I have signups but nobody paid. Should I keep building or move on?

Why the totals can’t answer it

“150 signups, 0 paid” is two numbers from two different moments. The signups say your pitch interested people when they saw it. The payments say nothing yet, because there are several reasons nobody paid, and only one of them is “nobody wants this”. The other reasons are cheaper to fix than a new idea.

Check 1: are they the right people?

Look at where the signups came from. A post in a general community, a launch site or a giveaway brings curious people; a thread where someone described your exact problem brings people who have it. If most signups came from the first kind, the list tells you your headline works, not that your product sells.

Read ten signup emails. Company domains, or names you recognise from the places your users gather, are a good sign. Throwaway addresses are not.

Check 2: could anyone actually pay?

Surprisingly often, the answer is no:

• There was no price, or it was hidden behind “contact us”.
• The checkout was never tested with a real card.
• The free version did everything they needed, so there was no moment where paying made sense.

If any of these is true, nobody has been asked yet. Fix it and ask.

Check 3: did the people who tried it come back?

Signups who used the product once and never returned didn’t get what they came for. Signups who come back every week without paying are telling you something different: it’s useful, but the paid part isn’t where the value is. Those are the people to talk to. Ask them what they’d miss if it disappeared, and put the limit there.

When to move on

Move on when the right people saw it, could pay, tried it, and still didn’t come back. That’s rare after one launch, so give each fix a fixed window: two to four weeks, with a number decided beforehand (for example, three paying customers from the people who return). If the number isn’t reached after two honest changes to the offer, the idea is the problem, and you’ll know it from evidence rather than from a bad week.

With Nordva Launch

Every waitlist signup and visit keeps its source, so check 1 is a table instead of a guess. With Stripe connected (read-only, every plan), Insights shows which sources brought the few who did pay. Feedback from inside the app lands in one inbox tied to each person (50 messages a month on Free), which is where check 3’s answers come from.