Who in their right mind is going to commit to a 6 month sub until they've seen the quality of the material? Offer them a month to month package and a huge incentive to pay for longer timescales up front when they get to renewal.

I don't think you can get around offering a monthly charge, too many people are going to skip on your product if they have to invest 6 months at a time. You can however try to entice them to pay for more by charging higher if they pay monthly.

Especially if your service is not well know people are not going to want pay for months up front. You'll need to deliver an extremely good sales pitch and show that they're paying for quality. Even then your going to have people not want to pay for more than a month at a time, and then you have a choice to make:

Do you let these people walk and make nothing while you hold out a higher price.
or
Do you let them pay for a month and at the least make something, possibly turning them into a more long term subscriber?

In my opinion if your offering quality people are going to come back for more. Providing a month option is something I would definitely implement.

A 5 year subscription? Geez. I would go month to month, quarterly, 6 months, 1 year, and maybe lifetime.

You said yourself that most people won't stick around more that 1 year because it's a gateway to something else.. So why even offer multi year memberships?

I'd rather have someone sign up for $29 for the first month and realize they don't need the membership anymore, than not have them sign up at all because the membership length and price commitment is too high.

What niche are you targeting? Are your prospects used to seeing membership sites like this?

Only if they weren't very bright or sucked at math. The affiliates that matter (the ones who can send you tons of traffic) are going to want to get paid as soon as possible and I'm not sure you set up makes that possible (unless you're going to pay upfront commissions right away or maybe after a 30 day period).

My own numbers and data doesn't support this at all. I've tested a lot of pricing models in more than one niche. Roughly 78% of the people are going to quit during the first 90 days, irregardless of they paid monthly, for 6 months, or for 12 months.

I'm incredulous at this. How many members did you test on and for how long? I've been running pricing tests on different kinds of membership sites for years and the monthly membership fee structure usually won hands down.

If you're running some kind of stock trading or forex trading platform and education, your pricing scheme might work.

My own testing shows that you actually get more net profits if you offer a monthly membership. Remember, the more options and flexibility you have with your payment options, you're going to increase sales.

People are going to drop out, that's part of doing this kind of business model. You want to focus on signups and retention.

Not necessarily, it depends on how much you're getting in aggregate versus a monthly membership. You'll get less signups at those higher prices, unless you're offering something that has more inelastic demand than your competitors.

That's why you drip feed your content if you're able to. This way a person can't join and see everything you have to offer during the first month or two. Set it up where they have start off with the basic or whatever and let them know upfront that this is how it's set up.

Quit worrying too much about people joining and quitting, focus on new signups (sales) and retention (offering value).

I have a suggestion. Run a split test with two different pricing models and compare which one does better. Make sure you do it long enough and have enough data for it be statistically relevant.

RoD

If your customers can not see your product they will not sign up for your site for two reasons. First, the large financial commitment. Second, the large time commitment. I would highly recommend offering a monthly charge, this will allow customers to see your product without a large money and time commitment. If your product is good, they will be willing to make the larger commitment and you will receive the full membership funds in advance.

Another option is offering a free trail period. This would allow customers to see your product, fall in love with your product and be willing to make the financial commitment to your company.

Your only "lock-in" is providing top notch value month in and month out. You'd be foolish to not offer monthly unless you are some high demand guru. There is a reason why many services are monthly w/ no commitment.

Give them a good reason to continue paying you monthly. Be indispensible. That is your long term guarantee, not some lock-in pricing plan.

I have found more success with membership sites when I offer a $1 7 day trial and then bill for the full membership. I have gotten testimonials of member who have stayed saying that they would not have even concidered the membership if it wasn't for the trial period.

I hope this has been helpful,
Steve Yakim

I think you should probably charge them per month. Your members gonna feel safer. Many people just won't sign up if they have to pay for months upfront, you'll simply leave a lot of cash on the table. Giving them options to save money paying for 6-12 months upfront is great but nobody's gonna pay you for up to 60 months. Nobody can be sure your site will last that long. What if you shut it down without refunding them money? They won't be comfortable with that thought.

An interesting story. Once I subscribed to a membership site. It was updated every month with internet marketing content. The fee $27 per month. When I entered the premium vault full of good things I noticed it had all stuff collected during the year in one place. So the very first members if they were still on board the club had to pay 27 x 12 = $324 each to get hold of the same number of digital products as me for $27. I just downloaded everything I wanted and cancelled the subscription. In 5 months I came back and subscribed again. I grabbed all I needed from the whole library of new products added within this period of time. I was charged $27. If I didn't cancel I would have to pay 27 x 5 = $135. $108 saved. Not much but I bought an ad space on a cool blog for that buck and made sales.

Be sure you give your subscriber what he's charged for. No more no less.

Well it is B2B. That's another reason. Plus I've done some testing on this type of thing in the past. And my experience was that the higher prices made far more money. My challenge is that I think from my experience I'd say the average customer is at most going to stay 6 months. I'm assuming a bit here but I'm fairly sure. So ideally I wouldn't mind trying to offer longer term packages to try and lock them in for longer. I don't know. its hard to say right now but Im pretty sure the money to money thing really won't amount to a whole hill of beans as I've done something similiar to this before and my experience was the higher the prices the more money was made. Also there was that perceived value like "it's got to be good if it's this pricy" sort of thing.

A member to a membership site if it's a decent site stays 3.5 months on average.
I hope that helps you some.

If you do offer an annual make sure your refund policy reflects the only refund they get is for the unused portion of the memembership. So if they they pay for a year then cancel after four months give them a prorated refund for 8 months.

You can simply put yourself in the shoes of your customers and ask yourself this question. It's also easy to answer: If you don't trust it yet, you can go for monthly so if you don't like it, it wouldn't at least hurt because you are just paying it for a month.

Monthly, quarterly, Annual and Lifetime. Add a free trial to gain trust and encourage trust.

Get them in there first!

Make it easy for them to get access and see how great the membership
site is.

Offer a low priced trial for 1 day to one week then increase the price.

If you have tons of value there then it will make your members feel a lot
easier about making a decision to stay on as members or not.

Don't over think this!

Get some members into the program then test different price points later.

PERFECTIONISM = POVERTY!

Regards
Gavin