Feedback Needed: College Confidential Premium Subscription

College Confidential Community
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Didn’t read the whole thread so forgive me if I’m repeating points already made.

There are a lot of very active parents of adult kids who are no longer in college. They provide a lot of very useful content. But I doubt if many of them would pay. I wouldn’t. You’d lose a lot if the best forum posts if they can’t access the super secret subscription area.

How about pay what you think it’s worth model like Bandcamp instead of a donation model. Similar but not a non-profit thing.

Also do you have an app? If not, might look into that instead of just the website. You could charge a one time fee for the app download. Niche has one. TripAdvisor, another forum heavy site, has one.

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Maybe sell NFT playing cards?? Oh wait……
:wink:

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My 2 cents:

A Wikipedia style request for a donation if you’ve found the site useful.

I chanced upon CC when my S23 was in 11th grade and the thoughtful parent forums were invaluable to me. The “Class of ___” parent groups were incredibly helpful as I read not only our year, but also back through the year ahead of us to glean the process folks were going through during their student’s 11th and 12th grade years.

The on and off topic college visit threads with up/down/same were terrific as well.

And now I’m still here both because I enjoy dipping into the Parent threads here and there, but also because I too like to “pay it forward” when someone asks a question about a school we visited, or an experience we had. And because I recognize so many “friends” from their usernames and their helpful and kind advice over the time I’ve been here.

I think many parents would feel happy to make a donation, perhaps open that up twice a year with a site banner: if you’ve found CC helpful would you consider donating any amount: $3-$30, to keep the lights on…

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Like @blueberriesforsal, I joined when D23 was applying to colleges, and have learned so much from this wise community. What a brain trust! There are folks on here to whom I am eternally grateful for their contributions to making my life easier and often happier (thank you Cartoon/Humor Thread!).

If you had told me back then it would cost me $10 or $20 for unlimited access to the site, and given me the chance to peek at the many forums, maybe read a couple before I hit a paywall, as a parent I would have shelled out that $ at the time gladly. With hundreds of thousands of kids applying to college each year, and new parents on the internet looking for valuable college information (that is not Reddit), what about charging new users to ‘onboard’ to CC, in addition to premium paid events like the AMA’s mentioned upthread? Add in those bi-annual donation drives, which I’d gladly participate in, and you might have enough to not just boost revenue but work on some of the other ideas that have been shared here.

I agree that there is nothing like CC, and I’ve recommended it to countless other parents. An onboarding fee only for new members keeps existing members happy and posting, and should help defray costs. Students/families who cannot afford the minimal fee could apply for a ‘scholarship’ to cover costs.

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I wouldn’t pay anything remotely in this range. I don’t mean this as a negative of CC. I’ve never paid an annual subscriptions for any other online forums. However, I’m not in the target audience for other non-forum content/services you mention.

I used to own and manage a popular forum. It wasn’t as big as CC, but it did have thousands of active users and a large number of new posts per day. I did it without any unwanted ads or subscriptions, yet still made a large profit. Instead I placed affiliate text links within popular non-forum sections of the site, only including links that naturally fit with the content and a large portion of people reading the content would want to click, and were clearly identified as external links. I don’t know if there are many options for affiliate links related to colleges, admission, testing, counseling/advising, … but there is a lot of money being spent on related products/services to this field.

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I’ve been busy and I wanted to let other people talk, but this a topic I am genuinely an expert in, so I feel comfortable speaking with some authority: almost without exception, consumer-facing forums are not directly monetizable businesses. (I heart CC but it is not an exception.) Either people run them as hobbies, or they are lead generation for some other service that the forum owner provides. Attempts to directly monetize participants - whether they’re regulars or occasionals, seasonals or perennials - essentially always fails. I say this bluntly to strongly suggest @CC_mike pursues other mechanisms for revenue generation that do not include charging members, because I am very confident that you will not succeed at generating an amount of revenue that is meaningful enough for whatever gates you put in front of people. (I could be convinced that there is some kind of offering to international students, BTW, but that’s mostly because of the unbalanced power dynamics, and I don’t think you’d really want to do the things it would take to make it work.)

That doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to make money, and @Data10 suggests a type in the recent message. Popular forums that focus on high purchase intent topics (e.g. firearms) can make a ton of money with affiliate links. Popular forums that serve communities who are willing to spend money (e.g. soccer parents) can make some money with affiliate links, maybe even enough money to innovate. (They can make more money with their own adjacent store, though obviously that carries a cost burden.)

CC is definitely not the first type: it is not far from the second type, though, and has a reasonable amount of SEO juice from its longevity. A reasonable place to invest, I think, though it would require probably some rethinking of CC policy around recommendations, is to have some sticky threads that are written by CC authorities that address direct purchase intent - e.g. “best test prep books for 2024” or “the most useful books on college admissions” or “top ten things you need for your freshman dorm” or something that’s more SEO-targeted in the title. Plenty of these things exist online, of course, but CC has a ton of domain power.

In a world where so much college recommendation and preparatory content is free and widely available, it’s difficult to think of complementary offerings that people would pay for, especially at any sort of scale that makes it worth it. Trip visit planning is a possibility - a mix of tools and expertise. I don’t think there is a lot of scale but “we want to visit seven schools in the Northeast in April, help us put together a plan” is a thing people would pay for, I think. It’s essentially a tech-enabled travel agent. I’m moving a bit into theorizing here, though.

