The profit pyramid: how to scale your online business

Most online entrepreneurs start their journey with a single product - like a service, a subscription, coaching, or a digital product.

I love to start with a single thing (no matter what it is) because it’s a great way to learn how to sell that one thing to the right kind of customer.

But when you’re ready to take your business to the next level, you'll want to expand your offer beyond that one thing. And that’s a critical time to be intentional about what you build next.

So today I'm going to show you how to expand your offering.

We’ll break down a simple framework you can use to build a group of offers that serve your customers at different stages of their journeys. This is called The Profit Pyramid.

What is the Profit Pyramid?

The profit pyramid is a stack of offers that has five tiers. And each tier represents a different type of product or service. As you move up the pyramid, the price point and value of your offers increase, while the potential customer base narrows.

I realize the word "pyramid" usually carries a negative connotation (pyramid scheme). But I promise there’s nothing slimy about this pyramid. It’s simply a way to think about offers that stack on top of one another.

For today’s lesson, you’re going to be an online chef. You teach busy parents to prepare restaurant-quality meals, with limited ingredients.

Okay, let’s get cooking.

First, here’s your pyramid:

Now let’s talk about what each level, or tier, means.

Tier 1: Lead Magnet (The Base)

The base of your pyramid is a lead magnet.

Lead magnets are pieces of high-value content that address specific pain points for your ideal customers. You offer your lead magnet in exchange for an email address. And in doing this, you help potential customers solve a problem and build your email list at the same time. Win/Win.

For this example, your lead magnet might be something like a simple checklist: The Super Parents Perfect shopping list. This list could help busy parents make sure they have the most common ingredients stocked at all times.

This free resource provides instant value to parents who are struggling make sure they have ingredients they can use in a pinch.

And this lead magnet helps you showcase your expertise, your personality, and your creativity.

This also gives you an opportunity to create awareness about your personal brand and a perfect lead-in to the next level of the pyramid: The Micro-offer.

Tier 2: Micro-Offer

Micro-offers are low-priced products that solve a narrow, specific problem quickly.

You can price them anywhere from $9 to $29, and they'll act as an easy entry point for customers to check out your paid content.

Going along with our online chef example, your micro-offer could be a Month of Meals Planner for $19, featuring 31 simple, limited-ingredient recipes that build on the previous shopping list you helped them curate.

You’re helping them move from stocking the ingredients to actually using them. A perfect next step.

This “toolkit” solves an immediate problem:

What’s for dinner tonight and the rest of this week?

And it can introduce broader concepts that busy parents may want to improve on such as ensuring meal variety, planning ahead, and more advanced meals for picky eaters.

Tier 3: Core Offer

Your core offer is your main product or service, typically priced between $97 and $497.

It should provide deep, comprehensive value in your specific area of expertise.

For example, your core product might be a digital course for $99 called Mastering The Family Dinner: From Homemade Pizza to 5-Star Meals.

Your course could teach busy parents to design monthly meal plans strategically. You might include lessons for efficient planning, budgeting, shopping, and cooking. You could include bonuses like:

• A food budget spreadsheet
• PDFs of food pairing suggestions
• Your favorite time-saving kitchen tools
• An e-book of your top recipes with shopping lists and required equipment
• Your best tips for easy clean-up
• And more…

Remember, the goal of your core offer should always be to deliver significant business or life-changing results.

Customers who complete your course and take the appropriate action should reap the rewards you promised and feel like they got a lot more than what they expected (and paid for).

Still, some customers may benefit from more personalized attention. So at the conclusion of your course, you can offer a bonus of some kind. Perhaps it’s a strategy session that includes one-on-one coaching. And this sets the stage for your next level: The high-ticket offer.

Tier 4: High-Ticket Offer

High-ticket offers are premium services, typically priced at $1,000 or more.

You build this kind of offer for your most committed customers who want you to provide personalized solutions for their situations.

Maybe some of your students want 1:1 cooking lessons or custom recipes based on their family budgets and dietary restrictions.

The sky is the limit. What type of high-ticket offer you can deliver, and more importantly, enjoy doing with or for your customers?

Because take it from me, doing something you hate, even for a lot of money, is not sustainable.

One of the best parts about your high-ticket services is that 1:1 customer interactions usually reveal common needs from your top clients.

So as you work closely with these customers, you'll gain insights that directly inform the design of your continuity program, creating a natural progression to the pyramid's final level.

Tier 5: Continuity Program (The Peak)

At the peak of your pyramid is what's called your "continuity program" — an ongoing membership or subscription that provides continuous value for an extended period of time.

This could be something like a $99/month "Dinnertime Insider" membership that includes monthly workshops, access to a community of other meal-planning & recipe-sharing parents, exclusive recipes and discounts, and access to you for monthly Q&A sessions.

Again, there are so many options for what you could possibly offer. Be sure to pick something you’ll be great at delivering, and something you will enjoy doing.

A continuity program can help you generate predictable, recurring revenue, which creates that stability that so many businesses struggle with. And it's a natural finish line of the journey you've taken your customers on, from free content through increasingly valuable, paid offerings.

Implementing the Profit Pyramid

Building a Profit Pyramid is a methodical process. And I recommend starting at the base and working your way up. The key is to make sure that each level naturally leads to the next.

Use insights from customers at lower levels to inform your next-tier offerings, and be flexible enough to adjust as you go — all based on feedback.

An important note: You don't need to offer all levels at once.

Build slowly and intentionally to make sure each product delivers real, tangible value before you try to move customers to the next tier.

I love this approach because it allows you to:

1. Cater to customers at different price points
2. Create multiple entry points for spending money with your business
3. Increase customer lifetime value
4. Build more diversified income streams

Wrapping Up

The Profit Pyramid is one of the most powerful frameworks for scaling your online business.

By structuring your offerings this way, you can solve problems for a wide range of customers while continuing to steadily grow your revenue.

If you don't have a product yet, start by creating a free lead magnet that solves one painful problem for your audience. And listen for feedback.

Already have a lead magnet? With feedback in mind, work to add a tier to your profit pyramid by looking at data and hypothesizing about what a natural next step could be.

If you already have a core product, consider lead magnets and micro products that can roll up naturally to your core offering.

The Profit Pyramid is a fun concept to think about because you can be extremely creative.

If you like lessons like these, then you’ll love my flagship course, The Creator MBA. I’ll take you on a logical, step-by-step journey from growing your audience, to landing your first client, to scaling up your offers (and revenue) effectively. No hacks. No tricks. Just instructions anyone can follow.

Join 4,500+ internet entrepreneurs here.

Good luck building out your pyramid, and I'll see you next Saturday.