That isn’t true for other sectors. At the moment, only a few content sites have successfully managed to charge people to view their articles, and those sites tend to be in the finance sector. The Wall Street Journal demands just over $100 for an annual subscription to its web site, delivering only short previews to nonsubscribers (although subscribers can send articles to their friends, allowing the publication to benefit from viral marketing). The Economist asks for about $90.
These kinds of sites—dating sites that demand a membership fee and news sites that demand a paid subscription—are offering something that users are clearly prepared to pay for. In the case of dating sites, that’s exclusivity.
When they can pick up the same service on a free dating site, members see the pay wall as a filter keeping out people who aren’t serious. If someone is prepared to dip into their pocket to pay a $25-a-month subscription fee, then that’s a great sign that they mean business. They’re less likely to be looking for a short-term relationship and more likely to be active on the site and prepared to invest in building a new relationship with someone they meet online. They’re also likely to be financially stable enough to afford the membership fee—a decent sign that they’ll make a good date!
For readers of the Wall Street Journal’s online edition, the return is value. Subscribers may well feel that the content available on the site does more than satisfy their curiosity; it gives them professional information that’s worth more than the price they’re paying for it. The knowledge that they gain by reading the paper’s reports every day, for example, may give them a better understanding of what’s happening on the stock exchange, thus helping them to make smarter investments, which will in turn bring in more money than the $100 subscription fee.
Create a site that offers either a sense of exclusivity similar to that found on Match and eHarmony, or provide the kind of high-value content offered by publications like the Wall Street Journal, deliver it to them in a steady, undisturbed flow, and you should be able to persuade your users to pay you every month, too.
Those are the principles that have allowed my own membership site to grow and prosper. The Profit Vault (www.TheProfitVault.com) is a membership site that doles out valuable training and content to my members over a 13-week period. For those who want to learn practical strategies for making money online, we’ve organized our content in a consumable manner that provides weekly objectives, motivation, instruction, and action items so that users can pursue their online goals. Members pay $47 per month to enjoy this content (Figure 6.1).
The Profit Vault is an online example of a membership site or continuity program. But that doesn’t mean you can’t create physical products and receive recurring payments from customers.
One of our popular offline products is the Top One Report (www.TopOneReport.com). As a magazine format, this publication offers fresh, original content written by me and members of my staff. We tackle all things business-related, with a special focus on online business. But unlike a typical magazine subscription, the Top One Report commands a premium of $29.95. Just as people will pay more for an e-book that provides instant gratification and valuable material, our subscribers are willing to pay more for our report because of the quality of the information found within. Remember, it’s all about providing value. If people can justify a purchase that promises a larger ROI than its cost, they will be willing to sign on (Figure 6.2).
Figure 6.1The Profit Vault is an example of a membership site that people will gladly pay for on a recurring basis. As long as you are providing value, customers are all too happy to continue subscribing.
That may sound slightly odd: a publication explaining how to make money on the Internet that is produced using old-fashioned ink and paper and dropped in a physical mailbox outside subscribers’ homes.
Of course, I could put all of the content in the Top One Report online. I could post it on a web site, and I could distribute it by PDF. But there are a couple of reasons I don’t do that.
Figure 6.2Subscription models are nothing new, and sometimes the old way of doing things is still the best. The Top One Report is a printed, monthly magazine packed with advice and articles about Internet entrepreneurship.
The first is piracy. This content is exclusive. People have paid for it and I want them to continue doing so. If I put it online and charge for it, I can be sure that some copies will be e-mailed, shared, and passed around. Some people won’t be paying for it. Printed distribution reduces the number of people who are reading my publication for free.
But a print publication delivers something even more important than piracy protection: It comes with a high perceived value.
Readers expect online content to be free and are unwilling to pay for it. They will, however, pay for magazines, because they assume that the information those magazines contain has been carefully chosen and well researched. Because anyone can create a web site and place content on it, new visitors can never know whether they’re about to get some truly valuable information or something that just came off the top of someone’s head. A print magazine—like a book—costs money to produce. If someone has decided to invest in that publication, it’s a good sign that it contains information that other people are going to find valuable.
In fact, as we’ll see, it doesn’t cost a great deal to produce a print magazine, and it’s possible to do it with no
