Changes for Girls Chase in 2013

Thanks Cam.

Yeah, I think it's the best of all worlds. There's nothing that forces you to make good content like having the income tied directly to the content; if you want people subscribe, give them stuff they think is worth subscribing to get.

And you're right, of course my own personal concerns factor in. I have some pretty big things I'd like to do with my life, business-idea wise, which means I need to move fast and build something big now to stay on track with where I'm trying to get to a few years out. You get only a few decades of productivity to do what you're going to do and then you're dust, so if you're going to do it you'd better do it quick. Move fast or live to regret not doing so. One of the things I needed to find out soon was if GC could be that big something now or if it couldn't be, because I couldn't keep spending time on it if it was only ever going to be small scale. But the doubt is beginning to recede (I'm more a realist than an optimist, sort of the opposite of what 99.999% of entrepreneurs tend to be).

Anyway, the next few months should be tell-tale; if things go the way I think they will, this business could start growing quickly (well, as quickly as I can manage it without sacrificing quality).

Chase

Howdy Mike,

Neat comment here - really enjoyed reading about you user experience on the site; cool to see how you read and navigate around in detail. Also cool to hear the range of thoughts, feelings, and emotions you had on reading the update! I love getting honest feedback like this because it enhances one's theory of mind and makes you better able to predict how people react to things and how to do things and communicate them next time.

I think I'd kinda-sorta-maybe been thinking about content subscriptions before, but I didn't sit down and say, "Okay - we're doing it!" until sometime in November. So, it's a few months in development. The summaries though... have I been doing that? I haven't even realized. To be honest, I've been kind of burnt out lately, and when I write these massive giant articles I'm sort of half-consciously stream-of-consciousnessing it... I'm not even sure half the time if they're any good or chock full of grammar mistakes or folksy metaphors that don't make any sense, but people seem to like them so I guess they're still turning out okay. I'm kinda running on fumes, man. Maybe it's a subconscious thing that happened to prompt more click throughs to other articles, or maybe it's something I added in because I thought it created more value. I'll keep an eye out to see when I'm doing that and what I'm thinking when I do.

I feel you on the concern on wanting to see the site continue to grow. Ever read Dawkins's The Selfish Gene? He establishes "meme theory" there, basically that the mind wants to spread its ideas, or "memes" (he coined the term in that book), to other minds, the same way that genes want to spread themselves to future generations. This is why cultures, religions, political parties, and all manner of belief systems tend to get spread by people who really want to spread them. Even the Apple vs. PC or iPhone vs. Android or Subaru vs. Lamborghini or whatever ideas you want to see spread and grow and propagate. It's weird, but everybody does it.

My instinct based on all the comments and feedback I've received from people on how they use the site seems to be that they very quickly get excited soon after discovering Girls Chase and start clicking on tons of articles and navigating to tons of articles. I'd imagine, yeah, they probably tab open a bunch of pages, and start going through them. What's going to happen, though, if the guy's excited, and he's reading through stuff he likes and enjoys and he thinks the information is great, when he reaches the last article, then he's got to decide: do I pay and sign up, or am I done reading for now? I guess the question is, is 10 articles enough to convince most people that the stuff on GC is going to benefit their lives enough to be worth 20 dollars a month?

I can't say for sure, but I THINK it is. By the time you hit 10 articles, you've read at LEAST 20,000 words on here, and quite possibly a lot more; so there's a very good chance you're already extremely familiar with the tone, style, and content, and know if this is your kind of place and if it's filled with the kind of information you've really been looking for, or if it isn't. The paywall won't impact sharing at all either, because if someone's hitting the site for the first time off of Facebook or Google or Twitter or what have you, he's not even going to know there's a paywall if he goes back on Facebook and says, "Yeah, that was a really good article; I read two others there and they were good too."

There's a differentiation between the passersby who check a few articles out, share them with other people, pass the word along, and never come back, and the readers who really dive in and want to get their feet wet with the material. I think the folks in that latter category are liable to want to subscribe, and the folks in the former will just keep doing what they've been doing, never being the wiser that anything's different.

Chase

Hey G,

Awesome to hear. Every time I see someone coming every day, I think, "Gah! I am disappointing this person by not having new content up daily." But, soon, hopefully.

Yeah - that the site works okay on smart phones is pure dumb luck. I didn't even realize how much traffic was coming from smart phones until I looked at the analytics a few months back. How people browse the Internet has really changed the past few years. I NEVER go to website on phone... the screen's just way to small and typing stuff on an iPhone is just way too slow. But, I was the kid in high school who when the teacher told us to go to a URL I asked, "What's a URL?" So, I'm always a little behind the curve I suppose.

