85 Members Paying $15 Per Signup Within First Week of Launch

I have a Christian dating site that I launched on August 14th. I already have 85 members that have registered paying $14.95 per month. However, when you consider that this only represents a 15% conversion rate using targeted marketing such as CL, Flyer handouts, and using friends and family to email associates, I figure I could get MANY more conversions. My AdSense revenue has also increased to between $4-$5 per day.

Right now, i'm trying to find a sweet spot to make it a no brainer to pay for the Premium membership so I have just dropped the price to $4.95 per month, and am primarily focusing on volume and quality of members. My question is, does ANYONE have any suggestions on what other means are profitable as far as advertising to Christians?

I have a giveaway set-up, as well as an affilliate program, but most of my users could care less about either of those incentives. Any advice would be much appreciated.

 

Thats bad that you changed the registering fee right away when 85 people had registered. It's possible that they wont pay anymore.

 

I agree with sogastic - if you changed the fee less than a week after many members had paid $14.95, you'll likely have many members asking for a partial refund ($10). I'd definitely consider raising it back up to $14.95 if you want loyal members.

 

yes exactly. And when 14.95$ was fine for those 85 people it will be fine for another 85 people also. Or you have complains about the price so high ?

 

Keep the price at $14.95, join a few Christian forums with your website in the sig. get to know people on the forums, more members will come.

 

I wouldnt have changed the price either. If you insist on keeping the lower price, offer your current members who paid full price 2 months free, to compensate for the money they paid. but it seems as though people dont mind paying the higher price, so why not keep it?

 

Point taken.

 

Dont get too worried about dropping the price.. I did the same thing (sorta) about 6 months ago. I had several hundred members that signed up for subscriptions at $x.xx to start and then $x.xx monthly. After about 20 days (and several hundred signups) I lowered both the startup fee and the monthly fee in hopes of finding that sweetspot.
Want to guess how many complaints i got?
ZERO

Even though nobody complained, i was prepared to refund the difference to anybody that did complain...

 

You are one lucky fellow (or people just didn't notice ) because in the gaming world you can rest assured to get complaints from people who see prices being lowered just after they purchased.

It's worth considering.

 

How visible was the fee of the membership though? I think if members were able to easily see that the price had been reduced, you'd definitely be receiving at least a few refund requests.

 

My conversion on my site has been around 18% for the past 3 years. My site is free to join but after they enter their email and username and accept the terms, click submit. They are taken to a Initial Sign-UP offer. Which looks almost like it's required. This really increased conversions. Basically it gives them the act now or you'll regret it schpill.

Also constantly check to see which members aren't paid yet. Then routinely send them emails with discounts. This is what the big guys do and it works. Even if you have to deeply cut your regular rate. It helps business simply by increasing regular traffic to your site. The more active members are on the site, the more people want to join. People hate to visit a dating site where people haven't been on there in like months.

When I was running Adsense, I was averaging about $280 per month. What I hated about Adsense was, they constantly ran the same ads. So after people had clicked on them the same ads would be shown. So regular visitors to the site wouldn't click on them anymore. Which sucked big time.

Sounds like you have a good start.

You have 3 kinds of people. The first group is the group that are always willing to pay full price. The second group is the group that'll are more prone to buying, if there's a discount involved, and then there's the 3rd group of absolute freeloaders. They wouldn't pay for your service, if you offered it to them for just a $1.00 per month. They are just freeloading scum, that should be banished from the planet. They are just cheap SOB's.

I hope this helps. Having promotional offers will help with conversions. It'll get that 2nd group of people to buy.

 

That's why it's best to keep price lowering a secret. I never lower prices on the site itself. I instead send out emails to specific members, who have never paid. This prevents any members who have paid, from ever knowing about the discounts I'm giving cheap freeloaders just so I can get them to pay something.

I look at membership sales as averages. It's better to have anything other then a zero. Even if it's a massive reduction in price. It's still better then having a 0 in the box.

I had a 3 day for $5.00 promotion once and it got like 20 people to buy, who had been on the site for like a year and never paid anything. That's 20 more people that paid something, then nothing. Several of them ended up buying a regular membership though.


I had a couple complaints and figured it'd be best to avoid that in the future. So I've always done it this way and it tends to work.

 

Uh... but how somebody can sign up if they don't know the price? Certainly it must be somewhere on the site (at least in the shopping cart).

There's one problem with keeping secrets. People tend to share them anyway... and at some point some members migth tell that they got the service with discounted price - and that might piss off some people who would think "Why weren't WE informed?".

Anyway, good luck with your situation. I've always try to put myself in the buyers' shoes - and think "If I were customers, would I want to be treated like this?"

 

within 1 week you get 85 members willing to pay $14 a month...and you think it is bad? Are you kidding ..that is $1270 in residual income. If you can maintain this it will mean that in a few months you will have a $10,000+ website a month. Even if it drops a bit ... I really do not understand your motivation to drop the price...unless you have costs made that you do not tell at this moment.

 

You can use coupons...keep the price the same, but use a coupon to give a discount. Or a different (temporary) signup page.

But I agree with what most are saying here...why the <> Did you make it cheaper.... That was silly

 

This sounds like a pretty succesful site. I would agree that the best best is to keep the public price the same. Offer discounts via email only to existing free members. Also, you can require some type of site participation incentive to get the discount such as refering a friend, X number of forums posts, or other things that increase site activity.

 

Feel free to list your site on my Christian Pixel page www.connectedchristian.com
Give me an affiliate link if you have one.

Thanks'

 

I think that's got to be the right idea. If you alter the price, make it fairly obvious and see how many irrate emails you get. Should no one complain then great, if they do then give them however many months free, or a refund, or some other form of compensation. Perhaps give them a little extra for being one of your first members, but do be prepared to give refunds. Not gaining a member because the price is too high is far better than losing a member who goes on to complain in public.

 

Hi, Can I ask if you used a dating script or a particular CMS?

I am interested in setting up a dating site too (not Christian).

thanks

 

I agree fully. For a christian website you should immediately refund the difference to your current members. Morally your obliged too and in business sense you will create some loyal members who will appreciate it.

If you are prepared to refund you should do so immediately to everyone you have now ripped off. Once again people who whinge, whine and complain get everything and the common decent folk get screwed. People wont be hide behind "its just business" forever (iI hope).