How mispricing an eBook got me the wrong readers. What I learned.

What I didn’t tell you in the title is that I had to completely remove it from sales too, to fix my mistake.

In 2016 I wrote an eBook about HTML and CSS, teaching everything a completely beginner should know to create his own website and start looking for a job in the area. That was my plan. The book contained around 90 chapters, 135 pages and 800 exercises. Everything was taught in a way that in every chapter you should be able to create a new thing to put on the page. People loved it. It was practical, they could see results as they progressed and could sharpen what they had just read with about 20 exercises/chapter.

I had this idea: if I’m writing, editing, publishing and delivering it, why should I charge the same as “the big guys”? (prepare to sit back and shake your head) So I decided to price it $9.35, of which, I’d receive $8.48 after the payment gateway taxes. Haha, look at me giant authors, I’m making more money per copy than you.

About 740 people bought it (I had a small YouTube community and most of the marketing was made in Facebok groups), making $6.275 in the first months. The revenue is not the point here.

The point is that the book was targeted to beginner web developers, starting a career, people commited with the long term learning, people who wouldn’t stop just knowing HTML & CSS. And I’ve got these guys.

The problem is that I’ve priced my eBook lower than a template people could buy for $29-49, change some text and put online without layout changes. So instead of buying those templates, people started reading my eBook to learn how to create a website for their own business. People that would never read again about any other web technology, started to create sites for their barber shop, restaurants, favorite bands, how to be good in Minecraft…

Suddenly I was receiving questions like: “how do I add one more photo?”, “how can people outside my computer see my website?”, “how do I make my site accessible with a dot com in the end?” (aka buying a domain).

I had other projects going on so I couldn’t answer more of this, as it was not my focus and most of these readers would never buy another related product again (well, they could buy some VERY basic stuff, which I was not willing to create). By the time it was consistently selling organically 10-15 copies/month (it was the second result in Google search for the portuguese term for “learn html css”), I decided to take the book off.

What I learned from this, so you don’t have to repeat my mistakes:

#1 - It’s not because it is an ebook that you have to charge like it is a piece of air.

#2 - Charge for the change you are making in your readers life. In my case, they could start/ change a career and make some good money in the future. By not charging the price my desired audience would pay, I attracted and audience I never wanted.

#2.1 - Make it clear in your sales page, the outcomes in their lives. In my page I didn’t even write “front end”, I solely focused on HTML and CSS, and learned the hard way that you don’t need to be a front end to be interested in these languages.

#3 - Charge for the change your product is making in YOUR life. If you are going to give people support, think about what kind of people you want asking you questions and the time you will invest into it.

#4 - Whatever the price you pick, there will always be someone that has nothing to do with your audience, there’s no way of getting only what you initially wanted, but you can filter them.

What would you make different?