Dropping Prices on Pay Sites?

[Dianna Vesta]

As a result of the economy how many of you have dropped prices on membership?

What new steps have you taken to secure retention and boost signups?

I’ve been talking to a few niche webmasters and they claim that they did drop their prices and saw no increase. I have BDSM and although my signups aren’t huge they retain very well. A lady that works for me says that we should drop the already low prices- 29.95 first month then 24.95 after, customer loyalty. I killed the trial because I had more charge backs from people saying they didn’t know they would be rebilled after the trial.

So I want to build a site called Brutal Bitches- really hardcore Femdom pics and movies & charge 39.95 – to prove to my staff that if they really want it they’ll spend the money.

Feed back please.

Dianna

[Winetalk.com]

Dianna,
if you don't run affiliate program,
I suggest $9.95 membership, as they recur FOREVER,
well known fenomena.

[Rolo]

Depends on the site/content/traffic... rare niche sites can almost set any price they want, and still a good amount of surfers signs up.

Steps to get better overall retention:

- Only have rare niche site(s) (ex. female domination)
- Get rid of traffic from sources which have access to alot of free content (ex. thehun)
- Remove low converting countries from your signup page (ex. mexico)
- Offer only monthly memberships

Steps to get better overall signups:

- Have lots of content and sites in several large niches
- Get more traffic from sources which have access to alot of free content (ex. thehun)
- Allow low converting countries on your signup page (ex. mexico)
- Offer very cheap or free trials

[Mike AI]

Rolo that is excellent advice!!! Many people should print that up and hang in on the fridge!!

[Dianna Vesta]

Originally posted by Serge_Oprano@May 13 2003, 10:15 AM
Dianna,
if you don't run affiliate program,
I suggest $9.95 membership, as they recur FOREVER,
well known fenomena.
We do run affiliate programs. I sign-up for affiliate programs and know that I probably wouldn't sign up for a program that only paid 50% of 9.95=- lol- then again, maybe I would. I'm pretty much here for the long haul so if every single member came from affiliates and my final payout 4.00 @ 500 that's still 2000.00 - Just got to add an extra and make it 5000, right?

[Dianna Vesta]

Rolo that is very good advice indeed. We do have rare niche and I also produce a lot of my own content. It's real, that's for sure. We do retain well but I also get a lot of people signing up, canceling and coming back every few months to see everything, stay a week or so then leave.

I'm having a problem converting tho. My sites:

www.femsupreme.com
www.sexslaveacademy.com

Both have good traffic but they aren't converting lihe they should. Do you think I should change something? I use to have the standard index page then a tour/join, but that wasn't working. I decided to show the newest updates on the main page as an attempt to lure them in.

Also, about pop-ups we had some there on exit but we got a shit load of complaints from members.

Thanks again for great advice.

Dianna

[Dianna Vesta]

Originally posted by Rolo@May 13 2003, 10:45 AM

Steps to get better overall retention:

- Only have rare niche site(s) (ex. female domination)
- Get rid of traffic from sources which have access to alot of free content (ex. thehun)
- Remove low converting countries from your signup page (ex. mexico)
- Offer only monthly memberships


We are doing all these things. I don't understand about removing low converting countries from the signup page tho.

[TheEnforcer]

Voltar has a low priced $9.95 or so site in his program and from what I hear they stay for quite a while.

[Jim]

I have several sites at $14.95 and the members do stay longer....especially if you have daily updates..... :okthumb:

[sarettah]

Also, about pop-ups we had some there on exit but we got a shit load of complaints from members.

************************************************** ***

You can let the members exit without the popups and pop the hell out of anyone backing out from the sign up form....

Also, just a note on marketing (coming from a mainstream perspective, so I do not know how well it converts to adult) I have found that folks pay for "perceived value" rather than actual value. In many cases, if you lower prices the reaction will be "Why, what's wrong with it" while if you raise prices the reaction will be "It must be good if they charge that much for it". Two stories to illustrate:

Story 1:

I was working in wholesale wine and liquor. We had some really really old Sebastiani Sonoma Brut champagne back in the warehoue. It had been on closeout for at least 5 years, we couldn't give the shit away. We got a new wine manager. He decided to RAISE the price on the Sonoma Brut to a ridiculously high price, more than it had ever been worth or ever would be. He sold all 10 or so cases we had in a week for the new price. Perceived Value rather than actual value.

