I made my first sale today...so why do I feel like the biggest idiot?

Not a lady ...
You've earned. You've learned. It's all good. Next time better. Be sure to capture a glowing report from your satisfied customer.

It's super important to focus on the positive. Congrat yourself for that sale, it hopefully means you are on the right track.

I know lots of indie hackers say 'charge more', but on the flip side I built my business up by under charging, but increasing the prices gradually and consistently as I knew I was offering value.

First sales, just like first jobs are usually under paid. Use it as a learning opportunity and hopeful a model, or case study for future sales, business processes, etc.

I'm sure you will learn something along the way and want to tweak things you are offering.

I know I always look back at all my 'great poorly executed' ideas and laugh.

🎉 Congrats on your first sale!

A day late to the party here :-) Everyone else has given great advice. I just wanted to throw in my energy of moral support. Also, everyone does this kind of thing, especially in the early days. It's all part of the journey.

Some day, when the bumps are smoothed out and things are going great, you'll tell the story about how you wildly undercharged your first customer, but it was ok because you learned something right away.

Looking at the deliverables I promised and what I'm getting paid, I undercharged. By a lot.

Obligatory "not a lady"

But it's common. When you're trying to get that goose egg off your scorecard, price is the easiest thing to sacrifice to earn your first customer.

Money at this stage isn't as important as thoroughly validating your offer, I'll say.

If you're offering something people want, you can progressively bump up your pricing.

You learned that you are undercharging - that a valuable lesson. No one is 100% right when starting something new, so learn, complete the order the best you can, do everything you can to get constructive feedback. The value of the experience you will get outweighs the monetary value you would get (usually in cases like this).

Congratulations on getting your first customer. And, for realizing that you undercharged by a lot.

See your getting your first sale as a learning experience, with the amount you undercharged being part of the fee. Nothing to be ashamed of. Then, update your pricing and go after sale number 2.

Hey Zviko! First, congratulations on your first sale, that is a HUGE milestone!!!

I think it's totally common to underprice your offering early on in your journey, I know we did the same (and perhaps are still doing it!).

Maybe your new client can refer other people to you? Then you can also think of it being a small price to pay for the beginning of a network effect :)

Yo yo yo! Don't be so hard on yourself.

You sold something. Do you have an idea how many try and money ain't hitting no bank?

Give a clap on your back, look up and be fierce because this is just the beginning.

Take @rab s idea that's smart.

Have a great day @Zviko !

Hi Zviko, how did the webinar go?
Did you reach your target?

Hi there! I coach my career and public speaking clients on this type of stuff all the time. This might work for you:

1. When you give your customer results, that will increase the value and reputation of your company. You should separate your personal value (which you could charge $1 million for if you wanted) for your business value, which comes from giving customers value. This will allow you to charge others more in the future.

2. Try something called the MODEL - another thing I love to use on myself and with others who are in a funk. Write down the following.

CIRCUMSTANCE: This is a neutral fact. Circumstances are not negative or positive. The thoughts we attach to them make it negative or positive. In this case, the circumstance could be the amount in your bank account that you charged the client.

THOUGHT: What is the thought you have about this circumstance? In this case, it could be that you think you undercharged.

FEELING: What feeling does this give you?

ACTION: What action do you take as a result?

RESULT: What is the result?

Your thoughts always create your results. What's likely to happen when you fill out this Model is that you will find that you do not like your results, which you can trace back to your thoughts. The next step is to work backwards and work on changing your thoughts to get the result you want.

CIRCUMSTANCE stays the same: Amount in your bank account that you charged the client.

RESULT: What do you want the result to me? Based on your post, it could be to deliver an exceptional experience to my new client.

Now what are your THOUGHTS about the circumstance?

Now what are you feeling?

What action will you take to align with these new thoughts and feelings to get your result?

Hope this helps!

Congratulations. One small step!

We have curated a list of podcasts on Sales, guess it will be helpful https://blog.mails.wtf/top-sales-podcasts/

Congrats on validating that your product is worth paying for! Most of us never make it to here.

Next step: experiment with pricing.

Congratulations!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You got someone to PAY. That's the goal. You will have plenty of other opportunities to charge what's right, and this will be only an anectode in the long run. Sometimes is really difficult to charge what the real value of your job is, it happen to me a lot of times.

Keep up the good work!

Congrats and increase price of it.

It's about expectations and value-delivered.

1. For example, when I buy a book for $25, I expect it will be a good book. It may have taken the author 30 years of experience and 3 years distilling them into a book. So I am clearly getting a bargain because $25 is nothing compared to the hard work of the author.

2. But the author is selling 1 million copies so he/she is getting the return they deserve. Just because it took the author 3 years of hard work doesn't mean each reader need to pay them for 3 years of hard work.

3. The price is determined by how much value the product brings to the customer, not by how much work it took to create the product. The value must be greater than the price for a purchase to make sense, otherwise we would all just do things by ourselves.

Last point, it's amazing how fast our expectation changes: when we don't make a sale for weeks, we feel "Oh the price must be too high, nobody wants it", and when it's selling well we feel "Oh I must have set the price too low let me raise it".

Focus on the value delivered is the best way to deal with this expectation issue.

Ultimately, it's soothing to know that we're helping people when they pay us, whatever the amount.

Congrats!
Maybe one way of thinking could be like - you're my first customer and I'm giving you this one at a special offer, you deserve it. Next ones will pay full price. And then you raise price.

I tend to look at pricing as a big experiment. So no matter the outcome, you're always learning something to build upon next time. You've validated people will pay money for your service. That's a big milestone! One that not everyone gets to celebrate. Now you can experiment with the perceived value of your service by increasing the price.

I don't remember where I heard/read this, but @patio11 experimented with the price of his services by increasing the price every time he got a sale. If a customer paid $3k, he'd ask the next customer to pay $4k. And he kept upping the price until he started loosing business because customers said it was too expensive. It resulted in him charging way more than he ever expected was possible, because he learned how valuable his services were to customers.