You’ve spent weeks planning your first live streaming event. Everything’s ready – except for one crucial detail: the price. Too high, and you might scare away potential viewers. Too low, and you might not cover your costs. Sound familiar?
The answers depend on many factors, including how your business generates revenue, what your industry looks like, and more. Whether you’re a live streaming veteran or you’re just starting your transition from YouTube to a dedicated streaming platform, we’ll help you walk through it.
Let’s take a look at seven steps that will lead you to the right price point for your live stream.
7 steps to determine how much to charge for your live streaming event
Step 1: Know your goals
What are you trying to do with this live stream? If you want to earn revenue from the event, your primary goal will be to maximize how much you can earn by getting the word out to a lot of people, emphasizing the value of your stream, and charging for it.
But you might have other goals for your stream.
It could, for example, be more of a marketing play. Maybe you’re launching a brand-new course and you want to show people how valuable it is so they purchase in the future. Or you’re giving a sneak preview of exclusive content that you hope will get potential members to sign up for a subscription. In this case, you’ll want to reach as many viewers as possible – you might even make your stream free in this case.
There are other reasons to run a live stream on your website or app, too, such as
- rewarding your current subscribers,
- broadcasting an event for public interest,
- engaging your current community,
- seeking feedback from your audience, or
- making a big announcement.
The first step in pricing your live stream is understanding what you want, not just from the stream itself, but from a business perspective, as well.
Step 2: Research live streaming in your niche
What do other content creators in your niche charge for their live streams? This is a great place to start in your research. If your competitors are charging $20 for access to their streams, you’ll have to make a good case for why yours is $50 – or you’ll need to price more competitively.
Just remember that pricing too low is an easy trap to fall into.
It’s also a good idea to look at how – not just how much – others in your niche are charging for their live streaming events. Is it a one-time payment? Does it require a subscription? Is it available for rent after the stream is over? It could be a combination like we see here on RaceDayTV, where you can watch with a subscription or buy access to individual live streams when they’re done:
This is valuable information when looking at the competitive landscape. But remember that your competitors might have different goals, and that could affect their pricing. And if they’re still using Facebook Live or Instagram Live, you’re looking at fundamentally different live events.
Spend some time looking at the live streams in your industry niche – find at least five and see what they’re charging and what’s on offer for each stream. What’s your unique value proposition? What is it that you do better than anyone else? What value are you providing that viewers can’t get anywhere else? What kind of viewing experience will you offer?
This will become the cornerstone of the marketing plan for your live stream (we’ll talk about marketing a bit more in step 7).
Step 3: Consider other factors that influence the price of your live stream
You know what you want to accomplish with your live stream and you have an idea of what others in your niche charge for theirs. Now it’s time to look at some of the specific factors that may change how you price your live stream.
Content-related factors
Here are a few questions about the content of your stream to answer:
- How long is your event? A long event could justify a higher price than a much shorter one.
- Is this content exclusive? If there’s nowhere else to get it and this is a one-time opportunity, you could charge more.
- What’s the production quality of your stream? A multi-camera live stream and professional video editing will justify a higher price than a stream from your phone.
- Are there guest speakers or special features? The more value you provide your viewers, the more you can charge.
- Will you use interactive elements? A live chat or question-and-answer session not only boosts engagement, but increases the value of the live stream.
If your streaming platform offers valuable live streaming features like chat, guest speakers, 4K streaming, or anything else that improves the quality of your live stream, that will increase its value. And increased value means you can charge more.
Technical factors
There are technical factors to keep in mind, too, that could affect your pricing:
- What are you paying for your streaming platform? You’ll need to cover your costs if you’re looking to make a profit on this stream.
- What are your equipment and production costs? The more professional or complicated your stream, the more you’ll spend on equipment and production, and that cost needs to be recouped somewhere.
- Do you pay for bandwidth? Some streaming platforms charge extra if you exceed a bandwidth cap, and a high-quality stream could put you over the limit.
- Will you need technical support for the event? If you’ll be paying for tech support or spending a lot of extra time solving technical issues, count that toward your costs.
Choosing the right streaming provider can make a big difference here – for example, Uscreen gives you unlimited bandwidth and up to 500 attendees (with unlimited attendees on our Plus plan). 24/7 email tech support is also included, with the option for priority chat support and a dedicated account manager on some plans.
