By Mark Monciardini on January 04th, 2009
Membership Calculator
Todays Hot Tool is a Membership Calculator that tells you how much money you will make with a membership/subscription service website up to 3 years. Watch the movie and please post your feedback.
Great little tool. I like the fact that it helps you see the steps along the way. Much of the hype surrounding membership sites is the focus on how much you make with X number of subscribers. They fail to look at the fact that when you start, you aren’t making a dime until those first people sign up at launch…great format to wrap up the short-term and long-term perspectives.
Mark, it was a surprise finding this kind of content on your blog, but a nice one for sure. This is something I’ve been considering and the spreadsheet is a nifty little tool to see how profitable a membership-based application/website could really be. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for the comments. We’re planning on adding more options to the calculator. Please post your requests here and I will put it on the list.
Thanks!
Mark
Thanks for this post. I haven’t done a membership based site YET. But after this I plan to. I had always heard about the benefits but never took the time to look into it more.
Because mindset is everything, I won’t say I hope reading this post was life changing, I will say it IS life changing. Just seeing the numbers, so small, so plain, makes me realize that I have been missing out on something big!
I’ve been a fan of the Cover Action product, but really thank you for this!
Dan
http://www.919photos.com
Mark,
Thanks for sharing – this is a great tool.
The one thing I would add is a calculation for the number of people that drop off each month.
So let’s say you have a 75% retention rate (75% of people stay each month), then that would change the overall calculations since there would only be 75 people to carry into the next month.
Make sense?
The obvious reason for this is that not everyone will stay a member and doing it this way will provide you a more accurate representation of the membership income.
So if you added a “drop off” percentage or a “retention rate” into the calculation I think it would make this a little more powerful :)
Anyway, love your stuff and really appreciate all the content you provide.
Take care.
Stu
Stu makes a great point, if you are asking for additional features, perhaps add a retention rate. Rarely, if ever, would you keep all of your members for even 6 months, let alone 3 years.
Stu and Gregg,
Yes, Great idea. This is exactly what I’m thinking too. I’ll have someone work on it right away. How cool is that. If you have more ideas let me know. I will incorporate them in!
Mark
How about a way to set membership signup fluctuation? Lets say your monthly drop-off rate is 25% and your monthly sign up amount can be adjusted to randomly fluctuate between 80 and 110 members per month?
Hi All, Yes I agree, a membership calculator with drop rates would be awesome, any word on this yet?
Great tool! Thanks for posting it.
I’d like to see an option for persistency rate on the input page.
Thanks again!
Hey Marko…
I purchased your first Cover Action Pro scripts before, but I didn’t realize you had a blog going. When did you start this blog?
Yes… pleas… by all means, can you come up with a finely tuned Membership Calculator. I’m working on a membership type of website, and so is a friend of mine. It would be great to have the numbers of people dropping out of the membership too. Good job on the spreadsheet…