I absolutely want to get an app going. The only problem with apps is that they're a bit outside the budget of the site just yet. If you want a good app, it's somewhere between $20,000 and $40,000 to have made. If you want a GREAT app, add a zero to the end of those numbers. That's the one problem with apps: price tag.

Anyway, we'll see how content subscriptions does, and we'll see if / when apps fit into the budget and go from there.

Chase

Thanks Seifer. I'd be very honored to have you as one of the early subscribers here.

You seem like you're very able to put yourself in the other person's shoes; a high degree of empathy is an interesting trait when you're learning dating and pickup and seduction. It makes it a lot harder to get going, because you'll tend to be WAY more self-conscious about what other people think of you, but it also gives you a HUGE advantage once you're already rolling because now you can put yourself in the girl's position (or other people's, in socializing or business or hanging out with friends) on the fly and improvise and be right. Whereas the guys with less empathy (which is reasonably common in males) have to learn everything one step at a time - do this and this happens; do that and the other thing happens, etc. - because it's harder to guess what she's thinking, how she'll feel, and how she's bound to react.

My feeling on paying for articles and actually implementing what's read is similar. I had a discussion with a friend about products, and he told he'd pirated tens of thousands of dollars worth of internet marketing products, and never made a cent from any of them. Then he deleted all of it, and would only consume products he paid for, and after that he launched a successful freelancing career and then a successful online business using only the stuff he learned in the products he'd purchased.

People just view things very differently that they get free compared to when they pay for it. Most of what's in the book you can find on the blog, for instance; it's just better organized in the book and more intuitively laid out. Yet, I routinely have people writing in to say that they read the blog for 2 months or 4 months or 6 months and then bought the book and their results skyrocketed. I don't think it's because the book is any better than the blog; actually, the newer blog content is way better than my writing back when I first did the book. I think part of it's really just that they paid for it (or, maybe it's the clearer, structured organization, and I'm way off base?).

Either way, I'm excited to get the new system under way. I will be looking to make sure we do out best to make sure we do you right, with tons of new and upgraded content and material on GC.

Cheers,
Chase

Hey Ash,

The previous articles will be covered by the paywall too, so they'll count against the meter - you'll only be able to access 10 of them a month without a subscription.

You should be able to subscribe from India though - looking at TinyPass, which is the paywall provider I'm leaning towards most, they accept all major credit cards, PayPal, and Google Checkout. We've actually never had an Indian buyer on the site, despite maybe 1200 or 1300 sales and Indians making up the fifth largest group of readers here (e.g., we get a couple sales a month from Norway, and zero from India, and there are 1/10 as many Norwegian readers as there are Indian readers)... I always assumed that Indians just couldn't afford to buy (or maybe they don't like buying dating info products) - but is there some other reason, like Indian people don't use credit cards or PayPal or whatnot? How do you buy stuff online in India?

Chase

Hey Ali,

Thanks for the detailed comment here. Clear you put a fair amount of thought into what you had to say.

I checked out Hand Free Cookbook; looks like a solid idea. I don’t do much cooking myself, but I have girls cooking new recipes for me it’s a lot of racing out of the kitchen to double check the recipe on a computer and make sure she’s following the steps right, then running back in again. This’d certainly make it easier. The hand motions to go forward or back are a nice touch!

On the sales page, trust me, I know, nobody likes long form sales pages. I hate them myself. The problem is, they work. I’ve tried testing out really nice, friendly pages that aren’t pushy at all and just lay everything out for you so you can play around with, pages that are cool, all kinds of pages… and the winner’s the one you see up right now.

If I had the budget, I’d definitely pay someone to design Amazon-style pages though, absolutely. I had that recommended to me for the first time about a year ago by my conversions guy, and it’s been the plan for whenever I can get a team on overhauling those. That’ll most likely be sometime after we move to content subscriptions; although I’m not sure how big a role products will still play in the business at that point. Probably doesn’t make sense to abandon them completely though.

Kindle, yeah, I’ve thought about that, but the problem is 35% royalties on anything priced over $9.99 I think it is (and lower in other countries). We’d have to price it 3 times as much on Kindle to make the same amount of money we make selling it on the site (or sell it at the same price and simply accept that Amazon simply gets most of the revenues from selling the book). There’s also the question of having to conduct a marketing campaign for another channel, which is something we’re simply not staffed to do just yet. But, I think Kindle’s an interesting medium and it has promise; I’m just not sure what they best way to use it yet is.

