6 pricing A/B tests I’ve run (and which ones worked)
How pricing experiments helped me reach $6,000 MRR
It’s been a while since my last post on getting to 19,000 monthly clicks from Google. Since then, I’m happy to say that Remote Rocketship has grown to $6,000 MRR! 🎉
Here is a brief look back on how long it took to get here:
$0 → $1 took 4 months
$1 → $2,000 took 2 months
$2,000 → $4,000 took 3 months
$4,000 → $6,000 took 2 months.
A big part of achieving this was experimenting with different pricing strategies. In fact, so far I’ve run 6 different A/B tests on it.
In this post, I want to share what each of these tests were and their (often surprising) results.
1. Moving the job board behind a paywall
This was my first step towards monetizing Remote Rocketship. Prior to this, people could search for jobs on the site for free. In the meantime, I was trying to monetize by asking companies to pay for promoted posts.
However, despite having 60,000 monthly visitors to the site, I didn’t get any interest from companies – probably because all the tech layoffs mean that companies are getting way too many candidates right now.
So I decided to change the business model: Instead of charging companies to promote their posts, I charged job seekers $10/month to use the site.
At first, I was quite hesitant to do this. I was worried that putting up a paywall would kill traffic to the site. That said, I wasn’t making any money from the site either, so I didn’t have much to lose 🤷🏻♂️
Experiment setup
Hypothesis: Because Remote Rocketship provides value to job seekers, job seekers will be willing to pay for access to the site.
🔬 Control group (90% of users)– Free access to the site.
🧪 Test group (10% of users) – $10/month subscription required to use the site.
✅ Result:
10 paying subscribers after two weeks 🎉
Traffic to the site decreases by 50%.
This was enough validation for me that people are willing to pay for the site and so I put it behind a paywall!
2. Doubling the price from $10/month to $20/month
🔬Hypothesis: Doubling the price will decrease the number of signups but will increase revenue.
🧪 Control group – $10/month to use the site.
🧪 Test group – $20/month.
❌ Result:
66% decrease in signups.
35% less revenue.
I was disappointed with this result but glad I ran it as an A/B test. I set the price back to $10/month afterwards.
3. Adding a 2-day free trial
🔬 Hypothesis: Having a free trial will convince people who are on the fence to sign up, ultimately increasing revenue
🧪Control group – $10/month to use the site.
🧪Test group – 2-day free trial, then $10/month.
❌ Result:
No change in signups.
Many people in the test group canceled before their free trial ended, resulting in less revenue.
4. Offering half-price and free “scholarships“
I wanted to see if there are people who would be willing to pay $5/month but not $10/month. I didn’t want to halve the price for everyone, though, so I offered “scholarships”.
🔬 Hypothesis: Offering half-price and free subscriptions would increase the number of signups. Some people who would have paid $10 per month will end up requesting a scholarship anyway, but overall, revenue will increase.
🧪 Control group – $10/month to use the site.
🧪 Test group – An option on the signup form “Can’t afford a subscription? Click here”. Users could then buy a half-price subscription for $5/month or even email me for a free subscription.
❌ Result:
Signups increased by 30%.
Overall revenue remained the same.
I decided not to ship the experiment and keep pricing at $10/month for everyone since it’s simpler.
5. Weekly subscriptions instead of monthly
The idea for this experiment came from the founder of Teal, a tool for job seekers. He mentioned that job seekers don’t expect to be searching for a job for a long time, so monthly subscriptions feel like a big commitment.
🔬 Hypothesis: Charging $5/week instead of $10/month is a way to double the price without decreasing signups. It will also lead to higher churn, but overall revenue will increase.
🧪 Control group – $10/month to use the site.
🧪 Test group – $5/week
🟰 Result:
Signups remained the same
Churn increased
Overall revenue remained the same.
I decided to make $5/week pricing standard on the site so that I can run the next experiment (below).
6. Offer weekly, monthly, and yearly subscriptions
🔬 Hypothesis: Offering users the choice between subscriptions will increase customer lifetime value.
🧪 Control group – $5/week to use the site.
🧪 Test group – Option to choose between $5/week, $18/month, or $60/year.
✅ Result after one month:
Revenue doubles! 🤯
LTV increases from $35 to $45 per user.
In the test group, 55% of people signed up for weekly subscriptions, 30% for monthly, and 15% for annual.
This was by far the experiment which surprised me the most. I was not expecting such a big increase in revenue!
Conclusion
So many of these experiments had results I did not expect, and my biggest takeaway from running all these experiments is that it’s super important to A/B test any pricing changes – otherwise you might end up shipping something that decreases.
Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed it and maybe even picked up an idea or two to try out for your own SaaS. If you have ideas for other experiments I should run, do let me know 🙂
This is really cool. I have a job board that I have not officially launched. I just did some link building though prospecting and outreach and I have around 1.2k unique visitors per month.
The data source is similar to yours but I don't really have tech skills, so I compiled a database of around 500 companies whose career pages I check regularly.
Just curious, what is your current traffic?
I just want to say I find your blog really inspirational. No one seems to publish pricing experiment details like this, it's super helpful.