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Membership Sites: How Much Freemium Content Vs Premium

by tomv
14 replies
Hidey Ho,

I have a blog set up ready to be filled with content with new posts every week or so. I'm also thinking about soon having a paid membership site on a monthly subscription with dripped content. The premium site will have in depth instruction in mind body training, stress management, spirituality, etc. The freemium site will have lots of techniques.

Is this a good idea for a model? The public blog would be well organized with lots of techniques and insights. Would people make the jump from the blog to the paid site or would they just figure they're getting everything they need from the blog anyway?

I already have a following that is a good fraction of more than 20,000 happy readers from one of the books I wrote. Some of them get my monthly newsletter. Just not sure how to separate freemium from paid so that it would make sense to the blog readers to also do the free one month trial, give the paid site a try and stick around.

I just revealed my tentative plan. Is there a way to keep cranking out free content and still demonstrate a lot of value in the paid content that would support me enough to really prioritize my time taking good care of both paid and free members? I try to Google this stuff, but it's tough. It's hard to find working models to look at. If anyone is in the self improvement niche, I would especially appreciate the insights.

I know the title of this thread is about how much free vs paid content, but maybe it's misleading. Maybe there's a qualitative rather than a quantitative distinction that I can make that separates the free and premium content. I'm also considering free sessions with premium memberships and a forum and other things. A lot of the freemium blog content is likely to be embedded instructional YouTube videos with a transcript below. Any ideas are appreciated.
#content #freemium #membership #premium #sites
  • Profile picture of the author Monja
    I've done it similar like you. When I created my membershipsite (livingformondays.com) I've added tons of free content to show people that it can only get better what they find inside. That works OK but since I'm not that known it takes me a bit to built trust. Another Internet Marketer told me that I should first build an audience and then a membership site. I guess that is not the worst advice. Beside that, it was really stressful to fill the membership site so I think that is the best to do:
    Add tons of content because each article you publish is a door open for Google to your site . Just if you have many open doors you'll be able to attracted visitors and therefore members later.
    Since you have already 20,000 readers you can move forward much quicker. Still I'd give away a lot of good tips free and then, when you get some feedback from your readers, I'd announce the opening of my paid membership area - it will be worth already with 5 subscribers by time so you definitely have nothing to lose
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  • Profile picture of the author Ian McConnell
    I started with providing plenty of free content. My intention was that I would build rapport with the reader and eventually they would subscribe for my paid content... I wasted about 2 years doing this with no success.

    I hired a coach who told me to make it all paid content. The idea was that I would position myself as the premium content provider and if the reader wanted free stuff they could go elsewhere. I had awesome results doing this.

    I was interviewed by Yaro Starak and I go over the model in great detail. The secret to a membership site that makes great money is the positioning in the market place and making the sales funnel convert well.
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  • Profile picture of the author Monja
    hi ian,
    that sounds awesome. before i listen to the interview - can you tell me what you did to market your content? i mean, so far i thought with the free content i could do some marketing and then, later, people will switch to the paid version
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    • Profile picture of the author Ian McConnell
      Originally Posted by Monja View Post

      hi ian,
      that sounds awesome. before i listen to the interview - can you tell me what you did to market your content? i mean, so far i thought with the free content i could do some marketing and then, later, people will switch to the paid version
      Monja, you'll learn from the interview that my one and only traffic source was affiliates. The product was listed on Clickbank at 70% commission. Affiliates drove traffic to the sales page which offered monthly content at $27/mo.

      My membership content was on how to build a model railroad. At the time of starting there was no other membership site like it online. But you could buy magazines for around $7/mo and there was a HUGE amount of free information available online.

      That's why the "free content hoping they'll upgrade" model is a slow and painful way... Ranking the free stuff on Google mean't I was being positioned with all the other free providers and getting upgrade conversions of less than 0.25%. And, I was working incredibly hard every day creating new free content.

      When I positioned myself as the premium information provider my affiliates could afford to pay as much as $0.50/click to attract the right buyers. This significantly reduced my workload and sales page conversions went from less than 0.25% to over 10%.

      It also allowed me to sell the membership site for 6 figures...
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  • Profile picture of the author Monja
    Ian, Thanks so much for your answer. That sounds super logic actually. Do you think that works in every niche?
    How did you attract affiliates? Because - when you start nobody knows you and people most probably won't advertise for you. I have the same - a 1$ trial for 7 days and after that it is 49.95$ per month. Affiliates get 75% from that - recurring. But I don't attract many affiliates, and doing it the hard way as I told tomvondeck - free content with the hope of a switch. yes, it works but it is painful, definitely. I'm willing to work hard though.
    But would LOVE to know what you did to attract your affiliates?
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    • Profile picture of the author Ian McConnell
      Originally Posted by Monja View Post

      Ian, Thanks so much for your answer. That sounds super logic actually. Do you think that works in every niche?
      How did you attract affiliates? Because - when you start nobody knows you and people most probably won't advertise for you. I have the same - a 1$ trial for 7 days and after that it is 49.95$ per month. Affiliates get 75% from that - recurring. But I don't attract many affiliates, and doing it the hard way as I told tomvondeck - free content with the hope of a switch. yes, it works but it is painful, definitely. I'm willing to work hard though.
      But would LOVE to know what you did to attract your affiliates?
      Monja, I didn't attract affiliates I recruited them. The time I was wasting (by creating free content) I rescheduled to find websites ranking highly in Google for my keyword phrases. Then I asked the website owners (using their contact page) if I could buy ad space on their website. They would reply quickly, because usually their website was making no money... and then I offered an alternative, which was for them to use a banner with an affiliate link (and make a commission from every sale), rather than a fixed amount for ad space every month. 100% of the time they took the affiliate link option.

