I'm starting to think "freemium" is just a polite way to say "working for free"
I need to vent a bit.
I launched a free tier three months ago because every growth guru told me it was the only way to scale. So I gave away 1,000 free accounts, sat back, and waited for the upgrades to roll in.
Exactly 12 people paid. That's a 1.2% conversion rate.
The worst part isn't the lost revenue it's realizing I spent three months providing server space and support to 988 people who will never give me a dime. It feels less like a growth strategy and more like an unpaid internship for my own software.
Am I missing something here? For those actually making money: did you just kill the free tier entirely? Or did you aggressively cripple the free version until it was practically useless?
I'm not linking anything. I just want to know if anyone has actually made freemium work without bleeding money for a year first
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I get the frustration. Feel like this should be more of a check on if the product is worth paying for. Are users still using it or just making free accounts? What your usage analytics? It's good that you have people paying. That's an accomplishment. But cap free usage and see if people pay to keep using. Just my humble opinion.