Extremely cool that you consider GC your favorite startup! That’s the first time I’ve had someone say as much about the business. It’s kind of about to be in an odd place category-wise; the only businesses using content subscriptions are new sites and scientific journals, really; this is a weird kind of business to be running. I’m not really sure how you’d define it, exactly. It’s not news, and it’s not a journal, but it’s also not about to be a products company anymore, either.

Oh well. I don’t like labels anyway.

The student discount thing is an interesting idea. You’d have to check emails, like how Facebook used to to only let people with .edu emails sign up; I’d have to check with the paywall company to see if that’s doable. I’d suspect perhaps not, but it’s worth investigating.
Thanks for the feedback, Ali. Yeah, it’s useful; getting to hear people’s thoughts and opinions and suggestions and recommendations on here is always worth doing. It’s rare I make a big change out of comments and feedback, but sometimes they kick off thought processes going that lead to changes later on down the road.

Chase

Hey Ninja,

I have videos of myself in Spellbinding / the MPP, and on the Spellbinding / MPP sales pages. There’s also a picture of me in the free How to Text Girls eBook you get you sign up for the newsletter.

So, I’m not exactly in hiding, I just haven’t gone and plastered my face all over the site ;) I wasn’t sure how much I was going to throw myself into GC in the beginning; when I started this, it was just a blog I was putting posts on once a month or so back in 2008 and I had a corporate job for a pretty prestigious firm doing a lot of contracting for finicky government clients. So, I didn’t exactly want the ties then with my secret identity, I suppose you’d call it. Being a bit more open about showing my image now that I’m a few years removed from the world of midday meetings and early morning calls and business travel and expense accounts.

I’m heartened to hear the site’s had the impact it has, particularly with how it's affected you yourself, and how effective a paper you were inspired to write on your experiences. If you can do that at 17, and you’re working on yourself in the meantime, you can go anywhere you want to… assuming you keep working at it and don’t content yourself to rest on the laurels of early success, that is.

A vocal minority of readers have been asking for more general life articles, yeah; so, I’ll see what I can do on that front to get some more of them mixed in, without the site losing focus on what’s gotten it this far, of course.

Break a leg with the new female attention you’re getting, and the new guy you’re turning yourself into, Ninja. Thanks for the comment, and just remember, you’re getting better or you’re getting worse at all times. Err on the side of getting better, and you should be fine.

Chase

Thanks for the benchmark, Brock. I actually wasn’t aware of any non-news, non-science journal business running a content subscription model.

$9.95 is a classic sell price (right up there with $9.97 and $9.99). Once you break the $10 mark, you move into a different range; same with the $20 mark, and on up. I’ve heard that if you’re going to break $300 on pricing something, you might as well take it right up to just below $500, because psychologically $397 and $497 are virtually identical to most people. Pricing’s funny stuff.

My gut on the $10 mark is that it cheapens the brand, and I am pretty protective of the brand. Actually, $15 and $19 also felt cheap to me. Only once I hit $20 did my gut say, “Not cheapening.”

Our goal with pricing is really to hit the lowest price we can hit that isn’t going to cheapen the brand for the majority of people. Even at $21.95, there are going to be people who are going to look at that, and that price is going to cheapen things for them. They might say, “This is $80 a month information; the fact that they’re selling it for $20 a month leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth.”

My feeling is, at $15 or $10, there are simply a lot more of those people.

Maybe I’m wrong, and my bar of what’s too cheap is set too high. Or it could even be too low; nobody’s going to leave a comment telling you the price is too low and you should raise your prices.

We may also simply be seeing the bargaining that happens from people every time you say you want to change something; e.g., if I posted on here originally: “The monthly rate will be $9.97 a month,” I guarantee you there’d be people writing in to say, “You know, I really feel that $5 a month would be a lot more reasonable; $10 is a little too steep. Scientific American is $3 a month, and they send you a magazine! Where’s the overhead on THIS?”

What can I say… pricing is weird.

Chase

Hey Dave,

We may well be! Well, assuming all goes according to plan.

You've been tearing it up on the forum, and I can tell you've got a solid grasp of the material on here and a range of your own experience. You're clearly gung-ho about helping out guys and teaching, too.

Let's discuss once I've had a chance to see what revenues look like under the subscription model. I'm loathe to make promises I can't be certain I'll be able to meet; underpromise and overdeliver is my preferred mode of operation ;)

We should start having a good idea I'd say within 3 or 4 weeks of content subscriptions and the new site design getting into place - so stay tuned!

