What finally moved the needle on paid conversions for my SaaS
I’ve been building Inkfluence AI for a few months now, a tool that turns an idea into a publish ready ebook (chapters, structure, export).
I was getting usage, some early interest, SEO starting to move… but paid conversions were basically dead.
What confused me was users weren’t frustrated, they were leaving satisfied. - and that turned out to be the main problem I was having.
People would generate a few chapters, export a PDF, and think:
“That’s pretty good, I’m done.”
The insight that changed everything:
Free users should never walk away with something they feel they already own.
So instead of limiting creation or pushing trials, I changed the model to:
- Creation stays generous
- Export becomes preview vs final
- Free exports are structurally non-final (last chapter gated, preview watermarking)
- The paywall appears at the moment of pride, not exhaustion
The result:
I’ve had paid subscribers 3 days in a row since making that change.
Still tiny numbers! But the behaviour shift feels real in a way nothing else has so far.
Posting this mostly to sanity-check:
Has anyone else run into the “users feel done too early” problem?
Curious how others have handled that handoff between value to ownership.
If anyone’s curious, this is the product:
https://www.inkfluenceai.com/
this resonates a lot I've also noticed the same pattern where users are happy but never feel the need to pay did you test a few variations before landing on this >=?
I've seen the same phenomenon framed a bit differently - once users have "invested" in your solution (by spending time creating), they are more likely to pay to unlock additional value. This is why moving the payment point later in the onboarding process works. This is the same psychological principle as in the paid add-ons in an otherwise free app.
Out of curiosity, how was your paid conversion set up before you made the changes you described?