I listen to a shitload of podcasts and $5 a month is indeed about the going rate for the "join the patreon or club and get a bonus podcast a week" thing.
Most don't even offer ad free on top of that.
That being said, guess how many podcasts I support at $5 a month? None.
I think this is an interesting, and critical, point.
I've said before on another thread I'll carry on subscribing at the $48 price and a number of people on the forums have said similar - this is obviously great for Bald Move and means they will be getting more income from us individuals than they did before. However, overall, for Bald Move a four-time price increase will only result in bigger income if the membership level is at least a quarter of the previous level. If it dropped below that then the guys are actually making less money than they were before.
At the moment Bald Move converts 1.7% of listeners to Club members. If the price increase resulted in a drop to 0.4% of the listenership being Club members then the Club is actually making less than it was before despite the price increase because the extra subscription price that the 0.4% is paying hasn't made up for the loss in 1.3% of members.
So when looking at Patreon and seeing that the average patreon pledge is for $5.65 there is another critical variable to look at - it's important to bear in mind that the people who pledge on Patreon for podcasts are a small fraction of the overall audience of those podcasts but how small? The average pledge may be $5.65 per month buy how big a proportion of the overall listenership are willing to pledge at that level and how does it compare to the 1.7% membership conversion rate for Bald Move?
For example - if only 0.2% of the audience of those podcasts is pledging on Patreon at an average of $5.65 a month (0.2% of listeners * $5.65 a month * 12 months = average of 13.6 cents per year per listener on patreon pledges) then Bald Move is actually making proportionally more money by getting 1.7% of its audience to pay $12 a year (1.7% * $12 a year = 20.4 cents per year per listener). In that case, if I was some kind of business advisor, I'd tell the guys that it makes more sense to keep the price low.
If however that pledge amount represents 1% of audiences then the high-price strategy makes more money because the drop-off in quantity of subscribers due to the higher price (1.7% falls to 1%) is proportionally smaller than the increase in money earned per subscriber (1% * $5.65 a month * 12 months = average of 67.8 cents per year per listener) and that would make it a good business decision for Bald Move to increase the Club price if they felt they could retain 1% of members.
Those are just back of an envelope calculations that a) assume that Patreon Podcast Pledges (or Triple Pees as I've decided to call them) average $5.65 - the data Jim had was for Patreon as a whole which raises money for a range of endeavours not just podcasts, and, b) uses 0.2% and 1% as arbitrary rates to make the point that looking at an average Patreon pledge alone does not tell you if it makes good financial sense for Club Bald Move to raise prices as you have to consider the proportion of listeners willing to pay those prices in tandem with this.
I'm sure the guys will be monitoring club sign-ups and listener to Club member conversion rates closely over the coming months. I'll personaly find it interesting to see what happens to the numbers (but that's because I'm a bit of a geek for this stuff).
I don't know, the only reason anyone has anything to complain about now is because Jim and A.Ron were willing to offer such a low price point to begin with. It was too low. Don't look at it as "charging me four times as much", look at it as "it was nice I was able to pay 1/5th of what I should be paying for so long, now its finally time to pay market value (if even that).
The foundation of your complaints rests on the bedrock of Bald Move's altruism.
I disagree. You cannot claim the market value is 50 or 60 bucks if the vast majority of the market is getting it for free.
This is either an academic point out something you haven't thought through. It reminds me of the old joke that an economist is someone who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing. But instead of rehashing the same points again, i will just point out that it you think that is not how much bald move is worth to you, you can just donate how much you think it's worth. And if you think it's nothing, then you can always free ride and take a risk bald move fails.
See, the thing is.... my personal choice in that matter really won't have enough impact on baldmove's chances of survival. I'm just one average-income individual.
Hence the question (and the real topic of this thread): what would pursuade a larger percentage of listeners to convert to paying customers?
For that vast majority of listeners who haven't converted yet, the current offering they get af the price of zero is apparently all the value they need. Because even at the low hurdle of 12 dollar per year, they were not pursuaded to become club members.
I don't know, the only reason anyone has anything to complain about now is because Jim and A.Ron were willing to offer such a low price point to begin with. It was too low. Don't look at it as "charging me four times as much", look at it as "it was nice I was able to pay 1/5th of what I should be paying for so long, now its finally time to pay market value (if even that).
