Charging for advice made MORE people ask, not fewer
Building an async Q&A platform for professionals with my co-founder. Been wrestling with positioning for months.
Started with the obvious angle: "Experts are overwhelmed by 'pick your brain' requests. Let them charge."
Made sense. We're both operators with 20+ years experience. I tracked it once — 70+ hours of free advice in a year. Maybe 10% of people did anything with it.
But the "monetize your expertise" pitch wasn't landing.
Talked to dozens of people. Then heard something that flipped it:
"I wanted to ask you something months ago but didn't want to bother you."
"I didn't know if you'd even be open to questions."
"Honestly, I'd rather pay €50 than feel like I'm begging for a favor."
That last one broke my brain.
We'd been focused on expert pain: "Stop giving away free advice."
But there's equal pain on the asker side: "I want to ask but I don't know if they're open. Asking for free feels like imposing."
The two-sided problem:
→ Expert: "I want to help but can't say yes to everyone. Need a filter that doesn't make me a jerk. And I can't give everyone an hour of my calendar."
→ Asker: "I want to ask but don't know if they're open. Don't want to feel like I'm begging. And I feel bad asking for their time."
The insight: two things remove the friction.
Price — not about the €50. It's a signal. For experts: "I'm open." For askers: "You're welcome to ask." Clears the social awkwardness.
Async — no scheduling, no calendar tetris. Expert answers when they have 10 minutes. Asker doesn't feel guilty taking an hour of someone's day.
Together: easy to ask, easy to help.
Still early, still figuring it out. But this reframe changed everything.
Question for founders here: ever discovered you were solving the right problem but telling the wrong story?
Building this at mindpick.me - async Q&A, no scheduling. Would love feedback from anyone who's dealt with this problem on either side.
This aligns with what I’ve seen too. Charging often acts as a seriousness filter — people come in more prepared and more willing to act.
Free advice tends to attract curiosity, while paid advice attracts intent.
Did you notice any change in the quality of questions once you introduced pricing?
Yes - but not in the way I expected. The questions didn't get more "sophisticated." They got more specific. Free questions tend to be broad: "How do I improve retention?" Paid questions come with context: "We're at $2M ARR, 15% monthly churn, mostly in the first 60 days. Here's what we've tried..." My theory: when someone pays, they feel entitled to a real answer. So they put in the work upfront to make sure they GET a real answer. With free advice, there's almost a politeness problem - people don't want to "take too much" so they keep it vague. Payment removes that guilt and gives them permission to be specific. Still early data, but the pattern is pretty consistent so far.
This matches what I’ve seen too. Charging often acts as a clarity and intent filter — it signals value and tends to attract people who are more serious about acting on the advice rather than just consuming it casually.