Pricing + First Payment Worksheet

Your goal is not perfect pricing. Your goal is to get one real person to pay for a narrow outcome.

Start with one simple paid offer, use the fastest payment path available, and learn from the conversation.

What This Worksheet Is For

Use this when you have:

• A small working app, AI tool, template, dashboard, or automation.
• A specific user with a painful problem.
• Enough product or manual process to deliver one useful outcome.
• No pricing confidence yet.

Do not use this for:

• Enterprise pricing.
• Complex usage-based billing.
• Fundraising projections.
• Multi-person sales teams.
• Long pricing research projects.

What Counts As A First Paid Signal

The first paid signal can be:

• A $19 one-time payment.
• A $29/mo subscription.
• A $99 founder deal.
• A $250 setup plus first month.
• A paid pilot with 3-5 early users.

It is strongest when the buyer is not a close friend or family member, understands the offer, and pays for the outcome you intend to deliver.

Avoid:

• "Pay me later if you like it."
• Unlimited free beta access.
• Enterprise custom pricing.
• A pricing page with six plans.
• Spending a week debating $19 vs $24.

Step 1: Define The Paid Outcome

Fill this out before choosing a number.

My product helps:
 
Who has this problem:
 
The painful situation is:
 
The outcome they want is:
 
The old way costs them:
 
My tiny paid promise is:

Good paid promises:

• Generate 30 short-form video hooks from one YouTube URL.
• Find 20 qualified Reddit posts where your product can be mentioned.
• Turn one messy CSV into a clean investor update dashboard.
• Rewrite one landing page hero section into 10 sharper variants.

Bad paid promises:

• AI productivity platform.
• Marketing automation.
• All-in-one founder assistant.
• A better dashboard.

Step 2: Choose Your Value Metric

A value metric is what pricing scales with. Good value metrics are easy to understand and tied to customer value.

Selector questions:

• Does the metric increase when the customer gets more value?
• Can the customer understand it in 5 seconds?
• Is it hard to game?
• Can a small customer start cheaply?
• Can a larger customer naturally pay more?
• Can you measure it without engineering complexity?

Beginner recommendation: if unsure, start with a flat monthly price plus a simple usage limit.

Example:

$29/mo includes 100 generations/month.

Upgrade later only after users hit limits.

Step 3: Pick Your First Price

Suggested starter ranges, not market benchmarks:

Use these as starting hypotheses, then adjust based on buyer urgency, customer segment, cost to serve, current spend, and real purchase behavior.

• Consumer-ish, low urgency: start under $20.
• Indie founder or creator tool: start $19-$49.
• B2B time-saving tool: start $49-$149.
• High-touch setup: charge a setup fee.
• If the buyer can directly tie the output to revenue, you may have room to charge more.

Step 4: Build A Good / Better / Best Offer

For first-dollar validation, keep tiers simple. You can publish only one tier and keep the other two for sales conversations.

Worksheet:

Core outcome:
 
Usage limit for Good:
 
Usage limit for Better:
 
Usage limit for Best:
 
One feature worth upgrading for:
 
One support/setup benefit worth paying for:

Suggested starter structures:

Rules:

• If you offer three tiers, make Better the recommended/default tier when it matches the most common buyer.
• Make Best mostly an anchor unless early users ask for it.
• Do not create more than 3 paid options.
• Do not build custom billing automation until someone has paid or committed. Use hosted checkout first; if payment unlocks app access automatically, implement verified server-side fulfillment.