Pricing a subscription when you have no idea what to charge
Most creators price too low, for reasons that feel like humility and are actually a forecast.
The question comes up immediately and there is no clean answer, so here is a way to think about it.
Start from the maths, not the feeling
Decide what you want this to be worth per month. Say ₦150,000.
At ₦1,000 per month you need 150 subscribers. At ₦3,000 you need 50. At ₦10,000 you need 15.
Now ask which of those you can actually picture. For most people with a real audience, fifty is imaginable and a hundred and fifty is not. That is information.
Why low prices are a trap
Pricing at ₦500 feels safe and humble. It is neither.
It means you need six times as many subscribers for the same money, and every one of them is a person you have to serve. Support requests, comments, the sense of obligation — those scale with subscriber count, not revenue. You end up with more work for the same income.
A low price also says something. People read price as a signal of confidence. Underpricing does not read as generous, it reads as uncertain.
The tier that actually works
Most creators do best with two or three tiers where the middle one is the one you want people to pick.
- A low tier that is genuinely worth its price
- A middle tier with the thing most people actually want
- A high tier for the small number who want to fund you properly
That high tier matters more than its subscriber count suggests. A handful of people paying ₦20,000 a month changes your income materially, and those people exist. They are not looking for value for money. They are looking to support someone whose work matters to them, and a platform with no way for them to do that is leaving their money on the table.
Changing your mind later
You can raise prices. Grandfather the people who joined early — let them keep the old rate. It costs you little and it tells everyone watching that being early with you is rewarded.