in the states. We’re OK here because we’ve got the NHS. But you know, you’ve got lots of costs in the US as an individual business. You’re you’re accountancy companies. Cost a fortune. I mean, they literally it. It’s crazy how much accountancy charges in in America. Because of the complexities of state taxes and federal taxes and all that kind of stuff, whether you’re a B Corp or an LLC or or whatever, you know our tax, it takes our company taxation system over here is really quite simple. You’re either self-employed or you’ve got a limited company or a partnership, you know, so it’s not.

Yeah.

It’s not complex at all. There’s three versions of a company you can have, you know, in the states, there seems to be. Because he called, he called as seed, partnership, sole trader, whatever. It’s complex stuff.

Yeah.

So you have to charge 5 grand for the website, you can’t minimum.

It’s true.

Yeah.

I would, I would agree with you and I would.

That both of them.

Those are the key things. Yeah, I Andrew, I agree with you so much. And I think the other thing we need to to start doing is and we all know the. Problem. Client makes that first payment, they’re done the whole ready to go on a website project. And then you don’t hear from them for five months, right? And it’s like, how do you, how do you, how do you move? A project I. Actually went to the .2 years ago where I started putting into my website contracts. A clause said that the client disappears. The project goes dormant and there’s a restart cost on the project. How do you? How do you handle that approach?

Well, it’s so if I do so, it’s 50% upfront payment and then the remaining 50% within and it’s I’ve changed it slightly, but it was always used to be within six weeks or when the project is complete or whichever is the sooner. So that’s the that’s the phrase that you’ve got whichever is the sooner. If it goes beyond six weeks. The money is that all of the amount of the money is due, right? Yeah. So they have, they have to pay that. And then with like you, there’s a restart charge and also there’s a restart time because in the time that you’ve been waiting for them to to restart the job you’ve got, you’ve you’ve you’ve said no to other businesses, right for at least a week or two. You said no to other projects cause you’ve got this project on board and.

Hmm.

I mean, that’s the reason for the existence of things like Atari. It’s the reason for the existence of things like Bertha, because at least now you’ve got a you you can open up communication channels where the the customer can doesn’t have to sign into a Trello or give you a Google doc or something. You know, you can sign on to the website with that room and they can put you can. You can create the. The content with birth of the text content with Bertha. And they can amend it or say yeah, they like that or whatever. So you’re your web development and your web design is becoming more intrinsically will build a a total done for you including the the initial copywriting, even if it’s AI generated. But it’s still there. So those are the reasons from the years of experience of. Being held at the end of a fishing line and not being pulled in, you know, because the content hasn’t arrived or something’s got in the way. I’ve got a couple of clients like that at the moment. They’re an absolute nightmare. They just. Where’s the content, you know? And then all of a sudden, they send you an e-mail with 30 pages of a four tip types out on a Google Doc. You know, and you and say, right? Can we ready? Can we launch this next week? Well, no, actually we can’t. Yeah, because, you know, you’ve we’ve got other projects on the on the go now. So yeah, that’s where I stand. It’s it’s six weeks. The final payment is due within six weeks or when the when the project completes, whichever is the. Yeah, those are the words that I use, and that’s legal jargon from a lawyer who gave me that. So you.

Know Ohh I’m sure. And and the other thing I I would say you know with this whole pricing model is I. I treat websites interesting. I treat them like going into a restaurant. So you go in and you sit down and you grab a menu and you say I want a drink. And in your case, it’s vodka. I know that. So we, Andrew orders his vodka. Then you order your second vodka. Then you order maybe a salad. I don’t know. I would order a salad to start my meal. You know where I’m going with this? Then you order your entree. And if you’re still hungry, you order dessert. And I look at my diabetic numbers, they say. Ohh crap. I shouldn’t have done that, but that’s another story, right? But the point I’m making. There’s I’ve built this menu of services and I’m gonna pay based on the menu items that I. Bought. Websites are no different. If you want this, you pay this. If you want this, you pay this. If you want this, you pay this. We need to stop this. Ohh, can you insert this? No. This is what we agreed to, so if you want this, it costs you this much more. Your thoughts on that?

