What are the keys to paysite success in 2011?
 

There are a lot of paysite owners here on GFY. With 2010 coming to an end I thought a good topic would be a discussion on the keys to paysite success in 2011.

Here are a few to get this started.

- engage with your customers. If you don't care about your site why should they?

- identify and study your key competitors. Be aware of where you are better than them and where they are better than you. Build on your advantage and work to decrease the disadvantage. Keep your eye on them. Know when they start making moves (both in the members area and marketing).

- Remember this is a business. If you treat your customers with respect they won't mind when you try to make more money. Ex-member emails, cams, upsales etc are all fair game. Remember to put yourself in their shoes. Find that happy medium and you'll make a lot more money without upsetting your customer base.

- customer support. Our industry has a reputation for shady billing and shitty customer experiences. One way to overcome that is providing outstanding customer support. Go the extra mile. If a long time member has trouble with the site give them a free month. If somebody cancels because of a problem fix the problem and give them a free month so they can see you are working on it. Customer support is an easy way to help the future of your business.

- instead of worrying about where the industry has been worry about where it is going.

- the world is constantly changing. How much did your paysite change in 2010 vs 2009? How much will it change in 2011?

We brought CS back in house so we could focus on that aspect more. Phone, live chat, email CS.

Keep updating the sites, try to make the experience better, work on pricing, upsells etc.

We've been most busy on our members areas the last year, and this year we are focusing on expanding traffic to our sites.

Very smart to bring your CS in house. It's everything imo.

key to a successful paysite..is to not do one. Money saved is money earned..memberships are going away..as well as people's credit cards..put your money into other areas ( mainstream)

Shap we may not be a paysite but I think the biggest key for us our love for our own product. Building a product and brand and not look for the quick easy money like you said. I'm a fan first off and it shows when I talk about it. I'm like that with our sites, handjobs and fleshlights and you can tell when you talk to me. Its similar when someone asks you about your kids..

Competition was severe for us with Myfreecams leading the march. I studied them and made adjustments to our model without sacrificing what we believe in. Tipping, micro payments and being able to buy blocks of time.

Content is still key and while Tubesites have had a massive impact yes even for webcams no matter what they say. Maintaining a high level of model and having a high standards. Personality sells no question but attractive girls with a killer personilty is the ticket. People are willing to pay and do.

One thing we introduced was member to member interaction. It was something I feared at first but the bro factor was high. Members enjoyed rating, talking and interacting with other members much to my surprise. I was thought that it was about the girl and the guy but I was wrong.

Being available and getting everyone past the 9-5 mentality really helped land affiliates and members. Embracing social media was key for our success.


Everyday I learn something new....and I try to apply it the best I can.

hidden crosses on multiple merchants!

as the pie grows smaller, i think the biggest key will be just to hang on and stay in business. as the competition will be going under, those that will remain will be picking up their business and manage to grow that way.

interaction, tattoo it on your arm together with mobile.

Yep. I'm using our existing customers to find ways to attract and acquire new customers :)

Care to expand on that?

2011 is going to be worse then 2010. well for most people

Funny, I've found that some of my sites ppl don't care if we update while others if I miss a single day members cancel! Of course, I have 24 paysites....

So for me, adding new, unique sites like this one helps enormously:

www.erosexotica.com

I have feeds and bonus content to keep members happy but honestly, overall, I found that I could update every single fucking DAY and members won't rebill beyond 2-3 months, max. Sure, there is that small percentage - 2%? - who stay for months and years but overall rebills are down, and will stay down in 2011 IMHO.

So adding new sites, getting our own traffic sources, customer service (free months for everyone who complains!), weekly newsletters, ex-member emails, and starting in 2011 upselling to a couple webmaster friends' sites (all CCBill), and trying to sell cams and chat for the first time (members area). I'm also thinking about throwing some cam links onto my tours, too but don't know if that will help or hurt things.

