It's the most common indie-hacker plan on the internet: build a small app, charge $5 a month, get 1,000 users, and enjoy $5,000 in monthly recurring revenue from anywhere in the world. It sounds modest and safe. In practice, it's one of the hardest ways to make $5,000 a month.
Compare it with the alternative: ten businesses paying $500 a month. Same revenue. Completely different life.
$5,000 MRR
TWO WAYS TO GET THERE
1,000 consumers × $5 a month, or 10 businesses × $500 a month. The revenue matches. The fees, churn and support load don't.
Cost 1: payment fees eat small prices
Card processors charge a percentage plus a fixed fee per transaction. On Stripe's standard US pricing — 2.9% + 30¢ per successful card charge — the fixed part barely matters on a large invoice and hurts badly on a small one.
- A $5 charge costs about 44.5¢ in fees. That's 8.9% of your revenue.
- A $500 charge costs about $14.80. That's under 3%.
Across $5,000 a month, the consumer version pays about $445 in card fees; the business version pays about $148. And if your consumer product lives in a mobile app, Apple's App Store takes 15% for developers in its Small Business Program — $750 a month on the same revenue — and 30% for the first year of a subscription under its standard terms.
Monthly card fees on $5,000 MRR
US$, Stripe standard US pricing (2.9% + 30¢ per charge), one charge per customer per month.