(Oh, and Patreon or similar with a badge for donators and maybe a private forum or something, or wait to see what those people ask for, is a super-easy, very-low-tech idea that would 100% bring money in, I don’t know how much, but iterating on the ask is almost certainly higher ROI than almost anything else you would do to start. Absolutely do that.)

Hope this is helpful!

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Advertising & affiliate links are probably the best and safest methods. Charging consumers for access to advice may generate liability issues–especially if a website–such as CC–certifies the advisors.

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I expect CC would be ok from a legal perspective if they only used counselors in professional orgs like IECA and NACAC. But CC’s attorneys obviously have the final say on that.

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Maybe CC should be a hobby and admins need a day job! Sounds hard to monetize it.

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Let me sum up more ideas for a paid CC product:

Definitely
:white_check_mark: Patreon-style paid monthly supporter levels
:white_check_mark: Ad-hoc payments for specific benefits (like private chance me category)

Promising
:white_check_mark: Access to specific guidance from paid professionals
:white_check_mark: Catered content for groups like International Students
:white_check_mark: College Essay feedback

We’re definitely going to iterate on the first 2 items. We need to build in the competency of taking payments directly from users (which CC has not done to my knowledge). It will take us a few days but I’ll keep you updated in this thread.

Thank you all again for your feedback. I loved reading what you all feel like are CC strengths and how much benefit you’ve gotten. That fact that so many of you want to pay it forward really makes me proud to be part of this community (and my eldest is 16 so I’ll be asking for your help directly soon enough!)

Feel free to keep discussing but I will turn my attention to booting up the payment system and the Patreon model…

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Most of the students wanting help with essays are international and many of them seem far from wealthy. Not sure if they are a resource for payment.

I came on here in 2007 and many came well before that.

@CC_Mike glad you didn’t mind my joke :slight_smile:

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I agree with others that I wouldn’t necessarily be averse to donating, but given the for-profit context, I would be looking for a little more transparency before I would throw cash at the issue of CC’s long-term sustainability. I’ve never been able to find any info about the business model, and have no idea, for example, how much the highest-paid employees earn.

If some premium services are to be paid, then maybe a way of sponsoring less-affluent students and families into the premium levels would be an appropriate donation model. But again… vague assertions that the platform isn’t profitable don’t exactly meet a “Charity Navigator” standard of transparency for soliciting donations.

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What is Patreon style?

I’ll look up but you can probably explain in simpler form.

Admittedly, I don’t pay for any websites. I think my better half pays for alltrails…but that’s it.

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“Patreon-style” is a bit of misnomer. We’re been discussing a simple, modest, paid subscription that provides (nominally at first) additional benefits to people who subscribe. It is definitely not a donation in any sense of the word (i.e. not tax-deductible).

I think the similarity comes in that people like to “support” artists who they like on Patreon. In the same way, some folks here are willing to “support” CC because they get value from it. In addition, being able to take payments allows CC to offer other paid content or features.

We’ll try it and see how it goes!

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What’s the difference between that and an annual fee?

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I think having tiers on CC is a big change. It has been kind of democratic, for lack of a better word. Patreon does not have tiers as far as I know. I joined during COVID lockdown for my tai chi school.

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When I think of “fee”, I immediately recoil at the thought of locking down the most used parts of the site behind a paywall. That’s most certainly not what we’re going for here. The “free tier” will be everything folks can register and do today.

Patreon allows creators to make their own tiers like this one from their front page. Many just have one tier.

It’ll be easier to imagine with a visual. Before we launch anything we’ll have some draft marketing material to show and get some feedback.

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Please please please do a decent Beta testing before you do anything permanent. You don’t want to be the next FSA of the year🙂

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I agree with the above comments that something of value needs to be added to generate user fee’s/subscriptions, and I don’t mean first downgrading existing content or experience and then asking for a fee (see Amazon).

I like the idea of trying to monetize external links, but maybe organize it in a type of sequence that a student would go through in a process, basically a timeline of critical steps. For Child 1, we hired a consultant because the process and steps had changed quite a bit from when I applied. The timeline/checklist we got from her saved us a lot of internet sleuthing and concerns that we may have missed something. We did not need a consultant for Child 2. To me a basic generic timeline/checklist would be a nice free tool to provide. This timeline could then serve as the backbone to hang external links and tools (some could be free like a tracking spreadsheet).

Similar timelines could be developed for other processes, like professional and grad schools, athletic recruiting and financial aid. Whether it is part of enhancing the site overall or providing paid for forums ( I would choose the former), for the specialty areas, indicating whether a poster actually has a background in that area will make the site better. I know on the athletic area, there is often misinformation/confusion that the knowledgeable posters have to constantly correct.

What I am getting at is that this site could aim to be a gateway to all the stuff a college applicant and their family need or want to know. It’s not that the site houses all the information, but provides an easily navigable framework from where to start.

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It would be reasonable for the students asking for essay help to pay cc a fee (perhaps per essay) but the parents who are already helping for free would just continue to do so. The money would go straight to cc.

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