Marketing Tips: Free or Paid Membership for your website?
Thursday, February 7th, 2008Many people when buying a dating software think about its promotion and the different ways to earn money, of course. The common question I used to hear from customers was about membership. Should it be for free at the beginning? Isn’t it better to set a paid membership from the start? If the membership is for free, how should I earn? And so on.
There are tons of dating websites already, but as we can see they choose different business models. Let’s take a look at the most popular scenarios to understand how it works.
FREE START. Most dating web-sites start with free membership. Why? Profile database. The goal is to get as many people on the website as possible within a short period of time. The other point why it is reasonable – you put your new website online and people are joining and having fun for free while you have time to test the software, check hosting facilities, improve design, adjust admin settings, add necessary features, fix bugs if appeared. Once you are done with preparation you are ready for big promotion and to start earning money.
100% FREE. The example can be www.plentyoffish.com, which is completely free for everyone, no hidden fees and paid upgrades. The website earns on advertising. This is one model. With the right advertising strategy it can become a very profitable business.
JOIN FREE. Another way you can choose is partially free dating service. I call it “Join Free”, because usually joining (with some rare exceptions) is the only free service on such kind of websites. This is made to attract people at the beginning and shows the benefits of paid membership when they are already inside.
There can be combinations of the schemes mentioned above or some slightly modified examples, but basically the idea is like that. Which way to choose, you decide considering your target audience, promotion experience, knowledge of advertising tactics and professional preferences. Just make sure to take into consideration your clients’ perspective (think of client’s needs!).
Also, look at the article on the www.freedating-sites.com. I like the text, because the author gives some words of advice from the user’s point of view, which is very important to know before you make a decision about your marketing strategy.
So, which strategy do you choose for your website?
