Save big on select digital products!

What should you charge for your first digital product?

There is no correct price for a first digital product, but there is a correct way to reach one. Start with the buyer, then work backwards through VAT.

Gizella Nagyne Palinkas

9/8/20266 min read

There is no correct price for a first digital product, but there is a correct way to arrive at one: decide what shelf the product sits on, look at what that shelf already charges, and then work backwards through every deduction that stands between the price on the page and the amount that reaches you. For anyone selling to consumers in the EU, the largest of those deductions is VAT — and above a certain sales threshold it is charged at your customer's national rate, not yours.

That second half is what most first-time sellers miss. They pick a number that feels brave, publish it, and discover months later that it means something different depending on which country the buyer was in. This article closes that gap before you set the price rather than after.

Price is a positioning decision before it is a maths decision

A price is a sentence. It tells a browsing stranger, in one glance, what category of thing they are looking at and how much of their attention it deserves. A €4 file and a €40 file promise different amounts of work — from you in making it, and from them in using it.

So the first question is not "what can I get away with?" It is: what is the smallest complete job this product finishes for someone? A checklist that saves an afternoon and a programme that changes how someone works for a month are not the same shelf, and no amount of clever pricing psychology will make a browser treat them as though they were.

Two practical consequences. Look at the shelf, not at the internet — the useful comparison is five products solving the same specific problem for the same specific person, not the general noise about what digital products "should" cost. And do not price for the person you were: the most common first-product mistake is pricing for the version of yourself who could not afford anything, rather than for the person the product is genuinely for.

The number on the page is not the number you keep

Here is the part that is genuinely mechanical, and where a sourced number helps more than an opinion.

Under EU rules, digital products sold to consumers are treated as "telecommunications, broadcasting and electronically supplied" services. Once a seller established in one EU member state passes EUR 10,000 in cross-border sales of these services in the current or preceding calendar year, the place of supply moves: VAT is due in the member state where the customer lives, at that country's rate.

Those rates are not close to each other.

Standard rates across the EU in 2026 run from 17% in Luxembourg to 27% in Hungary, with an EU average of 21.9%. Run a single €7 ebook through those three and the arithmetic is straightforward — divide the gross price by one plus the rate:

Sold to a buyer in Luxembourg: 7 ÷ 1.17 = €5.98 before any other cost
Sold at the EU average rate: 7 ÷ 1.219 = €5.74
Sold to a buyer in Hungary: 7 ÷ 1.27 = €5.51

Forty-seven cents of spread on a €7 product, decided entirely by where the buyer happened to be sitting. Nothing you do to your sales page changes it, and if you advertise one price to everyone — which is what almost every small seller does — you are absorbing that variation yourself. A perfectly reasonable choice. It just needs to be a choice rather than a surprise.

What the €10,000 threshold actually changes

Below the threshold, and provided you are established in a single EU member state, these remain domestic supplies and your own country's rate applies. Above it, the customer's rate applies and you either register in each member state where you have customers or use the One Stop Shop (OSS) — a single registration in one member state that covers the rest. The European Commission is explicit that OSS is optional, but that once you opt in it applies to all qualifying supplies across all member states.

Three honest caveats, because this is the kind of detail that goes stale and varies by circumstance:

The threshold is for sellers established in one EU member state. If you are established outside the EU, it does not apply to you in the same way — non-EU businesses have their own route into the schemes.
Thresholds, rates and scheme rules change. The figures above are the 2026 standard rates; check them against the current position before you rely on them.
This is general information, not tax advice. An accountant who knows your actual situation is worth considerably more than any article, this one included.

A practical way to set the number

Here is a sequence you can run in about an hour, on paper.

Write the job. One sentence: "This finishes ___ for someone who ___." If you cannot write it, the product is not ready to price — it is not finished.
Find five comparables. Same problem, same buyer. Note each price and what is actually inside.
Place yourself on that shelf, honestly. More complete than three of them and less than two? You are in the upper-middle of that range. Less complete than all five? You are at the bottom, and that is fine for a first product.
Pick the gross price — the number the buyer sees. Round it to something legible.
Run the deductions. Divide by one plus the VAT rate that applies to you. Then subtract whatever your payment processing costs. Write down what is left.
Ask one question of that remaining number: is it enough that you would be willing to answer a support email about this product in six months' time? If not, the price is too low, and lowering it further to "get started" makes the problem worse rather than better.
Set a review date. Put it in the calendar — sixty or ninety days out. A price is not a tattoo.

Step 6 does the work. A price that makes you resent your own customers is a bad price whatever the market comparison said.

Three things worth avoiding

Pricing by hours worked. Buyers are not purchasing your time. Two products that took the same three weeks can honestly sit at very different prices, because they finish different-sized jobs.

The permanent introductory price. A launch price that never ends teaches returning readers that the real price is whatever they wait for. If a price is introductory, give it an end date and honour it.

Waiting for certainty. There is no threshold of confidence at which the right number becomes obvious. You are choosing a starting position and adjusting — the same as everyone else who has ever done this.

Not sure which shelf you're on?

Six questions about what you have actually built — scope, audience, comparables, how finished it really is — and you land in one of four pricing positions, each with a specific next step. Two minutes, nothing collected.

Frequently asked questions

Is it better to launch a digital product cheap and raise the price later? Both directions work and both have a cost. Starting low gets you early feedback, but raising a price later means telling existing readers the thing they saw is now more expensive, which takes nerve. Starting at your intended price avoids that conversation and gives you fewer early signals. The approach that consistently causes trouble is a launch discount with no stated end date, because it quietly becomes the real price.

Do I have to charge VAT on a digital product? It depends on where you are established and how much you sell. Under EU rules, a seller established in one member state whose cross-border sales of digital services stay under EUR 10,000 in the current and preceding calendar year treats those as domestic supplies at their own country's rate. Above that, the customer's country rate applies and the One Stop Shop handles it with a single registration. Rules differ for non-EU sellers, and this is general information rather than tax advice.

What is a normal price for a first ebook or guide? There is no normal, only the shelf you are on. The useful exercise is opening five products that solve the same problem for the same person and writing down what each charges and what is inside it. At Ella Wealth Community the working rule is that price should match the size of the job the product finishes — a checklist and a full programme are not competing for the same decision, even on the same site.

How do payment fees change what I should charge? They come off after VAT, and on low-priced digital products the fixed component matters more than the percentage. A fixed per-transaction fee is a much larger bite out of a €3 sale than a €30 one, which is one honest argument against pricing a first product very low. Run your own numbers rather than assuming: gross price, minus VAT, minus processing, is the figure to look at.

Can I charge different prices in different countries? You can, and large platforms do. For a small seller it usually creates more complexity than it resolves — several price points, several sets of copy, and the question of what happens when someone finds the cheaper one. Advertising one price and absorbing the variation is simpler, provided you know what the spread costs you.

When should I revisit the price? Set a date when you set the price — sixty or ninety days is a reasonable first interval. Revisit it when the product itself changes, when you have added enough to it that the original job description no longer covers what is inside, or when you have enough of your own observations to have an opinion. Changing the price because of one quiet week is noise, not signal.

Get the groundwork right first

If the product is still taking shape, price is the wrong problem today. The Digital Product Beginners Guide covers choosing a niche, creating the thing, and getting it in front of people — the decisions that come before the number on the page.

The whole thing, free. No upsell at the end → Digital Product Beginners Guide

When you want the sequence written down

Creating a Digital Product in 6 Steps is the method in order — what to decide first, what to build, what to leave, and where pricing sits.

Seven euros. The method, written down, in order → Creating a Digital Product in 6 Steps — €7