Times have changed. The economy is difficult around the world. The old days when people sign up and forget about it are over.
These days most of my income comes in the second half of the month with rebills. But the future looks bleak for me, as more of my rebills soon fail.
I now focus more on those large single payment sponsors.
Please compare my April stats with yours: 70% new sales were a purchase of a single month. I checked my CCBILL stats and with the remaining 30% - all but one has already canceled their trial.
We actually have wicked rebilling, some of our sites average 6 months! Maybe its because we give members huge content libraries, steady twice-weekly updates, an easy-to-use members interface and bonus access to several other sites
Compared to a few years back, the length of rebills is shorter indeed, but the average still is 3-4 months. Talking about rebills, I have one that rebills since the beginning of 2006! That guy makes me some great money!
While most of my new sign ups are single month the ones who join for recurring do tend to stay. About 60% rebill at least once and I have a few who have rebilled for over 2 years. About 30% of those that sign up for recurring cancel before they ever get into the site but I’ve noticed that with other sites as well so…
My site is very small and completely amateur so results may be very different for larger programs with frequent updates and professional content production or multi site networks.
On the affiliate side, I mix and match between PPS and rev share programs. Sites that rebill well have made way more money than I would have gotten from a single $35 payout.
Personally, with the banks and card companies screwing customers with interest rates and fees, I’m grateful for every sale I get and don’t care if my share is $8 or $50 as long as the check comes and clears the bank.
Sales for April have been pretty bad (but jan to march been surprisingly good), but I cannot see any major downturn in amount of rebills compared to 2009 or 2008. I’ve had roughly the same amount of rebills the last few years. Like you I have been fearing a loss of rebills, but it just hasnt happened.
BUT
I’ve generated more and more traffic over the last 3 years, yet I sell less and less. The only thing that can mean is much more difficult to sell now than it was in 2007:
Overall signup ratios and $ / hit:
2007: 1 in 254, $0.05 raw / $0.08 unique
2008: 1 in 298, $0.05 raw / $0.07 unique
2009: 1 in 367, $0.05 raw / $0.06 unique
2010: 1 in 430, $0.04 raw / $0.06 unique (so far)
Keep in mind this is statistics for several million hits which makes it slightly more reliable. And if you keep in mind it counts for very large volumes of traffic even a small shift from in 1 in 367 to 1 in 430 is a HUGE difference.
On large scale, it really really shows how progressivly worse it’s getting to sell sites. I think we’re still not out of a real recession, buying patterns have changed from “massive spending, I don’t care attitude” to “saving and watching every dime”. Together with that less productive ways of selling porn have grown huge. 2007-8 we saw the rise of the Tubes, which in essence are just glorified TGPs with the same crap ratios.
It means more traffic is seeing more stuff for free and buy less. Nothing we can change about that now, just have to do the best we can and work harder. Unfortunately I think it’s going to stay bad or get even worse.
Yes, it’s certainly harder to sell now than it was a few years ago. However, for me personally, I’m finding that the most unique sites are selling with relatively much lower ratios.
Anything with a bit of a “twist” to it I find sells quite well for me. For instance, Kinky Dollars. I can’t believe the lower conversion ratios and rebills for their 3 main gay sites. I may even be setting up some blogs for their straight ones as well to see how that goes. People out there love their kink and it’s showing.
Then again, I’m finding other very good sites not rebilling that well for me. So from my perspective, while there are factors that help a site rebill, I think it’s harder to put one’s finger on a site that will necessarily rebill these days. At least, that’s what I’m seeing. I mean rebilling for longer than say…3-4 months. I’ve got my older members that have been around for a few years like most people, but they sure are far and in between.
Yep, folks are watching their pennies. All we can do is hope the world economy bounces back to where it was even 18 months ago.
