Let's address your biggest question. "How much should my course cost?" I'm willing to guess that most of you probably aren't charging enough for your courses. Probably not even close. What if I told you that $100 is the minimum you should be charging for your course? Your first thought may be, "there's no way I could price my course above $100," and you aren't alone. A lot of newer online course instructors worry that charging premium pricing will scare off buyers, and they believe that offering cheaper courses is a safer way to grow your business. If this sounds familiar, let me share three big reasons why premium pricing will actually help you grow a sustainable online business.

First, premium pricing will make your revenue goals easier to meet. If you sell a cheaper course, you'll need way more students to enroll in order for you to hit your revenue target. Think about it this way: for every $100 course you sell, you'd need to sell five $20 courses. Finding five times as many students is no easy feat, so charging premium pricing can help you focus your time and energy into your existing students instead of constantly finding new ones.

The second reason why you should charge premium pricing is because of a psychological effect called perceived value, which means that customers tend to believe that high-priced courses provide more value. Think about how real estate prices change over time, or how different jewelry prices vary based on the perceived value of their brands. Or imagine if I offered you the choice between two plates of dinner at two different restaurants. One plate is $20, and the other plate is $200. If someone else is paying, and the food is largely the same, which one would you choose? People will believe that a $200 course will bring them greater value than a $20 course ever could, and in fact, many people are more skeptical of cheaper courses because they doubt that such a low price point could offer them a truly meaningful transformation. Not only that, but when people spend more money on a course, they are actually more likely to engage with the content because they've got skin in the game. They've not only made a choice to invest in you as their guide, but they've also made a conscious choice to invest in themselves.

The third reason why you should charge premium pricing is because it weeds out bad students and saves you time and agony in the long run. Again, it might sound counterintuitive that I'm telling you that you want fewer students, but the fact is that cheaper courses will only attract budget hunters looking for a quick and easy fix, and there's a good chance that they won't put in the work needed to achieve your intended outcome. A big part of your success lies in your students' success, so you need to attract students who will take your course, not request a refund. Premium pricing will filter out anyone who isn't serious about your course.

For these three reasons, we strongly recommend that you charge at least $100 for your online course. We have a course price calculator you can use, but here are some very loose pricing guidelines:

• If you're offering a minicourse, as we teach in Build Your Audience, we almost always recommend that you offer this bite-sized content for free. However, there are times where you may be validating an idea with a paid minicourse, and in those cases, you might consider charging between $25-$50. These courses only have one milestone, and should be consumed fully in under an hour.
• Since most of you are working with a full online course, I'm going to move right ahead into pricing for a standard, full-length course, which we recommend pricing between $100 and $500 dollars. The difference between the lower and higher end of that spectrum will depend on the enormity of transformation you're offering. It makes sense to charge more for a course that allows you to seriously change your potential, your life, or your income. A course that is smaller in scope might fall on the lower end of the spectrum. The quality of the content counts too. For example, a course like this one with a workbook, studio-quality video, and additional resources should be priced higher than a comparable course with only screencast videos and no downloadable material.
• Lastly, if you're offering a flagship course, it should likely cost far above $500, possibly into the thousands of dollars. This would only happen if you're providing a truly life-changing transformation, like finding a new job. As a reminder, we only recommend flagship courses for experienced course creators, since they often combine experience and curriculum from working with students and clients.
• The most straightforward way to think about course pricing is this: the larger the transformation you provide, the more your course should cost. Teaching someone how to decorate cookies, like Karla does in Karla's Cookies, is a fun skill, and it's something you could learn in a day. Karla's course is priced at $99 because it's a low stakes skill, or hobby. On the other hand, a career mastermind where students get a promotion or change industries is a massive transformation, and that course should be in the hundreds if not thousands in exchange for that massive outcome.

We hope you take this guidance to heart and commit to charging more for your online course. The course you created is so valuable, and it's probably exactly what someone is looking for. You owe it to everyone to charge a price that attracts the right students and reflects your incredible experience.