Story 2: (think I read this in Ann Landers or Dear Abby years ago)

A guy is looking for a car and as many of us would do he is looking through the ads in the local paper. He runs across an ad for a late model porsche Carrera at the ridiculously low price of $250.00. He calls the number to verify that the price is right and that a decimal point or two haven't been moved by accident. After confirming the price, he goes and looks at the car. The car is beautiful, low mileage, not a scratch, runs like a dream, drives even better. But, all the time his mind is nagging at him that there must be something wrong because of the price. He finally finishes testing the car and all that and goes and talks to the seller. He once again confirms the price and then asks her, "It's a beautiful car, it must be worth at least $25,000 or so , how come the low price, what is wrong with it". She replies, "Well, my husband ran off with his secretary a couple of months ago and last week he sent me a letter asking me to sell the car and send him the money". Perceived Value.

Hope that helps in some way :)

[Rolo]

Originally posted by Dianna Vesta@May 13 2003, 12:08 PM
We are doing all these things. I don't understand about removing low converting countries from the signup page tho.
Since we were talking about "overall retention", then getting rid of those countries which have a hard time recurring will help your "overall retention"... If you run a pay per signup program, then allowing all countries to signup will pull your overall income per member down... only keeping those countries which have a good track record with recurrings will help you make the most from each member send from an affiliate. Also it lowers the "multiple chargebackers", since most of the people doing 4-7 chargebacks at one time are from outside the US.

Now if you only focus on your bottomline, and do not have pay per signup affiliates to pay, then you can accept all countries, but it will hurt your "overall retention".

[cj]

Originally posted by Serge_Oprano@May 13 2003, 10:15 AM
Dianna,
if you don't run affiliate program,
I suggest $9.95 membership, as they recur FOREVER,
well known fenomena.
this is a good theory, however to get the equivalent $$ in your pocket, you have to get at least 3 months out of this member to make back $29.95 ... on a $29.95 charge, the odds of getting someone to stay for 1 month at 29.95 are higher than getting someone to stay for 3 months at 9.95 ...

BUT, if the 9.95 member stays that long they will stay for ever ... then you have to decide if you'd prefer a 6 month member at 9.95 or a 2 month member at 29.95

Dianna, we've had great success using a step down billing model

$29.95 first month, 9.95 per month after that ... the ONLY market it helps you with is those who WANT to stay a member, or those who have cancelled due to the price.

Offer a different pricing point to your members after they cancel & as an ad on your exits ... 'thanks for your loyalty, here's a cheaper way to sign up'

dropping the price will NOT guarantee you more transactions, at the end of the day, that's the only relevant factor.


Also, about pop-ups we had some there on exit but we got a shit load of complaints from members.


tell those members who complain you'll be happy to remove the consoles but the price of their membership will go up to cover your losses. members don't run your site, you do, they will always complain over popups - TOO BAD.

[Rolo]

Originally posted by Dianna Vesta@May 13 2003, 08:07 AM
I'm having a problem converting tho. My sites:

www.femsupreme.com
www.sexslaveacademy.com

Both have good traffic but they aren't converting lihe they should. Do you think I should change something?
Been sometime since I did any paysites myself... these days I focus on backends/software/processing... but the stats I see from "other" sites, shows that more direct and graphic tour(s) helps...

Direct
-------
Surfers looking for BDSM content are harder to sign up + recurre, because there are so many niches in that niche, plus those surfers are probably more experience with sex, then most people how join "bangbus" type sites, so getting them horny probably takes a bit more than flashing some skin. A more direct crude text and guide to the join page... if the surfers are looking for female domination, then he doesn´t care about how many videos or pics are inside... he wants to be told that he is worthless and he needs to sign up - NOW, so he can please his personal dominatrix by looking at all the naughty content ;-) (ok, I´m really bad at given BDSM advise since I have no experience with it, but I can relate to the female domination part - one of my ex. girlfriends was a real dominating bitch always trying to control me :unsure: :D

Graphic
----------
While text is good in the BDSM niche, then men are still very graphic... show more content, but just enough to tease... choosing your samples careful - these and your text is the only basis your surfers have to decide if they want to become members.

Like I said its been sometime, since I did any paysites, so there are probably alot more good advice to be given by others :)

[slavdogg]

www.femsupreme.com
www.sexslaveacademy.com

Dianna, I cant see how you expect the sites to convert for you.
They're hard to surf and navigate, there are more links to other sites than anything relavent to the site itself. But the most frustrating are those links that lead you members area and ask for a password.

basis site design is where you should start before you think about changing the prices.

[Dianna Vesta]

I'm definately coming back to this after I do my farm rounds. lol

Hey I want to thank you guys for taking the time to visit my site and offer this feed back. It's very helpful to me.

We did the tour thing, simple graphic design. For w hile all this worked for us. I agree that there's too many links taking them away from the site. This needs to change.

