Best Way to Provide Paid Services on Your Membership Site

Membership site can be a valuable asset if you know how to monetize it right. Generally, such sites are launched to deliver users expertise, education and communication. Successful site can be constructed in Membership Plugin by Supsystic – plugin that possesses all necessary features and options for design. When site is launсhed and content is prepared there is question arisen – how to monetize it? Below you can see some tips on this subject.

You need to make a decision on providing really valuable content on payment basis. Of course you can leave some content outside the payment barrier, however, this content should be promotional – showing that your level of expertise is high enough to pay for subscription. Once you make a decision to provide paid content you need to define the price and choose business model

If you decide to enforce subscription plan for users you can define whether to enforce monthly/quarterly or annual plans. Once you make a decision on it you need to know that in order subscription plan to be renewed each period you need to provide users with really valuable content each time you make updates. Otherwise, subscription will be cancelled and you may start to lose subscribers.

This model is rather popular for courses that are not going to be updated. It is like buying e-book – you make a payment and book is yours for the life-time. So if you enforce such a payment model you need to make really strong course with no need to be updated to remain actual. Otherwise your content risks to be outdated and you begin to lose credits from your users. You can start this kind of business model after the content is ready and you already have a loyal audience that has appreciated it. Then you can close an access to the most demandable content and sell it for a fixed price.

You can enforce several subscription plans on your website. The difference between plans should be in the content accessed and other features that are enabled or disabled depending on what the kind of plan is purchased. In order to make an adequate choice between mentioned above business models you need to clarify points below:

• Is it possible for you to offer several membership plans? Can you provide extended functions or content that is valuable enough for users to pay more for those? What content and features are alike and isn’t it better to implement only one subcription plan?
• How many subscription plans can be offered to users?
• What type and quantity of content should be offered for free to make users subscribe to plan? Do users have to sign up to website to see free content?
• How can the membership levels be named? What should be the base for plan naming? Number of features available?
• Should there be an option to become member of another level or should the levels remain fixed? Is there any other option to move to higher membership level than just purchase more expensive plan?

Once you have answered questions above you should think about supplemental offers to make. Really, there can be many relevant things to offer with your product to your target audience. You can specify whether it is possible or not if you define your position on the points below:

• What are the products relevant to my subject and can those be sold along with subscription plans? Can the offer be combined with subscription plan or it has to be made separately?
• What are the products that are the best for selling on membership site – by margin, quantity, demand?
• What is the place of supplemental offers in my business model. Where is my profit – in the supplemental offers or main service? How can I convince user to make a purchase?

Sometime you see that user has added purchase to cart but he haven’t paid for it. There are various reasons for such situation. User can change his mind or the reason could be in the fact he had no intent to make a purchase really. In order to deal with this issue you need to make sure you implement some actions:

• Notify user about the product in his cart with catchy and persuasive email – this is the first and easiest way to get user proceed with purchase.
• Ask user for a feedback. The reason of cancellation could be in the issue that has arisen for a user in the process of purchase. If you are able to clarify this issue you are likely to make him buy.

For membership site it is a regular thing when user cancels purchase. You need to make sure you got this issue comfortable for user and automated. Even such a detail like friendliness in cancellation or abandoning play a large role in user’s loyalty. For example, if you have implemented an option to cancel subscription from interface in a couple of clicks this will increase your reputation for user rapidly. On the contrary, if user can only cancel subscription manually and he has to wait for response from your support it will have negative effect on his opinion on your service. So in order to provide easy cancellation that leave an option for you to make user your client again consider the next:

• Provide automated subscription cancellation as easy as possible.
• Ask user to leave feedback to clarify reasons of cancellation in a friendly way.
• Propose user to confirm subscription to news and updates so that you can make him an offer in the future.
• Make sure you have clarified cancellation agreements and user remains satisfied as much as possible.

Former members can return to your service. Usually, users give up on subscription plan due to the fact they got everything they needed from your membership site. Or the next reason could be dissatisfaction with your services. So you should either process feedbacks to improve service quality or make additional offers that answer users’ needs.

• Provide a recapturing campaign to make supplementary offers.
• Offer user subscriptions to your newsletter.
• Provide former users with discounts and trial that can motivate them to get back as your members.
• React on feedbacks with friendly and grateful responses.
• Offer users better conditions for new or updated services.

Refund rate is an important metrics for any business. Refunds can be treated as a loss, but it is important to manage those properly as clients tend to leave negative reviews on service if refund policy is corrupted. On the contrary they leave less negative reviews even they gave up on service due to dissatisfaction if refund was provided properly. Note that refund policy that satisfies client leads to reputation improvement and more leads in future.

• Make sure your refund policy is clear and transparent.
• Make it as easy as possible – it is better to provide refund within interface available to get in a few clicks.
• Make sure you have a page dedicated to refund policy and that user can reach that page easily.
• Provide deep analysis on refund cases to decrease refund rate and solve issues that cause those.
• Do not give up on clients that requested refunds – make sure you offered them subscription on news and and updates in friendly manner.
• Offer better conditions for those who requested refund.
• Make sure you hold the gateway fees for refunds.
• Provide fair refund policy that leaves beneficial conditions for user. If your service is provided properly there will be low rate of refunds requested.

If you follow listed above tips and advices you can surely provide well-managed paid services on your membership site designed in Membership by Supsystic.