Question: How would you charge for a new subscription offering to existing members?
We have an existing subscription business (print and digital) with art and journaling prompts. We are preparing to release a new digital web app that provides a framework for self-discovery and reflection. It's a pretty different offering than our current membership — but we imagine that this will become our main business and we will migrate our existing digital subscribers over to it.
I was imagining we would offer this for free to our existing subscribers and start putting our previous locked content within the premium section of this new web app, driving our existing members to this new app and keeping our business streamlined.
But I got some advice that we should charge for this new product, even if just a little as a way of validating the concept since its a new idea and we still not really know yet if it is what our community is looking for. With the idea that payment would show us there is demand and people see value.
What would you do? Offer it free to existing members and push the existing member content in there? Or bill separately for it and keep the member content separate and validate this concept?
Depending on how big of an existing subscriber base you have to leverage, I would consider testing a few different offers. For example, you could do a beta launch to a segment of your list offering it free and track your conversion rates. Then do a second pre-launch paid offer to another segment, and see what the response is. Then based on the data, you can decide how you want to position the wide public launch. Worst case the paid offer bombs, and you give refunds to the handful of paying subscribers when you launch it to the public for free (to avoid pissing the paid users off).
Love the idea of testing different options and seeing what works before rolling out with wider public launch. Thanks!
You have a few options...
Offer it free to current members with minimum options and then transition into a premium model with full features.
Or launch it as a completely separate service/entity and resign those clients
Thanks for the suggestions!
We are actually considering launching the new app with a freemium model in any case. I forgot to mention that in the original post :-)
Personally, I would charge. New product, new offering, new revenue. I agree with the validation component advice too.
In the beginning you are running an experiment. Will people pay for this new product? If you offer it for free and roll in that other content you will be adding in additional variables that will make the result less clear.
You can always streamline down the road.
Makes sense, thanks for chiming in and sharing your wisdom!