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I sell a niche educational tool for technical leads($19 one-time access).

I get decent traffic from India/Southeast Asia, but 0 sales.

I’ve read conflicting advice:

The "SaaS" View: Don't lower prices; filter for high-value customers.

The "Game/Ebook" View: Lower prices significantly (60%+) to match local purchasing power, because zero marginal cost = free money.

Since my product has no server upkeep (it's just a Next.js app), I just enabled aggressive PPP.

Has anyone here successfully monetized a one-time purchase dev tool in India? Or is the "Free or Nothing" culture too strong?

I have had numerous enquirers from India but no sales, it was such a waste of time that I geoblocked the whole region.
This is going to be very personal opinion but I’ve bought many digital products when I’m either not thinking too much about the price or find that it has a much cheaper Indian version. Many times, have I done it just so I could help out another founder.

The most recent one I remember was some tool (Show HN) that searches the Mac with a local AI. I’m yet to start using it. I like the idea, and I might use it someday. It was beta-discounted

I’m from India.

We do PPP for Caido in India and Brazil but for subscription. Brazil definitely worth it, India not so much.

For our voucher system we decided to not do PPP otherwise you need some kind of geoblock ala Steam to avoid code reselling.

SaaS software is not generally zero marginal cost since you run the infra, have support, etc, but maybe in your situation is close to zero since its very simple.

If you have no sales, but your costs are very low, you should try it.

The main reason not to would be costs or cannibalizing your higher value customers (which you don't have).