What are You Worth?

“You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake in your bed and believe in whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”
– The Matrix (1999)

It would be so funny if Morpheus presented Neo with a whole jar of colored jelly bean options. Neo would sit there and pondering the slew of options while Agent Smith narrows in on their location.

“You must choose, Neo. Quickly!” Morpheus would command with indignation.

If it was up to me, I think I would gobble up a handful of beans to see what magical flavor I would have mischievously concocted.

“Mmm…popcorn!” By that time, I might be dead.

Okay, we don’t live in The Matrix or at least I don’t think so. As of right now, my gut feeling says that we live in the real world; a world where business and options loom over our heads.

This is, of course, redundant if you consider business to be war-like.

As both a bargain hunter and a luxury consumer, I have had the opportunity to gain a lot of insight on the consumer buying process.

To justify my market research, a.k.a. shopping, I force myself to reflect on the compelling forces that encourage acquisition of products and services. Therefore, my job as a marketing strategist is to buy, reflect, apply, test, buy, eat, buy, and reflect…and not necessarily in that order.

I like my job.

I was inspired to write this e-book (releasing on December 1st) because of the confusion with pricing and packaging strategies in the creative industry. There is an ongoing belief that the formula for determining your value is to multiply the number of hours you work with your worthy rate. So, what is your worthy rate?

Although the concept is sound, it isn’t completely applicable. For starters, the wedding or photography business is not a conventional 40-hour per week job. There is no stability. You may not have work year round.

So, the next step to throw out a number like $40,000 a year and divide that by the number of jobs and again by the number of hours needed to complete the work. That seems foolish to me.

Through this book, I hope to guide you into achieving something greater – understanding the psychology behind how consumers choose. Not only will they, hopefully, choose you, but they will choose you repeatedly (or at least refer you their friends).

I will be offering various real world scenarios for reference because it is easier to make sense of the business concepts during application – almost like the associative property in algebra.

To be frank, there is no right or wrong answer for pricing and packages. There are, however, certain techniques that are more effective than others.

Understanding the psychology of pricing starts with consuming. That is why my heroine is a fictitious character called, “Rebecca Bloomwood,” who is the protagonist for Sophie Kinsella’s Shopaholic book series. Even though these books have the intent of being entertainment, there is a lot of valuable knowledge to be learned from Rebecca’s experiences. All we have to do is change our perspective and question – why?

Without further adieu, my name is Lawrence Chan. I am a wedding photographer and a blogger on “Tofurious,” where I share technological developments and marketing strategies for creative professionals.

On a side note, everything in this book is applicable to all types of businesses. Since I am a wedding photographer, I will be writing in that perspective. Rest assured, it will make sense for everyone.

The million dollar question – what are you worth?

So…

1. I’d love to hear your thoughts on answering this predicament by commenting below.
2. I want to hear what your friends have to say, so share with Retweet or Facebook buttons below. Thanks!

Other Chapters

• Preface: What are You Worth?
• Chapter 1: Psychology of Choosing
• Chapter 2: Choosing is Painful
• Chapter 4: Secrets on How to Handle Discounters
• Chapter 5: How to be Fearless in Pricing
• Chapter 14: 2 Steps for Naming Your Packages

Curiously yours,

Lawrence Chan

P.S. Book on the psychology of pricing and packaging is available next week on December 1st! I’m still adding chapters to it despite the looming deadline. There are just so many ideas!

P.P.S. What are you guys up to for the holidays? Are you going to bring your camera equipment with you?

P.P.P.S. I have an awesome holiday card idea, but I need a cat. If it works out, I’ll post it online and run it as an ad somewhere. To be continued…

P.P.P.P.S. Cheri De Haro attended my pricing seminar a few weeks ago and sent me a lovely note.

Lawrence – Thank you. Been routinely using the [pricing and packaging strategies] this last week with 100% success thus far ; )

Read more about this e-book HERE.

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