The Financial Guilt of Spiritual Entrepreneurship
Do you consciously, sub-consciously, or even un-consciously demonize money? Guilt about making money from a calling or higher sense of purpose seems to be almost epidemic among spiritual entrepreneurs.
Are you apologizing for the (future) success of your mission? Before you’ve even achieved it? That’s ass-backwards inverse manifesting…
I noticed that when a friend of mine recently released a new download-able digital product — one he worked very hard on, for hours – one that truly contributes something meaningful, unique, and spiritually valuable to his customers — even though the price-point is a modest $5, he used apologetic language — right on the sales page!
He felt that he had to justify why he deserved to be compensated for the work…
I certainly continue to struggle with a kind of “survivor’s guilt” regarding my “success” as a professional spiritual blogger and intuitive medium — and that site is barely monetized! I still catch myself reverting to age-old bad habits — I actually treat my greatest gifts as a shame — that sounds crazy! But it’s an authentic emotion. I do find it easier to accept compensation for this blog and the “more useful, more tangible, more quantifiable” information I share in the form of tutorials.
Self-improvement, New Age, Spiritual, and Religious publishing niches are businesses — big businesses. Churches are businesses. Non-profit organizations are businesses.
Professional blogging is a business.
I’ve written about my financial epiphany — the turning point in my quest to create a meaningful career for myself, one that’s in-line with my highest calling. These articles continue to be among the most popular on Shift Your Spirits.
There is a deep, underlying spiritual principle involved in your relationship with Money as an archetype. Low self-esteem rears its ugly head in a kind of spiritual cancer — it undermines your sense of self-worth, your creativity, and your finances.
Is your dis-eased ambition — even your worthiest motivation — attached to a dysfunctional, co-dependent relationship?
If you’re already familiar with the concept — if you’ve completed the original exercise — is it perhaps time to check in with Money again?
This life-changing exercise requires and deserves re-visiting — it’s a relationship. To be truly effective, you must engage Money in conversation regularly — again and again. Old habits creep back in.
I check in with my new Money archetype about once a quarter — in our most recent dialog He asked me the following:
- If I asked you to come over and clean my house each week, and you spent a few hours doing so, would it be fair to pay you?
- Would you go to work tomorrow and clock in for three to eight hours if your boss said you weren’t going to get a pay check?
- How many days would you be willing to do work for (maybe) “just a tip”?
- How many seconds would you spend feeling “guilty” about looking for another job?
Chances are you know what it feels like to have a “meaningless” job — maybe you’ve worked in food service or some spiritually-bereft retail environment or (God bless you) as a cubicle drone…
If you can accept money for doing something you identify as “meaning-less” why would you struggle to manifest wealth for doing something a million times more meaning-ful?
Slade Roberson is an intuitive counselor, ATP®, professional blogger, and the author of Shift Your Spirits, Automatic Intuitive Response, and the PageCoach Problogging Tutorial Series. Slade on Blogging shares behind-the-screens internet marketing, self-publishing, and blogging strategies with other personal development writers, coaches, and healing arts practitioners.
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12 Responses to “The Financial Guilt of Spiritual Entrepreneurship”
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So how does one set a price for something? Is it more valuable that many have access, or that the creator is well-compensated for their time?
If it’s something that has no ‘cost’ to reproduce, does setting a lower price point mean that more people may access it and the over-all take might be higher?
How does one value one’s own time - when in order to provide the service, an hour or two must be given up?
Hmmm…
Slade, this is something that is RIGHT at the forefront of my personal struggle and growth TODAY. The article couldn’t have been better timed. You’ll see that when my next Druid Journal article gets posted (probably tomorrow morning) — a walking meditation. (Though I didn’t realize it was a meditation while I was walking…)
It’s true I half-apologized for charging for the meditations, and that definitely shows the guilt I feel about charging for them. I’ll tell you an open secret: I also feel guilty about my “real job” income. I live in an area where there are many homeless, and many others whose incomes will never approach mine. Yet I’m sure many of them work just as hard as I do, at work that they find much less rewarding. Where is the justice here? Why shouldn’t I give back in return for all of the extraordinary gifts I’ve received in my life? Why shouldn’t I offer all I have to give, online, for free?
On the other hand, of course, I have my dreams for myself and my family… Dreams that would be helped a lot by a sizeable income from online stuff.
