difference between 24.99, 29.99 and 34.99
 

any one change around priceses on there sites and see a drop in sales?
Does a cheaper memebership actually get more sales?

I don't think so.. sometimes 34.95 ratio is better than 24.95 for me :)

i agree with spideriux

The difference is $5 and $10 respectfully

I concur .

:thumbsup

no.. we get as many sales when we put our prices at $9.99 trials as we do at $40 for 40 days..so we are sticking w/ the latter

thanks for data

Ive seen 34,95 sites convert perfectly... Are you starting paysites and wondering what price to set on them?

Awesome :thumbsup I'd suggest you to add your program to our directory at FHGStore? I'd be love to promote your sites.

Psychologically, people tend to regard cheaper pricing to equal cheaper product (in general). They perceive a drop in price as desperation on the part of the webmaster to boost sagging sales.

I'd sooner go with fewer sales at a higher price than rely on volume of sales at a devalued price. But that's the producer in me. We work long hours to produce our original content - I just can't bring myself to devalue it by dropping prices.

Colleagues I've talked with over the years think much the same way. Many have noticed a decline in sales after lowering their prices.

$1 trial up to $29.95 join converts all the same for me.

So for me the trials actually lose money since the surfer quits before it converts to full price half the time.

You have to track join page submits to get an idea on it. You can also offer different price points based on traffic types, like free site / avs mixed people respond to lower price points better.

Anyway, the big difference is the money volume increase. It really doesn't matter that your ratios slip or retention slips a little. The increase in money from just a $5 jump is very noticeable. At a 100 sales a day, before rebills that could be a $15k increase in revenue. To not be effective it would have to drop 15 sales a day on average, and that probably isn't going to happen. Kick in the rebills, and the growing effect of them simply can't be out averaged.

You can out price your retention. You can fool your surfers, but if the members area isn't good they won't upgrade and they won't retain. So offering monthly discounts on rebills can help and increase long term retention if your members area / content isn't perfect.

Now, if you have the members area, good content, great-heavy updates.. and you give them great support, you can pretty much price it at anything you like - and you will see a monster increase in revenue.

--- The reason most of us charge around 30, is VISA. They like lower price point chargebacks vs higher price point cb's. So if you plan on running higher price points you need to improve your support that much more. CB's is based on Money Volume too, so a $5 or $10 increase if you already sit at .6, could put you in a danger area.

If you earn an extra a 10k, 15k, 20k+ monthly in revenue, it's only fair to add some support staff and extra updates in.

I agree with TheDoc. If you have exclusive niche content you can charge up to $49.95+ and people will pay it. People connect a higher membership price with higher quality of content. If your members area holds what the tour promises don't go for the lower price.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Maybe someone can enlighten me why some paysites offer 'discounts' especially on review sites.

Perfectly good high quality sites with scores up in the 90s choose to lower their price by 33% I assume to get better conversions. You would need that price point to convert 33% better (!) in order to make the SAME amount of money.

My theory is one guy did it and then a bunch of others thought it would be great and make them more money.

Some price points or discounts do better on repeat/bookmark traffic sources. If you are in the top 20 for a length of time you will have been exposed heavily to the loyal base, so giving a discount can help revive it.

And.. Review site members don't retain that well, not bad but def not golden. So the discount would help spark loyalty with the Paysite and it helps give the review a better return-purchase rate since it is at a discount.

Haha... I thought I was going to be the only jerk to say that.

Good point. I agree with the long term retention on review traffic, it does not retain that well mostly because they are pro surfers that jump from site to site. Still, dropping the price 33% would actually need quite a big jump in conversions considering if you're on a merchant it going to cost you more % wise to charge a lower price, plus you get more members sucking the bandwidth at the same revenue.

We charge 39.95$ and 29.95$ for rebills, on our long running sites, seems to work well.

I agree with this, especially regarding "niche" content... If you've got the same content as any other $29.95 site but are charging $10 more, I can't see surfers thinking that they are getting more value at your site...

I also think $39.95 without a trial is kind of a scary price for the average surfer, IMO there's sort of a mental price change in the under $30 and over $30 price points.

Always remember, are you selling your product or your price. If all you have to sell is price, look for new product.

You should set up a split test for each of your major traffic sources.

You may find that type-in traffic converts better at a higher price, while review traffic does better with a lower price or similar findings.

It's important that you also measure the value gained from increased sale price vs any drop in retention.

What you find works best for your site may well not be the answer for other sites.

I am continually amazed at what works for what site.

There are some sites that we have been able to raise the price on and actually INCREASE conversions, without affecting retention.

On other sites, we have found that the drop in retention wasn't worth the increased membership price.

For some sites we have found that offering a higher price to type-in/index visitors works well while allowing affiliates/linked traffic to see a lower price.

The key takeaway here is test & measure - don't guess and hope.

Make sure to send enough traffic to be statistically significant during your testing.

Here is a link to a free spreadsheet to help you calculate sample size based on conversion ratio

i was just talking about this with a friend of mine a few minutes ago.

on my paysite, http://www.zgasm.com i saw a significant increase in signups when i moved from 19.99 to 29.99 a month.

As usual peeps associate cost to quality and i think that sells them.


Additionally, my friend and i were talking about this and i THINK he's going to raise his prices for a second time... after the positive results he saw from the last increase. He is going to about $35 per month.


Affiliates like the bigger payout too..

wow yea lot of good information here. Thanks

Intresting

this is good....anyone have more to add on a new day?

This turned out to be a great thread so far..

Pricing is a very complicated thing. Lowering and raising price can bring all kinds of suprise results when it comes to profitability. You need to do a lot of A/B testing to find the sweet spot.

:winkwink:

I second that, this is a great thread. We have tested all over the board and have found that there is price inelasticity in the market for the most part. Doesn't matter whether at 19.95 or 34.95 very close to same conversions.

Because our affiliates know their traffic best, RevenueCash gives affiliates the opportunity to use all of those pricings.

In our affiliate area we offer:

$24.95
$29,95
$34,92

And by a simple request you can let us add a special payout rate.

Interesante...

This thread delivers :)

Like it was already mentioned, increasing and lowering the price may be tricky.

On the one hand, visitors do tend to associate cost with quality, so with low price a surfer may think that the quality of product is accordingly low and may be reluctant to signup. In this case increasing the price may bring really good results.

On the other hand, it doesn't necessarily mean that the higher you put a price the better the convertions are. There is always a certain price limit and if you go above it you may hamper your convertions considerably. So I strongly believe that you need to make certain tests with different traffic sources to see what works best for you.

ideally you would want to find the sweet spot though.