I haven’t been here long. I hope this is the right sort of topic in the right place. If it isn’t, just tell me.
This seems like the kind of group that might be interested in helping me noodle around on pricing. And I wouldn’t mind a few more eyeballs and opinions right now.
So, background just in case you missed my intro post: I do screencasts for a living. I’ve run RubyTapas.com for ~4 years now, it’s been my primary source of income for most of those years, I have well over 2,000 paying subscribers, blah blah blah.
Once upon a time, I kicked off RubyTapas at a rate of $9/month, because everyone else in a similar business was also charging $9/mo.
Four years have passed. Almost all of those other business have either gone defunct, been swallowed by corporate behemoths, or raised prices.
I’ve still been selling total access to a library of over 400 videos, plus two new videos a week, for $9/mo.
This has become unrealistic. I realize it, everyone I talk to realizes it. Even customers tell me to charge more. But I’ve been hogtied by having my business harnessed to a hosted subscriptions service. They haven’t provided any easy way to raise prices, or even to have users migrate to other plans. And the user experience with them is so anemic that I’ve been nervous about asking for more money when i can’t deliver features people have been asking for for years.
Fast forward to last month. I discovered the world of WordPress paid membership plugins has matured mightily in the years since I first investigated it. I realized I could deliver everything I’d always wanted to deliver with a fraction of the effort I had assumed it would take. I spent an extremely hectic two weeks, creating and launching “RubyTapas 2.0” based on this new platform.
And there was much rejoicing.
This seemed like an opportune moment to update my pricing model. You can see what I arrived at here. I’m not going to spend a lot of time talking about it, though, because I’m already unhappy with it. I’ve received a little negative feedback, and frankly I agree with the feedback. For instance, the “progressive access to former seasons” thing is confusing and weird compared to other screencast subscriptions.
Mind you, it’s all selling. I’m just not happy with it.
Oh, and notably, despite my attempt to bracket the “featured” mid-level plan, most sales so far are going to either the top or bottom tiers. And more top than bottom. This seems to confirm my misgivings about the middle tier.
Some of the considerations that go into pricing:
- I kinda want something for folks who really just want to keep paying the good 'ole $9/mo.
- All access is one thing; all download access is something else entirely. Here’s a thing that used to happen on the regular: someone would sign up for $9, download the whole catalog, then quit. Sometimes they’d quit so fast their transaction didn’t have time to settle, and then they’d demand support(!). This wasn’t as big a deal when I just had a few dozen episodes, but once it got into the hundreds it became more of an issue. For this reason, I’m not comfortable with giving all-download access to monthly accounts.
Here’s the structure I’m thinking of moving to right now.
EITHER:
- Peckish ($9/mo):
- Access to current season only
- Hungry ($12/mo):
- Streaming access to all episodes.
- Ravenous ($18/mo):
- All of the above plus:
- Access to the “Afterbar”: an eclectic series of exclusive longer-form content, e.g. interviews with people I find interesting, unscripted dives into topical technologies, behind the scenes stuff, peeks at early work that may turn into episodes, etc. Maybe also a Slack channel?
- Some exclusive, curated deals on other learning resources, 'cuz I know people.
- FEED ME (~$200/year)
- All of the above, plus download access to all episodes.
OR:
- Peckish ($9/mo):
- Access to current season only
- Hungry ($12/mo):
- Streaming access to all episodes.
- Ravenous ($~200/year):
- All of the above plus:
- Access to the “Afterbar”
- Some exclusive, curated deals on other learning resources, 'cuz I know people.
- All of the above, plus download access to all episodes.
As you can see, the big question I’m noodling on right now is whether to have a fourth, yearly-only tier; or whether to collapse that into the “Ravenous” tier and make Ravenous yearly-only.
But honestly the whole structure is up for critique.
Again, experience suggests I’ll make sales regardless. But I’m curious if people have gut-level reactions, considerations I hadn’t thought of, thoughts about aspects of the plans that might bite me in future, etc.
Many thanks in advance!
EDIT: I should note that one-shot purchases of groups of episodes are also part of the future plan. I’m just not quite there yet. I’m focusing on my subscription pricing before I move on to the one-time sales.
The plans structure looks like a more sure way to increase the revenue.