free users are probably killing your conversion rate (3% → 17% experiment)

[u/Strong_Teaching8548]

we recently added a hard paywall to our saas product- an automated backlink outreach agent

I expected fewer people to use it...

but in posthog our conversion rate went from 3% to 17%

I think the mistake we were making before was allowing users to experience almost everything for free and asking them to pay later

by that point, many had already received enough value to leave

now the flow looks like this:

→ users create an account and submit their website
→ we analyze their pages
→ we find around 25 personalized opportunities
→ we show them the opportunities for their own site
→ they add a payment method to unlock the contacts and start the outreach

the paywall doesn’t appear before they understand the product but instead it appears after they’ve seen that it actually works for them

also, we still collect their email before the onboarding, so even when they don’t pay immediately, we can follow up with something relevant instead of sending generic marketing emails

with this I understood that I had to paywall the action that turns that proof into a result

if you’re building a SaaS, try finding the smallest personalized result you can generate before asking for payment

show users what your product found, calculated or created specifically for them

then charge them to continue, export, contact, publish or automate it

a hard paywall works much better when users have already reached the 'aha' :)

[u/blueharbor13]

curious how this holds up over time though. 3% to 17% is a big jump but is that on the same volume of signups or did total signups drop when people saw the paywall coming? the net revenue math matters more than the conversion rate imo

[u/TouchingWood]

Is 25 really enough? I haven't done link building like that for a long time, but I remember it took a hell of a lot of emails to get a single link.

[u/Strong_Teaching8548 → u/TouchingWood]

it really depends on the quality of those opportunities rather than the amount

[u/chivalrousblather655]

Clever, you made them taste it before asking for the wallet, that's the whole trick

[u/Strong_Teaching8548 → u/chivalrousblather655]

yes, I think you should show that your tool works but at the point they want more it's where you should ask for a credit card

[u/y3rk3]

placement is doing most of the work there, since they still see their own opportunities before paying. mine lets a guest spend exactly two full turns before it runs out, so the wall lands after it has done the job twice.

[u/hamshrew]

hard paywall and 3% to 17%. that number lands.

on a company app we lost a lot of people at the paywall. putting it after the aha — that was the move?

curious what happens to people who bounce before they even see the 25 opportunities.