How Do You Price Your Membership Forum?

I keep it free, and offer a "special membership pack" for paid members.
Logic is that if it really is good, people will upgrade. but meantime people can come, get acquainted, get used to it and participate.

Split test and see what you can get away with while still having your readers see your content as immensely valuable.

Don't forget, it's internet marketing so $7, $17, $27, $47, $77, $97, $197, $297, $997, and $1997 are just psychologically satisfying numbers.

Thank you, Crissie. That's exactly what I've done. The forum has been around for a year, it's a PR4 and I want to offer more than just great conversation. The conversation piece can remain free for members, but the courses, classes and teleseminars they have to pay for in an upgraded area. I am just not sure what to charge exactly for memberships and how much to deliver for each level. I have a tendency to give away the farm and am learning not to do that. :-)

No, you wouldn't. You need info from people working in your own industry segment.

The best thing you can do is just look at your competitors. What are they charging? What do they offer? Do they appear to have a decent number of members? If they use recurring billing, how long does the average member rebill?

These are variables that change drastically from industry to industry.

Thanks for your great advice!

Yes, DubDub, I did a competitive analysis but it was difficult for several reasons. One, they are not using a regular forum like I am. They use Moodle or Infusionsoft and they offer their members to form their own community within the community. I use Xenforo, which doesn't allow for that. These people also offer in-person trainings that cost thousands of dollars to attend. I'm not in their league (yet). They are also well known people who make millions and are quite famous (their databases are in excess of 500,000 members). I'm just starting out and have 300 (loyal) members right now.

Guypeleides, not sure how to do split testing with a forum. What I can try is set a starting price and then go up from there. I was trying to set the forum up as a Clickbank product and share 50% of the monthly recurring fee with affiliates. I've been experiencing technical difficulties giving Clickbank the right 'url pages' to verify the purchasing process since Xenforo is linked to Paypal. It's a bit frustrating without having the necessary technical skills.

Thanks all! Really appreciate your help! Will keep you posted with my progress.

My advice is to offer a monthly, 3-month and annual option. Most of my subscribers end up taking the 3-month, a surprising number take the entire year.

We have 3 membership sites currently that all run close to this model...

1-month: $27
3-months: $65
1-year: $250

These have proven to be the price levels that perform best for us.

Jeff

I'm not sure on your business model, but couldn't you narrow that down into 3 levels. Having 4 levels sounds like they are are getting too many options. Having 3 levels would make it easier for you. Most paid memberships I've seen have 3 levels. I'll offer some examples:

SEMrush pricing
Web Hosting - Shared cPanel Web Hosting
Subscribe to video2brain to Learn New Software and Technology Skills

There are plenty of other services with 4 levels for sure, but I was suggesting a way to make it simpler. Perhaps your business model requires 4 levels, is there a reason?

JBSmith, these are great numbers, thank you for sharing. I guess I was low balling, thinking that I should charge $2 just for access to 80% of the forum and $7 for the remaining 20%. lol. I do like the quarterly and yearly offer and so offer a discount. May I ask, what do you deliver for these rates (i..e eBooks, courses, workshops, teleclasses, or access to communicate with others)?

MrMonetize, I agree with you. Am pondering at keeping it to 2 or 3 levels but am still trying to figure out what exactly the difference in offerings are for each level. As I said, I have a tendency to give away the farm for nothing or pennies on the dollar. Tried doing it for a year on a donation basis. Yeah, like that worked (not)! Gotta stop that crap as I know it will only undervalue the products...

From my research I heard that the average monthly membership is $27 and the average membership length is 2 years. The total customer value would then be $540. Can anyone confirm this experience?

The one challenge I have with Xenforo is that once a paying members has access, he has access to the entire forum and thus to all products. XF doesn't have a drip function and incompatible with Wishlist, etc. So either way, they get access to ALL material the moment they pay their first monthly membership. It's a slam dunk for anyone to sign up, copy and paste everything and cancel their membership.

MrMonetize, yes, I like the highlighted middle column and agree that it grabs the attention. So 3 membership types it is. :-) I need to figure out how to write the html code to highlight the middle column that way. I can write the basic table html code but to highlight a column like that I still have to learn. :-)

I also think that it's a bit harder to charge for monthly services related to personal development than for services like hosting, etc. People are funny that way. They'll fork out money before they would invest in their own personal evolution.

Thank you!