a single source, nothing corroborates it

Take a block of months up front, then rerun it

Prepayment fixes cash flow, locks the customer in for the period and lets you spend more to acquire the next one, but size the block to what this buyer will actually hand over rather than defaulting to a year. Wrapping the subscription inside a cohort product, prepaid access plus training and hands on setup at one price, turns recurring revenue into something launchable. Rerun the same launch on a schedule with the cohort capped, and a one off spike becomes a line you can plan around.

The method

1. 01

   Take payment for a block of months up front: it funds acquisition and locks in the customer for the period.

2. 02

   Size the prepay to what a beginner will actually hand over rather than defaulting to annual.

3. 03

   Wrap the subscription inside a launchable cohort product: prepaid access plus training, templates and hands-on setup, sold as one price.

4. 04

   Turn a one-off revenue spike into something you can plan around by rerunning the same launch every month.

5. 05

   Cap each cohort at a small number and launch it monthly, so scarcity is real and every launch is an event you can systematise.

What it returned

• $500

  A $500-600 annual payment felt too high for someone starting out, so he set $300 for six months

• 10

  ConvertKit Academy: 10 members a month at $300, covering six months of ConvertKit at $50/month plus incentive-graphic templates, a course on reaching the first 100 subscribers, autoresponder training, and a team member setting up the account

• $2,000

  The first Academy launch spiked $2,000 in a day from 7 customers prepaying about $300 each, roughly doubling the cash available versus MRR alone, with those customers rolling onto $50/month after six months

• Jason Cohen's MicroConf talk on annual prepay at WPEngine: prepayment fixes cash flow so you can spend more per customer, and prepaid customers churn less

Sources

• How selling a SaaS app like an info-product doubled revenueNathan Barry · nathanbarry.com · Annual prepay · 2014-06-26