Unique content, never-ending work, more sites, hang on til things stabilize (if ever), keep rollin'. :)

First, it's important to remember that each person is just one person. They usually represent a number of other people but you generally don't want to base major changes on a single individual's wants (yourself included imo).

That said in our forum (which is quite active) we have a lot of discussions. We discuss trailers, tours, what got them to join. All kinds of stuff. The vocal members are very open to discussing this stuff. The key is to remember they represent a portion of your members and not all of them. But they often bring up really awesome feedback that we completely overlook. I know speaking about us specifically we get caught up in the technical stuff and miss a lot of obvious stuff that they bring up right away in our sales pitches and trailers.

I agree. But at the same time in the last few months I've talked to a lot of people that have turned the corner and are doing really well again. So I think the people that are staying put and not changing their ways will be in trouble. Everybody else has the opportunity to have a good year :thumbsup

We get tons of ideas from our forum, best feedback is from your own traffic imo.

Yep 100% The key is being able to find the relevant feedback. I've always taken that skill for granted but whenever I ask for staff members to give feedback from the forum they often get lost and take everything at face value. One of the keys to really killing it is being able to gather all the information and know what is truly best for the user base as a whole.

Can't go wrong with great support.

The big kicker in my opinion is Programs need to stop waiting for affiliates/traffic to come to them.

And.. based on company resources, many paysites and programs need to identify how they can sell themselves and the content they have, deeper and wider - before they sell someone/something else.

10000000000000000% agreed. I've always said if you want to be successful you should always be your #1 affiliate. I think I can take that a step further and say if you want to be successful you have to be able to be your ONLY affiliate.

Great thread, especially for the "small fry" like me. I do well in my niche (Solo Girl). Ironically enough with no affiliates and especially with a 1 and half "man" show.

Still trying to figure out how to get more traffic, how to get my members more interactive, how to draw more traffic to my forum.

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Fantasy and interaction.

We do not have a "team" of customer support. When our members approach them we email them directly ourselves in a very correct way. We also communicate directly with surfers on forums and wherever possible. We realise very well that they are the ones that pay our bills.

All great tips, thanks.

These are useful tips from Shap. Thanks for posting.

Great thread thanks Shap
Happy Holidays

3d ........

Good thread. Nice to see people sharing.

make all of your content freely available on tubes, torrent sites, newsgroups. spread it around as much as you can so that it gives them no reason to have to pay to view it. cancel server and try to get a job at Walmart but get denied as you have no real world experience.

Some of our CS is out of our hands as CCBIll takes care of it. But we have a note on the account that anyone asking for a refund should be referred to us and if they say no, to just issue the refund right away. Its better than getting a CB.

We have links in the members area for members to contact us with any help requests or anything and plenty of other things to keep the site growing.

i like the interactivity points...let them give feedback on content they like...maybe they can rate some content...leave comments about it, request more of a certain kind even

have no idea why sites don't set up a facebook like members area. or maybe people have.

fired ...

No one ever mentions -- "make a fantastic product that people will want". Seems kind of important.

content ... you dont care about support if you offer quality everything :2 cents:

IMO that's a given but definitely worth mentioning.

If you are a European sponsor, ask yourself why your site is worth $34.95 when some of the best sites in the USA only charge $24.95 or less.

I'm sure the numbers show you make more given rebills, exchange rate ect but, I sure dont and pretty much wont promote anything over $29.95 because it doesnt sell for beans.

There are some good European sponsors and sites but almost all of them are priced $34.95 or over.

Honestly, how many pay site owners are going to make major changes, and spend time and money to try to fix things?

Even if you told them exactly what was needed for them to make their sales pick back up, would they have the money to do it and they would dedicate the time to get it done ?

I would think a lot of them either already quit, hanging in their on rebills, never had to make major changes and wont for various reasons, etc... How many are going balls to the wall making new changes and trying to save their company??

Bookmarked :)

<key>don't start a new one</key>

Customer support is definitely a key to success.