The foundation of your complaints rests on the bedrock of Bald Move's altruism.
I don't know, the only reason anyone has anything to complain about now is because Jim and A.Ron were willing to offer such a low price point to begin with. It was too low. Don't look at it as "charging me four times as much", look at it as "it was nice I was able to pay 1/5th of what I should be paying for so long, now its finally time to pay market value (if even that).
The foundation of your complaints rests on the bedrock of Bald Move's altruism.
I disagree. You cannot claim the market value is 50 or 60 bucks if the vast majority of the market is getting it for free.
This is either an academic point out something you haven't thought through. It reminds me of the old joke that an economist is someone who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing. But instead of rehashing the same points again, i will just point out that it you think that is not how much bald move is worth to you, you can just donate how much you think it's worth. And if you think it's nothing, then you can always free ride and take a risk bald move fails.
See, the thing is.... my personal choice in that matter really won't have enough impact on baldmove's chances of survival. I'm just one average-income individual.
Hence the question (and the real topic of this thread): what would pursuade a larger percentage of listeners to convert to paying customers?
For that vast majority of listeners who haven't converted yet, the current offering they get af the price of zero is apparently all the value they need. Because even at the low hurdle of 12 dollar per year, they were not pursuaded to become club members.
Something needs to happen to sweeten the deal.
My point is that you fundamentally misunderstand the market landscape for media companies. Very few companies can successfully cater to the "cater to me or I'll free ride consumer."
Let's start out with the basics. Bald move provides a ton of content, and I would posit that the only way they could produce more hours of content is if they dedicated less time to each podcast. So the only way they could offer more content to subscribers is by offering less content to non subscribers. But in media no one is going to spend money on something without having tried it first.
Now, maybe you disagree with that, but let's go to the facts. Every single newspaper that tried to go paywall only for their articles has failed. The most common model for newspapers right now is the NY Times, where if you want to free ride you can essentially read all their articles by deleting cookies, but there are enough people who care about it to support it financially.
In radio, if you listen to NPR you can essentially free ride forever. They still survive due to donations, and if they were to say, move to sirius XM to avoid free riders they would probably fail.
And it is like that throughout the media landscape. Restricting access to your current content is the fastest way to become irrelevant. Don't believe me, find a podcast that is financially viable that follows your idea for a pay wall. What bald move is doing is what most grassroots podcasts are doing, except bald move cuts the patreon middle man.
Now, you may claim that it it not a matter of free riding, but a matter of the cost. At which point I go back to what I said: if you don't want to spend $48, you can donate the $12 and have access to most things. And people who won't even donate the $12 are people who would likely free ride anyways.
I've already explained why they are bad ideas. They all involve doing less for non members. They are all based on the flawed idea that the secret to having more people willing to support bald move is to offer them less to start with.
I've already explained why they are bad ideas. They all involve doing less for non members. They are all based on the flawed idea that the secret to having more people willing to support bald move is to offer them less to start with.
No, you must have misunderstood my suggestions.
A_Ron expressed similar concerns as you do, and in my second post I tweaked them a little to clarify I'm aiming for features that would add more value for members (not less value for non-members)
Anyway, I was hoping people would offer additional and/or better ideas. It's easy to point out the flaws in somebody's ideas, isn't it? Do you have anything better to offer?
I don't know, the only reason anyone has anything to complain about now is because Jim and A.Ron were willing to offer such a low price point to begin with. It was too low. Don't look at it as "charging me four times as much", look at it as "it was nice I was able to pay 1/5th of what I should be paying for so long, now its finally time to pay market value (if even that).
The foundation of your complaints rests on the bedrock of Bald Move's altruism.
I think people are factoring this in - to some degree anyway.
The fact that $12 has constantly been referred to as a 'no-brainer' suggest that the price was too low to start with. Based on that, I think the audience is prepared for a price increase.
The problem (if it can be called that at this point) is that among the people here who are arguably the most invested in the Bald Move community, there are people balking at the $48 ask. I suspect that if there's some resistance here, there will be much greater resistance among the more casual members (those who just kicked in their $12 to support the guys and aren't overly involved) of a x4 price increase.