Well, I’ve got coming from the printing. I was in the printing industry for a long time, lot of years. And one of the the favorite phrases of a client was can you. So let’s go back to repro plate making and all that kind of stuff. You know, it wasn’t digital print, it was proper lighter graphic printing. So you had to make plates and film and stuff like. And you’d have a you’d have an image of, say, a house for a property, estate agent brochure or something, and that image would have reversed out text, so you’d have white text on that. You’d make the plates for that. You’d do a paper proof. You send it to the client. Ohh, can you just change the text on this to say this? This, this. No, we can’t just do that because all four plates are reverse. Out. All four films, so we’re going to have to redo the film and we’re going to have to redo the plates and redo the proofing. And that’s another 600 lbs. That happens in the web world like you can’t believe. Can you just move that section to there? Can you just do this? Can you just do that word? That word just. Always has sound and dollar signs attached to it, you know? So if the client says to you can you just then that that sets off the till goes kaching kaching kaching. Those can you just things just cost you 300 bucks buying or $500 whatever. So that’s how I address it and I say and I say to them, no, no, you know we you do a brief, you take a brief, you give them a A proposal which forms part of your contract of what you’re gonna do. And if they move away from that. You can you can do things as a courtesy, and also if you’re on a, say like a maintenance plan or something and they they do something that’s over the. Our you can invoice them. You invoice them with it and say OK that was a. 150 bucks. Cause it’s our hourly rate and you can either discount that to zero and say this time we did it as a as a courtesy or discount it to 50% because you know we’re doing this as a courtesy, but you make sure that’s never gonna be. Never gonna happen again. And it kind of pre warns them that next time they ask for something, they’re gonna have to pay for it. So they think about it a little bit easier. You know they won’t come to you and expect it for nothing. You know, because it will be. Marked as discounted this time as a courtesy.

You beat me to my next question. You must have profit in your in your head today, Andrew. And that was this whole thing about discounting. So I’ve taken the approach for over 10 years. I never discount without showing the original value and then showing the discount. And I think a lot of web agencies are market agencies. And then says that these disservice, they say, here’s the price. No, break it down. Show them what they’re getting. Show them why they’re paying and then show them what the final dollar amount is. I think that. Is the best approach personally, but.

Yeah, I do too. And and and modern modern invoicing systems. You know, we use zero to invoice people and and you you have columns and you have categories and then you can you you can describe what you’ve done and then the column is a sales and then you’ve got. You know two hours or you unit cost 152 hours discount 50%, you know, and people can see that you’ve discounted it. It’s it’s got a minus figure on it as well as a plus figure and. It’s in their brain. Ohh I got a discount on that. Thanks for that. Or whatever it is. And I’ll tell you what, I don’t discount as much as as much as you you might think I do because. Why should I? You know, I’ve got an hourly rate that that’s my hourly rate. I just had a conversation with a client as well saying. Ohh. You you charged us the wrong hourly rate, I said. No, I didn’t. I charged you my normal hourly rate. If you go back to your invoices, you’ll see that I discounted it for you because it reached a certain amount of hours, you know, 15 hours. I will give you a 20% discount on my hourly rate. This was a 2 hour job. Therefore, you’re gonna pay the three. 100 bucks that you. That is my normal hourly rate. And they go OK, you know, they and they, they accept it. And as I say, people, once you educate people around your pricing because it’s very difficult, isn’t it? We go into a get into a service station to to service our cars. And we don’t know how much a set of brakes is gonna cost or a set of tyres. We’ve kind of got an idea up ahead, but we really don’t know how much they’re gonna charge us for that. And then they all of a sudden hit us for another. £700 you know I got hit for about £500 the other day on my car and just think ohh. It wasn’t really ready for that, but it’s and then you see the value that they’ve given you in the previous years. You know they’ve they’ve actually, you know, you had a bulb gone, so they didn’t charge that they didn’t charge, they didn’t charge that. So they’re giving you value over the years and and if it’s an expensive item like brake discs which need repairing and their life saving.

That’s quite.

Generally, hopefully for other people on the roadways. Well, you’re gonna pay your £600 for to have all your discs replaced and your pads it, and that’s what we the the problem is when you start discounting is how do you keep control of it. So you they say well, you gave me a discount last time, why can’t I have that now and you say well because it’s it’s not within the parameters of our discounting scheme. You know as I say. You. Plus a 20% discount, 20 hours plus you might get a 30% discount because we value you as a customer and we’re thanking you for the 30 hours that you’ve given us. But you know, if it’s gonna be ad hoc worker, an hour at a time, it’s gonna cost you.

