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The most frightening stop on a creator's journey is the transition from a free service to a premium membership site. We've had conversations with several creators who are looking for more effective strategies for navigating this transition. Recently, a customer that has offered free subscriptions for many years asked us if we could "able to share the examples of how they have announced their transition to a paid or paywall newsletter which has proven effective? My concern is that if not done correctly, it could cause a negative impression in people's mouths."
He's also right to be worried. People who want to move between free and paid to leverage their passion into a career have to leave something of a "bad impression on people's minds" in the event that they ask people to purchase something that they previously had the ability to access at no cost. In fact, another one of our customers has recently tweeted that same sentiment: "Every time that I mention it, people seem annoyed that there's a paid (subscriber) component of 2PMinc. In addition, when they do remove me from their list, but they also inform me that they are'money hungry."
The good news is that If you're worried about getting the people who are your customers to pay, you're not alone: Every single creator who earns a living doing something they love is forced to make this difficult yet necessary change. But the bad thing is however, that even in the best of circumstances, your intentions can still be misinterpreted. A lot of people do not want to spend money on things they believe they could get without cost. But, if you plan the transition thoughtfully, you can make a significant percentage of your users to paying customers. Here are a some examples of strategies that we've seen creators implement to successfully transition from a free service to a paid service.
Make sure you are transparent with the early adopters
It's true that your earliest followers may be among the first in your community to voice their displeasure about the transition from free to paid but keep in mind that they're the very first people in your audience who believed in your business. As Aaron Schwartz said in a Business Collective piece on the process of moving from a no-cost early model to one that is paid for, "Early adopters want you to do well because they believe there's the value of your work. If you're worried regarding a price increase an ideal option is to talk to folks. Calling them is an ideal way of finding the issues your customers with their concerns, as well as allowing you to express your enthusiasm and the reasons for charging more immediately."
Give "founding members" the treatment you deserve
Be sure to give away something in exchange for a donation
Giving away "Freemium" content helps build confidence and credibility with soon-to-be customers while also positioning your company as one run by an established thought leader. While many authors use free content to build up a following prior to making the switch from free content to paid ones, it's a smart retention and acquisition strategy to keep a freely accessible version of the content you have gated. As an example, Team Flower, attracts more paying members and positions them as thought leaders in the flower professional business by offering free content outside of their membership offerings. They pull in enough revenue through their memberships to run their site full time and still provide free content to over 22,000 flower experts each week.
Share the "why" behind your membership
You love what you do You've been steadily growing an audience who loves it too, so you want the money to spend more time and energy to improve your offerings and in order to do that, you'd like to charge for the services you offer. It's possible that you don't know the motives behind your paid membership but if the people who are following you do not, it's impossible to achieve success. It's more than likely that early adopters and potential members will want the reason behind it and the reason they're paying.
The ability to create a page for them to email them makes it easier to let them know the whereabouts of their money and how it's going to improve your membership offerings. A great example of this could be kottke.org . They have an official membership page which provides the "why?" behind their decision to join paid memberships, including wanting to focus on committed readers, the desire to have the ability to finance and develop his website as well as revealing the vulnerability of Jason Kottke. In the section entitled " A change in the world of media" Kottke writes, "It's been more than 11 years since I left my job in order to run kottke.org completely. Online media has changed significantly since. Hell, it's transformed a great deal over the last few years. Blogs are dead -- long live blogs! -- and the open internet is in a bind. If you talk to the creators of other established websites that are independent on the internet (and I have talked to a lot of them) and you'll learn that display and traffic ad revenues have been declining for the last few years. There are many factors that have led to this decline -for instance, Facebook, readers switching to mobile, the rise of apps, the rise of social, overtaking search for discovery, ad blocking tools, Google Readers shutdown, VC cash flooding into online media and also smaller sites that do not have dedicated content marketing or social and mobile development teams aren't able to keep up. There are other strategies that are needed."
One of the most crucial things to be aware of when moving from free content to paid subscriptions is not just ask your customers to pay for your value but increase your worth as well. If you are planning to provide similar newsletters, videos or content. that you had previously in the past for free, but with an increased price, the people who follow you are likely going to wonder what's on the menu and the reason they're paying for something they had previously received at no cost. Following the steps above and keeping a constant feedback loop to founding members, and continuing to refine what you've created as well as the method you use to create this will help you successfully transition from free to paid memberships.