Pricing an earned tier
An earned tier is priced with three decisions: what a post earns, how often one user can earn, and what a post that gets noticed earns on top. Each is a number the product sets in its own unit, and each is cheap to change later. The questions below are what to settle before setting any of them.
What a post earns, how often, and what reach adds. Everything else in an earned tier follows from where these three sit.
What is there to price?
Three settings, and they belong to the product. Whatever verifies the posts and relays the rewards should have no say in what a post earns and no cut of it; the reward economics are the product's own, priced in the product's own unit.
| Setting | What it is | The question it answers |
|---|---|---|
| Claim value | What one qualifying post earns, flat | What is a post worth to you? |
| Cooldown | The space between one user’s earning posts | How fast may one user earn? |
| Reach bonus | A bounded bonus for a post that gets noticed, settled once its reach has had time to build | What is reach worth on top, and what is the most a post can cost? |
The three settings of an earned tier.
What is the earned tier replacing?
Make it your only unpaid tier. Fold the free plan or trial in as a small baseline that works for everyone, and let posting be the way past it. "Post to expand your plan" answers the objection every team raises first: nothing is being taken away.
Size the baseline so that someone with real usage feels the wall in their first week or two, when they are most engaged and most likely to post.
What should a reward be?
The unit you already sell. If your tiers are amounts of a consumable, the reward is that consumable and the decision is only an amount. If your tiers gate capability, reward a taste of the paid capability; feeling the paid product sells the upgrade better than more of the free one.
What is a post worth?
The least decidable of the three on its own, because you don't yet know how often anyone will post. Two pegs help: what your old free plan gave a user in a month, and what reach into the poster's own graph would cost you in ads. The claim value pays for the post; the reach bonus pays for the reach it earned. Keep the base modest and let the bonus carry the bigger number.
Bound it on both sides. Generous enough that posting is obviously worth doing, not so rich that a handful of quiet posts costs more than it brings in. One user posting often with posts that land is the program working, not a leak.
How fast should one user earn?
The cooldown is the only rate limit, so it is also the per-user budget: a 7-day cooldown allows about five earning posts a month, and five times the claim value is the ceiling from posts alone. Work that number out before the first post. It is the one your margins have to survive.
Expect it to beat your old free allowance. An active poster out-earning your old free plan, month after month, is the distribution you are buying.
What do you call the reward?
The unit your users already buy: credits, tokens, messages, renders, months. "Your post earned 25 credits" needs no explanation. Don't invent a point they have to convert in their head.
When do you revisit the numbers?
Whenever the evidence says to. A change applies to posts made from then on and never reprices a post already made, so adjusting is cheap. Set the numbers, watch a month of posts, and move them.
Questions founders ask
How much should I reward users for posting?
Enough that posting is obviously worth doing, and not so much that a handful of quiet posts costs more than it brings in. What your old free plan gave a user is a natural peg, but it is a peg, not a rule. Keep the base modest: the claim value pays for the post, and the reach bonus is where a post that gets real attention earns its bigger number.
Who holds the rewards?
Your product does. Rewards are denominated in your own unit — credits, tokens, months — and granted by your product to its own user. Whatever verifies the posts confirms them and relays the instruction; it has no claim on what you pay, and it should not price or cap it.
Can I change the numbers later?
Yes, any time. A change applies to posts made from then on; a post already made keeps the terms that were in force when it went up. Nobody’s earlier post is ever repriced.
What stops one user from farming it?
The cooldown is the rate limit, and it is the only one — so it is also the whole per-user budget, and the most one user can earn in a month is a number you can work out before anyone posts. One social account binds to one user, publicly, which is a colder environment for farming than an anonymous signup form.
Go deeper
The only unpaid tier — don't kill the free tier; demote it.
What a free tier costs — the math to run on your own inference bill.
What is a post worth? — the two-part price, in full.
Pick the unit — credits, tokens, months, seats; never points.
Rewarding reach — the decisions behind a bonus for a post that gets noticed.
How an earned tier grows — three go-to-market plays from one program.