But job seekers have a lot of consultants/agencies/headhunters they can turn to and I’d imagine your price mostly depends on the competition
This is true, but also often overrated, especially when it comes to individual customers. If you’re selling to businesses, do consider that they’d be willing to shop around and optimize to some extent, so differences from your competitors matter a lot. Individual customers however really hate having to search around, compare options, and risk choice overload; if they’ve found OP as a provider of this service, they’d really prefer to be able to choose them. At this point, OP is not in equal footing with the rest of the competition, and thinking so would lose them income.
I run a similar kind of business to OP, and what I’ve learnt over the years is that unless your prices are outrageously higher (as in an order of magnitude or more), pricing higher than your competition doesn’t significantly affect your business, and often results in higher earnings (i.e. what you lose in raw customer numbers, you more than earn back with the larger individual revenues).
RE Jacobian’s point: This is fair, though it works on the assumption that the competitors offer an equally good service (i.e. they get the job seeker the highest paid, the most fulfilling job for them, etc.). This is open to debate because a) these competitors serve their network of businesses not job seekers so they’re selecting from a smaller pool and/or b) incentives aren’t as strongly aligned with the candidate. I’m still exploring the space though so I can’t speak to what side of the argument is stronger.
This is true, but also often overrated, especially when it comes to individual customers. If you’re selling to businesses, do consider that they’d be willing to shop around and optimize to some extent, so differences from your competitors matter a lot. Individual customers however really hate having to search around, compare options, and risk choice overload; if they’ve found OP as a provider of this service, they’d really prefer to be able to choose them. At this point, OP is not in equal footing with the rest of the competition, and thinking so would lose them income.
I run a similar kind of business to OP, and what I’ve learnt over the years is that unless your prices are outrageously higher (as in an order of magnitude or more), pricing higher than your competition doesn’t significantly affect your business, and often results in higher earnings (i.e. what you lose in raw customer numbers, you more than earn back with the larger individual revenues).
RE Jacobian’s point: This is fair, though it works on the assumption that the competitors offer an equally good service (i.e. they get the job seeker the highest paid, the most fulfilling job for them, etc.). This is open to debate because a) these competitors serve their network of businesses not job seekers so they’re selecting from a smaller pool and/or b) incentives aren’t as strongly aligned with the candidate. I’m still exploring the space though so I can’t speak to what side of the argument is stronger.
RE digital_carver: What biz do you run?