Is anyone charging a fee to members?
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I have not been following the group closely, so apologize if my question has already been answered -- though I did do a "search" and no messages with "fees" or "money" came up.
I want to earn some money for the value that a new group I have just set up will deliver to its physician-members. They will join this by-invitation group because they want to be part of a professional development community -- learning together, sharing resources, and growing their ability to successfully treat a particularly challenging group of patients.?? Specifically, I'd like to establish a subscription fee, and offer the members a choice between a monthly or yearly payment plan, paid by credit card.? Are any of you doing that?? If so, have you found an on-line service that makes it (relatively) easy and inexpensive to manage monthly/annual subscriptions and collect fees??? If so, how have you integrated it with your management of the Groups.io group? A year or so ago, I asked Mark whether he planned to integrate a subscription service into Groups.io, and it wasn't really high on his list. Jennifer Christian, MD, MPH Wayland, MA? |
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David and others - Thank you for pointing out the issues ¨C and yes I have been thinking this through for a long while.? ? Vocabulary causes confusion.? Mark¡¯s decision to use the word ¡°group¡± as the name of his service does worsen the vocabulary challenges for those of us who want to use a service to facilitate communication within an organization-cum-community-cum-group comprised of PEOPLE.? A collection (group) of HUMAN BEINGS that wants to talk among themselves becomes confused with a virtual list of designated email addresses (a group) stored on a computer that then distributes emails from any one email address on that list to all of the other email addresses on that list -- through the electronic ether. ?So I will refer below to my a ¡°community-group¡± to signify it is a collection of PEOPLE, and to our virtual group on Groups.io as our e-group. ? ? How will my community-group use the Groups.io service??? Our new community-group is named Praxis Pioneers, an informal by-invitation organization with strict professional criteria for membership that I establish. The fees we will charge do not violate my Groups.io terms of service because the fees cover membership in the community of PEOPLE. ?I will add members to our e-group on Groups.io only after approving their membership in Praxis Pioneers. ?We will simply use Groups.io for email communication and will probably create and use a website on Groups.io, too.? ?In addition to using the Groups.io service¡¯s list-serv and website capabilities to communicate, we will use other vendors to market and host our webinars and conference calls, local conferences, etc.?? ? Why would people be willing to pay ME?? I am a nationally-known expert and ¡°thought leader¡± with a reputation for building collegial relationships across stakeholder groups, for being generous in sharing my knowledge and ideas, and for being an innovator. ??I have run a multi-stakeholder list serv since 2001 -- and will continue to do so.? ?Many people have told me how valuable it is to them ??¨C partly because of the new stuff I bring to their attention and the multi-stakeholder dialogue that results.? ?However, that group has not had a clear purpose other than keeping ourselves informed and enlightened ¨C and growing the number of people who think the way we do.? ? Why would people be willing to pay a FEE to belong to this new community-group?? ?I'm charging them for a membership in a community-group that has a clear purpose:? We are going to do an unusual project together.? We are going to collaborate and support one another in developing the skills and assembling the resources required to manage difficult cases of a very sort ¨C the small group of people for whom the traditional method of medical care delivery has failed.? There is currently no generally-accepted effective approach to ¡°salvaging¡± these situations.?? So, we will be developing, testing out and deploying a new and quite different treatment model, practice model, and business model ¨C each in our own settings ¨C and sharing our experiences as we do so. ???This will enable them to market themselves as having special expertise in dealing with these problematic cases, and earn more money by gaining a reputation for doing so successfully.? Professionals are quite accustomed to paying for continuing education/professional development activities-- and they are ESPECIALLY willing to do that when the skills they learn will enable them to expand their service offerings, improve the delivered effectiveness of their services, look more "expert" to potential buyers, expand their business, and earn more money. ??I expect we will need to award continuing medical education credits to them to acknowledge the time they are spending developing their expertise. ?And since we will have to pay significant sums of money to the organizations that will accredit the medical education we will be delivering, obviously we must have revenue to cover those expenses. ? Will this be a big