Your First Subscription Product: From Zero to Revenue in an Afternoon

You've built something people want to pay for. Maybe it's a SaaS tool that's been running free while you validated the concept, or perhaps you're starting fresh with a clear monetisation strategy. Either way, you're facing the same question every developer confronts: how do you actually charge people?

The billing landscape is littered with engineers who spent months building custom systems and are now stuck maintaining billing code instead of shipping product features. There's a better path, and after reading this you'll be on it.

The Overthinking Trap

Most developers approach billing like they approach feature development: they map out every edge case, design for scale they don't have, and build flexibility they'll never use. That instinct serves them well when architecting application code, but it's counterproductive for billing.

Consider what typically happens. A developer sits down to implement subscriptions and immediately starts listing requirements. They need to handle monthly and annual billing. They need to support multiple tiers. They need upgrade and downgrade paths. They need proration logic. They need to handle failed payments gracefully. They need webhooks to keep their database in sync. Before writing a line of code, they've designed a system complex enough to require weeks of implementation.

Meanwhile, their product sits there, free, while potential revenue walks out the door.

Here's the insight that changes everything: you don't need any of that complexity on day one. You need a single plan, a checkout flow, and a way to know who's paid. Everything else can wait until customers ask for it.

The Minimum Viable Billing Stack

A working subscription product requires exactly two things: a way to take money and a way to block users who haven't given you any. That's it.

For taking money, you need one product to sell. "Pro Plan: $29/month" is enough. You don't need a free tier or multiple pricing options on day one. Customers who want to pay will pay; customers who want options will tell you what options they want after you've launched.

For blocking non-paying users, you need an entitlement check—code that answers one question: does this user have access to this feature? On day one, this can be as simple as verifying whether someone has an active subscription. It doesn't need to be sophisticated; it needs to exist.

Salable gives you both.

Building the Happy Path First

Your first implementation should handle exactly one scenario: a new customer signs up, pays, and gains access to your product. That's the happy path, and it's the only path that generates revenue.

Start by creating your product in your billing system. Give it a name that makes sense to customers, set a price that feels right (you can always change it later), and configure a monthly billing interval. Don't agonise over the price. Pick a number, launch, and let the market tell you if you're wrong.

Next, set up the checkout flow. A customer clicks "Subscribe," completes checkout, and returns to your application as a paying customer.

Finally, implement the entitlement check. When a user tries to access a paid feature, your code should verify they have an active subscription. If they do, let them through. If they don't, show them the paywall.

The entire implementation can be completed in an afternoon. Not because you're cutting corners, but because you're deferring complexity until it's necessary.

What You're Deliberately Ignoring (For Now)

This approach works because it's honest about what matters on day one versus what can wait. You're deliberately setting aside several things that feel important but aren't yet.

Multiple tiers can wait. Yes, conventional wisdom says you need a Good/Better/Best pricing page. But that wisdom assumes you know which features belong in which tier. You don't. You're guessing. Launch with one tier, watch how customers use your product, and add tiers when you understand the natural value segments.

Annual billing can wait. Annual plans improve cash flow and reduce churn, but they also complicate refunds, proration, and plan changes. More importantly, you don't yet know if customers will stick around for a year. Prove monthly retention before optimising for annual commitment.

Free trials can wait. Trials are powerful conversion tools, but they're also a form of delayed revenue and a source of complexity. Trial users need nurturing, trial-to-paid conversion needs tracking, and trial abuse needs preventing. Launch with immediate payment and add trials once you understand your conversion funnel.

Usage-based pricing can wait. Metered billing aligns your revenue with customer value, but it requires infrastructure: usage tracking, billing calculations, and customer-facing dashboards. Start with flat-rate pricing until you have usage data that justifies the complexity.

None of these features are hard to add later. They're just unnecessary now. Every feature you defer is engineering time you can spend on your actual product.

The Launch Checklist

Before you announce your paid plan, verify that the critical path works end-to-end. Create a test account using your payment processor's test mode. Walk through the checkout flow as a customer would. Confirm that completing payment creates the right records in your system. Verify that your entitlement check correctly identifies paid users. Test that paid features actually unlock.

This isn't exhaustive testing; it's smoke testing the one flow that matters. If a new customer can sign up and access paid features, you're ready to launch. If something fails, fix it before moving on.

You'll also want a way to handle the edge cases that will inevitably arise. What happens if someone emails saying they paid but can't access the product? You need a way to manually check their subscription status and, if necessary, grant access while you investigate. This doesn't need to be a polished admin interface. It just needs to be possible.

Your First Customers Aren't Your Last Customers

The objection to launching simple is always some variation of "but what about professional customers who need enterprise features?" The answer is that professional customers aren't buying your product today. Early adopters are.

Early adopters are tolerant of rough edges and missing features because they're buying potential, not polish. They'll tell you what features matter through support tickets and feature requests. They'll teach you what pricing models make sense for your market. They'll surface the edge cases you couldn't have anticipated.

Your job on day one is to capture this learning by having something to sell. Every week you spend building features no one asked for is a week of customer feedback you didn't collect.

This doesn't mean you should ship broken software or ignore obvious problems. It means your definition of "ready to launch" should be "can I charge someone for this?" rather than "have I anticipated every possible scenario?"

Growing Beyond Day One

Once you have paying customers, the roadmap becomes clearer. Usage data reveals which features drive value, and those insights shape how you structure tiers. Customer feedback points you toward the pricing models that fit your market. Support tickets highlight which edge cases need automation.

The pattern is consistent: launch simple, observe, and expand based on evidence. Add a second tier when customers ask for different feature sets. Add annual billing when monthly retention proves strong. Add usage-based components when flat-rate pricing leaves money on the table.

This iterative approach isn't just faster for initial launch; it's more likely to produce pricing that works. Startups that launch with complex pricing models based on intuition usually end up simplifying. Startups that launch simple and expand based on evidence usually get it right.

The Afternoon That Changes Everything

Here's what's possible in a couple of hours: define your product in Salable, configure a checkout flow that handles payment collection, implement an entitlement check that gates access to paid features, and test the end-to-end flow to verify everything works.

By the end of the afternoon, you'll have something that seemed complicated this morning: a way to charge money for your work. Not a theoretical system design. Not a roadmap for future billing infrastructure. A real product that real people can pay for, today.

The revenue might be modest at first. Your first customer might be someone you know. Your second customer might take a week to find. But you'll have crossed the threshold from "building something" to "running a business." And everything that follows—better pricing, more features, larger customers—builds on that foundation.

The complexity can come later. Today, just get paid.

---

Building your first subscription product? Salable's Quick Start Guide walks you through the complete setup in under an hour, from product creation through your first checkout.