Stage 1 — Launch
First pricing
Pick a model and a number you can ship today — pricing paralysis kills more launches than wrong prices do.
- 01
Pick one model
Free trial → paid for clear-value SaaS; one-time purchase for tool-like products with no ongoing cost; freemium only if the free tier is genuinely useful alone; usage-based when value scales with use. With zero users, choose free trial or waitlist-to-paid — you can't extract revenue from nobody.
- 02
Anchor against alternatives
List three alternatives and their prices — including "do it manually" and "don't solve it," which are usually the real competitors. Your price communicates where you sit: meaningfully cheaper reads as lighter, similar reads as comparable, higher demands visible proof of more value.
- 03
Anchor against value
Estimate what the product saves or makes per month in the user's own terms (hours × their rate, or revenue enabled). Charging 10–20% of created value is a defensible starting zone for a solo product.
Tip: If the value story doesn't survive one sentence — "$X/mo to save Y hours" — fix positioning before pricing. - 04
Two tiers, not four
A free-or-trial entry tier and one paid tier is enough for V1. Every extra tier adds a decision your visitor must make before paying you. Name the paid tier something plain (Pro), list 3–5 concrete features, and make the popular choice visually obvious.
- 05
Ship it, then watch one number
Publish the pricing page and pick the single leading indicator that tells you if the price works — usually free-to-paid conversion after ~100 signups (healthy is roughly 2–5%). Below that: lower friction or price. At the top of the range with no complaints: you're underpriced.
Tip: Your first price is a hypothesis, not a commitment. Raising prices later on new users is normal and nobody riots.
Use this in your AI agent
Every step above is baked into the /pricing-first-time agent skill. Install shipping-skills and type /pricing-first-time to run the full playbook interactively for your product.