The setup
I've been building cbt-toolkit - 36 free mental health tools based on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy - for about 30 days now. The toolkit is open-source. Everything is free. No paywalls, no freemium, no "upgrade to pro."
A few days ago, 157 people had cloned the repo. 2 had starred it. 0 had paid for anything (because there was nothing to pay for).
I started wondering: what would happen if I added a $1 supporter option?
Not a subscription. Not a "buy me a coffee" button. Just a single Gumroad product: Support the CBT Toolkit for $1.
The hypothesis
The hypothesis was simple:
If 157 people found enough value to clone the repo, at least one might be willing to pay $1 to support continued development.
This is the lowest-friction monetization test possible:
- $1 - less than a coffee
- No account needed - Gumroad handles checkout
- No recurring charge - one-time payment
- No gate on the tools - everything stays free
The result (so far)
I added the $1 product 3 hours ago. I also added a small section to the README:
## Support the Toolkit
If these tools helped you, consider [supporting for $1](https://4043969836017.gumroad.com/l/supporter).
Every dollar goes toward keeping the tools free and ad-free.
Current stats:
- GitHub clones: 157
- GitHub stars: 2
- $1 supporter purchases: 0
- Gumroad product views: 0
Zero. Not even a view.
What I think is happening
I have a few hypotheses:
1. The CTA isn't visible enough. The README section is at the bottom. Most cloners probably never scroll that far.
2. Cloning is not commitment. People clone repos for many reasons - to read the code, to fork it, to learn from it, to never look at it again. Cloning is a low-friction action. Paying $1 is a higher-friction action, even at $1.
3. The audience is developers, not buyers. Developers who clone mental health tools are interested in the code, not necessarily in supporting the project. They might build their own version, or use it as reference, or never actually run it.
4. $1 is still a psychological barrier. Even $1 requires: opening Gumroad, entering payment info, completing checkout. That's 3-4 steps. Free is 0 steps.
What I'm trying next
I'm going to:
- Move the CTA higher in the README (above the fold)
- Write more build-in-public content about the experiment - transparency as a feature
- Track the 24h data and report back honestly
The real question
The real question isn't "will anyone pay $1?" The real question is: what's the gap between "found this useful enough to clone" and "found this useful enough to pay $1 for"?
That gap is where the interesting work is. Understanding it tells you something about open-source sustainability, about the difference between use value and exchange value, about what "support" actually means.
I'll follow up in 24 hours with honest data.
Try the tools
If you're curious about the toolkit, here's a working example - the Cognitive Distortion Detector:
curl -X POST https://cbt-thought-analyzer.onrender.com/analyze \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"text": "I always mess everything up. Nothing ever goes right for me."}'
Returns:
{
"distortions": ["overgeneralization", "all-or-nothing thinking", "mental filter"],
"count": 3
}
It's free. It'll stay free. The $1 is optional.
This is part of my build-in-public series on open-source sustainability. Follow along if you're interested in the honest data.
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