You may have heard that it's possible, depending on your current price, to increase sales by increasing your price for a product. This is because a higher price suggests that your product is more valuable. "People will sell any old junk for a buck, but who'd charge $50 unless it was really worth something?" If you think your prices are too low and you're planning on increasing them, be sure not to waste the opportunity to maximize your benefit not only from the higher price (if you've assessed your current price correctly!), but also from the fact that you're changing it.

Don't just change your price without telling anyone. Pick a date not too far in the future to make the change and post a message on your sales page telling everyone that the price is going up on that day. Tell them what the new price will be (especially if it's a significant increase). Being specific on the date and the new price will help convince the skeptics who thinking you're just claiming that your price is going up to try to get them to buy now. If they're still skeptical, they may come back the next day to see if the date you're claiming you'll increase the price has changed (some unscrupulous people use scripts to automatically update the date that they're supposedly planning on changing their price so that it's always just a day or two away). Telling the customer will get some to buy before the price increase who would have forgotten completely about you without buying.

If you have affiliates, tell them about your plans. Tell them that they'll benefit from larger commissions after the increase, and from the ability to motivate potential buyers before the increase. You may be able to motivate your affiliates to promote your products more aggressively both before and after the price change.

By the way, I'm increasing the prices of CaRP, Grouper and Tetra on January 14th. If you check those webpages before then, you'll see a prominent note about the impending changes. And I've told my affiliates.

A few more notes on pricing. I'm no expert on the subject, but I've read some of what a few of the experts have to say, and here are a few tips I've picked up here and there (BTW, I haven't read the book I link to there--just the information on the website...but I'm considering it).

Prices with 7s and 9s in them sell the best. I have no idea why, but the research shows that they do.

You can sometimes get away with raising your price a lot by adding a little value to your product. Or by adding a lot of value which costs you only a little to add.

I've read in a variety of places that offering a money back guarantee increases sales. That makes sense, of course, because it helps overcome the potential buyer's aversion to risk. That being the case, you should be able to increase your price without hurting sales by offering a money back guarantee. (I added a money back guarantee for the products listed above--I sure hope I'm right on this!) You might consider requiring the buyer to wait a week after their purchase before getting their money back. That could benefit you in a few ways:

1) It would increase the probability of the customer experiencing the value of the product before asking for a refund. For example, if they have a hard time using it when they first buy, they'd be more likely to ask for tech support vs. asking for a refund immediately.

2) Perhaps not the most ethically pure benefit, but true nevertheless: it would increase the probability of them forgetting to ask for the refund.

3) Especially with downloadable products, which can't exactly be "returned", it would discourage people from buying with the intention of asking for their money back by increasing their perceived risk (eg. they might forget to ask for the refund).

Lastly, how do you know if your price is too low? One good guideline is customer feedback. Which do you hear more often, that your prices are too high, or that they're too low? In my case, I often hear that my prices are too low, but never that they're too high. Even if people who don't buy are less likely to give feedback on the subject, it's a good bet that they're too low!