£150 simple as that. No, I agree with it now around discounting now many people may or may not know. You owned the plug in company at one time and you correct me if I’m wrong. You sold that off most of it by now. You got out of that business with it.

Sold. I sold it all off. I sold all the plugins off and there are total of I think about 11 plugins that that I because I had 22. You. And I took away 11 because they were just. Built into because they’re all divvy related, so divvy kind of built their functionality into divvy. So there’s no sign, just canned them of the 11 plugins that I sold to David were with layout injector because it’s got 40 odd modules in it. And also divvy 5 is coming out. So I didn’t want to get involved.

Yeah.

Making them backward compatible or continuing to be backward compatible and compatible with V5 as well. You know a lot of the a lot of people that.

Yes.

Build plugins for page builders are can be adversely affected. A. When a when a page builder changes and currently even in Bertha, we’ve got an issue with Beaver Builder. Doesn’t work currently. And we’re working with Eva builders say, what do you, what did you do? You know, you we didn’t change anything. What did you? Yeah, we’ve changed stuff. And the way it’s presented, they changed stuff because Gutenberg, we had a problem with Gutenberg when it first. When it came out 6.3.

Yeah. Yep.

Further, so that took us two months to find out what was actually wrong and it was a cashing situation.

Because I remember, yes.

Buttons load, you know, and it and it caused birtha to be kind of uncashed, if you like. But now she works perfectly good though. So we’re fixing the Beaver builder thing, should that should be fixed by Monday at the latest. But. With divvy, there are so many third party module makers that divy 5 caused them a lot of issues and I can see a few of them just going. Do you know what? I’ve got one plug in in Dev and I’m I’m not gonna bother, I’ll just deprecate it. Say sorry guys, that’s the end of that, I’m sure. So yeah.

Now plug in.

Actually, don’t really.

Plugging companies come to Black Friday every. And on Black Friday. We see this discount and I was listening to Katie Keith the other day from Burn 2 plugins and she came out and said I wait for Black Friday to. Renew all my agency plugins and then I cancel all the old deals and take all brand new deals and. Just pay the cheaper pricing. As a plug-in developer or plug in shop, should you discount your plugins? Why? Why not and should you stay out of the whole Black Friday ecosystem?

It’s very difficult because a lot of people make a lot of money on Black Friday. I mean, you know, I don’t know how I’m going to be able to discount birth or it’s 10 or a month, you know, so it’s just a, it’s like a cup of tea.

Yep.

But it it it’s a problem. And I’m trying to think who doesn’t do discounts on Black Friday? There’s a couple of people that stand up and go. I’m not discounting on Black Friday. And I kind of agree with them, you know, and I like, I I don’t disagree with Katie’s philosophy of buying plug it or cancelling plugins or or subscriptions and then restarting them on Black Friday if the deal’s good. I think that’s a sensible use of your finances. But. You know, Black Friday was originally. Put together to get rid of all the old summer stock. Basically. Yeah. You know, and and that doesn’t apply with digital products. It’s you know you’ve got you’ve got. I think it kind of devalues the marketplace for digital products and and plugins and sasses and it’s a nightmare to run as well because you you have to change your.

MHM.

Systems you have to build you you actually, you know, if you’re using easy digital downloads or WooCommerce or whatever to use to to do that you have to have a specific price and that price has to stay there in your system forever because it’s it’s obviously it’s a subscription and people are paying on the subscription and if you deleted that product afterwards, it wouldn’t. The the subscription wouldn’t work, so you know we’ve got in in our plugins. We used to have, you know, reams of things. This was the summer sale. This was the Valentine’s Day. This was the Black Friday. You know, you have to keep the plugins or the OR the payment subscription thing like. So I I’m looking forward not to giving a discount on Black Friday. I’m really looking forward to cause it won’t. I’m I’m not gonna go less than A10 or a month, you know.

I’m sure you are.

You can stick. It it you either want it or you don’t. You know it’s not. It’s not a big deal to me, but it it’s you may do a lifetime deal in in, in Black Friday or something like that.

Yeah.

Just for a just to see where it goes with us. But. Uh. I wanna see it. I wanna see a decline in the amount of extensions. And SAS products that actually do Black Friday offerings. So I want them to be brave and just say, OK, I can just live on my annuals, but a lot of people live off their black, you know, and I know one. Plugging guy or I know a couple, you know, that they. November, October, October, November they may.

