If you are figuring out how to price something, there are hundreds of ways you could do that.
Among those, dozens could be a good idea.
Among those, a few could give you an edge.
But what none of those answers are—or ever could be—is the only correct answer.
When society prepares us for life, it teaches us to find the only correct answer.
However, in most real-life decision-making, that approach is almost useless—not because the right answer is hard to find, but because it simply doesn’t exist.
A price point that will attract one audience will chase away others.
What’s too high for me is too low for someone else.
What’s right here is expensive there.
Value is subjective, and so is the price.
So, when is a price right?
Firstly, one can never find the correct price, only a correct price—one of several.
That has to be good enough, since nothing beyond that is possible.
Secondly, even though no decision can ever be perfect, if its consequences are at least as good or better than the likely alternatives, then it’s correct to use it.
Therefore, when people ask me “why should I change what I’ve been charging for years,” my answer is not “inflation,” “fairness,” or “peace.”
It’s usually a variation of: “because the world changed around you, so you need to find a way to keep up—and the alternatives are worse.”