To your point, I think that (at least some, but it feels like a sizable number of people) are buying in at the new rate either because they want Bald Move to survive and/or because they feel like they've been getting such a good deal all along that they're willing to kick in extra now.
What they're doing (IMO) is a decent strategy to address their immediate existential threat - lean a little heavily on a core group who are already really invested in the brand & products. I'm totally cool with that. My concern moving forward is that if they were converting 1.7 of listeners into members at a $12 rate, that's not going to improve at a $48 rate. As the dependence on Amazon showed, they're better off drawing income from diverse sources (ie 4 people paying $12) than putting all of their eggs in one basket (ie 1 person paying $48).
If I had to guess (and this is a pure guess) I think the guys are increasing the rate based on how much money that they need to raise vs what they'd more objectively value their product at during different circumstances.
Once the short terms needs of the company have been met, I'd suggest a more modest increase. One that is a step above the universal "no-brainer" rate but is still attractive enough that the membership base could be broadened. Just spit-balling, but maybe something like $20 and with that, do a full-court press on encouraging listeners to become members. Rather than almost passively mentioning "hey, if you'd like to become a member.." take a few minutes at the beginning of prime podcasts (GoT, Westworld, TWD) to explain the importance of memberships, tell listeners that their support is what makes the podcast possible etc. I realize that the guys are non-salesmen introvert types, but this is one area where they've really got to step up and do something that's a little uncomfortable for the sake and success of their business. Above all else, converting more than 1.7% of listeners to members will determine the fate of Bald Move. I think that they're right about the list of 'barriers to growth' that they've mentioned, and once the company gets over its current hurdle I think that they'll also see that a $48 membership fee is a growth barrier as well.
I don't know, the only reason anyone has anything to complain about now is because Jim and A.Ron were willing to offer such a low price point to begin with. It was too low. Don't look at it as "charging me four times as much", look at it as "it was nice I was able to pay 1/5th of what I should be paying for so long, now its finally time to pay market value (if even that).
The foundation of your complaints rests on the bedrock of Bald Move's altruism.
Above all else, converting more than 1.7% of listeners to members will determine the fate of Bald Move. I think that they're right about the list of 'barriers to growth' that they've mentioned, and once the company gets over its current hurdle I think that they'll also see that a $48 membership fee is a growth barrier as well.
It's a tough spot. Those suggestions seem problematic, but I agree in general that there could be a better sense of added value for the membership. LWJA seems like the flagship for membership content, and the only member's only podcast that's fairly regular, but by design they put way less effort into it than the free podcasts for the big shows. The more labor intensive premium stuff like QYP or the gaming streams are very irregular; you could easily sign up for a few months and never see any of that drop.
But I don't know whether improving that stuff is actually worth taking time away from making the main casts so popular that the tiny percentage willing to pay regardless of getting added value is enough. Personally, I'll gladly pay the fiddy bucks (or whatever ungodly sum it comes to in loonies) on a pure patronage model. Whether it makes good business sense, though, only the wisest and most godlike captains of industry would be able to say. Someone call Donald.
Seriously who are these people with computers and internet and yet cannot afford 48 dollars a year.
Oh, I don't know. The same people who didn't want to pay 12 dollars for membership in the past? You know .... approximately 98,3% of Baldmove's audience.
Seriously who are these people with computers and internet and yet cannot afford 48 dollars a year.
Everything can be done via mobile these days.
A smart phone isn't much cheaper. Regardless, 48 dollars a year is nothing. I am sure there is a small percentage of people who cannot afford this hike, but if you were budgeting 12 dollars and year for a podcast but cannot swing 48 dollars a year then you probably should not have budgeted the 12 dollars to begin with.
Seriously who are these people with computers and internet and yet cannot afford 48 dollars a year.
Everything can be done via mobile these days.
A smart phone isn't much cheaper. Regardless, 48 dollars a year is nothing. I am sure there is a small percentage of people who cannot afford this hike, but if you were budgeting 12 dollars and year for a podcast but cannot swing 48 dollars a year then you probably should not have budgeted the 12 dollars to begin with.
