How to Tell a Regular Customer You're Raising Your Price

Tell a regular customer about a price increase directly and early: a short, personal message stating the new price, when it takes effect, and genuine thanks for their repeat support — sent before their next order, not discovered at checkout. Because a Brillay purchase is one-off rather than a recurring charge, the new price only applies going forward. Custom Work lets you offer clearly scoped commissions and services: you set the price, the scope and the delivery time, and followers submit a brief and pay before you start.

Scope note: the notice windows, grandfathering options, and message scripts on this page apply to any repeat buyer of a one-off, non-subscription purchase — a freelance client rebooking the same deliverable, a commission customer, a returning coaching student, or a Brillay regular. The sections that name Brillay describe Brillay's own product mechanics and are labeled as such.

Source note: Brillay's own fee and policy claims below are cited by full canonical URL to Brillay's published pages at https://brillay.com/pricing, https://brillay.com/how-it-works, and the individual feature pages, which are the primary source for Brillay's mechanics, with the exact policy wording quoted. External figures are cited inline to the original publisher, with that publisher's own publication date.

A repeat buyer is different from a stranger seeing your price for the first time — they already have a reference point, so the same increase a new visitor barely notices can feel personal to someone who has paid your old rate three or four times. The fix isn't avoiding the increase; it's saying it plainly and early, because a Brillay purchase is one time, with no membership, and the new price only applies going forward.

How do you tell a regular customer their price is going up?

Tell a regular customer about a price increase in one short direct message sent before their next order, with three things in it: the new price, the date it takes effect, and one line of thanks for their repeat business. Send it in the channel you already use with that buyer, not a public price-list update.

For example: “Starting October 1, my portfolio review is going from $25 to $35. Wanted you to hear it directly before you book again. Really appreciate you being a regular.” Then reuse the same structure with your actual service, prices, and date. If you're still landing on the exact figure to announce, whether to price at $19 or $20 walks through how that last-digit decision affects perceived value.

Send a price-change message through the same email or social DM you already use with that follower. A price increase buried in a general announcement post reads as impersonal to someone who has ordered from you repeatedly; a direct note reads as respect for the relationship. You choose the fixed price your buyer sees. Full details are on Brillay's pricing page. Clear pricing helps prevent “that isn't what I agreed to” disputes. For Custom Work, followers pay upfront; you deliver the defined work by the delivery time you set. The same principle applies off-platform — on a freelance invoice, an Etsy listing, or a commission sheet, the number a repeat buyer sees is the number you set. On Brillay, each custom order arrives on your own page with the scope and delivery window already written down, and there is no listing to renew.

US regulators have stated the up-front-pricing principle explicitly. The Federal Trade Commission's Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees, 16 C.F.R. Part 464, took effect on May 12, 2025 and requires covered sellers to disclose the total price a consumer will pay up front rather than reveal it later in the transaction (FTC press release on the Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees, May 2025). That FTC rule covers live-event ticketing and short-term lodging, not custom work, so it imposes no legal duty on a Brillay offer — it is cited here only as the clearest official expression of the idea that a buyer should meet a price before checkout, not at it.

How much notice should you give before a price increase?

Give a regular seven to 14 days' notice before a new price goes live: that window is relationship guidance modeled on subscription-law notice floors, not a legal requirement, because no US federal rule sets a notice period for a one-off purchase. California's subscription statute, requiring seven to 30 days, is the nearest regulated benchmark.

The legal backdrop to that seven-to-14-day recommendation is narrow and worth stating precisely. The federal rule that would have tightened recurring-billing disclosures is not in force: on July 8, 2025 the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit vacated the Federal Trade Commission's amended Negative Option Rule in its entirety in Custom Communications, Inc. v. FTC, No. 24-3137 (Eighth Circuit opinion, July 8, 2025). Even when the FTC's amended Negative Option Rule was scheduled to take effect, that rule governed subscription enrollment and cancellation rather than one-off purchases, so it would not have set a notice period for a single async order.

State-level subscription law is the nearest analogue that does specify a number. California's Automatic Renewal Law requires a business changing the fee on an existing auto-renewing or continuous-service offer to notify the consumer at least seven days but no more than 30 days before the fee change takes effect, according to a consumer alert the California Attorney General's office published on September 4, 2025 (California Attorney General consumer alert, September 4, 2025). That same California Attorney General consumer alert, published September 4, 2025, notes that California's Automatic Renewal Law was amended effective July 1, 2025 to strengthen those disclosure duties.

