Price your Treats without undervaluing yourself

Almost every streamer prices their first menu too low. Not slightly — often by a factor of three or four. The reason is not modesty exactly. It is that setting a price means stating what you think your time is worth, out loud, where people can disagree with it.

This article is about doing that with less discomfort and better results.

Price signals effort, not just cost

A price does two things. It decides what somebody pays, and it tells them how much of a thing they are asking for.

That second job is the one people forget. A Treat priced at almost nothing reads as trivial, and viewers treat it accordingly — including by not bothering to ask for it. Something that costs nothing is worth nothing, and a menu of free-feeling options is not more welcoming, it is less interesting.

If a Treat takes you real effort and is priced as though it does not, you will get requests for it constantly, resent them, and eventually remove it. The price was the thing protecting you.

Build a shape, not a list of numbers

Do not price each Treat independently. Price the shape of the menu, because people choose by comparison, not in isolation.

A shape that works:

• One cheap entry. Reachable by Trigger Ticket. Its job is to be tried, not to earn. Almost all of your first-time participation comes through here.
• Two or three middle options at roughly three times the entry. This is where most real activity lands.
• One expensive option at three or four times the middle. Most people will never buy it.

That last one is doing work even when it never sells. It is the reason the middle looks reasonable. A menu whose most expensive item is the middle option makes the middle look expensive; add something above it and the same price reads as sensible. This is not a trick — it is just how people judge prices, which is always relatively.

Set the entry point for participation, not revenue

The cheapest thing on your menu is the most important thing on your menu, and it should be reachable without money.

Channel points cost a viewer nothing but time, and they are how somebody discovers that requesting a Treat is fun. That discovery is what makes a paid request thinkable later. Skipping it means everybody's first step is also their most expensive one, and most people do not take it.

Be genuinely generous here. The entry Treat is marketing, and it is the only marketing on the page.

Raising a price is much easier than you think

Streamers agonise over price increases and viewers barely notice them. Nobody is tracking your menu closely enough to feel betrayed, and the people who value what you do were not deciding on the margin anyway.

If a Treat is bought constantly and you are starting to dread it, that is not a sign it is popular. It is a sign it is underpriced. Raise it. The volume will fall and your enjoyment will rise, which is the trade you wanted.

You do not need to announce it or justify it. If you want to say something, "I've bumped a couple of prices, that one was eating my whole stream" is plenty, and people will agree with you.

When something never sells

Two possible causes, and they need different fixes.

Nobody understands it. Rename it once, more concretely. "Do a bit" is not a product. "Narrate the next two minutes like a wildlife documentary" is. If a rename fixes it, the price was never the problem.

Nobody wants it. Hide it. Do not cut the price to force it — a cheap thing nobody wants is still a thing nobody wants, and it makes the menu longer and harder to scan.

When something sells too well

Congratulations, you have found what your audience actually wants. Two things follow.

First, consider making a cheaper variant, not a more expensive one. You want more of the thing people want, and lowering the barrier to your best-performing Treat usually beats trying to extract more from it.

Second, check you still enjoy it. The Treat that gets bought forty times a month is the one most likely to burn you out, and it is worth deliberately capping — by price, or by hiding it some nights.

A starting point you can copy

If you want numbers to react to rather than invent:

Tier	Relative price	Accepts tickets
Entry	1×	yes
Middle	~3×	sometimes
Premium	~10×	no

Set the entry tier at whatever feels slightly too cheap, then build the rest from it. Revisit after two weeks with actual data instead of feelings.

Next: which numbers are worth looking at, and which will only make you miserable.