Your thoughts on 3 Tiered Member Access

[kaustic]

I am writing up my thoughts for my new site... and I was thinking of using 3 member access levels.... This way they have access to some of the content for a small amount of money, a little more for a little more, and all of it, for just a bit more than that...

I think that people on the internet are more inclined to purchase something that is literally pocket cash to them... I think the standard sum of pocket cash on the internet is $5, I mean, there are websites that don´t even sell porn, or anything at all, they just accept donations to keep the site alive at $5, and it works...

So, what I´m thinking is, by creating a Gold, Platinum, and Diamond level member access (All using PHP.MYSQL) I can get some people to try it out for cheap, and then in theory, they will want more and more as days/weeks/months progress, and eventually I convert $5 members into $25 members.......

This is also beneficial for the affiliate program I have in mind....

What you think?

[Mister X]

I think that regardless of whether a tiered membership works for the site it will make it hard to get affiliates. 5$ is just too low to interest most guys with traffic unless the conversion rates are VERY high. Which would mean that you would have to pay more than that and depend on rebills and upgrades and upsells to make your money. Which is risky.

Things are also complicated by the fact that a membership which rebills can't be upgraded. It has to remain at the same price as the original transaction, unless it is a trial membership. That means that there are only 2 options. The member has to cancel the original membership and then sign up again or he has to sign up twice for the same site to get the upgrade and have 2 rebilling transactions for the same site.

In the first case the member is unlikely to do it because he would have to cancel and then wait for his first subscription to expire before signing up again to avoid having 2 simultaneous memberships.

In the second case the 2 memberships wouldn't renew on the same schedule so it makes it fairly complicated to implement. It also means that there is a possibility that the original membership can be cancelled and the member can access the extra content at a lower rate.

Both methods make an affiliate program very complicated if you want to try to use a revshare type program.

The sites out there that have upgradeable memberships are not selling adult content which gives them options that an adult site just doesn't have at the moment.

[Ronaldo]

Ultimately you have to please your members or they'll cancel, or god forbid chargeback.

They're probably not gonna get the content they want to see so they have to continually upgrade and feel like they're being cheated.

The model you're describing appears to be based on pissing people off so they HAVE to upgrade, which imho, is a recipe for disaster.

[kaustic]

Mister X

Your words are always filled with wisdom based on experience... I understand what you mean by complicating the affiliate program, but I was going to gear the affiliate program a little differently than payouts. Instead of offering money for referals and signups and all that stuff... I´m going to giv ecredits or points to the members' accounts...

This way the members can use their points however they wish... whether it be a calendar, or a free gift, or a magazine subscription, or use the points to upgrade their own accounts, or get free months, etc....

I don´t really want a real professional Affiliate program like the ones advertised here on the site... I would want to gear mine to give the members as much free stuff as I can while still making way more money than whatever the payout is costing...

As for the 3-Level access, I plan on programming my own system for the website itself. I will be doing all the php/mysql programming myself, and leaving the artwork to someone else... If I can develop the system the way I invision is, the 3 access levels should not be a problem...... now for the billing:

I have to see what my options are... I do understand that the access levels might cause some problems if using ccbill, or another payment processor.... but I was thinking about getting my own merchant account, and setting up the server side stuff myself, to manage security, and the different group levels.

I think it is all very possible, and I appreciate the input. I rather people question it, and get me to think of alternatives, than to just flat out go with the original idea and possibly end up screwing it all up...

but with the billing issues aside, what do you think about converting those $5 members into $25 members within a few months?? Do you think it is easily attainable? I´m more interested in that, and what you think of the access levels to turn out better numbers...

....and I also plan for it to be a highly interative website.... similar to a portal site, with users of similar interest can communicate, and theres a user forum, and comment posting/image ratings, and prizes/give-aways, etc....

Thanks again Mister X!

