You have no idea what users are willing to pay
You guessed your price, picked a round number, or copied a competitor from two years ago. You've never actually asked users what they'd pay, so you might be 2x too low or 2x too high and you'd have no way of knowing. ProfitWell analyzed pricing at 5,000+ SaaS companies and found that companies who do pricing research even once per year grow 2x faster than those who set-and-forget. The good news: willingness-to-pay research isn't academic. A Van Westendorp survey takes 4 questions and 30-50 responses. You can run it with a Typeform in a weekend. ConvertKit, Buffer, and Baremetrics all publicly shared how simple pricing research transformed their growth. The worst pricing strategy is the one you never revisit.
TL;DR
"You have no idea what users are willing to pay" is a common monetization problem. Key signs include price was set at launch and hasn't been tested or changed since and zero data on willingness to pay — not even anecdotal from customer calls. Start by trying: Run a van westendorp survey with 30-50 users (4 questions: too cheap, cheap, expensive, too expensive) — buffer open-sourced their process for this.
Overview
If you're dealing with “you have no idea what users are willing to pay”, you're not alone. This is one of the most common monetization challenges that solo founders and indie hackers face. Below you'll find the warning signs to watch for, root causes to investigate, and quick wins you can try today.
Signs you have this problem
- Price was set at launch and hasn't been tested or changed since
- Zero data on willingness to pay — not even anecdotal from customer calls
- Conversion rate is a mystery — you don't know if it's the product, the positioning, or the price
- Competitors charge wildly different amounts (2-10x range) and you have no idea where you should sit
- Price objections are either literally zero (too cheap) or constant (too expensive) with no middle ground
- You feel anxious about pricing because you have no data to back up the number
Why this happens
- Willingness-to-pay research sounds hard or academic — it's actually 4 questions and a spreadsheet
- Fear of asking users about pricing directly — you think it'll seem greedy or unprofessional
- No framework for pricing research — you don't know where to start
- Assumption that lower price always means more customers — ProfitWell data shows this is wrong in most cases
- Pricing treated as a one-time launch decision instead of an ongoing experiment you revisit quarterly
Quick wins to try
Run a Van Westendorp survey with 30-50 users (4 questions: too cheap, cheap, expensive, too expensive) — Buffer open-sourced their process for this
A/B test pricing on landing pages with different visitor segments over 30 days — test 2-3 price points, not just two
Ask 20 recently churned users: 'was price a factor? what would you have paid?' — this data is gold and easy to collect
Interview 10 power users about the value they get in dollar terms: 'how much time/money does this save you monthly?' — Baremetrics used this to justify their pricing tiers
When to prioritize this
When you've literally never done pricing research. Even a quick Van Westendorp survey with 30 users gives you more data than 99% of indie SaaS founders have. If the last time you looked at pricing was at launch, this is your highest-ROI afternoon of work. Revisit pricing data at least once per quarter.
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