How does the price of paysite membership affect conversion today?
 

Old scheme with 29$ monthly isn't so good today. It loos like need to decrease trial and monthly price of paysite membership. What You think about? Have someone statistic?

Who pays for Porn? It's free everywhere

Many many years ago there was an emerging trend of 15$/mo membership prices but after some time it died out. If I remember right then half the price didn't really produced (at least) twice the amount of sales..

For $29 you need to give more than content. Maybe $20 discount on webcams or something

the half price is never producing double amount of sales.
but it can make a difference on the user´s lifetimevalue.
expensive memberships are mostly cancelled faster if there is not extreme hq-content and a high update quote behind.

You need to test yourself.

Many paysite owners who tried the "lower the prices" experiment realized that they made more money with higher prices, and went back.

This is not a new idea btw, paysite owners were already trying it 10-15 years ago :)

While at it, a few other things most paysites tried, failed, and reverted from them:

- "Let's remove downloads and make the site streaming only"
- "Let's sell the updates individually rather than memberships"
- "Let's sell free memberships"

All of these things work for SOME sites built around those concepts. But for most, they fail.

Price is an issue when potential customers don't see the value of your product or service. There are high quality niche porn sites, with frequent updates, that do very well. If you're trying to sell old, non-exclusive and non-HD vanilla porn from a site that hasn't been updated for years, then potential customers will focus on the price. I'm not going to name any specific high converting sites or programs, so do your own homework.

Every experiment I saw was for the same ratty ass adult website with shit content for double the price of Netflix that has hundreds of billions of dollars in content ready to stream.

One day someone will come along and destroy the porn market in the same way and get more joins than people can count.

The problem with lowering the price is you have to make up the sales with volume to increase profits. That is not really possible. Cut the price in half you need to sell twice as many Memberships. Can you do twice as many? Probably not.

Also the lower the price the smaller the pie for affiliates. So it's better to RAISE prices and offer more. Don't scrape the bottom of the barrel out of desperation.

$29.95 is still the gold standard. Can't beat a dollar a day.

However, on top of increased options via subscription lengths (60 days, 90 days, etc.), paysite operators may want to consider tiered subscriptions as well: A streaming-only at the lowest price point followed by one that allows downloading and maybe even an additional tier for 4K access.

I charge $24.99 monthly standard, $2.95 2 day trial and converting at $29.99 monthly then my 6 month and year...

but for rabbits and other affiliates looking to promote my site for a deal pass, I also offer a $5 for 5 day, converting at just $18, many people take this deal up and i notice so many guys using the $5 for 5 and coming back monthly to check out my latest vids...

an idea for those not wanting to spend on monthly but low cost when they want to enjoy a good wank! :thumbsup

Email me at alex AT nalem DOT com, and refer to this thread. I will share some advice learned from experience.

When you really think about it, it's been that way for a few decades! What service were you using back 2000 that you're using today that hasn't increased?

This is good!

Also depends how micro niche and unique your content is.

Something else that helps is a unique price. not jut $29.95
Something like $18.69 first month then 28.77 recurring or
32.69 one time for 30 days. then also email seasonal 50% promo's.

Cuttinmg the price, using the latest equipment worked in the 2000s.

Today it's all about the content. Is it interesting, sexy, shot well, good models, to rise above what's given away for free in 100,000s videos on numerous tubes.

I always loved the $5 more for non-recurring and it made the most money. People think it's so hard to cancel some sites so they will pay the extra and a lot would sign up for it and then come back in 2-3 mos and sign up again.

The unique price thing helps too cause rebills happen more if the person doesn't notice the charge on their monthly billing statement and 29:95 sticks out as a monthly bill.

can someone help me to count how many times paul have contradicted himself in just 2 sentences ?

when i still owned paysites I had a very nice model that worked pretty good.

The membership started at 39,95 and went down every month 5 euro til it endet at 9,95

The lifetime value I had than was pretty much higher as constant high price or constant low price.

1. point is that you have to see the price from the view of a user. When he joins everything is new for him and he gets most value for his money.

2. This leads also to the fact that some users are joining for a month, unsubscribe and come back after 1 year when they expect again a lot of new content.