I don't judge anyone if they can afford $12, but not $48 that is their situation. Remember however that we are also dealing with "many" international members who pay even more due to conversion rates. Smart phones also can be had for "free" with a contract. They would also be considered useful for much more than the podcast itself (entertainment).
Like I said, I don't have an issue with it as it started off too cheap and probably should have had an increased or two since they started. Everyone always grumbles at price increases when they happen, it eventually calms down and things go back to "normal".
Seriously who are these people with computers and internet and yet cannot afford 48 dollars a year.
Everything can be done via mobile these days.
A smart phone isn't much cheaper. Regardless, 48 dollars a year is nothing. I am sure there is a small percentage of people who cannot afford this hike, but if you were budgeting 12 dollars and year for a podcast but cannot swing 48 dollars a year then you probably should not have budgeted the 12 dollars to begin with.
I don't judge anyone if they can afford $12, but not $48 that is their situation. Remember however that we are also dealing with "many" international members who pay even more due to conversion rates. Smart phones also can be had for "free" with a contract. They would also be considered useful for much more than the podcast itself (entertainment).
Like I said, I don't have an issue with it as it started off too cheap and probably should have had an increased or two since they started. Everyone always grumbles at price increases when they happen, it eventually calms down and things go back to "normal".
Fair enough no judgments. To be fair free with a contract still requires an expensive contract. I like to think of it as not increasing the price of the membership but increasing the price of baldmove altogether because if we do not pony up the entire channel free content or no is going away.
I really like the way that LSG Media handles their contributors; they admittedly got the idea for commissioned 'casts from Bald Move, but they also let the lower-tier donators have some say (via voting) in what gets covered next, and that wouldn't be a terrible thing for a Bald Move subscription to include. There definitely would've been coverage of Stranger Things!
I really like the way that LSG Media handles their contributors; they admittedly got the idea for commissioned 'casts from Bald Move, but they also let the lower-tier donators have some say (via voting) in what gets covered next, and that wouldn't be a terrible thing for a Bald Move subscription to include. There definitely would've been coverage of Stranger Things!
I love that! Doesn't make the free membership experience any worse. Doesn't take a ton of investment (I think). Makes the membership a little bit more rewarding
The better long-term solution would be to increase the participation rate at the no-brainer $1/month level, they have an emergency and the peak GoT audience isn't tuned-in to hear an appeal for membership. If they can survive the harsh Georgia winter with this strategy, then I'd recommend lowering the entry point back down to maybe $2/mos and focus on more-actively promoting membership during the podcasts.
They should also be able to use those peak GoT numbers to get some increased ad revenue for next year (I've no idea how that process works, but the audience size should be worth something to someone).
The Dan Carlin-style: if you like the podcast consider donating a $1-2 is also an idea which might generate some revenue from folks who don't want to be a member, but also don't want to free-load.
I'm not being critical of this strategy as it's hard to make long-term strategic decisions with a ticking bomb counting down in the background.
A further pivot would raise fairness issues with those signed-up at the higher level, but I think most of the hard-core fans would understand. Maybe bring the lower pricing back later as a separate membership tier with more-limited access? It would be more-fair, but probably difficult to execute and administrate.
I'm hopeful that they can make it through to GoT next year and then focus on increased ad sales and pitching of memberships to establish a more-sustainable growth model going forward. I think the $5/month is going to be too much for significant membership growth for casual listeners who only tune in for 1-2 specific shows.
Disclaimer: I pay $10/mos as that's what I think all this content is worth to me so I don't have a dog directly in this hunt other than that I don't want Bald Move to go away or scale-back so I also threw a donation into the kitty.
Wheewie, there is a lot to read and process here. First, the problem with the idea of releasing the podcast sooner than we do is we essentially release it the very minute it has been edited and uploaded. If you watch our videos, you know that within 1-2 hours of the podcast being wrapped up it's out and public. So to give a bigger advantage to club members, we'd have to artificially delay the release.
