We currently own and operate an online dating / social networking
website which, for the purposes of commerical confidentiality I will
not name.
The site is 95% uk-based and has been running since March 2005
We allow members to join for free, but also offer upgrade
subscriptions. I have split what both packages provide below:
FREE MEMBERS
10 Messages a day
6 Photo Uploads
Free Chat Rooom
GOLD MEMBERS
Unlimited Messages a day
30 Photo Uploads
See Whos Voted
See Whos Looked
Broadcast and View wecams in the Chatroom
ADULT PASS
As we have adult content on the website we charge £9.95 for an adult
pass that lets you view unlimted adult images for one month.
GOLD MEMBERSHIP CHARGES
One Week £3.00
One Month £11.00
One Year £20.00
We have approximately 25,000 registered profiles. To help with your
answer, I have taken our August figures and broken them down as
follows:
INCOME:
Gold Membership Upgrades £2,681.23
Adult Pass Sales £1,651.70
Advertising Revenue (CPM) £ 752.78
Advertising Revenue (Adsen) £ 86.41
TOTAL £5,172.12
I have not listed running costs as it is not relevant to the question in hand.
Our main dilema at this point is to ask whether or not, if the site
was completely free (excluding adult passes), how much more use of the
site could we expect?
We currently average around 75,000 page impressions a day, and
naturally for us to absorb the loss in Gold Member upgrades, we would
need to make up the difference in page impressions and subsequent
banner ads.
We average £0.40 per 1000 pages shown, so if Gold Memberships for
August were £2,681.23 I estimate we would need to do an extra 216,000
page impressions a day (approximately 3 times the current page
impressions).
Naturally this would be a huge step for us, as the site is the main
income generator, and I wondered if you had any knowledge or case
studies of similar websites that had moved from paid subscription, to
advertising-paid free models?
Please feel free to ask me any further questions.
Kind regards
Martin |
