Ditch your subscription

The most popular advice for entrepreneurs is to charge subscriptions. Passive income and predictable revenue, yes sir!

This is terrible advice.

Here’s why recurring payments are killing your business.

The Subscription Fatigue Era

I killed 3 startups because of recurring payments:

1. IndiePage

   • ✅ It makes $4,000/month on autopilot ($45 for lifetime access).

   • ❌ It made $0/month when I priced it at $15/year.

2. MakeLanding

   • ✅ It made $100/day when I launched ($19 per landing page generated).

   • ❌ It made $0 with a $5/month subscription.

3. HabitsGarden

   • ✅ 100% of users chose the $47 lifetime deal.

   • ❌ Nobody buys the $5/month plan.

Netflix, Spotify, wifi... I spend a few thousand dollars a year on these services. When I see $19/month, it’s not just $19. It’s $228 a year, on top of everything else.

Business owners love subscriptions. Customers hate them.

Here’s the invisible cost of charging recurring payments:

• Conversion rate drop: People are reluctant to commit to another subscription, which triggers objections and hesitation.

• Fighting churn: People lose interest soon after signing up. Instead of a steady income, you’re constantly replacing customers who cancel.

$10/month VS. $100

Selling a $10/month monthly subscription is as hard as selling a $100 one-time payment.

Let’s assume you built an excellent SaaS (10% churn = 10% of your customers cancel at the end of the month).

Imagine you get 100 customers today:

• You’ll earn $7,176 with subscriptions, after 365 days.

• You earn $10,000 with one-time payments, right now.

Subscription doesn’t mean recurring revenue. If you’re working solo, in 99% of cases you’re better off financially with one-time payments.

One-time payments alternative

Sometimes, your business has recurring costs, and you can’t afford one-time payments. I’m not talking about bandwidth (that’s negligible) but things like AI credits or database costs.

Then try credits-based pricing:

• Let your customers pay upfront for what they’ll use. Generate 10 AI photos for $5.

• Then, add a Good-Better-Best package. 100 AI photos for $20 ($.2/photo looks cheap now)

This removes the subscription friction (which boosts your conversion rate) and helps you avoid constantly fighting churn.

When subscriptions make sense

• B2B: If you’re selling to businesses, subscriptions make sense because the end goal of any business is to make money.

• Complex credits: When tracking credits is too complex or it’s hard to quantify what your customers use.

Subscriptions serve a specific purpose. Recurring payment = Recurring value according to my friend Dan.

Just because competitors charge recurring payments doesn’t mean you should. Remember, people are tired of subscriptions, and purchase behavior is changing. Not charging a subscription can be a competitive edge.

Oh, and entrepreneurs flex on each other with MRR charts. It’s a status game, don’t fall for it. In the end, the customer is king.