Are you running a low touchpoint or high touchpoint subscription?
There are two questions we don’t talk about much when it comes to creating a subscription. They impact how much energy you invest, how you price your offering, and how it fits into your strategy.
Hi,
There are two questions we don’t talk about much when it comes to creating a subscription.
Are you going to run a low touchpoint or high touchpoint subscription?
Is your subscription meant to be a “first sale” or “last sale”?
These choices impact how much energy you’ll need to invest, how you price your offering, and how it fits into your broader business strategy. In this article, we’ll explore these two distinctions in depth and provide actionable insights to help you make the right decision for your audience and your own sustainability.
Low touchpoint vs high touchpoint
The first major consideration when creating a subscription model is deciding how much interaction you want to have with your subscribers.
What is a low touchpoint subscription?
If you’re running a low touchpoint subscription, it means your members have very little access to you. The Author Stack is, by necessity, a low touchpoint subscription. Yes, I reply to comments, but in general my subscribers and I don’t interact much, even in chats.
Because of this, I don’t spend a lot energetically on my The Author Stack subscription, so I can keep costs low. I often run discounts for up to 90% off, which I can only do because I’m not going to be giving people a lot of 1:1 attention.
Advantages of Low Touchpoint Subscriptions:
Scalability: You can grow your subscriber base without a proportional increase in workload. This is because your content can serve many people simultaneously without requiring more of your personal time.
Energy conservation: By limiting direct interaction, you can focus more on content creation or other areas of your business, which is especially important for entrepreneurs managing multiple projects.
Cost control: Since you're not expending much time or energy interacting with your subscribers, you can afford to offer your subscription at a lower price point, making it accessible to a wider audience.
What is a high touchpoint subscription?
Conversely, a high touchpoint subscription means you will spend a lot of time with your members. You’ll be doing live calls with them (probably), digging into their businesses, and interacting with them a lot. High touchpoint subscriptions should be priced much higher than a low touchpoint subscription because you will expend a lot of energy (either your own or hiring somebody) to take care of your members.
If you’re offering a coaching program or premium consulting service as part of your subscription, that would be a high touchpoint model. Your audience is paying for access to your expertise, insights, and personal guidance, which means you’ll need to invest considerable time and effort into supporting them.
Advantages of High Touchpoint Subscriptions:
Deep relationships: You’ll be able to form stronger, more meaningful connections with your subscribers, which can foster loyalty and increase long-term engagement.
Premium pricing: Since your subscribers are receiving more of your personal attention and expertise, you can charge a significantly higher rate. This makes high touchpoint subscriptions an attractive option for entrepreneurs who prefer working with fewer clients but at a higher price point.
Tailored content: A high touchpoint subscription allows you to offer more personalized content or services based on the specific needs of your subscribers. This can lead to greater customer satisfaction and retention.
How to determine which type you are
To figure out whether you should run a low touchpoint or high touchpoint subscription, consider the following:
Assess your available time and energy:
How much time are you willing to dedicate to interacting with your subscribers each week?
Do you enjoy engaging with people one-on-one, or does that drain your energy?
Evaluate your audience’s needs:
What does your audience expect from you? Are they looking for personalized attention, or are they happy consuming your content independently?
Have you tested the demand for direct interaction? If you notice that people are requesting live calls, Q&As, or personal feedback, that’s a good sign that a high touchpoint model could work. If your audience prefers self-paced learning or content consumption, a low touchpoint subscription may be sufficient.
Consider your pricing strategy:
How much do you want to charge for your subscription?
Are you comfortable with charging premium prices for more personalized attention?
If you prefer spending your time creating content or developing other aspects of your business, a low touchpoint model is likely a better fit. If you thrive on direct interaction and personal connection, a high touchpoint model might suit you better.
A low touchpoint subscription allows for a broader audience at a lower price point. A high touchpoint subscription can justify a higher price because of the personal attention you’re offering.
Additionally, if you plan to offer premium services eventually, try offering both low and high touchpoint tiers. See where your audience gravitates and adjust your strategy accordingly. For example, offer a basic plan with access to content only (low touchpoint) and a premium plan with additional personalized services (high touchpoint). This can give you real-time feedback on which model works best for you and your subscribers.
We have a ton of articles on developing a paid subscription strategy for paid members.
“First sale” vs. “last sale”
The second thing you should consider is whether you want your subscription to be an introduction to your ecosystem (“first sale”) or the end goal of your product line (
”last sale”).
What is a "first sale" subscription?
If you want your subscription to be an introduction to your ecosystem, or “first sale”, then it probably means you have a lot of other products and services to offer. Your subscription is a first stop in somebody’s journey to fall deeper in love with your subscription.
With The Author Stack, we’ve put a whole lot of our work behind the paywall, but we haven’t put anything we’re currently selling by itself. We added everything that we think somebody needs to consume in order to join our higher level products, including our conference.
