A How-To On Creating New Products
One of the easiest ways to grow your paid subscriptions is to package the assets and features you have already created and sell them as different products.
Episode 15 of the Paywall Podcast – Easy ways to level up your website to build paid subscriptions – Part 3: New Products – gives you a quick rundown of fast and easy ways to create new, revenue-generating products with tools and content that either already exist on or can easily be added to your website. Pete and Jeremy share with you which strategies to use and which buttons to click to increase your subscription revenue.
The Highlights
- A quick recap of the information covered in Episode 8, on using your mission to generate revenue through paid subscriptions, memberships, and donations.
- If you’re worried about the pricing on your main product – your paid subscription – you’re probably not charging enough. A higher price actually convinces readers that your content is more valuable.
- As long as you raise the price in small increments, your readers won’t raise a fuss over pricing increases. In buyer psychology, $25/ year is the same thing as $29/year. So why not charge $29?
- If you’re going to raise the price, use the targeting techniques discussed in Episode 14 to give your free readers a deadline to subscribe at the old price.
- Add a donation level. Especially for news publishers, using mission-based messaging, gives readers the chance to give you free money.
- Remove ads for premium-plus or membership-level subscribers. Generally, paid subscriptions outstrip ad revenue.
- Create a full-text morning newsletter to be automatically sent at 6 am to premium members. Particularly valuable for news publishers.
- Create instant email notifications for the release of time-sensitive material to be sent to premium members. Particularly valuable for financial and even news publishers.
- Make the unlimited ability to create classified ads a member benefit. This boosts your subscriptions and enriches your classified section, too.
- Make the ability to contribute to an Events calendar a privilege of your paid subscribers.
- Gift subscriptions should be 20% of every (giftable) publication’s subscription revenue. Be sure to promote them as featured product.
Did you miss an episode?
Our past episodes answer common publisher questions, provide explanations on making the most of your paywall, show off how other unique publishers have found success, profile the growth of a successful publication, and provide a wealth of tactics for growing your subscriptions:
- Why have a paywall?
- How to set up your paywall to convert more paying subscribers,
- 6 examples of successful publication & product launches,
- An interview with Street Photography Magazine,
- How to generate more paid subscriptions with promotions,
- An interview with Greg Wolfe on magazine renewals and gift subscription strategies,
- An interview with Todd Moen of Catch Magazine,
- Local news publishers: subscriptions v. memberships v. donations,
- Exciting things we’ve been working on,
- An interview with Wally Wallace of 50Fish on social media,
- Paid subscriptions and virtual conferences with Hal Niedzviecki of Broken Pencil Magazine,
- An interview with Greg Grisolano of Land Line Media,
- Easy ways to level up your website to build paid subscriptions – Part 1: Touchpoints
- Easy ways to level up your website to build paid subscriptions – Part 1: Targeting.
Stay tuned for the next episode of the Paywall Podcast, available on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, and Pandora.
