Hi everyone - I have an important topic to discuss with you. As many of you know over the 20+ years of College Confidential’s existence, several revenue models have been tried (and retried). Direct referrals, lead gen, programmatic ads, direct ad sales, affiliate revenue, and others have been tried to varying levels of annoyance to the community. One thing we’ve never tried is asking the community to directly support College Confidential. Today we’re proposing a new revenue model for us - the College Confidential Premium Subscription.
Who is it for?
CC has always existed to help students and parents find the best, most authentic information about the college admissions process. That won’t change. This subscription will be about providing maximum value to those seeking information and advice from our community.
What will be included?
We could use your help with this. While we don’t want to put the entire community behind a paywall, we do want to provide exclusive benefits to subscribers who choose to support CC. That could include:
No ads
No paid pop-ups (you’d still get alerts of breaking information)
Exclusive email content tailored to your year in school (Freshman-Senior)
Exclusive webinars on financial aid, test prep, and other seasonally relevant topics
Exclusive discounts with verified partners (think AAA discounts)
Anything else you can think of
How much would it cost?
Our initial thinking is an annual subscription in the range of $49-$69. This would be meaningful up-front revenue and give us fuel to provide exclusive content/discounts/features for subscribers. Monthly subscriptions are hard for CC because the site is so seasonal. Ultimately, we want to be able to provide value all year long for subscribers.
What do we need from you?
Feedback! We’re not sure if this is a viable revenue model, how many people will sign up, how much we should charge, and what to include.
As always, thank you to the recent and long-time users of the site for your contributions and for making CC such an authentic community. In Q4 of 2023 we experienced a 50% YoY increase in users and traffic. That rise is directly related to all the amazing discussion you all have created. We want CC to keep growing and be around for a long time and creating a sustainable business model is a key part of that. Thank you for your feedback - @CC_Sorin and I will be monitoring this thread and responding to your comments.
You wouldn’t have to pay to use CC. The premium subscription would offer some extra stuff. I think it’s a nice idea. People that want some extra stuff could pay for a year at a modest price.
I enjoy contributing on CC, because it gives me opportunities to help out young people and their families with what I hope are (at least sometimes!) useful insights and suggestions. I don’t mind that, in exchange for providing a platform, CC is monetizing my contributions and those of many other members. My hope is that this balances out the costs associated with providing a platform. BUT… actually paying for the privilege of contributing would not really work for me. I feel like I already “earn my keep” here.
I guess there could be an argument for premium memberships for students/parents who are in the college search and are receiving info and support here. But a lot of the kids and parents that I most appreciate being able to interact with here are the ones who couldn’t/wouldn’t pay for a premium membership. I would be sad to see tiers of access, because it would be yet another way of amplifying the inequities that a free platform helps to mitigate, when members rally to help out kids who are economically and otherwise disadvantaged find a good path to college.
For the most part I come to CC and try and help others – so I don’t feel a need to pay for that.
The likely outcome for me if the ads for non-subscribers become intrusive is that I come to CC less often/spend less time per visit (again, depending on the amount of ads). If that becomes the case I’d likely focus my time primarily on the Parent Cafe discussions (ex. books, tv show recommendations etc.).
My guess is that a subscription model or intrusive ads could discourage new visitors to CC since there are free alternatives. But of course that is just my gut feeling.
In any event, I would strongly suggest that the moderators be given free subscriptions as they provide a huge service to the site.
I understand…my concern is that without a subscription it sounds like there might be enough intrusive ads that the site would become frustrating to use.
These things don’t bring nearly enough value for that much money. You can block ads with a free ad-block and few people likely want more emails or webinar invitations.
I think a number of the comments above capture the problem you face. For many CC users, there may be an initial period of a couple of years when their families are starting to think about college and their kids are actually going through the application process. During that period, CC can be a tremendous source of information. Maybe some of those families would be willing to pay a subscription fee, although I’m not sure as they would also, by definition, be dealing with a whole host of other college-related expenses and there is a lot of free college information on the internet. And then, once the kids are actually in college, the model changes and users begin to focus more on giving back and sharing what they’ve learned. It is the more experienced users who are providing the advice that is of value to the new members, and basically providing the value in CC. It’s hard to see why they would want to pay for the privilege - paying, for example, for the “privilege” of reviewing essays without compensation. Of course, long-term users also enjoy the broader discussions that go on on the site - CC is really an amazing community of interesting people and a great place to have a challenging, but civil, discussion of almost anything. But again, I’m not sure people would pay for that. In my case, I think I would just decide it’s time to move on.
