We charge a lot of money for our membership site content. There I said it – we cost a lot of money. When Emile and I started our paid content business, we decided that we would rather service a smaller group of members at a higher price than a larger group of members at a lower price.
But more importantly, when we tested lower price offers, our revenue always decreased – even with slightly higher volume. Even with lower pricing, we attracted a few more members than usual, but not nearly enough to make up the difference lost from higher-priced memberships. It seemed that if someone wanted to become a member, they were going to do so pretty much regardless of what the price was. $299 per year made virtually no difference in membership volume than charging $499 per year.
Our lesson learned: People who will never become members won’t join at $999 bucks – and they won’t join at $9. People who will join at $299 will also join at $499.
I received the email below a few minutes ago. I get one of these types of emails a couple of times a month and in the beginning it would bug me for days:
Tim,
I really like your membership site and the idea, but I have to say, I really think you’re pricing yourself too high. I guess you might have some company-based members who can get the subscription fee paid for by their company, but for individuals, (who I think are the ones you’re aiming at), its just too high a price. Love it if you could come up with some different pricing options.”
I used to agonize over these. What if I was leaving thousands of dollars on the table? What if only .001% of the people who came to the site ever joined because we were overpricing? If we offered a low monthly price, maybe we’d get a lot more members and we’d actually make a lot more money!
When you first start selling content, there are a million places for doubt to start creeping in. You launch your site and it’s very slow at first – so slow that you think something must be wrong. You think to yourself, “I’ve totally blown it – I mis-judged the need for this, I priced it too high, my site design is terrible…etc, etc.” Especially when you get emails from people who say that if you priced it just a teensy bit lower, they’d buy (and tell all their friends to buy too!). It can really start to get to you. And don’t even get me started about all the emails from internet marketing gurus that are saying how much money they are making with their sites – those don’t help either.
Could those doubts about pricing, need and design be true? Perhaps. But 99.9% of the time it isn’t. Your gut is right – there is a need for your site and you priced it just fine. You just don’t have the volume of traffic needed yet to make sales on the 1% of people who will convert.
We had all these same problems with TraderInterviews.com when we started. We knew the product was AWESOME and priced fairly. But until we had enough traffic coming in to prove it, there were some very tense and unhappy months. Especially since we had been a free site for so many years – the haters were relentless with their emails when made the transition to a paid membership site.
But as our traffic grew, we realized that we were right on with our guts – there was a need and people were willing to pay for it.
As for those emails that we get that say we are too expensive, I started doing my own little test. I’d write back and offer our membership at 50% off – just to see what would happen. 9 times out of 10, I never heard from them again. My sense is that a single dollar would have been too expensive in their eyes. It wasn’t about the money, it was about their feeling that all content should be free or less than $10 per year. We’re just not willing to give away our content at that price.
If their email is polite and they use their name (as this gentleman did today), I always reply and explain why I think our content is worth the price and that it is simply a business decision. If the email is rude (as many of the freebie hounds are), they simply get deleted.
So, to bring this post back to the title about what to do:
1) Spend your time finding the prospects that see the value of your membership, not on convincing those that don’t
2) Believe in your product and your pricing – if your gut tells you what you have is great and pricing is fair – it is
3) By all means, test different pricing structures and levels, but don’t let individual emails dictate your testing
4) Hang in there and work hard on getting good traffic to your site – it’s the only way to really know if what you are doing is working
5) Politely reply to your emails that are respectful and delete the ones that aren’t – life is too short to waste time on someone who thinks they are entitled to everything for free
I’m not saying you shouldn’t listen to your prospective members. But keep in mind that those who want a deal (or something for nothing) will always be the most vocal.
Constantly and relentlessly create content that is high-quality and done with your best members in mind – you WILL be successful at this.
Interview Income teaches you our entire business from start to finish. If you’ve tried everything else to make money for your site, this is the information you’ve been waiting for. Sign up now during our soft-launch before pricing increases!
membership pricing membership site pricing
Izzy and Tim from FoolishAdventure.com were kind enough to have me on their show this week.
You’ll find 
Rob Booker is a content superhero. I recently spoke with Rob, a friend of mine in the trading business, who creates content and sells it online in that industry. In this two-part interview, we discuss first how he balances giving away free content vs. selling his classes and information, and how he creates urgency and excitement about upcoming classes.
Nathan Hangen is a blogger and digital content creator who is finishing his commitment to the military next month and taking the plunge into full-time online content sales. I came across his site after seeing a comment he made on another blog. What interested me most was what I saw him doing on his site. He was offering a paid E-book but also offering it as a free download.
The Interview Income blog is written by Tim Bourquin and Emile Bourquin, brothers and owners of Ideas For Download. The Interview Income Blog is your front row seat to see what we've done that worked and failed in selling content online. Thankfully, we've been pretty successful but we promise to always show you the reality of building an online business.