3. There are also users that unsubscribe in holiday times or for other reasons when they do not have that much time to surf.

4. As my model always started with the high price (even for returning members) people was calculating this and did not temporarily cancel to keep the lower price.

I think this system is not only smarter it is also much fairer than a constant price because no membersarea is changing the complete content in a month and from the view of a user it means that he pays the same for less in the next few months.

We also know all that the usage of a longterm member is much lower than the usage from a new user and this fact is felt by the user also.

That is very interesting Thommy!! I never heard of this pricing structure before but I like it. :)

I am currently converting my out-dated Members Areas with Elevated X so I can rotate content, schedule updates, etc. I am hoping this alone affects rebills.

But doing what you say - and given the new, better CMS coming - the move might be to raise the initial price to $39.95 and then reduce by $5 each month as you say.

However:

1. How do you advertise this so the new Member understands it right away?
2. How do you deal with yearly options?

Right now I found a mix of recurring and non-recurring works best. I have two of each so four options total.

we had in in that time in kind of a "compare box" beside other options of longer term
memberships that where based on this calculation

i.e

3 month = 1st month price plus 2.nd month price pluse 3rd month price = 3 month reccuring price

the same for 6 and 12 month

and that highlight the "every month less-price" as the most popular
the way I desrcibed in 1. but the "every month less" made more on the long run
as high payments are always a reminder to cancel

you can make non reccuring the same way I mentioned with 3, 6. 12 month
but keep the price a very little higher.

there can be many more options but than it will be confusing.

I would do 1, 3, 6 12 on reccuring with the every month less" higlighted with stars and in a separate box only 3, 6 and 12 as non reccuring

None! Which is not good.

However, look at what mainstream streaming services like Netflix charge. $15USD a month give or take. The price of media has dropped while adult mainly has stayed the same. Something to keep in mind.

Having an excellent, inimitable product is king

My users fall into two categories:

People who complain about $5
People who will gladly pay $50

Still figuring out how to identify and redirect each one :1orglaugh

and what is this excellent and inimitable product?

it can´t be a movie for sure
it also can not be this so called "unique content"

how can people WANT content if it is not popular?
and unique content can not be popular.

content in porn plays a very other role.
it is focused on taste, on a girl a sexual preference.
I can not even believe that there is even one user out there who have seen a porn video from the first to the last minute. if we would have to live from them we all would die.

selling porn means to read the consumers brain and this brain is working completely different as the producers or the sellers brain.

Netflix has mega-branding (like Pornhub). Mega brands can charge less because they make it up in VOLUME VOLUME VOLUME! :D

I sell on brain thommy

Or, niche niche niche

Perceived Value. :thumbsup

.

Pick which one the viewer gets with Netflix and see why the viewer is happy to pay.

Exclusive good content, non exclusive good content, hours and hours of viewing. If it were given away for free, they wouldn't make the money to pay for content.

Or.

Poor exclusive content that is replicated on site after site, 30 minutes of viewing a day. It's given away for free, so they don't make the money to pay for good content.

Paying for it is the problem today.

In 1998 to 2004 there were 100s of great content producers who had years of experience, models, equipment, etc. Few sites were able to pay them enough to bother with online. The few that did set up their own sites.

What Thommy knows about producing good content has left him selling ad space.

Anyone got a URL of his great paysites?

My take on it is - if you're going to pull out your wallet and pay for porn, and you're sold on this amazing content, and you're gonna trust your cc data to a porn site (processor, whatever) - does it really matter if it's $15 or $30? I mean, the difference is the cost of coffee and a bagel at Starbucks.

Going into $35+ might be much since that's not what the market is charging, but even then it's really not that big a deal. It's far more difficult to convince people to pay anything at all. You can even play the quality card - we don't charge too little because we offer quality content, and that works - the same way you step away from $15 sneakers knowing they're worthless and buy the $50 ones.

The benefit of having a low monthly cost (under $20) is the more likely chance of people not noticing this small charge or never caring enough to cancel it, so you get the perfect member - pays monthly and never even opens your site.

sure they have - but ask the consumers what the reason is that they buy it.

they are satisfying a very broad segment of people and the most people hope to see the blockbusters there. they do not buy netflix for the unknown exclusive content.

same thing with pornhub.
they are a mega brand and provide millions of videos that are in millions of other sites.

so it can´t be the content. right?