money-maker?? ?Heck no.? But since the other faculty members and I will spend a considerable amount of our professional time on it ¨C and we earn our living by the hour ¨C we intend to get paid something rather than nothing. ? ?? How big a group are you talking about?? It¡¯s fine with me if this group stays small, but it will probably grow slowly over time.? In fact, it will never be very large, because not many physicians are interested in mastering this particular subject matter.? I¡¯ll be delighted if we ever get to 200 members ¨C if each state ends up with 4 physicians who are willing to work with this type of patient and know how to do this stuff well, that would be GREAT. ? ? How will the group be marketed / why would people want to join (and pay)???? Last year was the first year I taught a day long face-fo-face course on this particular topic.? It will be repeated every year.? Attendees paid several hundred dollars to attend.? The people who attended were disappointed that there was no way to stay connected and go deeper into the subject matter.? They expressed a real interest in having a way to keep in contact with me and other faculty, to keep growing their knowledge / expertise and to share their experiences as they attempt to implement the things they learned in the course.? The ¡°graduates¡± of that course will now get an offer to join this new group.? ?They will not be fazed by a small monthly charge for an on-going connection to a community of mutual support. ? Cordially, Jennifer Christian, MD, MPH Moderator, PraxisPioneers ¨C tiny newborn organization -- e-group has 2 members so far. Go to and click on JOIN THE ROUNDTABLE to find out more or join us! ? ? -----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of David P. Dillard Sent: Friday, December 22, 2017 4:19 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [GMF] Is anyone charging a fee to members? ? There are several other considerations you may want to ponder in this regard. ? First the owner of Groups.IO may not want fee based services on his free site and may create rules regarding this and require that such services pay for the premium version of Groups.IO.? Rules for services can change at any time. He also may have additional fees or requirements put into for fee based groups on his service, when such are created. ? Secondly, a lawyer should be consulted to guide you to proper legal methods for setting this up and running it in a completely legal way. ? Thirdly is there a market for this information product.? Will enough people join to allow for a profit or at least cost recovery? Will they be satisfied with the information product and retained as members? ? Do you have a business plan and marketing plan?? Nobody who is unaware of your discussion group will join it.? If one pays for your product, it will need to be private and Google cannot and does not index content on private lists. Nobody will pay who does not perceive concrete benefits from learning from the content you share. ? Do you have credentials that show you have authority as an expert in the subject areas your shared information covers?? If not, on what basis are you charging for this information.? Also can people find the same or similar information for free on the internet, or quality fee based coverage of the same from credentialed experts. If yes to either on what basis are you charging?? Are there ways you can practice your expertese in whatever field that are more sure of revenue production than running a discussion group? ? I think you have some walls here to think about and then hurdle before you can earn income from a discussion group, regardless of how valuable you think the content you share is to your clients who pay to join your list. ? ? . ? ? Sincerely, David Dillard Temple University (215) 204 - 4584 ? ? > [excess quote trimmed by moderator] |
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Jennifer,
Specifically, I'd like to establish a subscription fee, and offer theThanks for the reminder: I've been meaning to look into this for my PTA group. In my case the fee isn't directly associated with the Groups.io group, being on the email list is just a benefit for dues-paying members, not the purpose of paying the dues. For a few years now we've been using Square readers to process credit & debit card payments (made in person typically during school registration) in addition to accepting cash and checks. As a merchant service their rates aren't bad, but they may not be the lowest either. In any case, they have been a convenient service to use. The proceeds (charges less the processing fees) are direct-deposited to a bank checking account owned by the PTA unit. The PTA unit is registered with the state of California as a non-profit organization. I know Square also offers online store services, where we might be able to able to accept on-line payment and perhaps set up electronic membership registration. That's my goal anyway, sorry I don't have it in place and can't report on how well it works. I'm imagining I'd receive per-sale or daily sales reports from Square, and send those along to our PTA unit's Membership VP. She maintains the master membership roster in an Excel spreadsheet. Shal |
Jennifer Christian
Duane
Shal Farley