At some point in your membership, you may decide that you want to increase your price.

You'll often find that something so simple can actually end up being big ol' can of worms.

So how do you approach it?

We have tips for increasing your prices and the strategy to use that will make doing so far easier:

1. Keep Existing Members at the Same Price

If someone joined your membership at $29/month and you’ve raised your price to $59/month, it’s not fair to bump them up.

The price that someone joins at is the price that they should stay at.

It’s very, very rare that you’ll have the right to increase the price you’re already charging your members.

And you'll actually find that most payment providers like PayPal and Stripe won't actually allow you to change the amount someone is paying as part of their subscription.

It may be tempting try to find ways of watering down what you’re offering to your lower paying customers – but it's hard to justify doing this simply because you decided you want to make more money with your membership.

The price someone gets for coming on early and supporting you from the beginning is a reward for their loyalty as an early adopter.

Plus, it’s actually a good thing for you from a retention point of view.

Make sure you inform your existing members of the price increase to avoid confusion and remind them of the great value they’re getting. They’ll be excited to know that their lower rate is a reward for their loyalty.

2. Use Your Raise as an Anti-Discount

Instead of offering a discount promotion offering $10 off each month, you can use the fact that in 4 week’s time your price will be going up to promote your membership.

You’re not giving anyone any money off, you’re running a scarcity promotion based on the fact that the price is going up in the future.

Give your followers a deadline to create this urgency.

Don’t rush into raising your prices, use the opportunity this price increase affords to run a promotion.

3. Stagger Price Increases

If your price increase is substantial, consider staggering the increase.

Say you know that in 2 months time your price will double, tell your audience that your price will be going up a little bit at a time until your deadline.

This strategy ensures that the sooner your audience acts, the better price they’ll get.

If your price is going up by $20, you can increase it by $1/ day, so every day they wait, they miss out on a dollar off.

The monthly price gets higher and higher as the promotion continues.

This is a highly effective strategy that shopping channels use a lot. You’re rewarded for fast action.

4. Create Tiered Price Options

Are you worried about your price increase affecting your sales? Think about why you’re increasing your price. Are you adding any additional value?

Rather than just increasing your single price option, you could consider having tiered pricing options.

Tier 1 could be your existing program, tier 2 could add an additional call or course, and tier 3 might have a 1-1 session or additional bonus.

You can still have your original option and continue sales with that, but also add extra value to other options and bring people in on tiers.

This triggers all sorts of psychological effects that can improve your sales and sway people towards joining on a higher priced plan.

5. Increase 1 Option at a Time

If you already have tiered pricing or monthly and yearly options, simply increase one of the options at a time.

This enables you to use the scarcity element.

You can increase the monthly price and leave your annual price at the old price before you increase it a month later.

Instead of increasing your prices all at the same time, you could turn this into a multi-level promotional opportunity that will give you more opportunities to bring in members.

6. Communicate Price Increases Clearly

You must be clear in your communication.

Don’t try to dress up the price increase as something it isn’t and just be straight with your audience.

Give them a warning and ask them to join before the prices go up.

You don’t want to trick people into your membership site, so you need to communicate clearly and be transparent.

You shouldn’t tell people the price is going up and then change your mind.

Transparency is key when it comes to membership sites because the goal is to get your customers to stick around.