Check out: http://www.thefemdomcollection.com

[Trev]

Originally posted by cj@May 13 2003, 11:33 PM
Also, about pop-ups we had some there on exit but we got a shit load of complaints from members.


tell those members who complain you'll be happy to remove the consoles but the price of their membership will go up to cover your losses. members don't run your site, you do, they will always complain over popups - TOO BAD.
This is very true, but in keeping with the whole retention side of things you really don't want to be grunting at your members...

I'd say drop a cookie on them in your members area to stop the exits popping as much, better than them popping everytime...

[Dianna Vesta]

After carefully reading all this (excellent BTW) I've decided to make a tour, maybe one pop-up on exit, enhance my links area for up selling & do billing like this:

$29.95 for the first month and then 19.95 for each months after.

This way I'm able to offer two programs to webmasters.. $20.00 per signup or 50% on all rebilling.

I'm still working on the plan but I think I've got it now.

Kisses
DV

[cj]

I'm still working on the plan but I think I've got it now.


i think you do too!

:okthumb:

[Dianna Vesta]

Originally posted by cj@May 15 2003, 08:16 PM
I'm still working on the plan but I think I've got it now.


i think you do too!

:okthumb:
Hey you! Nice to see you. Page me sometime and say hello. My days are a little free.

Anyhow, you know about this... do you think webmaster prefer pay per sign-up or rebilling? Based on what you experinced.

How's purvette doing?

Thanks,
Dianna

[Extreme John]

Originally posted by Rolo@May 13 2003, 07:45 AM
Depends on the site/content/traffic... rare niche sites can almost set any price they want, and still a good amount of surfers signs up.

Steps to get better overall retention:

- Only have rare niche site(s) (ex. female domination)
- Get rid of traffic from sources which have access to alot of free content (ex. thehun)
- Remove low converting countries from your signup page (ex. mexico)
- Offer only monthly memberships

Steps to get better overall signups:

- Have lots of content and sites in several large niches
- Get more traffic from sources which have access to alot of free content (ex. thehun)
- Allow low converting countries on your signup page (ex. mexico)
- Offer very cheap or free trials
By far the best advise anyone could follow.

[Hooper]

imho cheap sites just get bargain hunters. how much is a single adult dvd? isnt it something like 30 or 40 bucks at the local xxx news stand?

if you provide good high quality content you should charge for it.

if i have 100 members buying a trial at 2.99 (100*2.99 = $2.99).. 35% recur to full memberships (35*$39.95 = $1398)... and 50% of those 35% recur for 1 more month (17.5*$39.95 = $699.13) and 50% of the remaining recur for 1 more month (8.75*$39.95 = 349.56) you've made a grand total of 3095.25 off of 100 2.99 signups for a total revenue of 30.95 per signup.

Now if you assume that a 2.99 trial will sell better than a 9.95 flat signup.. (you have to. the difference is tremendous in my experience... assume that it converts about twice as well at 2.99 for the initial purchase) so 100 trial joins is equivalent to 50 9.95 flat joins... you now have to make $61.90 off of every member to match the 2.99 trial... which means you HAVE to have an average retention of 6.2 months.

Is 6.2 months possible? Sure. We have people we've been billing for 3 years... but even at 9.95 a 6.2 month AVERAGE retention is extremely optimistic while those trial join numbers are actually fairly pessimistic.

I'd rather have my money now than try and hope for lengthy retention.

Just my 2cents, take it for what it's worth.

[cj]

hooper, scroll up 9 posts above yours

:biglaugh:

great minds ;-)

[Dianna Vesta]

Originally posted by Hooper@May 17 2003, 01:48 AM
Is 6.2 months possible? Sure. We have people we've been billing for 3 years... but even at 9.95 a 6.2 month AVERAGE retention is extremely optimistic while those trial join numbers are actually fairly pessimistic.

I'd rather have my money now than try and hope for lengthy retention.


A year ago I could hav said so but today I'm not so sure. I was on the phone with my credit card company making an inquery about a charge. We were shooting the shit and I asked her if there had been an increase in people requesting new numbers or claiming they lost their card. She said yes.

I wondered about this because it seems that rebill declines have increased. Way back when the consumer wasn't nearly as savvy as he is today.

That's why I thought the loyalty discount would work best. Webmaster get a nice chunk on signup. I'm not sure affiliates trust the numbers on rebill or find that much value in it. Pay per sign-up sounds pretty good these days.

And I agree about content. If it's good, you'll get signups. If it stays good, you'll always reel them back in.

[Hooper]

hehehe. i somehow didnt even see your post cj :wnw:

scary thing is it took me 3 hours on a slide rule to figure all tha crazy math out!