skip to content

← back to the plays

independence5 unconnected · 5 more authors in those circles
standing

contested · 10 claims against 6

applies to

b2b, no audience needed

outcome not stated

confidence

high

evidence

19 claims · 15 articles · 4 receipts

window

2012-11-12 → 2026-04-23

5 builders who never spoke to each other · contested

Charge a lot to a few, or a little to very many

Both routes reach the same revenue and almost nothing else about the business is shared. A couple of dozen subscribers at a high price covers a salary, a hundred members paying a lot is reachable where a thousand paying a little is not, and narrowing the audience justifies raising by a multiple rather than a percentage. Against that sit operators earning well from thousands of individuals, a product on a very low annual price whose narrow feature set keeps costs down, and the reminder that serving both ends at once drags your headlines toward the generic.

What both sides agree on

  • Be wary of the thousand-a-month tier as a profit zone: the selling and engineering effort matches what much bigger contracts demand while the revenue does not.
  • At ten thousand a month the software alone will not be enough, so plan on your own professional services team or consulting partners to finish the job for each customer.
  • The cost of serving multiple segments is concrete: headlines drift toward the generic, and your pricing must open low enough for individuals while scaling to enterprise.

Where this splits

Haines, Levels and Barry argue for a high price to a narrow audience, while Jackson, Tringas and the Carrd account report sustainable businesses built on thousands of buyers paying very little.

  1. side 01 · 10 claims

    Charge a high price to a narrow audience

    Corey Haines · Glen Allsopp · Justin Jackson · Nathan Barry · Pieter Levels · Tyler Tringas

    1. 1Sell to businesses rather than consumers, and keep the price below the level that would need its own line in a budget so nobody has to justify it
    2. 2Choose the industry whose customers earn more per subscriber, and set prices against that, not against the market you started in.
    3. 3You can charge a lot when the product speaks directly to the customer's revenue, displaces someone they already pay, and would be a nuisance to build in-house.
    4. 4Charge a professional-grade subscription price for coverage that a specific industry needs, and discount only slightly for small teams.
    5. 5Price high enough that a couple of dozen subscribers pay a full salary, which is a much smaller target than mass signups.

  2. side 02 · 6 claims

    Charge little and make it back on volume

    AJ · Dru Riley · Justin Jackson · Rand Fishkin · Tyler Tringas

    1. 1Spread your revenue across many small, unglamorous businesses rather than a few large ones or a single fashionable industry, because concentrated revenue is fragile revenue.
    2. 2Accept a lower price point in this market and make the money back on volume; thousands of individual paying users can support a business doing one to five million a year.
    3. 3Don't assume headcount predicts spend - small partnerships and solo operators can pay you more than your enterprise accounts, because people pay for value received.
    4. 4A very low annual price can work if the feature set stays narrow enough that support and infrastructure are your only real costs.
    5. 5Sell to developers at a low monthly price and dogfood the thing yourself, since the buyer and the builder are the same person.

What it returned

  • $80

    Baremetrics averaged $80 per user on plans from $29 to $249 that scale with the customer's own paying customers, with no free option and a card required at signup

  • $10,000

    The author's example is that $10,000 a month from a thousand customers paying $10 is sturdier than two customers paying $5,000, and that long-tenured subscribers count for more than ones who joined last month

  • Attributed in part to Joel Spolsky's argument that almost every startup he has seen priced too low because founders imagine selling to people like themselves

  • Drip moved into e-commerce email marketing, where per-subscriber rates are much higher than for bloggers, and raised prices accordingly

Sources

the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

One email a week. Unsubscribe in one click, and the address is used for this and nothing else.

More in pricing

all pricing plays

the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

963 corroborated plays to draw from · 3 a week

One email a week. Unsubscribe in one click, and the address is used for this and nothing else.