“If a consumer accepts a change in the fee for an existing auto-renewal or continuous-service offer, the business must give the consumer notice at least seven days but no more than 30 days before the fee change takes effect.” — California Attorney General, consumer alert on California's Automatic Renewal Law, published September 4, 2025

A Custom Work order is a one-time purchase, with no membership, so California's Automatic Renewal Law does not apply to it. Followers pay upfront, and you deliver by the delivery time you set. Brillay, How It Works, https://brillay.com/how-it-works Brillay lets you change your price at any time: Brillay's Paid Questions page states “You can change your price anytime” (Brillay, Paid Questions, https://brillay.com/features/paid-private-questions), and Brillay's Personalized Videos page describes a starter offer “you can rename, re-price, and edit anytime”. The seven-to-14-day window recommended on this page is Brillay creator-relations guidance modeled on that California statutory floor, and it is not a legal obligation for any one-off sale, on Brillay or anywhere else.

Should you grandfather your regulars at the old price?

Grandfathering a regular at your old price is optional, not required. A time-boxed grace period — honoring the old price on orders placed within 7 to 14 days — rewards your most frequent buyers without permanently discounting your work. Open-ended grandfathering is the version to avoid, because unwinding it later reads to a regular as a second price increase.

Avoid open-ended, unstated grandfathering in particular. If a regular assumes they're locked in forever because you never said otherwise, the eventual correction feels like a broken promise — worse than raising the price once, clearly. Grandfathering is a time-boxed exception rather than a standing policy of per-buyer pricing — see whether you should charge every follower the same price for why a single public number is usually the simpler long-term choice.

On Brillay, you set a fixed price for Custom Work. For a short old-price window, tell regulars the deadline, leave that price live until then, and publish the new price afterward. For Custom Work, followers pay before you do the work; you deliver on your own time. The same mechanic works on any single-price storefront — an Etsy listing, a commission sheet, a freelance rate card: honor the old number on anything ordered before your announced deadline, then edit the listing once.

What are the exact scripts for telling a regular your price is going up?

Four scripts cover almost every price-increase conversation with a regular: the plain announcement, the announcement with an old-price grace period, the announcement with no grandfathering offered, and the reply to a regular who pushes back. Each one is three sentences or fewer, and each states the new price and its effective date explicitly.

Fill in the effective date and both prices as literal values before sending; a script that still contains a bracket is the most common way a price-increase message reads as a mass announcement rather than a personal note. Send whichever script fits in whatever private channel you already share with that buyer — an email thread or a client DM. Use email or your usual social DM to tell a Brillay regular about a future price change; a custom request order is delivered once.

What should a price-increase message to a regular actually include?

A price-increase message to a regular needs four elements: the current price, the new price, the date the change starts, and one line acknowledging their repeat support. Brillay's creator-relations guidance is to stop there — a long justification paragraph tends to read as defensive to a follower who has already paid you several times.

The four-element structure — current price, new price, effective date, thanks — is Brillay editorial guidance for creator relations, not a research finding, and any seller should adapt it to how they normally talk to their buyers. The same four elements carry over to a freelance rate-increase email, a commission-sheet update, or a coaching-package announcement. What a repeat buyer needs to hear differs slightly by format, using Brillay's offer types as the worked example:

Price and delivery time are separate settings a regular may need to hear about separately. With Custom Work, you define what's included, what you need from the follower, what's excluded, the fixed price, and the delivery time. One defined delivery closes the Custom Work order. That mechanism is what keeps a price increase from turning into scope creep or endless changes — the follower gets the defined delivery, not an open-ended work relationship. Brillay's how-it-works page states that a creator delivers “asynchronously on your own time within the delivery time you set,” so telling a regular that your delivery time is unchanged is a distinct reassurance from telling them the new price. A new listed price applies to future checkouts.

Should you explain why you're raising your price?

Explaining why your price is going up is optional and usually helps, but keep the reason to one short, factual line rather than a defense of your right to charge more. “Demand has grown,” “each order takes me longer now,” or “my costs have risen since I set this price” is enough for a regular deciding whether to keep buying. If “demand has grown” is your actual reason, a price increase and a temporary order pause solve related but different problems — see how to pause taking orders when you're overwhelmed if volume, not just price, is the real issue.

If cost-of-living framing is genuinely your reason, there is a citable number behind it. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers rose 3.4 percent over the 12 months ending July 2026, in the CPI news release published August 12, 2026 (BLS Consumer Price Index Summary, released August 12, 2026). The same BLS Consumer Price Index news release, published August 12, 2026, reported that the all-items index had risen 3.5 percent over the 12 months ending June 2026, so the year-over-year rate was easing slightly rather than accelerating. Don't overstate the inflation argument: a vague appeal to “inflation” for an increase far larger than that 3.4 percent 12-month CPI change reads as an excuse rather than an explanation.

Raising a price is also common rather than exceptional among small sellers. The National Federation of Independent Business reported that a net 31 percent of small-business owners raised their average selling prices in July 2026, down 7 points from June, in its Small Business Economic Trends report released August 11, 2026 (NFIB Small Business Economic Trends, released August 11, 2026). The same NFIB July 2026 report found that a net 28 percent of small-business owners planned to raise prices in the following months, down 4 points from June. Those two NFIB figures survey US small businesses with employees, storefronts, and inventory rather than solo creators, so read them as evidence that repricing is routine across the economy and not as a benchmark for what a creator offer should cost.