Now, we don't want to do that. But what about live audio streaming the podcasts simultaneously with the video? That's something we can do. There are a lot of existing services that will allow us to do that, and if we can build it into our new app with notifications when we're about to go live? That sounds pretty cool, and can get you the podcast (un-edited, granted, but if you've watched our live recording you know that we don't really edit the podcasts all that much. Recording and inserting ads is 99% of our editing. But on a long podcast like Game of Thrones or Westworld, that could be the difference between getting the podcast on your lunch break and the next day.
The problem with the feedback is psychological as much as practical. I already am a basket case about the large show email situation. Adding a financial incentive on top of that would just make me feel worse, and, no bones about it, if I'm doing anything but selected the best, most relevant, interesting, or funny emails to read (which, is subjective to me, as the editor, but still), I'm by definition making the show worse for money. Not only does that not sit well with me personally, but that's the kind of thing that can get an internet mob to lynch you. I already get a depressing amount of angry feedback about me not reading people's pet emails, god help me when someone is threatening to cancel their $50/year if I don't read it. Just, yuk.
I do think the idea of paywalling features is the way to go, but we try to draw a bright white line between our existing free services, television commentary and reviews, and the other stuff. Movies are a fine line, but we justify charging for the spoiler-reviews because we actually lay out cash to see these movies, and it's yet another evening we're burning for the business.
One of the reason stuff like QYPs, Silent Movies, game play throughts, etc are so slow in coming is because the overhead of editing and processing that stuff is much higher, and they don't have clear deadlines. One of the reasons we want to increase staff is to eliminate that bottleneck.
Anyway, I didn't mean to be dismissive of the "more value!" types, because obviously we're aware that is a consideration. We just know from internal polling it's a much smaller share of the concern. If polling is incorrect, then we'll have to make changes. Bottom line, we want to raise the $25k goal to put is in the position where we will never be in that position again. If club sales threaten to go soft, and we lose half of our club members, we can have a sale. If we're sitting fat and happy, we can do all kinds of things up to and including discounting the club. At $1/month, we couldn't do shit.
I also think that while the "more value!" types might in the short term abandon the club, we'll eventually grow the club offering to where if you like the extra stuff we do, you'll want in. It will be slicker, easier to get, and more professionally produced and packaged. If you're only in it for the TV and movies, maybe you never do. Or maybe you feel guilty every few months and throw in $5 bucks in the tip jar. Or buy a t-shirt. Who knows? But there will be options, for me and Jim and for people who want to support us.
I agree that it would be nice to grow the base as well. I'm planning on staying at $12 per year and giving up premium content, plus maybe a tip now to help you through the transition - maybe put in some ads appealing to cheapskates like me who want to help.
I think just having all of baldmoves podcasts under 1 feed makes it worth the $48 a year for me. Instead of subscribing to 12 different podcasts from the same network I get them all under 1 roof plus it helps my favorite podcasters keep the lights on.
I can only speak for myself but I certainly didn't join the club only for the extra content. I have listened to so many Baldmove podcasts that I have gotten more than my money's worth already, which is why I am certainly ready to pay a little more, especially in times of need. Because what would be the point of being stingy right now if it comes at the price of no more Baldmove next year Of course it's true that a price increase will discourage some people from renewing their membership, so that fewer people will pay a little more to keep the business going. However, I don't think that implies a never ending spiral of price increases, like some folks seem to suggest, because an equilibrium may very well be found where enough people pay enough money to make the business sustainable before a membership costs 100 dollars...
I hadn't realized it only takes you 1 or 2 hours to edit and release the podcast. Yeah, delaying it artificially wouldn't make sense. Live audio streaming would be great, though!
Comments
I've said before on another thread I'll carry on subscribing at the $48 price and a number of people on the forums have said similar - this is obviously great for Bald Move and means they will be getting more income from us individuals than they did before. However, overall, for Bald Move a four-time price increase will only result in bigger income if the membership level is at least a quarter of the previous level. If it dropped below that then the guys are actually making less money than they were before.
At the moment Bald Move converts 1.7% of listeners to Club members.
If the price increase resulted in a drop to 0.4% of the listenership being Club members then the Club is
actually making less than it was before despite the price increase because the extra subscription price that the 0.4% is paying hasn't made up for the loss in 1.3% of members.