Chase

Hi J.B.,

Pricing kicks in whenever the site design and technical redesign is finished... you know how those go. Anyway, end of January is starting to look a little too optimistic, so I'm guessing mid-February at this point. I'll provide an update when we have a more certain launch date.

Ricardus had a very successful launch of his new language-training business, which means he's both got his hands full with running a new business and has his own independent income stream, so while I know I and a lot of other people would love to have him back, he's probably out of here for good (and I'm happy for him!). He's still doing the phone and email coaching here, and will for a little while longer - we'll likely also do a "last hurrah" phone training promotion before he rides off into the sunset for good, for anyone who wants training specifically with him.

Chase

Hey Jon,

Appreciate the concern! All articles are covered by the new system, but that new system will be a metered paywall, rather than the older "article-cutoff-in-the-middle" varieties that were popular (and still are popular) with a number of scientific journals and newspapers before. So, new visitors hitting the site for the first time won't be affected (or probably even know there's a paywall), and won't run into the paywall until they reach the 10 free article / month quota that's set up.

You're right that the businesses using the older article-cutoff method have seen reductions in their organic traffic; the businesses using the metered approach, however, have maintained and grown their organic traffic, as only the people who really use the site are asked to subscribe, and the passersby who don't heavily use the site aren't affected. The vast majority of organic traffic (the people who only come for one or two articles, find the answer they were looking for, and leave) never knows there's a paywall, and those users who are just passing by continue to use the site as it used it before.

Chase

Thanks Tayo! We'll see what happens, but between the way the new site design is coming along and the new business model, I think it's looking good for the future of this site. Should be fun...

Chase

Thanks, M! The only deliberation really was whether a business model like this could work here... I hadn't seen it done elsewhere outside the news industry or the academic paper industry. But, the business needs a better system than pure products-based if it wants to be anything more than a small niche website, and businesses that don't innovate get left in the dust, so it's worth taking for a spin.

I suppose we'll see how it goes!

Chase

Hi Paul,

Thrilled to hear you're finding it "gold dust"! That's a neat-sounding compliment.

I'm in full agreement with you on products. I rarely play computer games anymore these days (no time; sometimes I miss it), but I was playing the smash hit "Kingdom Rush" sometime back and it was one of the few free-to-play computer games I ended up paying the $5 to access the extras in, because I just thought it was great and wanted to access everything else (even if the "everything else" was really only a couple of extra levels, and some perks like extra money / soldiers / spells that I wasn't going to use so as not to cheapen the gameplay). That model was designed to be easy to pay, and the value is easy to see because you're already using it. This "pay for access" model after you've already sampled the product makes a lot more intuitive sense to me than one where you're trying, as you put it, to sell people products they know nothing about and are being asked to take some marketing hype on faith that they'll enjoy what they're getting. It's just... simpler. And better.

The post sounds interesting. You can use the contact form - if you mention to Genaro that you spoke with me in the comments section and I told you to get in touch, he'll forward your message on to me.

Chase

Hey leverage,

I've thought about this one already, yeah. I'm leaning in favor of it; I don't want to make an announcement one way or another until we go live with subscriptions, but there's a reasonably good chance we'll offer previous customers some kind of discount (obviously, nothing like you'd get $40 off subscriptions if you bought the $40 ebook, obviously, as that rather devalues the programs, but probably something both fair and hopefully rewarding for the people who've been great customers already like yourself).

Chase

Steve-

Just seeing this one. Thanks for the support! In case you haven't had a chance to see it yet, we have the plans broken down into three different categories now: monthly ($21.95 a month), quarterly ($18.65 a month, in quarterly payments of $55.95), and annual ($16.45 a month, in one payment a year of $197.40) - hopefully that gives some flexibility and options.

And, thanks for the suggestion on articles for new visitors - the wall the paywall works is not the traditional one where articles are simply off-limits or not to non-subscribers, but rather a meter that resets each month - so each new visitor can access up to 10 articles for free, every month.

Hope that provides some clarification!

Chase

Heinz-

Much appreciated. You might've posted this comment again elsewhere; I know I answered a similar (identical?) one a week or two back... but here's the answer regardless. When I write, I'm targeting three groups of people: the guy in college (18 to 22), the guy who's recently graduated from college and hitting the mid-20s dating scene (23 to 35 or so), and the guy who's newly divorced and wading back into the dating world (40s and 50s). I skip 35 to 45 or so since most of those guys are either married, or they've figured out their game well enough that they aren't worried about it anymore if they're single.

