Bernard Bado

Ditch your subscription. ​ I killed 3 startups because of recurring payments: 1. IndiePage: ✅ It makes $4,000/month on autopilot ($45 for lifetime access). ❌ It made $0/month when I priced it at $15/year. ​ 2. MakeLanding: ✅ It made $100/day when I launched ($19 per landing page generated). ❌ It made $0 with a $5/month subscription. ​ 3. HabitsGarden: ✅ 100% of users chose the $47 lifetime deal. ❌ Nobody buys the $5/month plan. Business owners love subscriptions. Customers hate them. ​ Here’s the invisible cost of charging recurring payments: ​ - Conversion rate drop: People are reluctant to commit to another subscription, which triggers objections and hesitation. - Fighting churn: People lose interest soon after signing up. Instead of a steady income, you’re constantly replacing customers who cancel. Selling a $10/month monthly subscription is as hard as selling a $100 one-time payment. ​ Let’s assume you built an excellent SaaS (10% churn = 10% of your customers cancel at the end of the month). Imagine you get 100 customers today: - You’ll earn $7,176 with subscriptions, after 365 days. - You earn $10,000 with one-time payments, right now. ​ Subscription doesn’t mean recurring revenue. If you’re working solo, in 99% of cases you’re better off financially with one-time payments. One-time payments alternative ​ Sometimes, your business has recurring costs, and you can’t afford one-time payments. I’m not talking about bandwidth (that’s negligible) but things like AI credits or database costs. ​ Then try credits-based pricing: ​ - Let your customers pay upfront for what they’ll use. Generate 10 AI photos for $5. - Then, add a Good-Better-Best package. 100 AI photos for $20 ($.2/photo looks cheap now). ​ This removes the subscription friction (which boosts your conversion rate) and helps you avoid constantly fighting churn. When subscriptions make sense ​ 👔 B2B: If you’re selling to businesses, subscriptions make sense because the end goal of any business is to make money. 🤕 Complex credits: When tracking credits is too complex or it’s hard to quantify what your customers use. ​ Subscriptions serve a specific purpose. Recurring payment = Recurring value according to my friend @DanKulkov. Just because competitors charge recurring payments doesn’t mean you should. Remember, people are tired of subscriptions, and purchase behavior is changing. Not charging a subscription can be a competitive edge. ​ Oh, and entrepreneurs flex on each other with MRR charts. It’s a status game, don’t fall for it. In the end, the customer is king.