So when looking at Patreon and seeing that the average patreon pledge is for $5.65 there is another critical variable to look at - it's important to bear in mind that the people who pledge on Patreon for podcasts are a small fraction of the overall audience of those podcasts but how small? The average pledge may be $5.65 per month buy how big a proportion of the overall listenership are willing to pledge at that level and how does it compare to the 1.7% membership conversion rate for Bald Move?
For example - if only 0.2% of the audience of those podcasts is pledging on Patreon at an average of $5.65 a month (0.2% of listeners * $5.65 a month * 12 months = average of 13.6 cents per year per listener on patreon pledges) then Bald Move is actually making proportionally more money by getting 1.7% of its audience to pay $12 a year (1.7% * $12 a year = 20.4 cents per year per listener). In that case, if I was some kind of business advisor, I'd tell the guys that it makes more sense to keep the price low.
If however that pledge amount represents 1% of audiences then the high-price strategy makes more money because the drop-off in quantity of subscribers due to the higher price (1.7% falls to 1%) is proportionally smaller than the increase in money earned per subscriber (1% * $5.65 a month * 12 months = average of 67.8 cents per year per listener) and that would make it a good business decision for Bald Move to increase the Club price if they felt they could retain 1% of members.
Those are just back of an envelope calculations that a) assume that Patreon Podcast Pledges (or Triple Pees as I've decided to call them) average $5.65 - the data Jim had was for Patreon as a whole which raises money for a range of endeavours not just podcasts, and, b) uses 0.2% and 1% as arbitrary rates to make the point that looking at an average Patreon pledge alone does not tell you if it makes good financial sense for Club Bald Move to raise prices as you have to consider the proportion of listeners willing to pay those prices in tandem with this.
I'm sure the guys will be monitoring club sign-ups and listener to Club member conversion rates closely over the coming months. I'll personaly find it interesting to see what happens to the numbers (but that's because I'm a bit of a geek for this stuff).
We know that at the current price level, only a small percentage of listeners converted from free-riders to club members.
I'm trying to analyse and discuss why that is, and throwing out ideas how that might be improved.
See, the thing is.... my personal choice in that matter really won't have enough impact on baldmove's chances of survival. I'm just one average-income individual.
Hence the question (and the real topic of this thread): what would pursuade a larger percentage of listeners to convert to paying customers?
For that vast majority of listeners who haven't converted yet, the current offering they get af the price of zero is apparently all the value they need. Because even at the low hurdle of 12 dollar per year, they were not pursuaded to become club members.
Something needs to happen to sweeten the deal.
My point is that you fundamentally misunderstand the market landscape for media companies. Very few companies can successfully cater to the "cater to me or I'll free ride consumer."
Let's start out with the basics. Bald move provides a ton of content, and I would posit that the only way they could produce more hours of content is if they dedicated less time to each podcast. So the only way they could offer more content to subscribers is by offering less content to non subscribers. But in media no one is going to spend money on something without having tried it first.
Now, maybe you disagree with that, but let's go to the facts. Every single newspaper that tried to go paywall only for their articles has failed. The most common model for newspapers right now is the NY Times, where if you want to free ride you can essentially read all their articles by deleting cookies, but there are enough people who care about it to support it financially.
In radio, if you listen to NPR you can essentially free ride forever. They still survive due to donations, and if they were to say, move to sirius XM to avoid free riders they would probably fail.
And it is like that throughout the media landscape. Restricting access to your current content is the fastest way to become irrelevant. Don't believe me, find a podcast that is financially viable that follows your idea for a pay wall. What bald move is doing is what most grassroots podcasts are doing, except bald move cuts the patreon middle man.
Now, you may claim that it it not a matter of free riding, but a matter of the cost. At which point I go back to what I said: if you don't want to spend $48, you can donate the $12 and have access to most things. And people who won't even donate the $12 are people who would likely free ride anyways.
I started out this thread by claiming that after the price increase, even less people than before (1.7%) will see the added value of the membership.
And then I threw out a couple of wild ideas that, at least to me, could add some more value to the membership.
Feel free to refute my original claim, or explain why my ideas are bad, or offer better ideas. That's kinda the idea of the discussion.
No, you must have misunderstood my suggestions.
