Fair point. Two of my Level 100+ users have zero subscriptions - the free tier works for them. But here's the twist: I DO have paywalls (alarms, AI chat, analytics, infinite history). They just don't care about those features, or work around them. The one power user who IS paying (CV 0.86, irregular schedule) stopped using it 7 months ago but forgot to cancel. So the question becomes: are the wrong features locked? Or do power users just not need premium features?
I even ran an A/B test (hard vs soft paywall):
- Started by "recommendation" from popular entrepreneur
- 3 months, 3k users
- Baseline (soft paywall, can skip): 0.8% conversion
- Hard paywall (must activate trial): 0.6% conversion
- Revenue tracking broken (Firebase showed $0 both variants)
- Killed experiment yesterday.
I even ran an A/B test (hard vs soft paywall):
- Started by "recommendation" from popular entrepreneur - 3 months, 3k users - Baseline (soft paywall, can skip): 0.8% conversion - Hard paywall (must activate trial): 0.6% conversion - Revenue tracking broken (Firebase showed $0 both variants) - Killed experiment yesterday.