Audience factors
Your audience plays a big role in determining how much you can charge for your live stream:
- What is your target market size? If you’re targeting a huge audience, you may be able to charge less and make up for the lower dollar amount in volume, while a smaller audience may require higher entry fees to be cost-effective. (If you’re not sure where you’re going to recruit viewers for your stream, be sure to check out the top traffic sources for video-on-demand.)
- Will your audience be domestic or global? A global audience gives you a lot of potential viewers, but comes with currency, language, and other issues that you may need to spend time addressing.
- What kind of purchasing power does your audience have? You may struggle to recruit enough viewers if you’re targeting an audience that doesn’t have much expendable income or doesn’t see the value in your content.
- What kind of audience do your competitors target? There’s a sweet spot of finding the right audience and the right price – don’t forget that your competitors can be a valuable source of information here.
Be sure that the live streaming platform you choose can handle these factors. For example, some platforms only support a few currencies, while the best streaming platforms will handle just about any currency you’re likely to come across. Other platforms might make it more difficult to broadcast internationally, while providers like Uscreen abide by international copyright law and have no problem broadcasting around the globe.
Step 4: Calculate your break-even base price
Before getting into the specifics of pricing models for your live broadcast, let’s establish your break-even base price. This is the price you’ll need to charge for each viewer to break even on this video streaming event.
That means you need an estimate of your overall cost. Based on the content and technical factors above, along with some additional information, you can come up with a pretty good estimate.
Estimate your live streaming costs
First, you’ll need an estimate of your video streaming costs, which are influenced by several factors:
- What are the fixed costs of your streaming platform?
- Will you pay a surcharge per viewer?
- Will you pay extra for how much bandwidth you’ll need?
- Are there commissions on sales that you make through the live stream?
- What will you pay for marketing?
- Are you paying any of the people on your stream?
- Do you have employees to pay?
- Are you renting equipment?
- Are there additional costs we haven’t covered yet?
All of these questions will help you come up with an estimate of your live streaming costs (platforms like Uscreen that use simple, predictable pricing make this part of the process much easier). Let’s say, for example, that you’re expecting to pay about $2,500 to run your live stream.
Now it’s time to factor in your profit margin.
Estimate your break-even base cost
Now that you have an estimated cost, we can figure out the break-even base cost. This is how much you’ll need to make from every viewer to not lose money on this live video event.
(Note: if you’re planning on longer-term membership fees to recoup the cost of the event, you’ll want to know your average lifetime earnings per customer.)
First, estimate how many viewers you’ll get. Be conservative – you’ll get better at this as you put on more streams. Then divide your costs by that number of viewers. That’s the average revenue you’ll need to break even.
Let’s say we think we can get 300 people to watch our live stream – that means we’ll need to charge $8.33 for each viewer to break even.
If you’re looking to make a profit from this live stream, adjust that number upwards. How much depends on how much you think you can reasonably charge for the live stream. Think back to your industry analysis and your unique value proposition and come up with a goal number for average revenue per viewer.
In our case, raising that price to $10 might seem reasonable, and result in a $500 profit.
With that number in mind, let’s pick a pricing model for your live streaming event.
Step 5: Pick a suitable pricing model for your live streaming event
Are you trying to run a single live streaming event or a series? If it’s a one-time event, a pay-per-view arrangement where viewers pay once for access to just this live stream is easy and straightforward. If you’re planning a series, it may make more sense to offer a subscription plan where regular payments encourage viewers to stay engaged.
You can also offer multiple options. M/BODY, for example, uses Uscreen to live stream fitness classes and then offers rental options after the class is complete (this is easy to do with a platform that provides multiple monetization options).
This makes it slightly more complicated to estimate your earnings per viewer, but the more opportunities you have for monetization, the more likely you are to hit your goals. Here are some monetization options to consider:
One-time access
- Pay-per-view: one price for access to one live streaming event.
- Early bird pricing: encourage people to sign up early by offering a discount up to a specific date.
- VIP pricing tiers: VIP viewers get access to extra benefits, like free content, VIP chat, a Q&A session, live polling, or other exclusives.
Subscription-based
- Monthly or annual subscriptions: viewers pay by the month or year and get access to all of your live streams (or a specific selection of them).
- Hybrid models: you can combine pay-per-view and subscription models to let non-members preview your content or charge more for an exclusive event.
- Bundle pricing: a subscription might include live stream access and other content (such as pre-recorded video) with a slight discount for purchasing them together.
Tiered pricing structures
- Basic and premium access: premium viewers might get access to exclusive live chat, extra resources, free content, or other bonuses during your virtual event.
