Pricing Strategy Templates: What to Include and How to Use Them

A good pricing strategy template does one job: it forces you to write down your costs, your customer’s alternatives and your profit target before you pick a number. This guide shows the sections every template needs, the formula behind the math, a worked example for a digital product, and how to test the price once it is live.

TL;DR

• A useful template covers costs, customer value, competitors, margin targets, a pricing model, and a review schedule. Anything less is a calculator, not a strategy.
• Set your floor first (costs and break-even), then look at competitors. Doing it the other way round is the most common small business mistake.
• Target price = cost per unit / (1 − target margin). For digital products, your cost per unit is mostly time, tools and support, so you must allocate them on purpose.
• Test a small increase on selected products and review prices every quarter instead of setting a number once.
• Pick the model (cost-plus, value-based, penetration, tiers, subscription) after you know your floor and your buyer’s alternatives.

Table of Contents

• What a pricing strategy template should contain
• Start with your floor, not your competitors
• The margin formula and a worked example
• Choosing a pricing model for a digital product
• The five C’s of pricing
• Pricing an ebook or guide
• Perspective: why we treat pricing as a process, not a number
• How to test and adjust your price
• Get your team on the same pricing method
• Ready-made pricing resources
• A simple template you can copy today
• FAQ
• Sources

What a pricing strategy template should contain

Templates ranking for this topic vary a lot: some are one-page Word documents, some are spreadsheets with linked tabs, some are mind maps. The format matters less than the fields. Pulling together the lists published by Value Culture and Capidel, a complete template has these parts:

1. Pricing objectives. Are you after profit, market share, cash flow now, or a premium brand? The objective decides which model fits.
2. Fixed and variable costs. Rent, software, salaries and subscriptions on one side; per-sale costs such as payment fees, materials or fulfillment on the other.
3. Customer value. What does the buyer gain, and what would it cost them to get the same result another way?
4. Competitive landscape. Who else solves this problem, at what price, in what packaging?
5. Margin and profit targets. A number, not a feeling.
6. Pricing model and price table. Cost-plus, value-based, tiers, subscription, bundles.
7. Financial forecast. What happens to revenue at three or four price and volume combinations.
8. Test and review plan. Who checks the price, how often, and what triggers a change.

If a template you download lacks the last two, add them. Most templates stop at “the price,” which is exactly where pricing mistakes start.

Start with your floor, not your competitors

StartBuddi’s guide argues that many owners jump straight to competitor pricing before they know their own floor: real costs, break-even point and margins. That advice holds up. A competitor’s price tells you what the market tolerates; it says nothing about whether you can survive at that price.

So the first tab of your template should be a cost sheet:

The physical-product column follows the structure Everhour’s template uses, which separates direct product costs from operating expenses. For digital products, the per-unit cost is close to zero, which tempts people to price near zero too. Don’t. Your real cost is the production time you already spent plus everything it takes to keep selling it.

The margin formula and a worked example

The core math in most product pricing templates is the target-price formula: target price = cost per unit / (1 − desired profit margin as a decimal).

Note that this is margin, not markup. A 60% margin means cost is 40% of the price. Multiplying cost by 1.6 gives a different, lower price.

Worked example (illustrative numbers, not client data). You create a 60-page ebook. You spend 50 hours building it and value your time at $30 an hour, so $1,500. Tools and design add $300. You expect to sell 150 copies in the first year, with payment fees and delivery costing about $1.20 per sale.

• Fixed cost: $1,500 + $300 = $1,800. Spread over 150 copies, that is $12.00 per copy.
• Variable cost: $1.20 per copy.
• Full cost per unit: $13.20.
• Target margin 60%: $13.20 / 0.40 = $33.00.

Now stress it. If you only sell 75 copies, the fixed cost per copy doubles to $24.00 and the full cost becomes $25.20. At the same price of $33.00, your margin falls to about 24%. That single scenario is why a template needs a volume forecast, not just a cost column.

For context on margins, the NYU data cited by Shopify lists average gross margins of 33.18% for general retail, 38.77% for electronics and 56.88% for apparel. Digital goods usually sit well above those, because there is no inventory, but your time still counts.

Choosing a pricing model for a digital product

Once you know your floor, pick how you will price. Capidel’s template lists the common options, and each fits a different situation:

Salesforce’s guide on choosing a pricing model suggests a sequence worth copying into your template: analyze costs and competitor pricing, check what you can actually implement, run customer research, compare options against business goals, then select a model and keep monitoring it.

For most solo creators and small teams, value-based pricing with two or three tiers is the strongest starting point. Cost-plus gives you the floor. Value gives you the ceiling. You price between them.

If you want to see tiers laid out well, look at how a software company presents a tiered software pricing page: plans side by side, with each step up clearly adding something. You can borrow that layout for a basic, standard and premium version of your own digital product.

The five C’s of pricing

The five C’s give your template a quick sanity check. The OpenStax marketing textbook names them as cost, customers, channels of distribution, competition and compatibility. In practice:

• Cost: your floor from the cost sheet above.
• Customers: what they can spend and what they gain.
• Channels: anyone who sits between you and the buyer, such as a marketplace or affiliate, also needs margin, so your price must leave room for them.
• Competition: what else the buyer could do with the same money, including doing nothing.
• Compatibility: whether the price fits the rest of your brand and product line. A $9 template inside a premium consulting brand sends a mixed message.

Add these five as a checklist at the bottom of your price table and tick them off before you publish.

Pricing an ebook or guide

The factors for an ebook are the same four that any product has: total business costs, competitors’ prices, your target customers’ spending power and the product’s value. What changes is how you read them.

