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Originally Posted by pagalguy Firstly I am genuinely happy that so many of you are taking your time to key in your thoughts here. But I am also genuinely let down by a lot of people here right in this discussion. I have clearly stated in every way possible that FREE accounts will exist. I mean how can I really make it more clear ? I still can't figure out WHY half the posts on this thread allude to the fact that we will become a PAID site, when I HAVE clearly stated that FREE accounts will exist. I am led to believe that people read only what they want to read 
Ok, now that said there are some reaally nice ideas here on this thread! Some deep thought and excellent posts by reachmonil & capreal26 who've actually understood what I've said in the intial post and put in either appropriate ideas or comments as the case may be.
That said, I think you folks will be seeing a lot of changes in the way PG.com is run in the next 6 months or so. I have a very clear idea of what we are doing right and yes, I do need to avoid the pitfalls if any. So, if you have a good idea of what you would like to see under a premium membership, I'd like to hear from you folks. But I'll say one thing - at some point we will become a case study. A case study into sustaining a online community and I am darn interested in writing one  |
Hi Allwin,
Well a few comments on mechanisms for revenue generation:-
Before you kickstart premium membership besides your free membership, I think it would be better to have controllable feature set on the website, beyond the forums, and push them under the premium services, instead of value addon on some part of the forums, which I sincerely doubt would be successfull.
Some suggestions:-
1. Create supplimentary freebies on PG.com which have paid co-branding by coaching classes. Some ideas for that could be:
1. Online section test, full length tests, mocks, etc.
Users can log into PG.com, and use these online battery of tests to prep themselves. The questions and answers to these tests could be either provided by Coaching Classes (C.C.) in exchange for co-branding on each test OR could be created by our online community and yet be co-branded for a limited time frame.
An example for an online test is at:
http://www.bernardlabs.org
2. Start off user specific newsletters for both aspirants, B-schoolers and alumni. Let magazines buy ad spots or specific editions. These could run every fortnight and take in 3000 bucks a edition targetting 25K users.
3. Provide full-featured promotional campaigns for college fests, FMCGs, and those who love the 20-30 age segment. These campaigns could include content space, news updates on the events, etc. The campaign could be a flat fee for X MB for Y time frame.
4. You have a primary business which has access to hosting-domain infrastructure start providing, complete hosting solutions through Mambo, and supplement the revenue to PG.com. You could target all those coaching classes who, don't have technical expertise in setting up a website, hosting email and require online applications for their students and faculty. This could be recurring revenue year on year and would boost your INZANE Revenue model along with supplementing PG.com. Esentially you would be selling programs of Step 1. but only for their students, so no major development cost there.
Your long term objective should be to have a push towards content and deliverables, rather than solely relying on Forums. Also you need working on getting non-Indian students coming online, thats where your premium membership will really get a booster shot. GMAT, TOEFEL, IELTS are services which would be a greater revenue booster, than the Indian exams alone, because the average spend by those students is in the range of 1Lakh - 2Lakhs (US Students).
Will keep editing this as an when new ideas pop-up.
Take care,
Paul
PS: Some of the ideas and information bases have been picked up from a student portal we ran for a FMCG giant in 2000.
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