Tips and Tricks for Making Money with Interviews

I want to update you on our latest experiment of selling individual pieces of content outside of the membership and subscription products we offer.

(Side note: I would have done so earlier, but I’ve been traveling to tradeshows and meetings over the past 8 days and didn’t get a chance to post. That’s something I need to work on, by the way. I have a tough time getting focused enough when I travel to write good blog posts. If you’ve found ways to write posts while on the road that are as high-quality as the ones you write from home or office, I’d love to hear them.)

Anyway, the experiment has gone well and we’ve decided to continue offering individual interviews for sale along with the subscription products.

The interesting thing has been that even though it’s less expensive to become a member than buying just two individual interviews, we’ve had quite a few visitors buy two and three interviews without becoming members. Interviews are $25 each and a monthly membership that includes all the new interviews is $39.

It seems that some folks have such an aversion to a subscription that they’d rather just pay more and not deal with having to cancel a recurring payment. That seems odd to me, because we make it so easy to cancel online. After logging in, it is just two clicks.

I was so curious I emailed three of the buyers and asked them about their decision. Only one replied, and he said he just didn’t feel like taking the time to signup and wanted the instant gratification of using PayPal to buy the content he wanted without having to fill out another form. Fair enough.

But it’s a good lesson to us all. Don’t make the buying decision for your customer. Even though YOU may think one way is better than another, let the buyer decide. I personally don’t think our one-year pass, priced at $399, is the best value, when a Lifetime Pass is just $100 more ($499). But many folks do take the one-year option for their own reasons, I’m sure.

For people who have been playing the pricing and option game forever, this isn’t new. In the comments of the previous post, Matt Petrowsky reminded me that a book we’ve read and refer to often, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions contains a lot of this information. (The link is to the revised and expanded edition out on May 10)

I highly recommend it to anyone selling anything. There are some fascinating studies in it about what makes people choose certain pricing options.

creating content, subscription pricing Predictably Irrational