From Free to Pro: How I'm pricing Pingem after 30 days

👟 Topic: From Free to Pro: How I'm pricing Pingem after 30 days

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Last week I told you about killing SayMail's core feature and rebranding to Pingem.

This week, someone paid money for it.

It's not life-changing revenue. But it's the single most validating thing that's happened since I started building this app.

Let me walk you through the month that got me here.

Pingem has been live for about a month now, and I've been watching the analytics.

Here's a snapshot of where things stand:

And this is just from talking about Pingem in this newsletter + DMing people, no marketing or launch yet.

Some of these numbers are exciting and some are humbling. But that's the whole point of building in public. You get to see the real picture, not just the highlight reel.

The only metric I’m really caring about here is the bounce rate - how many people are landing on my site and dipping.

According to industry averages, 40% - 60% is normal for early stage, which is great! What I’m really encourage about is that users seem to prefer to template base workflow over the voice recordings.

That being said, I’m hoping to bring the bounce rate down closer to 40% when we launch.

With the free version of Pingem in a solid state, it was time to figure out what a paid tier looks like.

The hard part wasn't the Stripe integration, it was deciding what to charge for.

Here's where I landed on the free vs. plus:

Free tier gives you enough to experience the product and get value from it. You can search for contacts, generate emails, and use basic templates.

Plus tier unlocks the features that power users need:

→ Unlimited credits and email generation. Free users get a set number of credits per month. Pro removes that cap entirely.

→ Advanced Research. This one is a game changer, and I want to spend some time on it.

When you enable it for a contact, Pingem goes beyond their LinkedIn info.

We're talking podcast appearances, social media posts, personal websites, blog articles, news mentions, the kind of stuff that takes 30-45 minutes to dig up manually.

Here's an example of what that looks like:

Once the research is done, you choose which insights you want to include. Maybe they recently spoke on a podcast about a topic you care about. Maybe they wrote a blog post that aligns with your experience.

The result is an email that reads like you actually did your homework.

I had one user test this feature and their reaction was basically:

That's exactly the response I was hoping for. This is the kind of personalization that turns a cold email into a warm introduction.

I've got two more pro features on the roadmap that I'm really excited about.

I’ll keep the details about them under wraps for now because I don’t want to over-promise anything.

A month in, I'm learning that building a product is less about having the perfect feature and more about having the right features for the right people.

The pivot from voice notes to smart templates taught me that. And now, figuring out the free vs. plus split is teaching me something else: you have to earn the right to charge for something.

The free tier has to be genuinely useful by itself.

That’s all for today. If you enjoyed this post, share it with a friend!

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See you next Tuesday 🤝

-Michael Ly

If you're job searching, networking, or just tired of writing the same cold emails over and over, then Pingem might be for you.

The free tier gives you everything you need to get started. And if you want to go deeper with Advanced Research and unlimited emails, Pro is there when you're ready.

Try Pingem for free →

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