Introducing Paid Access

[Dan Burke]

One of the most frequently requested features is the ability to charge your communities for site membership and access to premium groups. Many of you told us your passionate members are looking for more exclusivity – they seek deeper content and private interactions within your community. Today, we are happy to announce that we’ve heard your requests. Paid Access is here!

In a matter of clicks, you can transform your community into a social business. Our latest feature simplifies the massive infrastructure and implementation burden typically associated with running a subscription business into one simple, flexible and easy-to-use product. Because Paid Access is a fully-integrated payment system, you can create a seamless charging experience and collect payments in real-time.

You have complete control over how and where you use Paid Access; the power to customize how your members will get charged is in your hands. There are a variety of ways to set up Paid Access. Use it for any combination of the following:

• Paid Membership: Collect membership fees from your community.
• Paid Groups: Create spaces for members to network, collaborate and access special content.  
• Paid Content: Provide a destination “Page” for members to access premium content such as reports, tutorials, embedded webinars, videos and more.
• Donations: Ask for member donations to keep your community going or to benefit your (or any) cause.

With Paid Access, you can easily run VIP fan clubs, publish exclusive reports, create classrooms or professional networking groups, organize special web chats and more. There are many ways to take advantage of this powerful feature, and we look forward to seeing how you will use it! 

Sneak Peek: See Paid Access in Action

Let’s use a group for this preview. In this example I’ll be setting up Paid Access on a group that I’ll call the “Direct Marketing Group” on a site named “AAF – Silicon Valley.”

I want to point out a specific feature in this example, and that’s the ability to charge a fixed price or ask for a donation on this paywall (a paywall is an area that requires payment to access such as a Group, Page or Site membership).

Setting a Fixed Price: The first screen I encounter when I set up any paywall is the Membership Length and Cost screen. Once there, I get two options: to set a fixed price for the group or ask for a donation. Here is what the fixed price screen looks like:

When setting a fixed price, I can choose more than one rate plan in case I want to offer an incentive to sign up for longer terms by discounting the price (an industry standard).

And here is what this page looks like when I want to ask my members for a donation to join this group:

Note the options to set a suggested price, as well as establishing a minimum and maximum amount to show my members (the entire list may be a bit overwhelming).

Here’s what my members will see if I charged a fixed-price for this group.And here is what they would see if I asked for a donation:

Notice how I set the suggested amount to $79.95, and the minimum and maximum values at $0 and $99.95 respectively. I suppose it would be wise of me to point out that there is the potential to charge $0. This means donation is optional, and that anyone can join without paying. We think this will be a valuable feature for many, but again, the option is yours, and by simply setting the minimum to a higher value, payment will be required.

Thanks for following along! I hope this post has sparked your creative juices and piqued your excitement. Now it’s time for the details…

How much does Paid Access cost?

Paid Access is our first add-on feature, giving customers on any Ning plan (Mini, Plus or Pro) the option to activate it for $19.95 per month. We are leveraging PayPal to process payments, so PayPal’s standard 2.9% + $0.3 service fee per transaction will also apply. These fees are all-inclusive, as we will be paying the PayPal service fee on your behalf (note: pricing for non-US customers differ slightly).

When can I start using Paid Access?

Starting on June 30, we will be rolling out Paid Access to a limited number of folks to gather feedback before making it available to all Creators in mid July. Sign up now if you want to be among the first to use this powerful feature. The first 20 Creators selected will get Paid Access free for their first month, as well as dedicated support from the Ning Team to get up and running.

Interested in learning more about Paid Access? Check out our FAQ page.

 

 

[AMZ]

lol i think it was too but maybe they removed it when they found out they could get some more money out of us

[Dan Burke]

Just to be clear, this was never listed on our site, as an add-on or a included in any plans.

[Anthony]

Question...

Can a member start a group and charge to access content to that group using their Paypal account ?

[Eric Suesz]

Anthony: You are in charge of this feature. Your members won't be able to set up any paywalls.

[Alex 小正正]

I think it's good idea to have a paid group that is: You can always get the answer you want!

I'll love to try but have no idea how to charge.

[Jordi]

19.95$ per month? Disappointing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Jordon McGee (Jords)]

Yeah :/

[Denis]

Not useful at all to me.

1. Restricted currency: People here are not comfortable making payments in US dollars.

Suggestion: Allow local currencies. Ning as a company compels us to pay in US dollars, fine. But Ning compelling us to compel members of our networks to pay in US dollars is over the line.

2. His Lordship Paypal: about 2% of my members know what it is and about 1% use it.

Suggestion: Leave the payment method open. You can't imagine that I am going to educate my members for may be a month on the idea that they have to pay for the content they had been accessing for free and when I manage to convince some of them, in addition I will ask them to go open Paypal accounts in order to send me the money.

3. Flat monthly fee: Too stressful because of the thought of losing money to Ning even without having made money.

Suggestion: Should be a percentage on payments collected from members. A ning network makes money, Ning makes more money. A ning network doesn't make money, ning makes the regular monthly fees.

4. This doesn't favor struggling to grow Ning networks. Ning networks that will make money from using this feature are networks already flourishing and making money. Yeah this will make rich ning networks get richer and poor ning networks get poorer.

Suggestion: Nurture small and struggling networks while benefiting from more successful networks.

Conclusion: This release is a disappointment to me and everything around it only reminds me that Ning is not a global company yet. We request more global considerations in future releases.

Thanks.

[Eric Suesz]

Hey, Denis. Your members don't have to use PayPal. They can use a credit card. You get paid via PayPal. You may want to read the FAQ page for this. 

[mark]

Think this feature is mispriced at $19.95 per month. Would be better to lower it ($9.95) and take a slightly higher commission. At $19.95 you're hitting psychological barrier that most won't go for. Just my opinion, I applaud the feature enhancement and agree this will not be for everyone.

[Anthony]

After thinking about it, maybe Ning don't have the technology in place to charge a percentage and if they should do it manually, thats a lot of work doing accounting for 80,000+ network.

[Anthony]

Creating a feature for 80,000 Plus network and slap it with a access fee of $19.95 without considering the situation of the average network is nothing short from laziness.

This what going to happen with this feature...Probably 5,000 network sign on for the first 30 days, then it going to wind down to only the big network, 25,000 to 50,000 members. 

Released it to everyone, when sale made Ning gets a cut, no sales no charge.