Before choosing and setting up your CMS, you must decide on your pricing model and how much you want to charge for the value you providing to a paid member of your community.
Will you adopt a free, paid, or freemium subscription model? Are you going to set up membership levels so people can opt to only pay for access to features that they need?
Figuring out the right membership model can be tricky. If you overcharge you can turn off potential members that may never consider your site again because of the negative first impression.
If you charge too low, people may get the impression that you are not offering something they can’t get for free elsewhere.
A free trial offer is a smart way to convince people to sign up and get a taste of the value packaged in your subscription fee and why that amount is justified. A drip feed strategy can help you protect your work during the free trial period.
Of course, you still need to set a price and I will cover how to go about doing that in greater detail later in the article.
Also, a free membership plan might be the right strategy for attracting as many people as possible to your site.
After they join, you can then monetize their membership by offering exclusive content or services that they can’t ignore if they want to maximize the value of their membership.
How To Price Your Membership Site
To set your price, you must first determine the amount you need to make each month to cover all your expenses and make a profit.
For example, let’s say the monthly subscription fee for the usage of your CMS platform is $150, you spend $2000 on marketing and the freelancers you rely on to create your content, and you dedicate 200 hours each month to the management of your blog at a self-valued rate of $30/hour, that will mean you have $8,150 in monthly costs.
Let’s presume you expect at least 150 subscribers to keep paying their subscription fee each month, you will need to charge $50 per month to break even.
You probably won’t break even in your first month, but it’s always better to set your paid membership fee to a sustainable rate.
You can also charge lower if you expect to grow your subscriber base to a much higher number and you are willing to bootstrap the businesses till you become big enough.
The price you set must also be a rate that people in your niche will be willing to pay for the value you are offering.
If your calculations show that you are spending way more than the earning potential of your site, cut back on your expenses till you arrive at a realistic rate.
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