With younger girls, the main differences from older girls are that they're more direct, more "obtuse" (they don't get nuance and subtlety as well), and they respond better to more exaggerated versions of what works with older women (e.g., old women like men who are challenging, while younger women like men who are challenging almost to the point of being assholes). Aside from those though, girls are girls - and the only real difference between one that's 18 and one that's 35 is the experience the girl's accumulated along the way to 35, and how it's changed and colored her perception.

Chase

Thanks Crasch! Interesting site you've got there. It's still a little early to tell, but things look promising for the business so far. I'm in talks with a few potential writers once I get a better idea of how revenues will play out a month or so down the line - we'll see how the experiment goes! Life's just one big experiment anyway though, isn't it?

Chase

Thank you, Chris. I really appreciate the sentiment and the support. I still do get to wondering if I'm just some Internet crazy screaming at the dark bowels of the web on rare occasions...

As far as the comments - as I recall, I don't think we moderated a single comment on this one. I was impressed with the class of everyone here too - we're very lucky in the group of people we have spending time with GC.

Chase

Anon-

My pleasure. Happy to hear I and the other writers here have helped to open your eyes to some things they might've been less open to.

On the discounted yearly subscription - don't know if you've hit the paywall yet on the new site, but that wish is granted - we have monthly, quarterly, and annual subscription options up, with discounts accordingly for the various plans.

Hope you're finding the rest of the articles you're reading just as worthwhile as the ones you've already read.

Chase

Thanks, Jason. I'm pleased we've made it to that level for you and contributed to improving your life, and thrilled we've retained your business. I'll do my best to make sure you continue to get high-quality content, and make the subscription as much of a bargain as I can.

Chase

Anon–

Happy to help.

The phone consultation with the Mastery Packages is with Ricardus (who doesn’t write anymore but still handles the coaching side of things). He had a really good testimonial from one of his students that I included on the phone consultation product page (here) – worth checking out to get a feel for the style of his consultations. I always liked to consider myself one of the better guys out there at phone coaching, but Ric gives me a run for my money (or laps me, depending on who you’re talking to).

On the book – I think it’s pretty structured, but everyone has his own opinions about what’s structured and what isn’t – you can download a demo copy of the book (with the first couple of chapters) here and decide if it’s the right style for what you’re looking for: Demo Version.

On time to getting good – that’s one that has a lot of “it depends” and caveats attached to it – least of all what’s meant by “getting good.” I was pulling girls from nightclubs about half a year after I started in earnest, but outside of one good workshop I attended and some stuff I read online I was mostly making it up as I went along. A lot of the guys who’ve emailed me or commented on articles or products are taking girls almost right away – which leaves me saying, geez, why couldn’t I have had it that easy? There are guys who buy products or read all the articles and continue to struggle anyway though, too. I think a lot of it’s mentalities – there are some guys who go out excited, confident they’ve got the tools to succeed, and then they just hammer hard at things until they figure out how to make them work. There are other guys who don’t though, and they don’t get the results, or they take longer to get.

On good: my personal definition for “good” is the ability to go out whenever you want and bring a girl home with you more often than not. To know that you can go out, and if you game hard, you probably stand at least a fair chance of picking up at least a reasonably attractive girl on any given night. And to know that if you want to find a new, really high caliber girlfriend, you can probably do that in two weeks to a month, max. For me, it took me about 3 years of reasonably dedicated (3 to 4 outings a week, with some low periods mixed in when I’d hardly go out) practice to reach that level… although it might be worth bearing in mind when I started, I was rather socially stunted – didn’t know how to hold a conversation, had no idea what to do with women who liked me, was far too unassertive, etc. You may not have as long a road to travel as I did. The only guy I know of who says he got good in a year is I think BradP, but from what I recall BradP was also going out 6 nights a week to practice game, every week of the year, in New York where the clubs stay open until 4 AM. If my math there is right, then that’s about 1900 hours of practice and refinement in one year. I had a full time desk job the first few years I was learning game, and averaged something like 500 hours a year of practice then, for comparison.

Most of the guys I know who are really good had some period of time in their life when they had time off from school, work, and any and all other obligations, and devoted that time exclusively to game. Getting good instruction is part of it – but having the time to do the hard work and build up the reference experiences and train your brain to recognize and work with all the patterns it sees is something you simply can’t get around – depending on how good you want to be, you’ve got to put a certain amount of hours in, too.

Chase