Most founders set their price in ten minutes. Then they pay for it for years.
The Price Code shows you how to find the right price for any product, service or offer. Real stories, simple arithmetic, and a calculator that does the sums.
26 chapters, a 16-tool calculator, and two editions: print size and phone size.
Move the price. Watch the profit.
Meet Dara. She sells handmade leather bags in Austin. Each bag costs her $54 to make and ship. She sells 1,000 a month at $120, and her other costs are $41,000. Change her price and see what it does.
- Price per bag
- $120
- Cost per bag
- $54
- Orders a month
- 1,000
- Profit today
- $25,000
Her new monthly profit
$27,400
Up $2,400 a month
Dara can lose up to 8.3% of her orders before this rise stops paying.
Chapter 1 shows why a small price change moves profit so much. Chapter 3 gives you the two-line formula. Read Chapter 1 free.
Six checks, in this order.
Each one depends on the one before it. Skip one and your price is a guess.
The floor
What does it really cost you? Below this number you are paying customers to take your product.
The ceiling
What is it really worth to the buyer? Above this number they walk, and no clever marketing will stop them.
The method
How do you choose a price between the two? There are five ways, and real companies have used every one.
The shape
Where does the price sit? In which channel, pack size, plan, free tier or country.
The move
When and how do you change it? Segments, tests, rises and discounts: the ones that earn and the ones that burn.
The guard
What can go wrong? Price wars, the law, and your own nerves.
The book, in two editions
A print-size edition (203 pages) and a phone edition (342 pages), as PDF and Word. Twenty-six chapters in five parts, and every chapter opens with a true story from a real company.
The Pricing Calculator
Sixteen tools in one file that opens in any browser: cost sheet and break-even, markup against margin, an hourly rate that pays, rise or cut, discount check, channel waterfall, platform commission, test sizer and more. It keeps your numbers on your own device.
A one-page price sheet
Chapter 26 walks you through filling one in for your own product, so you finish the book with a real price, not just ideas.
You will meet a phone that lost $200 in ten weeks, a hot dog that has cost $1.50 since 1985, a drug that costs $84,000 a course, and a cigarette company that lost a quarter of its value in a day.
Inside the book
Five parts, from the numbers to the price sheet you take away.
- Chapters 1 to 4
The Numbers
What a price really does, what you really pay to make the thing, and the floor and ceiling between which every price must live.
- Chapters 5 to 9
The Five Ways to Set a Price
Cost-plus, competitor-based, value-based, penetration and skimming, and share-first. How real companies chose, and how you choose.
- Chapters 10 to 17
The Shape of the Offer
A price sits inside a channel, a pack size, a plan, a free tier, a brand and a place. Eight chapters on shaping the offer around the price.
- Chapters 18 to 23
Moving the Price
Segments, surges, anchors, tests, rises and discounts. The tactics that move money, and the ones that burn it.
- Chapters 24 to 26
The Dangers, and Your Price Sheet
Price wars, the law, and the one-page price sheet you take away.
About the author
Questions
Who is this book for?
Anyone who sets a price: first-time founders, shop owners, freelancers and product teams. You do not need to be good at maths. The hardest sum in the book is a school multiplication.
Are the examples only from the United States?
No. The stories come from many countries and decades. Money is shown in dollars so every reader can compare like with like, and the method works in any currency.
What do I receive after buying?
A download with the print-size and phone editions of the book, in PDF and Word, and the Pricing Calculator.
Is this legal or financial advice?
No. The book is for education and is not legal, tax or financial advice. Laws differ by country and change over time.
I have a question or some feedback.
Write to vardhmansingh22@gmail.com.
Set your next price with numbers, not nerves.
Read the first chapter free. If it changes how you look at one number in your business, the rest of the book is waiting.