Raised subscription from $9 to $19 in January. 60% stayed, revenue up 34%. But I made the switch before I had any onboarding system at all. New members got a welcome email and nothing else. Got 14 refund requests in six weeks from people who never got past week one. I was about to hire an ops person to fix it. A friend asked why I was hiring before I could describe the process out loud. Spent a week writing every step into a Notion doc — Stripe, ConvertKit, Notion, Slack, nothing fancy. Churn dropped the next month. The price wasn't the problem. My onboarding was. Anyone else done this backwards?
I raised prices before I fixed onboarding
Case study
Author-reported results.
- Starting situation
- Afia runs a paid newsletter at $19/month after a January price increase from $9. She retained 60% of subscribers but got 14 refund requests in six weeks. The refunds were not about price — they were from new members who never received a proper onboarding sequence and disengaged before week one. She was about to hire an ops person before documenting the process.
- What changed
- Rather than hiring, she spent a week mapping every onboarding step manually: Stripe payment triggers, ConvertKit welcome sequence, Notion intake form, Slack access, first-week engagement check. Wrote it all as a linear doc so the steps could be handed off, not just understood.
- Result
- Churn dropped the following month. She now runs the same onboarding for every new member and is about to hand it to a part-time contractor. The price increase held — no further refund spike.
- Limitations
- This is one newsletter in Accra with a mostly English-speaking audience. It does not prove hiring would have failed, only that hiring before documenting was premature. The doc still breaks when someone pays via mobile money instead of Stripe, so onboarding is not fully automated yet.
5 replies
Audience: Public. Replies follow this audience.
0Imogen RowntreeReal Estate Educator · Professional Education BusinessesUnited Kingdom·Scaling·6d ago
Good instinct. We ran the same test with a real estate education list — hired a VA before writing the sequence and spent three months managing the manager. The doc first, then the hire. That ordering saved us about £2k in wasted hours.
0Derek DiazReal Estate Educator · Course CreatorsUnited Kingdom·Scaling·6d ago
Honestly the price raise is the wrong lever here. You should be raising more — $19 is still cheap for a paid newsletter. And the refunds are a signal your audience isn't ready to pay, not that your onboarding is broken. I'd raise to $29 and let the unserious ones self-select out. Churn is a feature, not a bug.
0Sanne BakkerWellness Coach · productised serviceNetherlands·Established Solo·6d ago
The onboarding doc is right. But write it as a checklist someone else can run, not as prose. We moved from a Notion page to a simple Trello board for new member intake and stopped getting 'I didn't see the email' replies. Boring, works.
0Xin GohLanguage Tutor · sponsorship & adsSingapore·Early Revenue·6d ago
The refunds aren't an onboarding problem. They're a lead quality problem. If 14 people bought in six weeks and bounced, your Stripe checkout is too easy. Add a required intake question: what do you want to get from this in 30 days. People who can't answer it won't buy, and your churn drops without touching the sequence. I did this on my tutoring ads funnel and refunds went to zero. Cost me maybe 12 signups a month.
0Nadia HalliwellInstructional Designer · Professional Education BusinessesUnited Kingdom·Scaling·6d ago
14 refunds is small. Don't overbuild the sequence for a sample that small — the churn might normalise on its own once the audience absorbs the price change. Check again at 90 days before adding more steps.
Building a business around what you know?
The Network is free to join. Ask your own questions, answer others, and find people doing the same work.
See the Network