Why I offer location-based pricing for my courses 🌍

What's the problem? ❌

When shopping online, everyone usually pays the same price for a given item, regardless of where you live.

But that ignores the fact that a given item may be vastly more affordable in one country than another.

For example, a $99 USD course is affordable for many people in the US or Australia, but it might represent a significant portion of the average monthly wage in another country.

Here are examples from a few of my students:

“Currently i live in Croatia, that is eastern Europe, the second most poor country in EU (first is Bulgaria), i mean, life is not that bad here to be honest. We have a great climate, nature, sea, and even living standards are not that bad (still we are EU). However, we are not that rich, currently I am unemployed here, minimum wage here is literally 500$. I am using this free time to put myself in a new position for changing my career, that is why I would like to go for your course.”

“The economy in Iran has experienced a severe decline in the last years... The Iranian currency, Rial, has significantly lost its value, and today one US Dollar is roughly equal to 350,000 Rials. Due to this hardship, the Iranain salary has become significantly low compared to the other countries... The total monthly income of my mother and my father is something around 300 US dollars... The fee for your course is $99, which is a lot of money compared to my family’s income, and it is roughly the cost of living for one month in Iran.”

Here's my solution ✅

That’s why I’ve launched “Purchasing Power Parity” pricing (also known as location-based pricing) for ALL of my paid courses. My goal is to adjust the price based on the average “purchasing power” of someone living in that country as compared to the US (where I live).

To access the adjusted price, all you have to do is visit one of my course pages. If you’re located in one of the 160+ qualifying countries, you’ll automatically see a discount code at the top of the page:

Discounts vary from 25% to 85% based on location. Check it out by clicking on one of my courses:

• Python Essentials for Data Scientists ($69)
• Become a Regex Superhero ($69)
• Building an Effective Machine Learning Workflow with scikit-learn ($99)
• Machine Learning with Text in Python ($299)
• Machine Learning bundle ($349)

If you see a banner at the top of the page, please let me know whether your country is being detected accurately!

If you don’t see a banner at the top of the page, that could mean you aren’t located in one of the 160+ qualifying countries. (If you think you should be seeing a banner, please let me know where you’re located!)

How did people respond? 💬

Here are a few of the responses I received when I launched location-based pricing:

“When I got to know Data School, I never thought about buying your courses, even though I was interested in them, because it was very expensive for me, but when you applied for the Purchasing Power Parity discount, you gave me a chance to buy it. So for that, you deserve a lot of thanks.”

“Thank you so much. It means a lot to me that the differences in the affordability of American products around the world is being recognized.”

“Your location based pricing is both a fair and an excellent strategy.”

“Wow that’s so incredible and unheard too, great work Kevin :)”

“This is a great initiative to look at purchase price parity. Highly appreciated.”

“A month ago I was hired as DS intern and I have been considering purchasing your course and asking for the discount because I was unemployed for a long time. I can’t describe my joy when I saw this e-mail. Thank you for giving us this opportunity to learn at affordable price.”

This isn’t a perfect solution, since income levels and personal circumstances vary widely within a country. That’s why I also offer student discounts and hardship-based discounts, regardless of where you live. (Please email me about this if it applies to you!)

How you can help! 🙌

If you’re in favor of location-based pricing, here are a few options for how you can help to support the movement:

1. Do you know of other independent creators that offer location-based pricing? Tell your friends about them, and feel free to share a link to them in the comments below!
2. Do you have a favorite creator that you wish would offer location-based pricing? Send this blog post to them!
3. Are you a creator that would like to offer location-based pricing? I recommend using Parity Deals to automatically offer location-based pricing. It’s easy to set up: (1) Create an account, (2) assign a discount to each country group, (3) create coupon codes in your storefront (I use Podia), (4) decide which pages the discount banner should appear on, and (5) add a single line of Javascript to your site!

👆 These are affiliate links, which means that I may earn a small commission if you sign up using my links. However, I only promote services that I personally use and recommend!

Please let me know if you have any questions, and feel free to email me if you need help accessing a course discount!