Clever way to price an online course

A young lady named Steph Smith is creating an online course called Internet Pipes to teach people how to do research on the internet.

There are few things I find interesting about this...

The course hasn't come out yet and she's already selling it.

The course does not become available until January 7, 2024.

But it's now December 13 and she's already sold 434.

But the main thing I find interesting is the pricing structure.

As people purchase the course, the price goes up.

For the first 20 customers, the price was $30.

For the next 20 customers, the price went up to $50.

The next 20 customers paid $70, and so on.

This pricing method not only allows the market to determine the pricing, but it also creates a sense of urgency.

Other points of interest:

• A course teaching people to research online is an example of creating a successful item in a niche that I might not have known people would be willing to pay for.
• She's chosen to create and market the course on Gumroad rather than one of the many other course platforms.
• The author allows buyers to pay more than the asking price if they choose to.

• The author offers a 100% refund policy:

And a few curious things I noticed:

• Item has 17 x 5 star reviews and the course has not even become available yet (how does this happen?)
• According to her pricing chart, she's sold 20 x 9 items = 190. But the Gumroad page says there have been 434 sales. So some sales are unaccounted for in the pricing table.
• The item does not appear on the author's main Gumroad page (maybe because it is a pre-sale?)

Overall, very interesting. The author has created a nice body of work on her site and has a good thing going with several areas of success.