Each.

You know, 100 grand in that month or 200 grand, you know, it’s just a. It’s something it’s tempting to to to discount your product and have that massive injection of cash, especially before Christmas and tax season starts as well. So it’s a nice. Tonight. Into your into your. I’d I’d rather not see any sales at all as far as or, you know, discounted sales on software because it’s you still got the same cost as a software producer. You still got the support systems that hosting the programmers that you. You’ve got. You still got to manage. It’s like people like lifetime deals, isn’t it? People say, oh, you shouldn’t do a lifetime. Well, you can. I mean it kick started us big time, but it’s it. It just use it as a kickstart, you know? It’s it’s it’s like it’s like it’s almost like self funding. You know, if you’ve got a product and people want to buy it and you’re doing a lifetime deal. So it too, I mean I know that. Siren has just come out and affiliates and ask. Woo commerce and it it. You know, he did a 49 at 50.

Mm-hmm.

Bucks they they sold out within minutes. That generated 2 1/2 grand needed a 99. Bucks 5050 things of that. That generation, another three or four grand, you know? So he’s he’s made 10 grand in a.

Day, which is great and I and I’ll tell you, is I just interviewed Alex recently and and that podcast is out and he will never offer another $49 deal again. He’s made that clear. This was a one time shot.

Yeah, fair enough, fair enough. But. It’s still. An injection of cash. You know, he probably injected probably around, I would imagine from the sales that he did on that yesterday. I think it was.

Yes.

Probably injected $10,000 into his bank account. It’s great, isn’t it? It’s a great way to general, but discounting Black Friday, I’m, as I say, I’m really looking forward not to doing a Black Friday deal. Yeah.

I’m sure. We we have a a, a mutual friend who’s name seem to enter every podcast. You and I do. Together and I think you know where I’m going with this one. That W card guy. Well, you know who runs this? This forms plug-in called WS forms, which you and I both agree it’s probably the best form plug in on the Internet, right? No question there agree with you and I know I and I know I’m talking to.

That’s not.

Mark. He struggled with that because he does do it, but he thinks he almost has to do it so.

Yeah, exactly. And that’s the, but it’s the fear of missing out, isn’t it, of that large amount of. Of interest. But it’s, I think. But he does it really well. I think, you know, he does a couple of discounts around. You know the flagship word camps 30%.

He does.

And I think I don’t think he does a massive deal on Black Friday. I think it’s like still 30.

It’s still 30.

You know, it’s not because and it’s and I think it’s only for the first year. So maybe it’s just a a lost leader to get people and once you’ve got WS form. You ain’t going back. You know, once you’ve.

No.

Got it’s, it’s. An incredible piece of software.

And.

And there are other forms out there on the market that we’re all used to and they’re they’re great as well because. Let’s not forget, you know, we I had. I was on a podcast this morning. Actually I mentioned contact form 7. We’re used to contact form 7 from years ago, and it was. It’s totally free. It always has been free and it will continue to be free. It’s got millions of downloads. You wouldn’t have thought that there was room for another form plug in and how many I can think of 10 form plugins out there. And there’s probably 5020, you know, including the Divvy form, the element of form. You know, all these kind.

The cadence form built in their cadence and so on and so on, yeah.

Of. Form solutions now. It now the form guys are now building out SMTP solutions as well you know so. So the.

Yes.

Forms actually get sent because you know because of spammers and abusers. The WordPress hosting companies are saying, well, we’re not gonna, we’re not gonna deal with mail. We’re not, you know, we don’t. We’re not interested in that because it’s just takes so much of our resources, you know, sending out 30,000 emails a month or whatever it is.

Yeah.

But yeah, I mean, he’s got, but he’s got a great. Kind of. Let’s not just talk to him. Talk about him too much, because he just gets too much publicity. This guy. Yeah, I know. He’s got a great philosophy around pricing, he.

He does he.

Doesn’t really like being in. But he knows that it, you know, cause he’s a businessman first and foremost. He knows that if he can get people in for the first year on the third year or 40% discount.

Yep.

It’s going to and that’s the way to do it. If you’re going to do a Black Friday deal. Just do it for the for that one year, you know. But then you’ve got next Black Friday to think about. Are people gonna cancel and renew or you know it it’s just. It’s one of the hardest things not to do. Is a Black Friday deal because everybody else is doing it. And do you really want to miss out on that extra 50 grand that you’re?

