Selling Individual Pieces of Content: The Test We’ve Dreaded is Live
We’ve initiated our next test on our membership site at Trader Interviews and I feel a little sick.
For years we fought selling individual pieces of content on our membership sites, for fear it would cannibalize the subscription revenue. There was no data to back this up. Just a gut feeling that if we offered individual white papers, eBooks, interviews and reports for sale, no one would join the membership. It’s the same think record labels feared when iTunes wanted to start offering individual tracks for 99 cents.
The time to get some data and either smash that theory or prove it once and for all has come.
Late last night Emile finished testing on the development server and went live with a new home page for the site that included “buy” buttons for individual interviews. Just the most recent four interviews (this is a test, after all). I cringed as I reloaded the page and saw those dreaded “Add to cart” buttons.
We receive regular requests to download individual interviews on a regular basis. I’ve always politely replied that they weren’t available and suggested they join the monthly membership or lifetime membership in order to access the individual pieces of content. Curious as hell, I always write down their email and name (or whatever data I can find) and then check a few days later to see if they have joined. They rarely had.
Either the price was too high to join the lifetime option (if the interview they wanted was in the archives) or they simply didn’t like being told how they could get the content when it wasn’t on their terms. Either way, we lost a sale. It’s tough to say, though, if we actually gained other sales and new members who simply never emailed, understood the deal, and joined up. I’m sure there were a few of those as well so perhaps it evens out.
The option to buy individual interviews has been up for less than twenty four hours and already something interesting is happening. We’re seeing a small boost in monthly memberships.
I have a guess as to why – more time and data will be needed to confirm this. It’s all about pricing and perception. We priced the individual interviews high compared to the monthly membership: $25 each. With a monthly membership at $39, I think we’re seeing a boost because compared to buying an individual interview, that’s a bargain.
The price of the monthly membership is the same today as it was yesterday, yet I think our visitors are seeing the value of a monthly membership when presented with the price of an individual interview. Prior to offering it, there really was no baseline to compare the cost of the monthly membership. Is it expensive? Is it cheap? Who knows? But giving the visitor something to compare our lowest-priced membership option to seems to be helping them make a decision faster.
This isn’t earth-shattering or ground-breaking news, of course. People have been using this method to create value in a consumer’s mind forever. But we just might have found a great way to sell more memberships by selling content outside of it. It’s all about pricing, however. Price the individual pieces too low and it will definitely affect memberships. Price it too high and your visitors won’t bother looking past the home page to see what a subscription costs.
We’ve sold a handful individual interviews so far. Would those have been new memberships if we didn’t offer them? Perhaps, but we’re not seeing the dip in membership sales I had anticipated, which tells me that those sales are found money that wouldn’t have happened at all if we didn’t make them available.
A lot more time needs to pass and a lot more data collected, but I’m feeling a lot more positive about this than I did last night.
membership pricing, selling content online, starting a membership site, subscription pricing
MemberCon is written by Tim Bourquin and Emile Bourquin, brothers and owners of Ideas For Download. MemberCon.com is your front row seat to see what we've done that worked and failed in selling content online. Thankfully, we've been pretty successful but we promise to always show you the reality of building an online business.
Interesting test you are conducting. I can't wait to see the results, because I have always wondered if people would pay for individual content.
I'll bet memberships go up AND you sell individual pieces. It's how people test your content and service.
They feel safer buying individual items and then can “upgrade” if they want to, but are not being forced to.
It's probably their first time thinking of joining an internet-based membership site and they're afraid they'll have trouble unsubscribing.
If you had 12 individual types of items they could buy, not just interviews, you'd entice 12 times as many people to test you out.
Think of those 12 as SLO's (self-liquidating offers). Market them as the “spokes” on the wheel and use them membership site as the “hub”.
You can break even on the marketing and selling the 12 spokes, because the hub is worth so much more.
You'll do fine, plus a bag of cookies
Thanks Mike, that's my sense too about this. Hope we're both right!
Tim, what you are experiencing with regards to relative pricing is a known tactic. I think you would really like the book Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. It showcases this very principle in the opening part of the book. I've been running a membership site since '90s and I still need to implement this approach.
Thanks Matt. I've seen that book but not read it. Getting on a plane in the morning to New York – good opportunity to read it! Thanks for the comment.
It's a really good book, but if you find it seems like I'm crazy, I may have confused it with another great book titled Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. I think those two books with other staples such as E-Myth are must reads. Now that I think about it, it's probably Predictably Irrational that has the example which matches offering two relative prices in order to get people to buy the higher priced item.
Sorry for my way late reply Matt. I think you're right – you're thinking of Predictably Irrational and we have read that one – good stuff. Thanks again.