IF you would be able to read and understand what i write you would know that I do not have paysites anymore.

I gave them up in 2012 after 15 years.
they still produced reasonable money when i stopped them but with no chance to expand.

I was also bored to see how my capacity went to fraud protection and support for a rising number of dumbs.

an average customer in this time brought me a revenue of 200 euro per year.
an average customer today brings me a revenue of 200.000 euro per year.

why shall i play the same game with so many competitors that can play it the same or even better than me?

and what do all this competitors need? TRAFFIC !

i never jump on a bubble - but i see it and focus on the demand that comes with this bubble.

and i did not create this bubble. when we started our first paysite in 1999 the situation was vise versa. there was too much traffic and no paysites in the german market. so i was one of the very first that created a paysite. and as there haven´t been the infrastructure around I created my OWN payment system and my OWN affiliate system.

i was LONG BEFORE fundorado, partnercash, sexmoney, cash4memebrs and all the others that where focusing this market.

so please do not tell me anything about this market - i did it from every perspective and not only from the small view of a wank-film producer that was never able to sell his own content to the final user.

Do Math much?

.

just badly explained by me - i meant after i was 15 years already in the biz.

I started 1997 with free member sites already. the first PAID member side we started in 1999. sure we made more revenue with the paid version but profits have been similar to the free version.

this :thumbsup


In the past, i´ve offered $1 for a day to my twitter fans, the card, the money, the wife noticing the payment, the cost didn´t matter, hardly anyone joined that day, alas, i´ve had a handful of fans join a week later, saying i´ve just updated another new vid & i´m offering 10% discount.

To charge a reasonable amount using a discount rather than a low price or a stupid high price is best, your members feel they receiving a deal for their 20 quid a month :thumbsup

Economies of scale, of course.
But users are now accustomed to paying $15 or so to view all the content they want.
If anything, porn has been priced as a premium from the get-go and still is priced at a premium today. That doesn't mean we should never go above $29 a month, but what users expect to pay for a digital content service back then compared to now has most likely changed.

You have to figure out what works best for you... Try different price points and see what converts the best.... Pretty easy to do.

No I totally disagree. :)

First, expectations in mainstream are WAY different than for a "vice" like porn. How people behave when it comes to Netflix or Amazon or Apple TV is NOT their watching/spending habits when it comes to porn.

But above all that it's this: perceived expectations. Lowering the price signals your product is Wal-Mart prices. I would rather keep the price high and give added value rather than sell a product people perceive as low-cost or worse, free.

The music industry - of which I was a part for fifteen years as a journalist - faced the same fate/doom. Back in 1999 when Napster first appeared. The major labels thought they defeated digital but 18 months later along came iTunes and the product the record companies were selling for $15 or higher - since you had to buy an entire CD, not individual songs - was suddenly reduced to $0.99. It took a decade for the labels to recover and ONLY by screwing artists via streaming services like Spotify.

So the moral to this story: keep your prices high, add as much value as you can (and hopefully more than your competitors) and market your ass off. :)

What few are discussing is what is the member getting for his money.

How many videos?
What's the quality of the content?
What's the quality of the shooting?
How well does the model connect with the viewer?
How unique is the content?
How many are available for free?
How well does the content fit the niche?

Few will pay for cheap content that is copied everywhere and available free on 100s of Tubes. People will pay for content shot properly that is unique and not on 100s of Tubes.

After 12 years of Tube sites I'm still amazed many haven't adapted to the changes. Surfers go to tubes to see what they're paying for, if they think it's worth the money they buy. Which has led to the death of 10,000s of sites that were ticking over with poor content.

We are offering the following prices:
* $4.95 for 2 days, we banned $1 and $2 trials as it bring only leechers. it didn't affect the ratio of trial. At least we don't loose money compare to $1 and $2.
* $29.95 per month
* $39.95 for 1 month only => no recurring, lot of success, customers prefer to pay $10 to be sure to not be billed an extra month.
* $89.95 for 6 months recurring

We remove 3 and 12 months as the number of subscriptions were very low and having to many offers may confuse buyers.