So I’m offering my meditations very, very cheaply, so that almost everyone can afford them — yet if almost everyone buys one, it will mean significant income for me.
But I’m not SURE that’s the right way to go. Hence the apologetic tone.
And there’s a nagging voice somewhere back there that says I should charge a lot more…
Slade, I absolutely agree with you that there’s nothing sinfully wrong with monetizing one’s site. In fact, I’m perhaps overly enthusiastic
But I can empathize with your friend’s rationale for apologizing to his readers because I was at first apprehensive about this action’s impact on my readers, too.
Masina, just 2 cents from me. From a buyer’s perspective, I’ll be glad to fork out good money for stuff that I perceive would provide good value (i.e. solve my problems). So, as a gauge of how much to price for your product, a lot depends on :
- your authority within the niche you’re in
- the value pricing of similar stuff in the market
- demand versus supply of the info you’re lashing out in the market.
All 3 are not absolutely mutually exclusive in my point of view, but no matter what, in my opinion, I don’t think one should price it low just to increase the take up rate. If your product is good and serves a need well, people will buy, lowering the price for the sake of increasing sales cheapens the perceived value, which may do more harm in the long run for branding purposes.
Anyway, the above’s just my own opinion. Btw, Masina, you’ve got a great blog!
Cheers, Ellesse
Hey Ellesse,
Great way to break down pricing, thank you. Perceived value is important, and it’s easy to forget about.
And thanks for the kind words about my blog, much appreciated!
Much joy,
KL
Mas, you jolly well deserve that!
Cheers,
Ellesse
K-L, Ellesse —
Thank you for truly breaking down and detailing the questions one must ask. Pricing services, in particular, has always been difficult for me — for things like design or web development jobs — copywriting is perhaps the most difficult of all — vary from project to project.
Inspiration, ideas, and solutions can come in a flash or brilliance or be present the tiniest crumb that won’t cooperate — so the Time factor is illusive, to say the least.
Donations:
Generally, one of the reasons I advocate Donations and Tithing as models for payment — “free with a donation” is not some gimmick — it puts the pricing and the value judgments in the customer’s hands.
Secondly, it gives you a chance to practice and adapt your skills with real live consumers.
Thirdly, it gives you some actual numbers to work with outside your own assumptions. One of the best ways I’ve found to determine what something is worth is to take a consensus of what people are willing to pay for it — in a very real — not “just a show of hands” — kind of way.
The most important thing is not to ask in the abstract, but to implement and practice and observe your work “in the field.” If you offer the same set of professional services or actions to say 5 different people, one pays you $10 at the low end, and another pays $40, and the other three are consistent at a $25 price-point, then you have some real numbers to work with.
You still must evaluate further, but keep in mind there are psychological factors at work. Most people when presented with the same product at a variety of price-points will most often choose — not the lowest, not the highest — but one step down from the highest.
Even when the products are identical, there is a perception of value at play — people assume that the more expensive something is, the better it must be.
This is SUCH a can of worms.
I employ everything from prayer, to the Money meditations I mention in this post, to market research. I also compare my products and services to similar offerings.
As for my time, I can tell you that producing an ebook or a blog has so many man hours attached to it — but you have to consider the long-term, cumulative, passive income once you have it.
Jeff,
First off, I LOVE it when I post something I struggled with or felt was too personal for other people to get and have the response that it WAS indeed timely for someone else. That’s my favorite kind of affirmation.
I think the price point for your Meditation downloads is FINE — and certainly NOT one you should apologize for. The apology undermines the perceived value. It might be different if it was really expensive, or if you received floods of emails saying “How the hell do you get off pricing that so high?!”
You might then realistically respond in that kind of defensive way. But it’s a glass half-empty/half-full prospect. You don’t want to influence your reader’s perception — they are likely looking at it thinking “Wow! That’s only $5 — I can afford that.”
As for the “other people are homeless and I’m fortunate” voices — the best way for you to honor your abundance and be in a position to share it is to first possess it with full gratitude and master it. You can’t impact other people’s lives in a good way without the resources to do so.
You can’t be generous if you don’t have at least enough for those you are responsible for. You can’t produce anything meaningful if all your energy is spent begging for change.
Homelessness is a mental health issue more than a financial one, by the way. Certainly a social issue, but aren’t they all?