We’ll likely tweak the ad-levels to encourage engagement. Something like:
Anonymous users → Full Ads
Registered users -->Ad-light (no video)
Premium users → No Ads, No Pop-Ups
Volunteers (e.g. Mods, Forum Champions) on CC would most certainly be given a free subscription. We could also consider doing that for folks who engage regularly on the College categories. All ideas welcome.
That’s the delicate balance we’re trying to achieve - how to keep the site sustainable but keep access open to those without means to contribute. Putting a gate around basic discussion isn’t really on the table. That said, perhaps there’s a way we can create a smaller, more personalized discussion for those that are willing to invest…
I wouldn’t pay for a subscription, especially at the amount you’re considering. I think a lot of people are feeling burnt out on subscriptions. I love football, but I refused to sign up for Peacock to watch one game. I’ve stopped getting “free trials,” too, because it gets old scouring my credit card bill looking for subscriptions I might have missed.
I think donations are a great idea. I belong to a running site that does that. Even though I don’t run anymore, I chip in occasionally because I enjoy the community.
I prefer the idea of donations over subscriptions. But I also understand that there are costs to running a forum this large.
Perhaps a solution would be that at the free level, a user could post as many times in any thread but have limitations on the number of threads they could start. For instance:
One chance me/match me thread (If the person posts at least once every 90 days, the thread will remain active, so no need to start a new one. And if a parent has already found CC useful for their first college child, then they may be willing to pay a fee for a second child’s chance me/match me thread.)
One other thread in any other section of the forum
Then if they want to be able to start more threads (or ask questions in the Q&As or use the “premium” features under consideration) then there could be staggered fee levels. And if a student has a waiver for college application fees because of being free/reduced lunch, then they can submit that and get their own cost-free account with full access (one account per waiver with the individual’s name on it…so it can’t be reused ad nauseum for free accounts).
If CC is really in need of more funding, then perhaps limiting “regular” free members to something like 30 or 50 posts a month, so enough to still be able to participate in the community, but not quite as fully.
For people who make significant contributions to the community by paying back/forward based off their own experiences/knowledge, I think that those individuals should get free full-benefit memberships. This might be based on the number of posts or likes or whatever system the powers that be think is fair.
CC is not a non-profit. But if you asked me how many years CC has made a profit… well I wouldn’t have to count very far.
Totally agree. Getting folks to pay for yet another thing will have to provide a compelling give-to-get.
This is a really interesting idea. Chance Me/Match Me threads are some of the most popular but many students don’t want to publish their data publicly. What if we offered a “private chance me/match me” for a small fee? Let’s dump the ideas for extra webinars/emails and other stuff people don’t want. A premium subscription would give access to:
Private Chance Me/Match Me forum where their data wouldn’t be publicly available
No ads or pop-ups
Exclusive discounts to select providers
The only problem is the supply side - senior members that give the feedback on chance me posts would get free subscriptions and be given access to that private forum. As for price? We would want to set it at something high enough so that demand is not overwhelming and the private Chance Me forum will always have good feedback and discussion… $39/year?
Another vote for donations a la Wikipedia or The Guardian. As addicted to CC as I am, I am unlikely to pay for a subscription. Much of the value for me is in the longtime contributors, and if their number diminishes so would my engagement/involvement.
Advertising isn’t enough? Surely our demographic (some proportion wealthy, some proportion young adult) is valuable to advertisers?
I assume most of us have ad blockers running or never click on the pop up ads…not sure how that would impact advertisers willingness to place ads, or their price?
What about places like the Parent Cafe which really are more a social gathering place? I would hate to see that area compromised because of too many ads or whatever else might discourage participation.
I won’t pay for any additional anything here. I’m around to pay it forward for the many years of help I received even through grad and professional schools for my kids. I don’t think that sort of participation should be discouraged.
One thing we’ve never tried is asking the community to directly support College Confidential. Today we’re proposing a new revenue model for us - the College Confidential Premium Subscription.