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Finances - What % of members never cancel a recurring subscription?

by ed22
3 replies
Hi everyone

I have several sites that charge a flat fee for access to a software product that users then have the right to come back to and download updates for free for life.

Say I charge $35 for this service, and have a good base of subscribers with this model; i.e. it works.

I'm considering starting up a different site where the same product is offered, but instead of charging $35 upfront, would charge say $2.99 a month recurring instead.

It's definately a product where people would need to come back for updates, so please lets not get sidetracked by this aspect

I'd need to set a min 1 year subscription to cover costs etc.

Do any fellow Warriors have any experience with these models?

-What % of people tend to cancel after the 12 months?
- What % of people would cancel within the 12 months (contract notwithstanding!?)

Thanks all
Ed22
#cancel #finances #members #recurring #subscription
  • Profile picture of the author Chris The Traffic Blogger
    Don't build your business on them forgetting to stop subscribing, but rather, figure out the average length of time your current audience is using your product and coming back for downloads.

    If someone isn't going to download your product more than once every month, they will simply cancel the subscription and rebuy it later on when they need the next version.

    Unless you are providing content frequently, I would not recommend a subscription based model.
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    • Profile picture of the author Tashi Mortier
      I have no personal experience but I can tell you that some businesses that have built-in checks for a subscription in their software are quite successful.

      Make the whole process painless for your users, though! So, don't require a re-activation more than every two weeks, so that they can use the program offline, too.

      Spend some time building in an autoupdate function, too. That will be a great comfort function for all your subscribers. After each update, tell them what great new features they got or perhaps they might never use them.
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  • Profile picture of the author Dave Rodman
    Banned
    I don't like subscriptions when there isn't really a good reason to have one. I think the best way to operate is how a shopping cart company does. One-time fee on the shopping cart software, free updates to fix bugs, and then upgrade fees to the next version. And then they just do value added services to go along with that. Such as add-on modules, additional services, etc.

    There was a popular IM product that tried to convert their product into a monthly fee, but it didn't seem to work cause they went back. I think subscriptions are a tougher sell than you'd think.
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