Replace the guilt with gratitude, and as you engage in updated dialog with Money, take the numbers out of the equation — he IS the numbers — find out what the emotions and the values are behind the actions.
I’m not in the business of blogging - yet - but do have an extensive banking and business background and I have been involved in a few entreprenurial pursuits over the years.
There are many good points in this post and the follow-up comments about pricing. There IS a perceived value to a consumer - you’ll get that litter of mutts adopted out faster at $5 per dog than you will giving away free puppies. An exception to the free issue is offering an introductory product at no cost, like Jeff’s meditations for example, to give the buyer a chance to sample your wares with no risk, with the expectation that the samplers will turn into buyers when offered subsequent products of equal caliber.
The biggest point though, in my opinion, is the pricing of your product is a direct reflection of the value YOU place on what you have to offer. This is especially important in calculating the value of your time. What is your knowledge worth on a per hour basis? What is it worth to your buyer that they are getting a level of care, service, or information from you that they may not get from some other site offering comparable products? What could you be doing of value for yourself during that time if you weren’t performing this task? What’s that worth to you?
If you believe in yourself, believe in your product or service, believe your time has value, believe you have something to offer that will benefit your customer, then you honor your knowledge-talent-gift-calling-time by pricing it accordingly.
I think another difficulty arises in pricing spiritual services, because, my sense of it is, you all greatly love what you’re doing. When you love what you’re doing, it’s fun. It doesn’t seem like work. Therefore it’s hard sometimes to determine what to charge for having fun!
I was asked to build two new gardens recently - something I LOVE to do. I did them for friends, so there was an additional love factor involved. Yet when it came time to settle up, I carefully calculated my design time, purchase/errand running time, cost of materials, and installation time. They did get a friend discount, but I was fairly compensated for my expertise, my out of pocket expense, and my time.
Hi,everyone. Some good points have been made by all. I have 4 classes that I took over a period of 4 year period of time. The first 3-day workshop cost $222.00. At the time, that was the most I had ever paid for classes of any kind. I wanted to take the workshop so I paid the money. The 2nd workshop, same person, same subject, more information, the price went up to $333.00. The 3rd workshop cost $444.00. I was beginning to have issues with the cost. The 4th and last 3-day workshop that I took from this person cost $555.00. The first 3 workshop included either cassettes or CD’s of the meditations that were learned. The 4th workshop included nothing. We had to spend another $200+ for the meditation DVD’s. For all but the first workshop, we were also out food, travel expenses and hotel rooms. I work with my husband parttime striping parking lots. I am of a conservative nature when it comes to spending money on things because I know how hard my husband works for that money. At the 4th workshop, several people brought up the question of price. Some people got angry and left the 3-day workshop on the 2nd day. If it hadn’t cost me a lot of money to do this workshop, I would have left also. I felt this was information that was really important for everyone to learn and the instructor was beginning to price it out of the financial range for a lot of people. Most healers are not rich. I know that well-know instructors cost a lot more to attend their workshops. I decided not to attend any more of his workshops. I probably spent close to $1000.00 on that last workshop. I am not saying don’t charge for the value of your time and information. What I am saying is consider who you want to have your information and don’t price it out of their price range.
Lola,
I, for one, am awaiting that writing project from you (you know the one…)
Which brings up a different point I’ve been meaning to make about “spiritual” creative projects — I think any creative project, such as a book or a blog — regardless of subject matter — is still a “spiritual, meaningful” contribution in a larger sense.
Thank you for sharing your financial perspective — all valuable, detailed points that other readers should find very helpful. (Note to self: introduce more brief posts and let all these brilliant commentors flesh them out FOR me.)
Jeff,
Were I to do a Blog Critique for you today, the one major suggestion I would make involves leveraging your free meditation — make it a subscriber incentive.
Not just on the Meditation feed itself, but on your main blog.
Such a substantial free offering not only promotes the other products in the series, but has the potential to turn more first-time visitors into long-term readers.
I have a feeling I’m not telling you something that’s not already on your To Do list, am I?
So, basically, yes, that qualifies as nagging…
: )
Patricia,
Thanks for sharing the perspective of the consumer — I know that most of us here are looking at the issue from this side of the pricing gun, this side of the “lectern” — and of course the message in your story is not a new one…
The audience is your boss!