Membership or Increased One Time Payment? Debate

hitmeasap Level X⁵

June 27, 2016, 6:28 pm

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Membership or Increased One Time Payment?

Hello,
I haven't that much experience when it comes to membership sites/forums or sections and I would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions.

I have a product, no, I have an idea for a product, but I can't decide in what direction I should go..

Here's the thing:
I have a product I want to sell. An Ebook. On top of that, I have extras such as videos, mind maps and other content.. But I feel that I have much more to give in terms of experience, but I won't be able to do so in more ebooks or videos.. I want to spread things out a bit and give my clients something more like a "step by step" thing, but with ideas, suggestions and tips, instead of guides or videos. Something like a daily idea/suggestion.

And what could be better than a membership site? - At least that's where I'm at right now. I believe a membership site/forum, or perhaps something like "membership newsletters" or whatever would be the best possible way to do this.. But I have no experience.

What do you think? Do you have any experience doing this yourself? Have you ever paid to gain access to a membership site/forum, where you could learn additional things?

In case you have. How was it? Do you think it was worth it?

Another option would be to increase the price of the product and give them these daily tips for free, during 12 months or whatever. But that would require the product to be very expensive.. What would you do?

Best Regards,
hitmeasap

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anwebservices

anwebservices

I was paying memberships to various websites where i could find valuable information i needed and also owned one of these websites before. Most of the time i have seen or used these was a subscription monthly payments and i guess it's best idea to go with. Always give something for free to attract new members... Not sure if forum would be a good idea, but i would suggest using WordPress website with some nice membership plugin where you can offer part of your content for free, while the rest is visible only to paid members, or protect whole page / post and separately make category for free stuff.

Good luck with your project

8 years ago

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hitmeasap

hitmeasap

Thank you anwebservices, I appreciate your reply.
So, one would be able to create a website, in wordpress, where I would be able to actually make some of my content visible for some people and other content non-visible for others?

I do understand that I'll have to give something for free and that's not a problem at all. The thing is that I would like some sort of membership, so they get into a "members area", where I'll share ALL the content. Like videos, mind maps etc.

Would something like that be easy to do? (For a non website guru.)
How much would something like this cost, if I hired someone to do this for me? On average?

8 years ago

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TommyCarey

TommyCarey

I would say to go the monthly membership route because you'll get more people signing up than you would with a large one time fee.

Let's say you charge $45 a month and you give out a lot of new content each month in order to help people with whatever they signed up for. You will get a good amount of signups if you have a good sales page that will convert them into customers.

If you go the one time fee route, you will get less sign ups because people don't want to risk a large sum of money on something that isn't guaranteed.

The only time I've ever paid a large sum of money for a service is when I paid a lifetime license for SEnuke. I was already using the software for 16 months and loved it, so I paid the $2,000 for the lifetime license and I get every single update they do to the software. Right now the software is up to $147 a month so I got in when it was good and now it's even better

8 years ago

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hitmeasap

hitmeasap

Cool Razzy, I appreciate your inputs.

If I had a "members area" without adding new content regularly myself then.. Do you think that would work?

Let's say, for instance, that I have 5 things.

Ebook. Videos. Mind maps. Tips & tricks. And a "discussion board".

If I sold the ebook, as a standalone product, and instead of offering people videos and all that as different bonuses immediately within the first offer. I offered people "access to the members area" for a monthly fee. Which they obviously would be able to cancel at any time they want. They would basically pay the monthly fee, one time, to get all the bonuses, and the "discussion board" would be updated regularly with questions, answers and all that.. Do you think that would work, in case I decreased the monthly fee, after the first month?

8 years ago

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augusta

augusta

A monthly fee is just it because they might even pay more unknowingly. let say you want to charge $80,for life but by charging $10 dollars a month though small but if they paid for a year, you would know the amount that you'll have lose for agreeing to just one time payment.

7 years ago

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EliteWriter

EliteWriter

I think that a membership would work out better. Obviously you need to keep the payments small while also not making them too small so that the period is prolonged too much. It would be a good idea to offer an incentive so as to motivate them further, such as the first month is for free, or pay 3 months in advance and get 1 month free - obviously it would depend on something that is feasible and cost effective to you, but that little push could work wonders.

8 years ago

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Lynne

Lynne

Following this, I am very interested to see what the suggestions are.

8 years ago

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Everett

Everett

I've tried something on the basis of both. A membership with an option of a one time based large fee. What I gathered is, is that users are often more likely to purchase the low fee service than to upgrade to the larger fee service. This is most likely due to the user paying a small amount before they decide to invest their a large sum of their money into the product.

I believe you should offer both, if you can. Sometimes people are so sick of paying monthly and rather would pay yearly or a one time fee to access everything, give the users both options and see what happens?

8 years ago

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vinaya

vinaya

I think membership is better compared to one-time payment when it comes to generating income from your business. When you are charging membership fees, money will come regularly and you will be able to run your business smoothly. When you are charging one time high fees, you will have a big amount on your hands. When this money is spent, you will have no money to do your regular business activities. Since one time payment always involves big money, people prefer to use monthly subscription because it cost less. The only drawback of membership is the members might leave the service if they don't like it. Once you lose a member, you will also lose income source.

7 years ago

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