MarkTiarra

Of all my posts this one I imagine will raise the most argument especially with the proliferation of false information in efforts to advance specific agendas. I?m certainly not saying that anyone disagreeing with the numbers below fits into that category because there are always exceptions too, but I can say in all confidence that these averages presented are what you can expect in a vast majority of cases. One nice advantage of doing design for many clients in many genres is that I get to have a good look at a cross section of numbers and a wide variety of scenarios instead of just seeing one narrow view of the industry based on a specific experience. So anyway, without further babble, here it is:

Conversions (Full Price joins): Anything from 1:500 to 1:1000 is acceptable. With smaller amounts of traffic and more targeted sources (i.e. search engines, a site specific blog, etc?) you can see better numbers and if you have mostly low grade traffic (i.e. tgp/mgp, forced exits, etc?) your numbers will be worse. Sometimes there is confusion on this front because people publish numbers based on hits to the second page or join page. You get people with a really specific niche that has only very targeted traffic and their numbers are great at that point and well, you see how it goes. But rest assured once you get a decent mix of traffic and are seeing some volume of it (like more than 5k per day) then the numbers I stated above are a reasonable expectation.

Conversions (Trial Price joins): All the same commentary from above applies but with low price trials you can expect your conversions to be more in the area of 1:300 to 1:600.

If your numbers fall outside these ranges then you should look at reworking you tours, video samples or the quality of the content you are presenting. Of course take a look at your traffic sources too.

Conversion From Trial to Full: This number is largely dependent on four factors:

1. How often you update .
2. How much content is available (also if there are many sites offered when fully joining).
3. The quality of your content.
4. Is the trial membership a limited kind.

If you are doing everything right and offering a limited trial member area you can see your trials convert at 50% or maybe even a bit better. If you are just offering limited time access to the entire members area hen 25% to 30% is a good number. As a start up though it?s not unusual to see numbers for trials as low as 15%. It takes enough content happening to really make trials work.

Retention: This number can vary so widely because it has a great deal to do with the frequency of your updates, the amount of content and the layout of your members area. Do you offer multi site access? o you offer rewards for staying longer? For a startup with a smaller members are and maybe one a week updates, 20% is a reasonable number. For a well built network of sites employing good techniques to keep people around (like multiple web cam shows per week for solo girls), then you can hit as high as 55%. When I speak in percentages I am basically saying that you calculate in this way:

* Look at your total rebills say for March. Let?s say it?s 200.
* Look at your rebills plus total full monthly sign ups for February. Let?s say that adds up to 400.
* Your retention would be 50%.

Figuring out the average stay per member is not the most telling fact because it?s often made up of polar opposites (members staying a year at a time and members quitting the day they joined). Using the percentage method you get a truer tell of your member area value. One important point is looking at what point your site can?t grow without more traffic. If, for instance, you have 600 members rebilling and your retention is 50% then you are losing 300 members per month. If your conversions are 1:1000 on 10,000 visits per day, then you are stuck because you are getting 10 members per day (or 300 new per month). Your solutions are more traffic, better conversions, better retention or more sites (which is really more traffic).

Using the ranges of numbers I gave above, hopefully you?ll be better able to decide which area is going ot be the easiest to improve upon and which area you are getting close to maxing out on already.

Anyway, I?m sure there will be plenty of people with examples of different numbers but again, these ranges come from a look at a very wide cross section in the industry instead of just specific and narrow examples. I hope you find the information useful as always. Many riches to everyone!

See more at:
http://www.guaranteeddesigns.com/blog/

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Sly

Trials 300-600 from front page? Where? Name sponsors and they'll have many new affiliates overnight.

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mattz

Sorry, but that post is just too long to read at this time of night.

-Bookmarked for morning!

MB

MarkTiarra

I'm not going to start calling out sponsors good or bad. You should see good numbers on uniques to front page with trials though or something isn't right. If all you're sending is gallery traffic it won't be that good but across the board mixing quality sources and gallery stuff then there is no reason not to see this. People hit 1:500 on full joins with some sites I work with.

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datatank

Do you think you should add a trial if you have first page 1:180 over all ratios on non trial joins?

MarkTiarra

Let me first ask you about how many visitors per day please?

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Axeman

Great post Mark!

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Hardcore J

Probably depends on how much traffic you have?




Mark - there are so many factors in the overall conversion ratio of a site that its hard to speculate exactly how things will turn out every time but I think you're pretty much hitting the nail on the head with your averages.

MarkTiarra

Yeah indeed - like I said so many exceptions but figuring if I sample 200 sites and you have 20 crazy exceptions you get the median from the other 180 sites. It's like in the olympics dropping the lowest and highest score to get a decent representation of average.

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datatank

real low 2500ish

Jamie

Those average are pretty well within the ballpark. Nice post

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MarkTiarra

Ahh ok too low to say then but it's a good indicator if you got it up around 20k that you'd stay in the 1:500 range. In an instance like this I wouldn't pull trials until the traffic is en masse. If you kept 1:180 on like 20,000 per day you'd be looking at 111 joins per day. If you have retention numbers that are real nice like 50% too then you hit a wall until 6660 members are reached at which point you lose what you gain every month. If you do that without any employees then you ought to be on a boat off the coast of Cabo.

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BobG

good stuff

MarkTiarra

National Pornographic... I love that name!

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UncutBucksMike

Great post Mark. I had to get out the MemberSiteGenie and my stats and have another go at my numbers. I always have to stop and think a bit whenever I go through the numbers because we do a decent number of non-recurring memberships which skew the retention number. But you keep re-enforcing that I just need more traffic LOL.

Thanks again for all the valuable tips!

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datatank

What dif do you think it makes if I have 20k a day or 3 months data that shows an over all ratio of 1:180