      I then worked with every affiliate one on one to make sure they made money every month. I did this with a dedicated affiliate blog, email, etc.

      This will work in every niche because it's basic business practice...

      1) Product - you have paid monthly content (membership site) that you can sell and pay a commission from the income.
      2) sales pitch - you have a great converting sales page with a compelling offer.
      3) delivery system - in my case Clickbank, so I didn't have to worry about taxes around the world and paying affiliates.

      Once you have those 3 things in place, you market hard to your demographic all over the world (get targeted traffic).

      Creating free content is a viable traffic strategy, but compared to recruiting affiliates (commission only sales people) it is very inefficient, reliant on Google, and could take you many months or even years to get some traction. Recruiting affiliates is something that could bring results tomorrow... That is if your product, sales pitch and delivery system are good!
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  • Profile picture of the author tomv
    This is mighty interesting already. I forgot to subscribe to this thread and assumed it got no responses. I love what both of you said, and I'll listen to Ian's interview 'cuz I'm very curious. I looked at Google results for Ian McConnell and there's a long list of probably the same success story.

    Let's suppose I stick with the original plan. I'm a very thorough person, and I would create a very well organized free blog site with all kinds of techniques - organized in such a way that many will just be satisfied subscribing to that site. I do have more structured and comprehensive stuff to say, though. A lot of "insights" get highlighted over and over in one of the Kindle books, so that's definitely a point of interest, too. This can all go into a member site along with structured modular instruction for both beginners and advanced students. I'm just not sure how many people will make that leap after going through the free blog and realizing that it's more structured and thorough than most books. I don't fully understand exactly the right conditions that need to be in place for people to make that leap to premium. Maybe I'd be screwing myself for being so "thorough"? I hope I explained myself well enough.

    I envision the free blog, if I go that route, to have a lot of embedded YouTube videos with various techniques with transcripts of these videos on the page. Also, brief articles and such with tips. I imagine the categories will be amazingly organized.

    Another note: I'm thinking one month trial then $9.99/mo thereafter. The emphasis will be on high retention.
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  • Profile picture of the author Ian McConnell
    tomv, as my coach explained (way back then) it's all about positioning in the marketplace. If you are positioning yourself as this awesome provider of free content then that's the demographic you will attract. People wanting stuff for free usually don't buy stuff.

    If you position yourself as the premium content provider then you will attract the demographic that sees the value in paying you to provide quality content. They don't want to spend hours sifting through free content and then filtering it for their own needs. They want the shortcut and they are prepared to pay for it.

    You choose one or the other position, and then focus...
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    • Profile picture of the author tomv
      What I don't get is how to position yourself when you haven't been exposed to the audience much. I know you mentioned a sales letter on the front page of the membership site and collaborating with other site owners. How do you position yourself so quickly after someone just happens to click on a banner?
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  • Profile picture of the author Ian McConnell
    tomv, positioning is something you decide. Nobody is going to say "tomv, you are now an expert in xyz niche, so you can go and sell your expertise to other people". You decide when this is the case. You position yourself as the expert in the marketplace and decide if you are going to give your information away for free or charge for it.

    Once you have decided your position in the marketplace, then you create a sales funnel to maximise lead flow, sales and profit.

    The interview will provide more clarity.
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    • Profile picture of the author tomv
      I listened to your stuff, Ian. Pretty good. Handing your affiliates an autoresponder series is a great idea. In my case, I'm not sure if I can imagine relying on that model primarily. Great work.
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  • Profile picture of the author hustlinsmoke
    First off my disclaimner, I have no membership sites at this time but have in the past. I end up not wanting the hassle of running them and I sell them.

    Now with most my successful sites I would offer only free at first. I would pack it with free. Then after so many months would open the premium side of it.

    The way I believed was to offer great and an abundance of free to get them in the door and then to offer only the best quality premium content. The better quality the less that has to be given in there.

    I really think it would depend on the niche though on how much is enough or two much. You know I go to these plr sites and think they have so much waste in the free section and not enough quality in the premium section. Makes it so hard for me to wade through the contents when I need something.
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  • Profile picture of the author SiteSmarty
    Why = Free
    How = Premium
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    • Profile picture of the author tomv
      I'm sure the why and how model works in some cases. In this niche, that would amount to video sales letters with no real instruction.

      @hustlinsmoke: Applying your model sounds like it could work if done right. The tentative plan is to put out free training in the form of videos embedded in blog posts as well as articles. To do that and get folks to the premium content might somehow involve going more into depth on each topic than the free content and the books have covered. I think that's the trick using the model you mention. A very structured and thorough course. People are at different skill levels, too. Each module would have to have step by step from the beginning and other content that appeals to advanced students. The whole problem is divying it up between the paid site and the free site.

      There is a Forbes article that has some nice instructions for freemium models, but applying it to my niche is still kind of boggling. It's at The 'Freemium' Model: Top Flaws And Potent Fixes - Forbes
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