A_Ron expressed similar concerns as you do, and in my second post I tweaked them a little to clarify I'm aiming for features that would add more value for members (not less value for non-members)
Anyway, I was hoping people would offer additional and/or better ideas. It's easy to point out the flaws in somebody's ideas, isn't it? Do you have anything better to offer?
I think people are factoring this in - to some degree anyway.
The fact that $12 has constantly been referred to as a 'no-brainer' suggest that the price was too low to start with. Based on that, I think the audience is prepared for a price increase.
The problem (if it can be called that at this point) is that among the people here who are arguably the most invested in the Bald Move community, there are people balking at the $48 ask. I suspect that if there's some resistance here, there will be much greater resistance among the more casual members (those who just kicked in their $12 to support the guys and aren't overly involved) of a x4 price increase.
To your point, I think that (at least some, but it feels like a sizable number of people) are buying in at the new rate either because they want Bald Move to survive and/or because they feel like they've been getting such a good deal all along that they're willing to kick in extra now.
What they're doing (IMO) is a decent strategy to address their immediate existential threat - lean a little heavily on a core group who are already really invested in the brand & products. I'm totally cool with that. My concern moving forward is that if they were converting 1.7 of listeners into members at a $12 rate, that's not going to improve at a $48 rate. As the dependence on Amazon showed, they're better off drawing income from diverse sources (ie 4 people paying $12) than putting all of their eggs in one basket (ie 1 person paying $48).
If I had to guess (and this is a pure guess) I think the guys are increasing the rate based on how much money that they need to raise vs what they'd more objectively value their product at during different circumstances.
Once the short terms needs of the company have been met, I'd suggest a more modest increase. One that is a step above the universal "no-brainer" rate but is still attractive enough that the membership base could be broadened. Just spit-balling, but maybe something like $20 and with that, do a full-court press on encouraging listeners to become members. Rather than almost passively mentioning "hey, if you'd like to become a member.." take a few minutes at the beginning of prime podcasts (GoT, Westworld, TWD) to explain the importance of memberships, tell listeners that their support is what makes the podcast possible etc. I realize that the guys are non-salesmen introvert types, but this is one area where they've really got to step up and do something that's a little uncomfortable for the sake and success of their business. Above all else, converting more than 1.7% of listeners to members will determine the fate of Bald Move. I think that they're right about the list of 'barriers to growth' that they've mentioned, and once the company gets over its current hurdle I think that they'll also see that a $48 membership fee is a growth barrier as well.
Spot on!
It's not about affordability.
Smart phones also can be had for "free" with a contract. They would also be considered useful for much more than the podcast itself (entertainment).
Like I said, I don't have an issue with it as it started off too cheap and probably should have had an increased or two since they started. Everyone always grumbles at price increases when they happen, it eventually calms down and things go back to "normal".
I love that!
Doesn't make the free membership experience any worse. Doesn't take a ton of investment (I think). Makes the membership a little bit more rewarding
They should also be able to use those peak GoT numbers to get some increased ad revenue for next year (I've no idea how that process works, but the audience size should be worth something to someone).
The Dan Carlin-style: if you like the podcast consider donating a $1-2 is also an idea which might generate some revenue from folks who don't want to be a member, but also don't want to free-load.
I'm not being critical of this strategy as it's hard to make long-term strategic decisions with a ticking bomb counting down in the background.
A further pivot would raise fairness issues with those signed-up at the higher level, but I think most of the hard-core fans would understand. Maybe bring the lower pricing back later as a separate membership tier with more-limited access? It would be more-fair, but probably difficult to execute and administrate.
I'm hopeful that they can make it through to GoT next year and then focus on increased ad sales and pitching of memberships to establish a more-sustainable growth model going forward. I think the $5/month is going to be too much for significant membership growth for casual listeners who only tune in for 1-2 specific shows.
Disclaimer: I pay $10/mos as that's what I think all this content is worth to me so I don't have a dog directly in this hunt other than that I don't want Bald Move to go away or scale-back so I also threw a donation into the kitty.
I hadn't realized it only takes you 1 or 2 hours to edit and release the podcast. Yeah, delaying it artificially wouldn't make sense. Live audio streaming would be great, though!