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I put a $5 price on a tool I gave away for free. 62 people paid anyway. QuickPush is a macOS app for testing push notifications and live activities. The source code is on GitHub. Free. Always will be. I put it on the Mac App Store anyway for $4.99 — just to see what would happen.

Result: 23,000 impressions. 62 paid downloads. $378 in sales. For a weekend utility. With a free alternative one click away. The lesson: convenience is a product. People don't always want the free thing. They want the thing that works right now, without friction.

We developers undercharge by default. We open source everything and feel weird asking for $5. Stop that. If your tool saves someone 20 minutes, it's worth $5 or more. Charge for it.