Fine print

Every tip comes with fine print, which often isn't always stated outright. Look for it.

The trick to reading and learning all the indie solopreneurship advice and tips is knowing that there’s always fine print that they left out.

Example: “Raise prices*”

* up to a point, but where this point is located depends on supply/demand, price sensitivity, competition, anchoring bias etc.

The recent Gumroad price hike was a good example. Creators who said raise your prices are now leaving Gumroad due to Gumroad raising prices. Hypocritical much? Somewhat. But the original advice to raise prices always had fine print which they left out, and might not be aware even.

You can raise prices, but if you raise by too much, customers will feel it’s unfair and go to a competitor. If you raise prices but no good convincing reasons were given, people won’t like it. People might be willing to pay more if there’s more value, like new features to help them earn more money, but Gumroad did no such thing. And if your product is a commodity, you get customers who are price sensitive and no loyalty to your platform – a price hike would just scare them away to other commodity platforms.

So context matters.

Every indie advice/tip should come with fine print. If it’s not there, go look for it, because there’s nothing worse than following well-intentioned advice only to have it backfire in your face.