AI products
For AI tools: which directories and demos bring buyers who keep paying.
An AI tool earns on subscriptions and credit top-ups after people try it on their own input, often beside two rival tools the same afternoon. Tally ties each payment to the visit behind it, so a directory listing, a creator's demo and an assistant's recommendation are weighed by money brought rather than signups.
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01How they sell
- SubscriptionMonthly plans with a usage allowance and a cheaper yearly option; when the novelty fades, it shows as renewals that stop arriving.
- UsageCredit packs bought when the allowance runs out. Each top-up is its own sale, and lifetime value adds it to the customer's first source.
- FreemiumA capped free tier so people can judge the output on their own files; the upgrade lands when the cap bites, sometimes weeks after the first visit.
02Payments it reads
- StripeSubscriptions and one-off credit packs through Checkout; one metadata field carrying the visitor's id links both kinds.
- Lemon SqueezyChosen by solo builders who sell worldwide and want a merchant of record to handle tax; orders, subscription invoices and refunds are read.
- PolarUsed for metered plans that bill per generation or per token; each subscription cycle, metered charges included, is read.
What Tally can't read
- Usage itself, such as generations run or tokens spent, isn't read; only the payments that usage turns into in your provider.
- Codes sold on a lifetime-deal marketplace are paid out by that marketplace, so the customers who redeem them show no revenue in Tally.
- Ad spend and ROAS aren't read, because ad accounts aren't connected; Tally shows the revenue behind each campaign's tagged visits, not their cost.
- Subscriptions bought inside a companion iPhone or Android app go through the App Store or Google Play and aren't read.
03Where buyers come from
- AI directoriesDirectory listings send people comparing three tools for one task; revenue per visitor shows which listing's visitors end up paying.
- AI assistantsSomeone who asks ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity for a tool lands in a channel of its own, and the receipts show whether those visits paid.
- YouTube and X demosA creator running the tool on real input can send viewers who pay on their first visit; first-visit buyers by source tells you whether it happened.
- SearchTask searches like summarize a PDF bring people with one job to do, who test the output and come back when they need it again.
04What Tally answers
Are AI assistants recommending us to people who pay?
Every breakdown gives AI assistants their own channel, so visits from ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and the rest sit on one row with their revenue, apart from ordinary search.
Sources with revenueDo directory signups pay past the first month?
Lifetime value groups customers by the source of their first visit and adds every renewal and top-up since. A directory whose buyers stop after one month shows a low average next to its customer count.
Lifetime valueDo people pay on the day they first try it?
Path to purchase gives the share who buy on their first visit and the median time for everyone else. A high first-visit share means the tool proves itself in one session; a long tail means the free tier is doing the selling.
Path to purchaseWhy do some credit top-ups have no source?
Coverage names the reason for each unlinked payment, such as a top-up charged from your app's billing page without the visitor's id, and shows the snippet that closes the gap.
CoverageCan we hear about refunds the moment a launch sours?
Refund alerts go out by email, Slack, Discord, Telegram or webhook as each refund lands, and spike and drop alerts flag a day that breaks from the usual pattern.
Alerts and digests
05Numbers worth watching
- Visitors from AI assistants
- Visits from AI assistants with the revenue behind them; an AI product is exactly what people ask assistants about, so watch this row from the start.
- First-visit buyers
- The share who pay on their first visit, by source; demo-driven channels and slow search channels behave very differently here.
- Refunds and chargebacks
- Refunds and chargebacks per source catch a listing that sends people expecting something the tool doesn't do.
- Revenue per visitor
- Revenue divided by visitors for each source, which keeps a loud directory from looking better than a quiet one that sells.
06An example
Lifetime value by first source
All time: every payment since 1 Nov 2025. The period above doesn't apply.
| First source | Customers | Lifetime revenue | Average value | Renewals | Repeat rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GoogleOrganic Search | 325 | $40,560 | $125 | 845 | 52% |
| ChatGPTAI Assistants | 126 | $21,071 | $167 | 391 | 61% |
| Direct | 178 | $18,216 | $102 | 374 | 44% |
| NewsletterEmail | 94 | $17,362 | $185 | 357 | 69% |
| Hacker NewsOrganic Social | 84 | $11,741 | $140 | 227 | 55% |
| x.comOrganic Social | 115 | $10,190 | $89 | 161 | 33% |
| RedditOrganic Social | 84 | $9,016 | $107 | 160 | 40% |
| PerplexityAI Assistants | 42 | $6,342 | $151 | 101 | 57% |
| Every source | 1,048 | $134,498 | $128 | 2,616 | 51% |
A customer is a visitor linked to a sale, counted under the source of their first visit. Lifetime revenue is net of refunds and chargebacks; repeat rate is the share who paid more than once (a renewal, an upgrade or another purchase). $13,167 from 426 payments not linked to a visitor is in no row.
07Setting up
- Next.jsIf the tool is a Next.js app, one tag in the root layout covers both the marketing pages and the app, and moving between them counts as pageviews.
- StripeCreate the credit-pack Checkout Session with tally_visitor_id in its metadata, so top-ups bought from inside the app link with high confidence.
- Call tally('first_output') when someone gets their first result; the goals view then shows how many visitors reach it and what they later paid.
08Questions
Does Tally see how many credits a user spends?
No. It reads payments from your provider and visits to your site. Spend inside the product stays in your own database; a goal call can mark a milestone such as a first generation if you want it beside your sources.
We have a free tier. When does someone count as a buyer?
When their first payment succeeds in a connected provider. A free sign-up can be counted as a goal, but revenue starts with the first charge.
Will the snippet slow down the tool's pages?
It's one script tag of about 3 KB, loaded with defer, so the page renders and the tool runs without waiting for it.