Yes.

Gonna. Make in that month. It’s a tough call, isn’t it?

It sure is just to kind of wrap up a bit. If we were talking pricing and you were speaking to a a WordPress company, what would you say would be your three quick takeaways when you’re planning in person?

Only do 2 pricing plans. OK, Max, if it’s a product. Because. Yes. You know a middle tier pricing is? It’s neither here nor there. You know, I was talking to a. I was coaching a person the other there and they had three pricing options and I said, well, what’s the difference? It’s just not a why are you giving people three choices not to choose, you know? 2 pricing models you know, like like I’ve got 10 bucks a month or $96 a year. When I had my plugins, you had one choice. It was monthly or annual. You know, you got a slight discount for being annual, which was great. I tried to get away from the five sites, 10 sites, 20 sites, WordPress. Really I don’t understand WordPress plugin developers doing 2 sites, 5 sites or whatever. It’s like it should. They should all be unlimited. You know, if you’re gonna have a plug in, it should work on every single website, and especially if you’re selling it to developers, so you price orderly, you say OK. This is what the it’s unlimited, but you you it’s limited features Mark does it perfectly. You know with all his extensions. Yeah, agency. You get all of the extensions if you want pro you don’t get all of them. Simple as that. You know and if you want basic you don’t and there’s a free version. So there’s four four options for for.

Yes he does.

US form which is I think is you know two too many, but it’s it. You just have two pricing things. So this is your basic. And this is what you get and actually that will cover you mostly and that’s that price. And here’s your super duper thing and that’s that price and.

OK.

And it’s unlimited.

I agree with you. What are you working on these days? Besides all this good pricing and stuff and spending time with me on acts and Twitter and.

Well, I’m working on my fitness because I haven’t been able to. You know, I had a couple of operations on my back over the last 8.

Yes.

So I’m. I’m actually physically now working on my fitness going, making sure to go to 15 minute walks and I’m trying to get down the gym and. All that kind. Of stuff, but I’m working on somebody’s hero.co.uk, which is my. Me. Kind of agency, kind of it it, you know, I’ve got to refine the offering on there, but I’ve becoming more and more white label and doing more and more white label work for people that have got difficulty in servers or difficulty with particular web systems that they’re using for, you know, literally across all of the web. There’s not just WordPress and stuff like that.

Yes.

Server issues eating issues.

Mm-hmm.

Bit of SEO, doing coaching as well. So I’ve got four coaching clients that I meet with every week as well, so that’s a nice little income stream and I do at least 4 hours of pro bono coaching as. Which is more listening rather than coaching. I tend not to tell them my coaching clients what to do, kind of try and guide them into the way that if you’re happy in doing what you do, you find what you’re happy has that happy is.

Yes.

That. And do and if that can make money, then do that, you know, and that’s what I’m trying to do with my.

Yeah.

Own life as well, I’m happy. I’m actually happier doing coach. Than anything else at all, because I can see people progressing and making things work. You know, I’ve got one coaching client who hasn’t been able to attend the coaching sessions because she’s too busy. That’s pretty good.

And and being happy is a journey not in immediate things, right it takes.

Yeah, being happy is well, you know, I can’t like if you’re in a marriage or a relationship with anyone in intimate relationship with anyone, it’s not your job to make them happy, right? It’s not for your purpose in life is not to make your partner. You can contribute towards their happiness, but they’re the only person that can make themselves happy, and that’s the kind of attitude I use towards coaching. Is making sure that the people have the tools and the thoughts within themselves to make themselves happy rather than to try to rely on somebody else to make them happy, because that will never work.

Yes. Yeah, Andrew, somebody wants to get a hold of you to talk coaching or anything else. What’s the best?

Somebody’s hero.co.uk you can go, which is SOMEBODYS hero.co.uk and at Arnie Palmer on Twitter. My DM’s are open always, and that’s it, really. You can find me on the interwebs and if you want to meet me, I don’t know when this is going out. Is this going out before work camp Europe.

Yes.

It sure is.

But before the 14th of June, I’ll be in Italy, you can. Just come up and say hi. I won’t bite, you know, not unless you’re edible, you know?

No. Thanks, Andrew. Good luck on your golf game and have an amazing day, my friend.

Cheers Matt. Thanks a lot. See you soon.