Most people charge for access to their membership site (although, you could have a free tier, or a free for all option)… but most people also struggle to work out how much they should charge.
Note: There is no right or wrong answer
If you are offering the value, you can ask for whatever price you want. You might have a recurring $1 a month, or $100,000 a month… as long as you are offering the things that you promise, and they choose to buy in at that price, then ultimately the price really doesn’t matter.
However, there are some things to consider.
1. What is your site going to offer? What is the value of that?
If there is a huge quantity of information, then the value might be higher, and therefore the price would be higher.
2. How much is your audience willing to pay?
And are they willing to pay an ongoing subscription for it?
In episode 3 we considered the different ways/times you can take money, and the decision that you made then will impact your decision now.
Now that you’ve answered those two questions, here are some points to consider.
– If it is pay per post, or pay per access, then you want a mid level fee. Not too low, other wise people will just come in with the intention of grabbing all the content and leaving straight away.
– If you are going to be doing a pay per month, or pay per week then you need to make sure that it is a reasonable amount for your market to add to their monthly bills.
Most people already have subscription based recurring payments. You pay for electricity and water, you might pay for netflix, for your phone or internet. There are lots of services in your life which have monthly fees, but you want to make sure that it is a reasonable amount for them to add to their existing monthly subscriptions.
– If it is fixed term fees will be higher because they are staying for a set period of time.
I didn’t give you a straight answer there… on purpose, because when it comes to pricing, it definitely isn’t a one price fits all solution.
I’ve seen membership sites from $9 a month to $9,000 a month and everything in between.
I’ve seen a whole range of varied support for that.
I’ve seen lots of entry offers, where you offer the first month for $1 (and to be honest… I don’t love this strategy. When you offer $1 first month access, that is what people feel like it is worth, and you often see a huge drop off after that first month… however, I know some people who have had great success with this strategy )
Lastly, you need to think about your retention rate.
If you are having a monthly subscription rate, or a pay per post, then you need to think about how many people are going to drop off, and how regularly? Is it worthwhile increasing the price slightly, so people are more thoughtful before they join… or even reducing the price slightly so that it’s not such a big monthly payment for them.
As I said, there isn’t a right or wrong.
What I want you to do is sit down and work out what is reasonable for your site.
Consider what content you are offer, what service level you are providing and what your audience is willing/able to pay.
Conisder your accounts, consider your profit margins and think about your business model.
Don’t just pull a price out of your arse, because it doesn’t work well that way.