We packed over $1,000 in value and over 900 posts in our member only area, but we consider this all "beginner” content, which are the things that people need in order to fall in love with our work. Some of the information packed inside is way beyond beginner level, but they are still beginners to our methodology.
The holds true with both fiction and non-fiction. Yes, you will find a lot of fiction behind my paywall, but you won’t find The Godsverse Chronicles (save the first book) or The Obsidian Spindle Saga, because those are the big draws we’re selling right now.
You can read everything else and fall in love with my writing and if you do hopefully you’ll then go buy our big series.
Advantages of a “first sale” subscription:
Wide reach: You can attract a broad audience with an accessible price point, giving people a taste of your content before offering them higher-value products.
Lead generation: A “first sale” subscription helps you build relationships with potential customers who may eventually buy your more expensive offerings.
Lower pressure: Since the subscription is just the beginning of the customer journey, you don’t have to constantly update it with the latest information or innovations.
What is a "last sale" subscription?
In contrast, a “last sale” subscription is going to be selling their membership as the “all-in-one” solution to a problem and be filled with the latest and greatest bells and whistles. It will be constantly updated with the newest tricks they’ve learned, and be more cutting edge than a “first sale” subscription.
This approach works well for those offering advanced courses, consulting, or high-end memberships. The “last sale” subscription becomes the end point of your product line, offering the latest insights and solutions to subscribers on an ongoing basis.
Advantages of a “last sale” subscription:
Premium value: Because your subscription is positioned as the ultimate solution, you can charge a premium price and attract customers who want the best of the best.
Ongoing engagement: A “last sale” subscription requires regular updates and fresh content to maintain its value, but it can also result in loyal subscribers who appreciate staying ahead of the curve with your latest offerings.
How to choose between “first sale” and “last sale”
To determine whether you should structure your subscription as a “first sale”
or “last sale”, consider the following:
Map out your product ecosystem:
Do you have other products, courses, or services that you want to guide your audience toward?
If so, a “first sale” subscription can serve as an entry point to your other offerings.
Examine your audience’s needs:
Are they beginners or advanced users?
If your audience is relatively new to your content, a “first sale” subscription makes sense. If they are already familiar with your work and looking for advanced solutions, a “last sale” model might be more appropriate.
Evaluate the level of exclusivity you want to offer:
A “first sale” subscription is usually broader and less exclusive, while a “last sale” subscription is more niche and premium.
Consider the content demand:
A “last sale” subscription will require constant updates and new content to maintain its premium status. Are you prepared to deliver that level of ongoing commitment?
Hybrid approach:
You don’t have to choose one or the other. Some creators offer both, using the “first sale” model to introduce subscribers to their ecosystem and the”last sale” model as a premium upgrade for advanced users.
If you choose a “first sale” subscription, it’s really important that you don’t give too much, because it pulls value away from your higher value subscriptions and products. If people get access to you for $1/mo, why would they pay you $50/mo for the same access?
Almost everyone I know, including me, kneecaps themselves by giving too much in their lower cost subscriptions. If you can’t make the high price work for you right now, you shouldn’t drop the price without significantly changing the offer. If you can’t make the low price point without giving too much, maybe you should consider suspending your subscription until you can figure out how to get the balance right.
Why is this important?
Mainly, this is important because so many of you are running high touchpoint, “last sale” subscriptions but pricing them like “first sale”, low touchpoint subscription.
We have high end courses and conferences, along with consulting and live training cohorts that splinter out from our subscription, which means we can offer 98% discounts and still make it work.
We aren’t spending a lot of time with our subscribers, so if they pay us $1/yr it’s at least something, and maybe those people will fall in love with our work.
While it’s true that a low touchpoint, “first sale” subscription will usually be priced considerable lower than a high touchpoint, “last sale” subscription, that doesn’t have to be the case.
However, it should always be the case that you should price your subscription depending on how much of your energy it will consume.
Personally, writing a post a week gives me energy, so I don’t consider that to be part of my pricing. I will do that anyway, but everything else does cost me energy, and I price accordingly.
Of course, you can also have two pricing tiers, wherein one gets very little of your energy and the other gets a lot of it, but you should design all this with intention from the beginning.
Knowing the answer to these two questions will help guide you to make good choices moving forward.
If you keep them as your northstar, you will be much less likely to burn out, because you are matching your energy to your revenue.
How do you balance the energy you put into your subscription with the value you provide to your audience? Share your strategies for managing workload while keeping subscribers engaged.
Is your current subscription model more of a “first sale” or last sale, and why did you choose that approach? Let us know how you decided to structure your offering and if you're considering any changes.
If you could change one thing about the way you interact with your subscribers, what would it be and why? We'd love to hear what adjustments you’re considering to improve your subscription experience.
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Where to go now:
“so many of you are running high touchpoint, “last sale” subscriptions but pricing them like “first sale”, low touchpoint subscription.” Boom. So helpful. Thank you. That’s the danger and the temptation. We all want to be nice. We hate charging money for our work, service, time and attention but we must be really careful about that. Really appreciate this.