Freelancer-specific data points the same direction. Fiverr reported that Gen Z freelancers raised their rates by an average of 32 percent, citing 2024 data from its own Freelance Economic Impact Report, on Fiverr's freelancing statistics page updated August 2, 2026. Upwork reported that 39 percent of all US workers freelanced in 2026, up 4 percentage points from 2025, citing its Future Workforce Index research published July 14, 2026. Neither the Fiverr figure nor the Upwork figure tells a creator what to charge, but together they show that raising a rate is ordinary practice in independent creative work rather than a sign something has gone wrong.

What if a regular pushes back or asks to keep the old price?

When a regular pushes back on a price increase, acknowledge the ask, hold the new price for future orders, and offer one short grace window rather than reopening the old rate. A reply that works: “Totally get it — I can still do [old price] for one more order if you book by [date], and it's [new price] after that.”

Comparing prices is a normal consumer reflex, and its prevalence has been measured. PwC's 2025 Customer Experience Survey, published September 29, 2025, found that 69 percent of consumers say comparing prices significantly influences their decision to engage with a brand (PwC 2025 Customer Experience Survey, published September 29, 2025). A regular who pushes back is doing that comparison out loud, so the useful reply names what the price buys and gives one dated deadline rather than reopening the old rate indefinitely.

If the pushback is really about whether the price still feels worth it rather than the number itself, that is a different conversation — see what to say when a follower says your price is too high for handling the value objection specifically, separate from the notice-and-timing question this page covers.

Does raising your price risk losing your best repeat customers?

Raising your price does carry some risk of losing a repeat customer, but mishandling the announcement is the more expensive failure. Published retention research puts the cost of replacing a lost customer at five to 25 times the cost of keeping one, which is the economic case for a personal, early message rather than a silent price change at checkout.

Harvard Business Review reported that acquiring a new customer is five to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing one, in Amy Gallo's article published October 29, 2014. The same Harvard Business Review article, published October 29, 2014, cites research by Frederick Reichheld of Bain & Company finding that increasing customer retention rates by 5 percent increases profits by 25 percent to 95 percent (Harvard Business Review). The five-to-25-times acquisition-cost figure and the 25-to-95-percent profit figure are both ranges drawn from cross-industry studies, not guaranteed results for any one creator.

“Depending on which study you believe, and what industry you're in, acquiring a new customer is anywhere from five to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing one.” — Amy Gallo, Harvard Business Review, “The Value of Keeping the Right Customers,” published October 29, 2014

Poor handling of any change in a buyer relationship carries measurable downside. PwC's 2025 Customer Experience Survey, published September 29, 2025, found that 52 percent of consumers said they stopped using or buying from a brand because they had a bad experience with its products or services (PwC 2025 Customer Experience Survey). If you're unsure your current price reflects your actual demand, why creators with the same following charge different prices covers what should drive the number, and how to stop underpricing your follower offers covers the case for raising it at all.

Frequently asked questions

Common questions about price increases for repeat buyers cover four things: whether Brillay requires advance notice, whether a price change touches orders a regular already placed, whether to raise prices for everyone at once, and whether the message differs by offer type. Short answers follow, with Brillay's mechanics cited to its own documentation.

Does Brillay require a notice period before I raise my price?

No. Brillay lets you change your price at any time: Brillay's Paid Questions page states “You can change your price anytime”. Giving regulars a heads-up is a relationship choice, not a platform requirement.

Does changing my price affect a custom request order already placed?

No. A price change applies only to future orders. For Custom Work, followers pay upfront, and you deliver by the delivery time you set.

Should I raise prices for everyone at once, or just new customers?

The simpler approach is to raise the listed price for everyone going forward, then decide separately whether to give existing regulars a short grace window at the old price. Charging two different public prices for the same offer long-term is harder to manage and can create confusion if buyers compare notes.

What if my regular customer stops ordering after the price goes up?

Losing a buyer is a real possibility with any increase, which is why a short, personal message and — if it fits — a brief grace period reduce the chance of a regular walking away. If a regular doesn't return, that outcome is information about where your price sits for that buyer, not proof the increase was wrong.

Is a price increase different for a Paid Question versus a custom request?

The message is the same either way — new price, effective date, thanks for their support. The one difference is scope and delivery time: with Custom Work, tell the buyer whether the defined deliverable or delivery time is changing alongside the price. The Custom Work order closes with one delivery.

The guidance above — direct notice, a dated effective price, an optional short grace window — applies to any repeat buyer of a one-off purchase, whatever tool you invoice through. The note below is about Brillay specifically, for readers who want a place to host the offers a price increase would apply to. Brillay has no follower minimum and nothing to apply for, which helps small-audience creators raise a listed service price from their own page. Creators can receive payouts in 41 supported countries, with payout setup managed through Brillay.

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