June and July are the two months our studio in Dubai goes quiet. Every studio has a version of this, a stretch on the calendar when the phone stops ringing for reasons that have nothing to do with how good the work is. This year we sold prepaid session packages right through that stretch, from the start of June into the first weeks of July, and the money landed while the slow months were happening, not before them, which is what actually carried us through rather than just filling the calendar back up later, the same cash flow timing problem most studios only fix after it is already a crisis.
Three prepaid packages, priced higher with each release and sold across those same six or seven weeks, brought in 39 packages for $29,656 total (measured). That's the headline number. The part worth stealing is why raising the price each round worked, why revenue landing during the slow stretch matters as much as sessions eventually filling it, and the number that actually tells you whether a campaign like this paid off once people start using what they bought.
This video runs about 12 minutes. The first few minutes are the story and the numbers, the Podyx build starts around the 4 minute mark, where the bundle plan gets created, priced, given its included extra, sized into tiers, added to our own website, and walked through from the client's side at checkout. Skip ahead to the 4 minute mark if you just want the build.
The offer itself was straightforward. 10 sessions of recording plus live mix, session photos included in every one, all 10 to be used before 31 August.
Do prepaid session packages actually work because of the discount, or the deadline?
The deadline does the work, the discount just gets attention. 10 sessions expiring on 31 August force 10 visits into the exact window we needed filled, the same logic behind filling empty studio hours on purpose instead of waiting for demand to show up. Giving people a year to use them would have meant selling next year's work today at a discount, same revenue, worse margin, and a calendar that's still empty this summer. The price is what makes someone look. The deadline is what actually gets them through the door in the window that matters, on top of the cash that already landed the week they bought in.
The price went up every time we released more
We didn't run one offer, we ran three, released weeks apart, and the price per session climbed with each one instead of dropping, the same tier and anchor psychology that shapes what clients pay in any pricing structure. A closed early release went out first to a small group of past supporters, 10 sessions at $54.43 a session, 4 sold. The public release followed at $81.67 a session, 21 sold. A second release in July offered 5 sessions only, at $103.43 a session, and sold 14, including one custom-length package, more than the public launch itself.
Most studios do the opposite as a deadline approaches, discount harder to force urgency. All that teaches people is to wait for the next round. Reward the commitment instead, more sessions and an earlier decision buys a better rate, and nobody who backed the campaign early ends up worse off than someone who waited it out.
The build, in Podyx
From the admin panel, Bundle Plans, then Add New. Name it, write the description, what's included, how it works, any fine print worth spelling out. Set the session duration, the linked service, ours was recording plus live mix, and add the included extra as an additional service with a quantity per session. Ours was session photos, next to nothing for us to shoot, a real month of content for a client who'd otherwise have to arrange it themselves. Set the number of sessions, a 10-session and a 5-session version in our case. Set the discount, add an image, the highlight text and the offer text, then publish, it lands on the studio's own Podyx homepage automatically. We also built a section on our own website that links straight into the bundle page inside Podyx. From there it runs itself, a client clicks through, pays at checkout, and the package lands on their profile ready to book against. Nobody on the team has to touch it. If you're sizing your own, a 5, 10, 20-session ladder, priced a little higher per session as the commitment shrinks, is the shape worth copying, even if you only build two tiers of it the way we did, and it sits right alongside the rebuilt subscriptions system if you'd rather sell ongoing access instead of a fixed bundle.
The number that actually tells you if it worked
$29,656 is the number that looks good on the day it lands. Redemption is the one that actually matters, because a session that's paid for and never used quietly changes what the buyer paid without changing what came into the studio. As of today, 65% of the 328 sessions sold have been used, with 12 days left before the deadline (measured, interim, the final number lands after 31 August). At that rate, a public-release session priced at $81.67 works out to $125.65 for every session actually shown up for, still under a regular rate close to $140. Full redemption beats breakage every time it's tested. Someone who paid for 10 sessions and used 6 knows exactly what they left on the table, even when the terms were clear from day one, and that's not someone who buys the next package. Chasing the last outstanding sessions before the deadline is worth more than banking the difference.
The channel we didn't plan for
This was built as a revenue play. It turned out to be the best new-client channel of the summer. 14 of the 39 buyers, 36%, had never booked a session before, and they came in during the two months new clients are hardest to win. One of them upgraded into a $3,090 production package after their first session, close to a tenth of the entire campaign, from a single conversation that only happened because a prepaid package got them through the door first.
Run one of these and the same four things hold, plus one more worth saying plainly. Size the deadline to the window that actually needs filling, a generous expiry just means next year sold today at a discount. Price the commitment, not the calendar, so whoever moves first never ends up worse off than whoever waited. Add whatever costs nothing but is genuinely wanted, and keep the best accounts, corporate, agency, the regulars, out of the cheap lane so they don't quietly downgrade themselves into it, which is really just one more way of diversifying revenue beyond a straight hourly booking. And remember the point isn't only to fill the studio later, it's to get real revenue in the door during the exact weeks it would otherwise be thin, the same problem a payment sequencing fix solved from the other direction last episode.
Thinking about running something like this yourself? Drop me an email at hello@podyx.com and let's set it up together!
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