Just What IS a “Premium Subscriber” ?
Posted on December 14, 2007
Filed Under subscriptions
Just a quick post explaining exactly what I mean when I refer to “Premium Subscriptions”, “Premium Content”, ect (because I’ve gotten the question more than once).
Simply put, Premium means “paid“. So when I refer to premium subscriptions or premium content, it means that people are paying for it.
At the forums section of GrownUpGeek.com we have a section known as the “private” or “restricted” forums - aka, the Premium Membership forums. To get into the “Restricted Forums” members must do one of the following:
- Be a helpful member, making many helpful posts/comments. We can track this with the Drupal User Points Module. The incentive to get into the premium/restricted forum for free helps to drive more user-generated content in the open areas of the forum
- Submit new content for the Restricted/Premium area. Any member that submits new items such as Myspace URLs that allow you to view private profiles, Facebook tricks, etc, get free, lifetime access into the restricted/premium forums. This helps feed more premium content into the premium forums, creating added value for premium members
- “Premium” Subscriptions - Members can ’subscribe’, via PayPal to maintain access into the premium/restricted forum area. First month is $5.99, and each additional month is $1.99. As long as their subscription payment stays current they will have access to the premium/restricted forums. The awesome thing about these reoccurring subscription fees is that that if you can keep members subscribing (by giving them a good reason to stay), those fees start to increase almost exponentially every month. I got the idea from reading Jeremy Schoemaker’s blog, and it has paid-off exceptionally well. I guess I owe him. We use the Drupal LM_PayPal module to automatically maintain our premium subscriptions.
- One-Time Fee: Members that make a one-time donation of $25 gain lifetime access to the premium/restricted forums.
So, Premium Subscribers are simply paying members.
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8 Responses to “Just What IS a “Premium Subscriber” ?”
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Since we’re on the topic of the word “Premium”, why not get the official definition while we’re at it?
Answers.com says…
- A prize or award.
- Something offered free or at a reduced price as an inducement to buy something else.
- A sum of money or bonus paid in addition to a regular price, salary, or other amount.
- The amount paid, often in addition to the interest, to obtain a loan.
- The amount paid or payable, often in installments, for an insurance policy.
- The amount at which something is valued above its par or nominal value, as money or securities.
- The amount at which a securities option is bought or sold.
- Payment for training in a trade or profession.
I’m curious about the amount of people that pay the flat fee vs the people who subscribe. Mind giving us a percentage breakdown?
Brandon - Call Center Job said:
In November we had 277 new premimum subscribers, and 4 flat-fee memberships.
As you can see, members just aren’t willing to pay the high-pricetag of $25, but $5.99 is much more palletable.
Randy Brown said:
I’ll have to remember this because I would do exactly the opposite. If I liked it enough to subscribe then it makes more sense to me to pay for the lifetime membership. It’s less than the price of a one year recurring subscription.
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Awesome! I think we talked about this at Wemug and im glad its working great for you. quality content is always the best thing to have once you start doing that. keep it up Randy! and PM for you on gasmoney forums. thanks ahead of time!
I am seeing more and more sites slowly moving to premium content based model. These days more and more people are willing to pay some fee to see things which are (1) exclusive (2) insider information (3) step-by-step procedure (4) discounted (5) expert advice (6) one-on-one with celebrity of the niche and similar other stuff. These days people don’t mind paying some fee for such stuff.
Hope you do will well with your this venture. I am also in the process of setting up a website based on similar lines.
Hi Randy,
Is there any significance to the initial first month price of $5.99? as opposed to it being the same for all months?
Love this site btw.
Joe said:
Thanks Joe;
No real significance to the $5.99.. I started higher, and lowered it one or two times, the $5.99 amount seemed to be the ’sweet spot’..