Feedback Needed: College Confidential Premium Subscription

College Confidential Community
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Yes, there is a lot of free information, however, there is no other place on the internet that people can get the kind of advice they get here, for free. Sure, there is reddit, for those who don’t mind wading through a lot of garbage and a large number of people who have no idea what they are talking about. I honestly can’t think of anywhere else on the internet where people can get a great response most of the time just by asking.

There are other sites that have good information, but frankly it’s this forum that makes CC so valuable.

I’d pay a fee for a subscription, mainly because I like using this site to keep abreast of what’s current both culturally and in terms of policy developments in the industry. This site helps me remain up to date with higher ed, which is relevant to my work. I also like helping students and parents navigating the process, but it is completely understandable that people don’t feel they should have to pay to offer free advice.

I am a realist. I think a subscription fee would put off a lot of the more casual users who still have good advice to offer.

I’m probably one of the few people that doesn’t mind ads on CC. Ads are just part of life and CC has to earn revenue somehow. The only time I have ever found ads to be troublesome was probably about 6 years ago when somehow there were pop up ads featuring scantily clad women.

I think the subscription fee would have to be no higher than $50 a year, but I do think it will be a hard sell and that they biggest loss would be the casual users, as I mentioned.

Edit: I think some people here have made some great suggestions on ways for CC to earn money. To me, approaching the colleges seems an obvious option.

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I think $50 is too high. My threshold for payments like this is around $25, and I am pretty low-income myself. For what it’s worth…

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An obvious suggestion would be to take steps to grow your traffic while providing incremental bolt on fee based services. Here are some steps I would suggest considering (and I suspect you have probably done)…

  1. lock down your current user base by reviewing what content works. Use a ratio of emoji likes vs posts to identify users that seem to generate the most positive interest consistently. Don’t take actions that make them question their continued participation. Some combination of your most frequent posters and those that post less often but get highly tagged is your core community and as a cohort is largely static. It’s tends to be the same people who have been members for a long time. You want to avoid alienating this base as it is what drives your current views. Be clear (as you seemingly are) that this portion of CC won’t be touched but purposed as a “gateway” to other more bespoke or vetted content.

  2. Students and Parents who are visitors seeking advice are your variable constituency. They do seem currently to be most drawn based on accessibility and price. Once again by maintaining what is currently at your core you will draw these participants in as they serve as the “cannon fodder” of questions that start the conversations.

  3. I mentioned previously that you could be a fee based match maker for vetted guidance, list creation, essay review etc.

  4. imbedded in your core but to draw more people in you could offer vetted issue specific threads. I have enjoyed my Investment Banking AMA but I think there is room for a lot more similar content. Threads about specific schools, careers, geographies, etc could be started by individuals via request with a quick explanation to CC as to the source of specific expertise or knowledge. Everyone would be able to participate but these targeted threads would require those offering opinions to share their experience level in their first post. We could use an honor code. This would ensure the thread originator is both the primary content provider and fact checker giving a casual reader a degree of confidence in accuracy. Pure opinions would be discouraged so purposeful readers could search and find topic specific and vetted info. Over time this would draw students and parents on to CC and these thread could be kept as a separate library of sorts.

  5. From these topic specific vetted threads (hopefully having increased participation) you can bolt on incremental fee services. Schools may want to control their own threads, career advisors or recruitment service could be offered, targeted marketing of resume creation services, etc.

If successful this creates a virtuous circle in which you maintain your current community and content but add layers of quality and specificity which will attract more readers which hopefully results in the capacity to charge at the high end, identify commercial opportunities within your clientele and sell ad space across the platform.

I know the devil is in the details but I think the revenue model solution has to be in the form of offering something of real value in exchange for real money. Real value in this case means verifiably (or close to) experienced advice and or access for professionals to a customer base in need of their services.

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Let me ask this - US News, for example, has - I forget what it’s called - but you pay a fee to access the school data.

I’m not sure if there’s a way to know how many people are paying?

How much of what CC could add in a pay model is already available elsewhere and would simply be substitutional? It’s hard to break barriers.

Someone above noted about Reddit (a site I never go on) - but that some of the schools have gone there - so is the CC losing in the battle? I don’t know as I don’t own/manage the site -but again, is the brand strength there to do this at this point? On the other hand, if something isn’t attempted, will the site still exist in a year?

Would it be possible and even useful - to maybe tag 20 or 50 advice seekers - either parents or students - who used the website for an entire recruiting season - and have a multi person focus group or even 1:1 interviews - and run some of the ideas from above - and that CC management previously had - by them - and see how this would have changed their interaction with the website…or if at a cost, would they even have interacted at all.

