Redweek raised the fees this month

I renewed my membership and purchased a rental add on July 24. The fees were $14.99 for the membership and $24.99 for the 6 month ad.

The fees are now $18.99 and $29.99 without any advance notice about the change. You would think with II's fiasco about not announcing the upgrade fees, Redweek might have learned the courtesy to inform current members so they could up at the old rates before the increase. I quick email would have been nice.

I understand increasing the price for the ad but increasing the membership fee seems ridiculous. To be more competitive Redweek needs to drop those prices to a truly nominal fee (how about $5 for 6 months and $10 for 18 months)and have some kind of verification system if the purpose of those fees are to keep scammers away.

You need to be open and honest with your members and treat them with respect. You are also competing against more and more sites and need to keep the membership fees low.

I also felt it was not the best judgment to do this without a warning to members.

It is there business to do with it as they want.

Will it stop me from using it, no.

Would I have placed a couple adds early? maybe paid my dues early? YES It would have made me feel better about this

Hi.

tracey75 wrote:

I renewed my membership and purchased a rental add on July 24. The fees were $14.99 for the membership and $24.99 for the 6 month ad.

The fees are now $18.99 and $29.99 without any advance notice about the change. You would think with II's fiasco about not announcing the upgrade fees, Redweek might have learned the courtesy to inform current members so they could up at the old rates before the increase. I quick email would have been nice.

Our last price increase was ~ 8 years ago. So on an inflation-adjusted basis, it's pretty much the same. The health of the marketplace is paramount, I agree. If we see any drop in the membership conversion rate, we'll lower the price.

We maybe should have been making small, annual adjustments.

tracey75 wrote:

I understand increasing the price for the ad but increasing the membership fee seems ridiculous. To be more competitive Redweek needs to drop those prices to a truly nominal fee (how about $5 for 6 months and $10 for 18 months)and have some kind of verification system if the purpose of those fees are to keep scammers away.

You need to be open and honest with your members and treat them with respect. You are also competing against more and more sites and need to keep the membership fees low.

We did discuss sending out notices about the price increase. Our worry was that we'd pull demand forward, before the increase, causing the conversion rate to be artificially depressed after -- and then we'd have to wait to see what the true impact is.

Since the membership fee is the only fee we charge everyone (versus the service/processing fees that every other site tacks on), we feel like the current price is still a bargain. It's only four bucks, after all. If you can save thousands on a vacation, the RedWeek membership fee is a rounding error.

Virtually every one of our key metrics have been improving significantly over the last several years. If we see that trend reverse, we'll look at the pricing as a possible culprit.