Program owners: retention ratios
 

I'd like to know what do you consider a good retention ratio, I mean rebilling, recurring or whatever you wanna call it :winkwink:

At what ratio it starts to be decent? when do you think it's time to worry? Just in case, I'm not asking for your program's retention ratio, I know all GFYers have 95%+ recurring :winkwink: just when do you consider it's good or bad.

Discuss

if you can get 50-70% retention you are doing well for the first month

for the second month you should be looking at between 40-60% retention of the members who recurred on the first month

for the third month in an ideal world your retention would be around 30-50% on the second months rebills

basically if you can keep your members for 3 months you are doing well imho and a lot of site cant do that!

yes, I agree :)
but what it would be as general ratio? I mean without discrimination of first, second or third month. Our sites with exclusive content are at 63.3% combined and the ones with plugins and non exclusive a little above 48%. Yes, it's sad, we're quite far of the GFY ideal of 95%+ :winkwink: but anyway, those numbers are bad, good, just decent, plain shit? It works for us, but I'd like to know if we've room to improve :helpme

bump

Good post here is a "Certified Juicy Bump"


http://www.gl4l.com/hgl/images/bump.jpg

to be honest there really isnt such a thing as a 'general' ratio to lump all of the conversions together for the pure reason that every paysite gets different sources of traffic from different locations globally

however as you have said i think the consesus around here would be that sites with exclusive content with multiple updates will convert and retain better than than the standard filler shite most paysites have in them

the best thing to look at is your btm line $$$ if you are making money and are happy with what you are making and it sounds like you are then keep on doing what you are doing changing something can do one of two things..

improve something or fuck things up completely lol

alan-l

Can you contact me...I want to ask you something about this topic?


Thanks

yes, sure, I'm having trouble with ICQ, currently going to reinstall it to see if it works :)

oh my, a certified Juicy bump! :smokin

no way in hell a BS plugin site retains better then 15-25%

in the past year because im always buying sites I saw financials of many BS plugin sites so I know real numbers.

Also it depends on source of traffic, you can have the best site if the source is TGP ot wont retain as well as SE traffic and such.

TGP MGP surfers are mini webmasters, theyknow how to cancel quick.

I dont regret spending shitloads of money on exclusive content, it pays off big time recurring wise.

I know its not what most want to hear but face facts early so you can enjoy some cash later.

I know what you mean, we're moving towards the 100% exclusive model at this time. But I gotta say I disagree with you in the recurring scenario for non-ex/plugin model. Of course, if your site is 100% plugins, I doubt you'll ever have a recurring, unless it comes from an idiot who forgot to cancel. But if you have a good balance between non-ex, plugins and a good interactivity with your members, believe me it's possible. Of course, it also depends on niche. We've a business model we're quite happy with, trying to take the best of every possible aspect in this biz, from traffic to content and all in between :)

btw, I love your approach to niches, hence your program :)

nothing wrong with plugins if you got some exclusives.

but like I said about different traffic retains different is very important, if you do a test using TGP traffic the retention wont be as good as SE traffic.

If you monitor TGP traffic joins you will see many cancel BEFORE even logging into the members area.

But if you got exclusive content they will rejoin as long as you have updates, and if your niche some wont bother canceling.

We are also now implementing DRM in all sites, you will be suprised how many surfers download 6 months worth of jerk off material and cancel.

DRM wont allow them to watch the movies unless they have a current membership.

Also always include a non recurring option in your paysite, we get tons of 69.95 and 99.95 non recurring signups, many are retuning members and many just dont wnt to bother with anything remotly called recurring.

thanks

if a site can't hold members for 3+ months then they need to figure out whats wrong.

way too many shit sites out there

yes, I'm interested in DRM, my tech guy is studying it. And we've non recurring options, we get 1 every 15-20 signups, usually the 3 months, but from time to time we get a 6 months signup.

About traffic, we use 80/85% SE traffic, so it makes things a little easier ;) TGP traffic takes too much effort for the results, specially when you're very niche oriented, your niche may not even fit in a TGP category! We also use some alternative traffic sources, and that's why we're moving all the way to exclusive. Nowadays is very affordable, we buy most of it from South America, at first I was worried about the fact they weren't speaking English, but it seems that members don't give a shit as long as they like the action involved, so now we use 1/10 of the content that we used as non-ex, but now it's 100% exclusive. Nice change, I gotta say :thumbsup

I'm going out now, hope this thread evolves, I got some nice answers :)

DRM is a good option to increase retention, but it has to be quick in verifying. i noticed from one site it took upwards of 10 seconds to start a clip because of it. thats just unacceptable and would do nothing more than piss off a paying customer possibly resulting in lost future income.

this thread is asking for a bump :glugglug

Good sites retain 50% month to month.. Sites doing better than that normally super niche sites or have a low cost with exclusive content.

Most do 30-40% month to month..

Average trial to converts is a killer 15%, good sites can do 25-35%, guys with good tricks can still get as high as 50%.

Of course, it's better if it costs you less, but I cannot see why low cost content would help in retention. Or the other way. The way I see it, content is good or bad, not cheap or expensive

Not the cost of the content, the cost of the membership to the site in relation to the amount and quality, etc of the cotnent.

If you have a 100% exclusive video site with like 500 gigs of video and you offer it at $10 a month that shit is going to retain a long ass time compaired to $29.95

now it makes sense, didn't understand it at first :)