[kaustic]

Ronaldo

On the contrary, I do not plan on cheating people out of their money... At each access level, the members will get a bit more access to the site. I want the site to appeal to large numbers of people, and some of these people may not necessarily want real hardcore porn off the bat... they may just want some softcore or glamour shots.... and I wish I could give a bit more detail about the site, but i cant just yet.... I´ll say this, there will be other stuff on the site besides just girls, and guys banging girls, and I think this common interest will keep members active in the site.... This way a $5 membership could give them forum access, but not access to hardcore or whatever else is being offered....

Again, I don´t plan on cheating or scamming or teasing people to get them to upgrade their accounts, I want them to get the initial $5 account to kind of test the waters on a website.... then have them realize that their $5 was well spent, and shoot... another $20 on top of that might be well worth it for people really interested i nthe site....

Plus, I don´t think that if a member @ $5 thought he was being cheated, he would just keep upgrading, he would probably just cancel and move on.... but I want to build up a good website where the members arent just busting a nut and moving on, but they actually are interested in the website, they have chances to win prizes, and free things, and get a real community feel to it like we have here at the XNations.... I think websites tend to last longer when theres more than just quick porn on the site.....

Not to mention, I´ll probably do some affiliation with you for those feeds of yours ;-)

[Mister X]

Originally posted by kaustic
Mister X

Y I understand what you mean by complicating the affiliate program, but I was going to gear the affiliate program a little differently than payouts. Instead of offering money for referals and signups and all that stuff... I´m going to giv ecredits or points to the members' accounts...

This way the members can use their points however they wish... whether it be a calendar, or a free gift, or a magazine subscription, or use the points to upgrade their own accounts, or get free months, etc....

I don´t really want a real professional Affiliate program like the ones advertised here on the site... I would want to gear mine to give the members as much free stuff as I can while still making way more money than whatever the payout is costing...

As for the 3-Level access, I plan on programming my own system for the website itself. I will be doing all the php/mysql programming myself, and leaving the artwork to someone else... If I can develop the system the way I invision is, the 3 access levels should not be a problem...... now for the billing:

I have to see what my options are... I do understand that the access levels might cause some problems if using ccbill, or another payment processor.... but I was thinking about getting my own merchant account, and setting up the server side stuff myself, to manage security, and the different group levels.

I think it is all very possible, and I appreciate the input. I rather people question it, and get me to think of alternatives, than to just flat out go with the original idea and possibly end up screwing it all up...

but with the billing issues aside, what do you think about converting those $5 members into $25 members within a few months?? Do you think it is easily attainable? I´m more interested in that, and what you think of the access levels to turn out better numbers...

....and I also plan for it to be a highly interative website.... similar to a portal site, with users of similar interest can communicate, and theres a user forum, and comment posting/image ratings, and prizes/give-aways, etc....

Thanks again Mister X! Hmmmm. Actually it sounds like a fairly interesting project. There aren't that many sites like what you envision out there, except a few that are very niche specific and perhaps not 100% legitimate. If you are planning an affiliate program based on member referrals then the pricing won't matter.

The only question is just what to offer to make it worth their while to upgrade, while at the same time giving them enough to keep them rebilling at $5 a month. I would suggest trying to get a decent income from upsells for various feeds, paysites, etc. to maximize your profit from the $5 members. Also make sure that your advertising is no too too intrusive, but that it is hard to ignore. One perk for upgraded membership could be ad free access then I guess.

I still think that the billing questions will be the biggest hurdles to overcome. Regardless of what you program for setting access levels, you are limited to what is allowed by your processor. Even with your own merchant account you really need a processor to do the actual billing for you. company like Epoch is probably a bit more flexible than CCBill.

I think that you should actually find out what your options are before you write a line of code to build the site. There might be one or 2 lesser known alternative processors out there that can do what you want also.

[kaustic]

Mister X

Thanks again, as you said, I haven´t seen many sites out there designed like what I envision. I definitely need some feeds and things like that, but I still want to provide original content.

Half the site will be hobby, and half will be women, and I hope that the hobby parts keeps them on the site and rebilling, and the women add to what they get with a membership.

I´ll check out eboch, and some others. Thanks for the tips. If you think you´d be able to hlep out on thep roject, and/oor you´re interested let me know. I finally got some investor capital, and I could use some experience on my side here.

Thanks again