- Additional features for higher tiers: you can use additional features to separate more than two tiers, as well.
- Group/corporate pricing: if your audience includes groups or companies, you can offer special discounts for signing up large groups of participants.
The more flexibility you have in your monetization, the more options you’ll be able to offer that meet both your viewers’ and your needs. Choose a platform that offers multiple monetization options and – if at all possible – an option like Uscreen in which you can combine different options for each event.
Step 6: Adjust your pricing model based on your specific goals
With all of the information above, you have a solid sense of what you’ll charge for your live stream and how you’ll offer access to members and/or non-members. Now let’s take one last moment to adjust your pricing for your specific goals.
For example, you might be trying to generate a sense of scarcity or exclusivity with your live streaming. Creator Science earned over $460,000 in two years using this strategy by capping the number of members at 200.
If creating an exclusive experience is part of your plan, charging a higher price could be a significant component of that.
On the other hand, if you’re trying to get people to sign up for a long-term video-on-demand subscription, you might make your virtual event more affordable – even below the break-even base cost – to get your content in front of as many people as possible.
With all of this in mind, here are four things to avoid when setting prices for virtual events:
Common pricing mistakes to avoid
- Undervaluing your content: you worked hard to make a high-quality live stream – don’t be afraid to charge for it!
- Ignoring market research: if your prices are totally out of line with what your competitors are offering, you might find yourself struggling to get viewers.
- Neglecting technical costs: spend some extra time figuring out how much you’ll pay for your platform, equipment, and other technical costs; they can add up faster than you think.
- Poor pricing communication: clear pricing establishes trust with viewers and avoids nasty surprises that might dissuade someone from attending your stream.
Step 7: Communicate your pricing to potential viewers
Now that you know what you’ll charge for your live stream, it’s time to sell it. That means you need to tell your audience, whether they’re subscribers, members, or the general public, why they should pay you to access your stream.
There are two important factors in communicating your pricing:
Emphasizing the value you offer
Remember your industry research? Now’s the time to try to set yourself apart from your competitors. When you’re marketing your stream, focus on the value you provide. What makes you different and better than all the other live stream options out there? What are you going to teach, show, or otherwise communicate to people that makes it worth the price you decided to charge?
The more unique selling points you can come up with, the better. Asian Boss is a fantastic example of highlighting unique benefits – their homepage clearly lays out five benefits of becoming a member:
Remember that the benefits of your membership or subscription business can form part of your value proposition. If you have excellently organized video content, for example, that could be a selling point if your competitors tend to be disorganized. Providing a great user experience is always something worth investing in and talking about (even just having a higher-quality live stream than your competitors can do wonders).
Clearly communicate your pricing
No one likes costly surprises, and the first question that many people will ask is “How much does it cost?”. Make sure your pricing is clear on all of your marketing materials – make sure every reader knows what they’ll be getting, what they’ll pay to get it, and any options they have for increasing or decreasing their cost.
Of course, you’ll also want to be very clear about why what you’re charging is worth it. The higher the perceived value of your content, the easier it will be to convince people to pay what you’re asking for it.
Platform features that make pricing easier
Certain live streaming platforms have features that make effectively pricing your live stream easier.
For example, Uscreen seamlessly handles multiple currencies so people from around the world can attend your stream. It also supports multiple pricing models at once, so you can charge for pay-per-view access, include the stream in a subscription plan, and offer rentals later.
Being able to stream to mobile devices may also help your pricing efforts, as you’ll be able to reach people wherever they are (our data shows that 50% of our customers’ live stream viewers watch on mobile apps). And Uscreen can help you build your own mobile streaming app, too.
And platforms with consistent, predictable pricing will make it easier, too. The fact that you don’t pay extra for necessary bandwidth or live viewers makes it easier to calculate your break-even base cost if you use a platform like Uscreen.
Launch your paid live streaming event confidently
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to pricing your live stream event. Your unique content, value proposition, and audience mean you’ll need a unique price and pricing structure. But you now have the tools to make a good decision when it comes to charging for access to your video streaming.
By understanding your goals, researching your industry, doing some calculations on your costs, and effectively communicating your pricing, you’ll be set up for success in running a successful live stream.
Over time, you’ll have the opportunity to experiment with different types of video streams, pricing strategies, discounts, bundles, and marketing efforts. Keep track of which work best for your business. Because every audience is unique, you might be surprised at what you find out! (And if you find that you need to raise your prices over time, be sure to check out this guide on how to raise your prices.)
