Question about members staying and paying : )

My business partner and I bought Dolphin 7.2 when it was first released in October. We have a dedicated server with Zarconia, and we opened our niche social networking site 32 days later. What a WILD RIDE that was! Four 70 to 90 hour weeks for me. but it went online on time, and so far I am really loving the power of the program and what all it can do.

My partner and I have run large online free groups for 15 years, so we do know a bit about how to retain members in our groups and how to market them etc, and we are getting a great response--so far close to 4,000 members with 3,340 of them listed as active--we are getting approximately 50 to 90 new members every day, so the interest in the website is definitely there.

My question is for the Dolphin owners who are successful with their social networking paid membership sites: what have you found is the best way to get your members to stay and pay?

Right now, we have a 2 week promotional membership, where new members can join for free and pretty much do everything besides upload videos. They seem to love the site, but once their trial period is over, many are not upgrading their memberships, which our grand opening membership fee is $13 for 3 months--not like a fortune.

What I am hearing from members who are leaving is that there are not enough people yet for to make it worth it for them to pay--or there are not enough members in their area YET--I do explain that the site is very new, only 3.5 months, it is worldwide, and it does take time and a way bigger advertising budget to build a huge membership quickly.

Another complaint is that no one is ever in Chat, which I think that is because with the older chat version, members can not see anyone in the chat rooms when they click the navigation link, and even if members are in the rooms, it essentially looks like a blank page. The new Chat+ version is supposed to alleviate that issue.

At one point, we did try to just have them pay upfront, but our membership went from 50 a day to 2--pretty shocking, and the complaint was that they would not pay if they could not see the site and try it out--understandable.

We are thinking about limiting what they can do on the site, but when we did this before, we had nonstop complaints all day long, and then we thought about perhaps limiting how much they can do--like they can contact 2 members a day--something like that?

I would love to know if you have found that a successful community site is pretty much a numbers game, and that members are not willing to pay if there are not 50,000 members? What have you all have done to retain paying members? Or if you have any advice on limiting actions in the promotional membership levels with a new social networking site, I would sure love to hear it. I have no idea what we should do at this point as we are total newbees as far as a PAID membership site.

Thanks so much on any ideas you all can give us. We really want this venture to be successful, just not sure which way to go at this point.

Sincerely

Tracey

One thing we did for a project was to allow promotional members to do everything - including uploading videos and photos and such - once the trial ends, it is possible a lot may stay in order to keep the ability of uploading things. Just a thought.

We sure appreciate your response, ProfessorSr.

I have a couple of questions for you:

1. What do you allow your members to have access to after their promotional membership ends?

2. How long is your promotional membership?

Thanks again for taking the time to help two Dolphin Newbees : )

Tracey

Hi Tracy. Speaking from my heart, there two things that stop members form joining, or even visiting.

The first of course is numbers. I belong to several sites where I'm the closest person to myself in 2,000 miles. For a dating or meetup site, that would be a disaster.

If you're in it for the money, it's all about marketing and as you say, you can do that well on a free site.

One very successful site I belong to has a strict guest membership rule that keeps the guests coming back. Many like myself join

.

Guest membership offers:

Unlimited Profile Views.

Can only contact or message one member a day

Limited winks (I think 5 a day)
Unlimited Forum views and limited (5 a day maybe) posts. A guest can't start a thread.

Three profile photos that all display at once.

A gallery with 20 photos

Can't view some pages, but not important to a member just wishing to meet up.

Pleople usually pay because they wish to contact or communicate with more than one member a day.

Secondly, $13 for three months isn't cheap. That's $52 a year ($80 in Australia) and people do expect a big bang for their buck. One of Australia's most expensive sites with over 300,000 members charges AU $36 a year and people balk at that. On both the sites above, there are between100 and 150 members in my town. About 25% are active.

When I start my own specialist site which is limited to Australia and new Zealand, I've been told to expect between 1,500 and 2,000 active members. The site will be free, but I'm already getting pledges. I'm not into it for the dollars.

PM me if you want to discuss the finer points more.

Thanks, so much for your indepth reply, Demmy. Excellent points for sure, and I will be discussing this with my partner, because we have been considering some of what you were saying--we just were not sure what was the best ways to limit members, and you gave us some wonderful ideas.

Right now, we have some members who are paying $100 for 2 years and some who are paying $500 for life. To protect our members, our site is as private as we can get it, and It is such a niche site, that some people are g;ad to pay to get in, but then there are those who will not, and I am guessing those are the ones who are a bit more web savvy, and have been on dating-type sites before. Although that is not how ours is billed, it is turning into a mixture of both, so we are allowing it to grow and see where it goes.

The closest niche site like ours is getting $5 a month, and they have over 150,000 members. It is not private and it is sure not very great software either. That site has been going for a LONG time, I think around 18 years, which shows me that longevity is a key too.

Also, thanks for inviting me to PM you. I will probably take you up on that offer : )

Tracey