Membership Tiers

[Josh]

Josh

August 15, 2016 at 4:46 pm

Greetings Ben and Co.,

Congrats on the new release! I’m excited about your new Child Theme & Plugins, and definitely considering a Membership soon. I’ve had a wonderful time with your Pinnacle Theme, and your support has been top notch!

I really love the Kadence Woo Extras plugin, as it meets some key shop needs without having to purchase expensive annual subscriptions from Woo that require a lot of painstaking customization. Yours looks good out-of-the-box!

If I were to suggest anything today, it’s to offer a Lifetime Membership, as that’s been the deciding factor when I purchase Frameworks.

I’d gladly pay $225-$300 USD for a Lifetime Membership to all services, with the caveat support only extends to your products.

With the dramatic drop in ThemeForest sales, and the backlash against expensive annual subscriptions for premium plugins, it seems clear to me the market is moving towards the Lifetime Membership model.

Alongside your current Annual Subscription, a Lifetime option would include many benefits for Kadence and members at large.

These Include:

• Less confusion. Customers concerned about security updates after Membership expires can have peace of mind…regardless whether lifetime updates to all installed products are included in the annual package.
• Competitive edge. With so many businesses changing to a subscription model, it offers Kadence a positive differentiation.
• Entice Child Theme developers. With an increase of Members (possibly helped by a Lifetime option), Child Theme devs would be enticed to create themes for the Virtue Framework. This would also build a support community around Virtue.
• Guaranteed revenue. With the life-cycle of a website (design) an average 3.5 years, a Lifetime Membership guarantees Kadence those 3.5 years of revenue ($75 x 3.5 years). Additionally, I suspect many members would only build 1-2 websites anyhow (and might choose to cancel after 1 year).
• Non-Users may purchase anyhow. With the prospect of Lifetime access to your growing Child Theme/Plugin repository, designers may purchase now despite currently using another framework, knowing they will return at a later date. I personally fall into that category.
• Multiple Membership sales. Members may choose to buy an Annual Membership once or twice, then move to the Lifetime model. If so, Kadence is likely to guarantee a certain number of years revenue from a Member (say 5 years @ $75), despite them ending usage @ 4 years.
• Options, options, options. People like options, it puts them in control.
• Create a social buzz. Having a Lifetime Membership options puts Kadence into an elite and much loved class of premium Framework developers, and a Lifetime option can help fuel social sharing.
• Increase conversions. I think many are simply turned off to paying annually. They’d rather pay a premium fee once and be done with it. A Lifetime option keeps those customer types from moving onto other Frameworks that do offer it.

That’s all for now. Apologies for the length of this, but as you may tell I’m very enthusiastic about this idea.

Appreciate your time in reading, and regardless your decision, huge thanks!

Josh