• Value beats length. A 30-page checklist that saves a buyer an afternoon can outprice a 200-page book they never finish.
• Bundle to raise the ceiling. A guide plus a workbook plus a template pack has a different price anchor than the guide alone.
• Check price points against your buyer’s alternatives, not against other ebooks only. A founder deciding on a pricing guide is also comparing it with a consultant call or a free blog post.

Write those three observations in the template’s “customer value” tab, with one line each. If you cannot fill them, you are not ready to set the price.

Perspective: why we treat pricing as a process, not a number

We run a catalog of more than 1,100 digital products across AI, branding, e-commerce and productivity, in formats from ebooks and courses to templates and prompt packs. Looking at that range, our view is simple: the price a product ends up with is rarely the one it started with, and that is healthy.

Two habits separate people who price well from those who don’t. First, they keep their cost sheet honest, including their own time. Second, they treat the first price as a hypothesis. A template is useful because it makes that hypothesis visible: you can see what you assumed about volume, margin and buyer value, and you can change one assumption at a time.

We also think format matters to price. A buyer who wants a quick answer will pay for a checklist or a prompt pack; a buyer who wants to change how they run their business will pay more for a guide with a workbook and a video walkthrough. Pricing each format for the job it does is better than pricing everything by page count. That is why we offer the same subject in several formats, and why the Designing a Profitable Business Model guide has companion prompts, a workbook and a checklist.

— Joshua

How to test and adjust your price

A template that ends at “set price” is half finished. Build a testing section with three parts.

1. A small increase test. Shopify suggests testing a 5% to 10% price increase on selected products, watching the effect on sales volume, and building quarterly price reviews into operations. Pick one product, not the whole catalog, so you can read the result.

2. A price and volume matrix. A pricing simulator such as Simúlalo’s uses a 25-combination grid of price and volume to separate profitable zones from loss zones. You can build the same grid in a spreadsheet: five prices across, five volumes down, margin in each cell. The same source notes that a 5% price change can move volume anywhere between 8% and 25% depending on elasticity, which is why one number set once is a weak plan.

3. A customer research step. Ask ten recent buyers what they expected to pay and what they would have paid for a better version. Small samples are not proof, but they stop you from guessing.

Record each test in the template: date, old price, new price, units sold before and after, and what you decided. Within a year you will have your own pricing history, which is worth more than any benchmark.

Get your team on the same pricing method

If more than one person quotes or sets prices, a template is also a communication tool. Both Value Culture and Taylor Wells recommend nominating a “pricing champion” who owns the template and runs short weekly sessions of 15 to 30 minutes on one topic at a time, such as break-even points or handling price objections. Keep the file in a shared folder so everyone is looking at the same version, and add pricing to your monthly reporting so it does not drift.

Ready-made pricing resources

If you would rather start from a finished system than a blank spreadsheet, these are the closest fits in our catalog:

• 6 Days to Smarter Pricing: a short, structured path through the pricing decision.
• The Complete Competitive Price Analysis System: for filling in the competitor tab of your template.
• Value-Based Pricing Implementation: for moving from cost-plus to pricing on customer value.
• Strategic Pricing Optimization: for the review and adjustment stage.
• Entrepreneur’s Business Command Center: to keep pricing, costs and goals in one workspace.

If you buy several, the VIP Membership is listed at $4.99 per month with a one-time $4.99 signup fee, and it gives discounts across the catalog. You can also browse everything by format and topic on the Personadigital store.

A simple template you can copy today

If you want to start in a plain spreadsheet, make five tabs:

1. Objectives: one sentence on what this price must achieve.
2. Costs: fixed, variable and allocated, with your own hours included.
3. Value and competition: three alternatives the buyer has, with their prices and what you do better.
4. Price table: floor price, target price from the margin formula, and ceiling price from customer value. Your list price sits between floor and ceiling.
5. Test log and review dates: quarterly reminders and the result of each change.

Fill in the first four in one sitting, publish, and use the fifth to learn.

FAQ

What is the difference between margin and markup in a pricing template?

Margin is profit as a share of the selling price; markup is profit as a share of cost. A 60% margin on a $13.20 cost gives a $33.00 price, while a 60% markup would give only $21.12. Use the margin formula if your goal is stated as a percentage of revenue.

How much should I charge for a digital product?

There is no universal figure. Start from your full cost per unit, apply a target margin, then compare the result with what the product is worth to the buyer and with the buyer’s alternatives. Publish between the floor and the ceiling, then test a 5% to 10% change.

How often should I review my prices?

A quarterly review is a practical rhythm, and it is the cadence Shopify recommends building into operations. Also review after any large change in costs, such as a new tool, a new channel, or a change in payment fees.

Should I price below competitors to win customers?

Only if you chose penetration pricing on purpose and have a plan to raise the price later. Otherwise, a lower price shrinks your margin and can signal lower quality. Compete on the result you deliver and the format that fits your buyer.

Sources

• Pricing Strategy Template Every Small Business Needs (Value Culture)
• Pricing Strategy Template Every Small Business Needs (Taylor Wells)
• Pricing Strategy Template (Capidel)
• Product pricing template (Everhour)
• How to Price a Product (Shopify)
• Pricing strategy for small business: a full guide (StartBuddi)
• 10 Common Pricing Models (Salesforce)
• Pricing Calculator (Simúlalo)
• The Five Critical Cs of Pricing (OpenStax)

Recommended

• Strategic Pricing Optimization
• Value-Based Pricing Implementation
• Workshop Pricing Blueprint
• 6 Days to Smarter Pricing