We see - for example, a few folks have run - this is my industry, what do you want to know?

Would someone pay $9.99 to access that Or $29.99? Or they’d never access that?

Because if the answer is yes, then the website can recruit experts from varying fields - but then of course there will be a cost sharing model - because you may have to pay some for their expertise.

At one point, the website had student ambassadors. It seemed a great idea…but you rarely see posts now. What was the compensation? Did it work? If not, why not, etc. Maybe they can be in a focus group too.

Maybe they can put out a post like this - but allow all people to respond (to get even more ideas) although you wouldn’t be able to control for audience makeup.

Finally - a lot of people solicit on here - and then they are flagged and the thread is closed.

Maybe if it’s clearly marked as a solicitation, they can remain - with a fee for posting?

Just throwing things out there to see if any is worth of sticking.

I just think in general - this is a free - all come share your experience site. And when you go to a fee model (even if partial) and it may be a natural evolving…but you change the entire dynamic of the wonderful service this forum has provided to so many.

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Sorry if I am late to the conversation, but I think the user-base is somewhat nuanced.

  1. People who offer advice and assistance.
  2. People who come for advice and assistance.
  3. People who derive pleasure and knowledge reading and commenting.

There is likely some overlap among the 3 types of users, but generally, these are the ones. Wouldn’t it be easier if CC further monetized the marketplace to offer services to the college marketplace? That could be done in a way so it does not disrupt the purity of what CC currently offers.

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@CC_Mike would you please share the current owner (business) of college confidential. It might help people come up with additional ideas that might be helpful.

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I agree with @tsbna44 that this would be the likely outcome if CC went to a fee based model.

The other sure way to kill this–or any–open forum based website is to become an echo chamber. Lack of diverse thoughts/opinions/experiences is the opposite of what higher education is all about. (The like button system is a step toward creating an echo chamber.)

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As an 18 year old high school senior who has derived much of my college application advice from online resources like here and r/a2c, I would not want to spend that much of my own money and would have a very hard time justifying that to my parents.

Also, as a point about the annual model, I’ll probably hang around after my college decisions are in, but not everyone (especially students in their senior year) is expecting to use the site often for a full 12 months and would therefore want to pay for a year’s worth of CC.

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I’d like to highlight this quote for readers joining the thread without reading all the posts. It seems to have been lost by some. If the current experience remains the same, I don’t see why it would discourage users who are fine with that level.

So what add-on services or other revenue streams can we suggest to Mike?

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Having a more robust college search function could be an add-on service. If the search function could help narrow down by class sizes, popularity of majors (or # of students going on to graduate educations in a field), plus the likelihood of merit aid, Greek life, etc, then I think it could be of value to families. Adding in the college’s merit and honors college deadlines (as well as just app deadlines) would be cool For more ideas related to the search tool, the post below expands upon it.

If I was a parent or student, I could see paying $5-10/year for access to the super-search tool. It’s an amount that doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it can really add up if it becomes popular.

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I like the Patreon idea to raise $.

I am skeptical of a premium subscription model, because it seems that CC needs to increase traffic, and I don’t know that a premium subscription model results in more traffic (but I am not an expert, so maybe there are some examples where that worked). I am assuming CC has already done things like SEO optimization, etc.

So, specifically how to increase traffic of HS students and/or their parents. Again, ideas not from an expert:

  1. More unique content. Advertised on CC as to where to find this, but on social media too, you know where the kids are, eg. TikTok and where the parents are (not sure where?)
  • Have AMAs from college AOs. Focus on colleges that need more students/applicants. So Muhlenberg, not Harvard. No hate on Harvard. They can do it if they want to.
  • Have AMAs from vetted experts…current CC members like we’ve had, but also authors like when Selingo did his AMA. Why can’t these be happening all the time. Like every week at least?
  • Have an ask the (vetted) college counselor night regularly
  • Have specific topic ask the college counselor AMAs. For example, several during the peak time frame when HS students are choosing classes for next year…so many kids don’t have any help on this.
  • AMAs from staffers from Common App, Questbridge, ScholarMatch etc.
  • Have the DOE/FSA do an annual FAFSA info session, and regular AMAs. Make them pay (!) This one might not work this year, lol
  • Info session/webinar on best books for college admissions, athletic recruiting, how to learn about a college without visiting, essay writing, exploring majors, gap year planning, summer program planning, etc. Record and post them prominently. Communicate thru appropriate channels the recorded session is up for viewing.
  • Ask people with a following to do AMAs: College Essay Guy, let him talk about the most popular free tools on his site. Have Akil Bello talk about standardized testing landscape. Have MITChris talk about anything, starting with the applying sideways blog post and why it’s still relevant today. Have the Grown and Flown peeps talk about the college transition.
  1. Can CC be more interactive? It seems like that might attract more students. I don’t really like the word gamify, but it fits.
  • Polls, quizzes, surveys…all to do with colleges, college admissions, finances/budget, majors, etc. I know CC has tried some of that, don’t know how it’s going. But you have to advertise these things and pull the kids/parents in, you can’t just rely on those who visit to see it.
  • Let people who engage earn some type of site currency. Have a dashboard with the currency leaders/make it competitive and fun. They can use site currency for special things, for example, 30 minutes list building with a vetted college counselor (I would periodically do that for free, and I expect some others would too). I know this can get tricky with minors, so obviously parents included.
  1. Have a resources section. This area could only be for people who contributed to Patreon or who have engaged with the site at whatever level or have earned currency of a certain amount.
  • I expect some people might upload the sample spreadsheet/documents they used to organize and track college info, college visits, financial aid, sample emails to coaches for recruiting, mock interview questions, etc. You get the idea.
  • Create some crowdsourced documents, for example summer programs and their costs, gap year programs, athletic recruiting camps, colleges for B students, colleges that give merit and how much people got last year (all anonymous of course), etc.
  1. What happened to the student ambassadors? Seems like a good idea.

