I really need to post on this topic as it is something that has recently caused me to lose a friend and business partner in this industry.

I invested in a straight program a year back with someone that I had high respect for. She had a site with about 600+ members and wanted to grow the membership base. Her pricing plan was $25 recur and $30 non recur. She was getting close to a 50/50 as to what a surfer joined. It flucuated slightly from month to month.

Now, the first suggestion I made was to go after some of the big players. They wouldn't touch her program with that pricing structure. Why? As they said why should I send my surfers to a join page that 50% of my surfers will join and I will only make $15 minus processing fees? Point taken.

She dropped the non recur and of course conversions took a hit. In her case it was by about 15%. I know of some sites that when they drop the non recur they take less of a hit while others take a huge hit.

But, here is the kicker. Even with worse conversions, the number of members who made it to billing cycle #2 far outweighed the 15% decline in new members. The reason being every surfer was being signed up for rebilling.

Membership went up. She should be happy, right? NO!

Even though memberships went up, her profits went down. Why? Because now all the members were not hers. Now she had to split with partners all the members who joined her site on a non rebill then joined again. Btw, she was real aggressive in getting those back by sending out a special price email to the members whose membership expired and didn't renew within 7 days.

So for her in the end I realized that while she loved affiliates sending her traffic and sales, what she truly cared about more than anything was her bottom line, not about treating her affiliates with the respect that they deserved.

Not the way I do business. So we parted ways....

Cpncerning points others made. Squirt said that a crappy site should offer a high one month price. Not true. A really good site should offer it if they want to make money. They know damn well their product is good. Like she did. They know that after the surfers membership expires they will join again. And they know they don't have to split it with anyone.

Squirt also mentioned that we need to think of the customer. A paysite owner has two customers. The members and the affiliates. Most paysites would have few members without affiliates.

Bandwith came up as an issue. While everything in this industry has been against us. Bandwith has become our best friend.

An affiliate that converts at 1:1000 is just as important to me as an affiliate that converts at 1:200. IF you use bandwith as a measure, that affiliate has used more bandwith to get the surfer to your site than the one that converted at 1:200 and not only that he is marketing a program that converts at 1:1000 when he could probably find one that does better. The extra bandwith on the tour is pennies.

Concerning bandwith in my members areas. I want them to burn through it. If I create a paysite, and they join, they have every right to go through everything on my site. It is their site as well. In fact I have found those that use the most bandwith tend to stay longer. They like the site. there are exceptions to this - those that just go through a site and download everything. Ok, I am out $5 on them (using .25 a gig).

The fact is webmasters (affiliates) who send traffic to a sponsor expect a return on their investment. One thing that has dramitically affected this is the cost of content and the availability of it. This is especially true for US webmasters where using sponsor content is technically a no no. The average price for a decent photoset hovers in the 40-60 range. Yet, we all know retention is not what it was 2-3 years ago. So under a revshare model it makes it harder for a webmaster to get a decent return on his investment IF 50% of the surfers he sends to a program don't even stand a chance of recurring and the other 50% recur at a lower rate than we are you to in the industry.

The question I ask is why do paysite owners throw this hurdle at the affiliates? When the 2257 thing cracks down and US webmasters stop using affiliate content and have to go buy their own, they will be very picky about what programs they market. If a PPS is paying $30 and a revshare is paying 50% but sends half to a non recur option and it takes the affiliate 4 or more months to make $30 a member because of lost members, they will be picky who they choose to market.

I am not totally against a non recur option. It's just when you have a $3-$5 difference in price that kills my bottom line. (Proof being Sean Cody was one of my lowest per member rev share site I ever marketed. I guess I had real bad luck as MOST of my members went for the one time charge.) I loved that site to death and tried so hard to justify the amount that a member was worth to me, but in the end I couldnt justify sending traffic at it when I could make nearly twice as much on just about any PPS and get the whole chunk upfront.

Some companies offer like $29 a month recur and $49 a month non recur. And surfers sign up to the $49. It's worth it. I still get $25.