Same set, two guys, two prices. That's on purpose. A fixed price is too high for the guy who's never bought and far too low for the guy who buys every week. So in EmpireChat, the price he sees depends on him as well as on the set.
Why one price fails
Our first 8 days on Fanvue, from our own account, make the point. 24 buyers spent $1,865 gross. One of them spent $1,345 of that, about 72%. The other 23 spent about $520 between them. It's a small sample, but check your own account. We'd bet on the same shape.
Over the life of this account, 443 people have spent $37,573, which includes months before our AI, sold by humans and another tool. That's roughly $85 a head, and the average hides the real story: one guy just spent more than 15 times that in 8 days.
Pick one price and you lose in both directions. Set it for the careful guy and your big spender pays a fraction of what he'd happily pay. Set it for the big spender and the careful guy never makes a first purchase.
What moves his price
The base comes from your Pricing Ladder: every vault item sits on one of 7 levels, and each level has a price. Videos and bigger sets cost more. Then his own price comes on top, and that's shaped by a few things:
- Where he stands. A follower, a guy on a free trial, a subscriber, a long-time subscriber and a big spender all start from different places.
- What he's actually paid. His biggest buy and his usual buy matter more than anything he says about himself.
- How he reacts. Each buy nudges his prices up a little. Each no nudges them down a little. Over time his prices settle near what he's comfortable with.
Say a set sits at $20 on your ladder. A guy who's never bought might see it at $14. A guy who buys every week and usually pays $30 might see it at $32. Same set, and each price makes sense for the guy looking at it.
The guardrails
Letting an AI price freely would be a bad idea, so she works inside limits.
A ceiling tied to what he's paid. We learned this one the hard way. A guy who'd only ever made a tiny purchase got offered a huge price on a script step, because a premium video happened to sit there and the ladder priced the video. Nothing about him fit that number. Now the price is capped against the most he's ever paid, so a premium item can't throw a careful guy a price from another planet.
A floor under the content. Your best stuff keeps its value. She can't take a premium video down to pocket change to close a sale.
No jumps for the big spenders. A big spender's offers stay close to his own level. They climb a little above his biggest buy, and that ceiling moves when he buys above it.
No random prices. When we test prices, each guy sits on one price level for good. His chat doesn't jump around from day to day, and the test stays clean.
Your manual price wins. Set a script's price by hand and that exact price goes out, to everyone.
If two fans compare notes
It can happen. Don't let anyone invent a story for it. DM offers are one to one, and a regular gets offered different things than a new guy. A plain answer is fine. What wrecks trust is a made-up reason that falls apart the next day.
Your bigger exposure is a single guy noticing his own prices move the wrong way. That's why a discount doesn't take him below what he paid last. That rule has its own article, and it matters more than the comparison problem.
What to do about it
- Pull your top 5 buyers and your last 20 first-time buyers. Compare what they paid. If it's the same, you're leaving money on one side and losing guys on the other.
- Price from what guys buy, not from what they claim. Big talkers are often small buyers.
- If you test prices, compare money per offer sent. A higher price that sells a bit less can still earn more.
- Keep a person on your biggest spenders if you prefer. One switch per fan takes the AI off him.