So, these are some ideas. Some might work, others maybe not.

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I think that’s a good idea. As you finish certain college planning and application steps you earn points and maybe get a small scolarship if you win or something.

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That’s a good idea. Could be a structured set of educational activities that can be done in relatively short sittings. Could be separate tracks for parents and students. Learning, engaging, earning points, and for the students…seeing their username on some leaderboard :sunglasses:

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I am trying to figure out what I would pay for. I find college discussions on reddit helpful but the answering audience is a little different, the discussion tends to be applying students and students currently attending the institution. I also subscribe to the pay version of US News. I think the only thing I would pay for is a “match me” feature that was a little more accurate or detailed than the models currently out there. Like if I could put in stats and features I was looking for- my kids GPA, SAT, majors of interest and maybe additional learning disability support and it auto generates a list of 10 reaches, 10 matches, 10 safeties. Fields like majors, location, size etc. Even with that though, I would never pay $50 for it, and I would likely only pay for the one year or two before applying.

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You have a great niche here and plenty of eyeballs within that desirable demographic.

Colleges have budgets for spending on digital outreach. They have money to spend and are very much looking for new ways to do it online.

I think you should work with the colleges, the College Board, the Common App, SCOIR, etc. on some creative ways to do targeted advertising on the site. And charge a lot. I think that’s better than the subscription model.

Remember… you’ve got what they want… us.

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Great ideas @Mwfan1921!

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Whew - there’s a lot to digest here!

The idea is that there will still be public chance me posts as always. There are some people who don’t want their information posted publicly and indexed by search engines. This idea is for a nominal fee, make their post inaccessible to anyone but CC community members. For CC senior members, the effect would be that some Chance Mes would be public and others would be in a special private category. Would that not work for you @thumper1?

Creating a way to CC users to monetize their own content is an interesting idea - one that we may be able to build towards.

I can always count on Linda. :wink: Even as a for-profit, we could create a “CC Supporter” membership tier. You won’t get a tax deduction, but you would keep things running. Maybe give you a nice shiny badge on your profile. Also, no ads. :slight_smile:

We’ve toyed with the idea of a “Marketplace” on CC - a special category where folks could pitch their service or product. We stopped short because of the labor in vetting all the vendors that could post in that category. Maybe we charge a fee as long as they keep discussion of their product in the “Marketplace” category?

Would love to do a focus group. Perhaps that can be a next step after distilling the ideas from this thread…

It was very labor intensive to keep track of the student’s work and ensure they were getting as much value from the work as we were. Ultimately, we couldn’t keep it going.

Great point. So glad to see you on CC!

Also something we’ve considered. It’s just hard to come up with something better than dozens of people thoughtfully eviscerating your school list through their own lived experience. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

There’s sooo much here - you all are the best.

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Yes, I enjoyed the AMA posts. You have so many great suggestions here!
I would love to see a rep from Questbridge or Posse on this site. I feel like very few of us know enough to answer knowledgeably.

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Same. They could educate regular CC’ers but also connect with potential applicants. I can’t imagine they wouldn’t do this (but maybe I am naive), and they could also advertise on their sites/their social media that they were doing an info session on X date on CC.

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I absolutely love Linda’s suggestion about QB and Posse reps and allowing the regular contributors to learn from it too. If AMA resources targeted at low-income students are behind a paywall, we need a plan to get that information to students who may not be able to afford the subscription.

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