E-commerce Model - Would buyers go for this?

[on-ramp]

My family owns and operates an on-line store of highly collectible signed and limited edition books.

At this point, our pricing is very competitive as to what other reputable shops are charging for their product.

So the other day I had a new idea: to start selling our books at cost, no profit to be made on each title. This would certainly change the market, as we would be the lowest price anywhere, almost too low.

here's the catch. a buyer has to purchase a subscription to shop from us, say 9.99 a month or something to that effect. Let's say it's about $120 a year. So if they buy several books over that year and save a thousand dollars, it's definitely worth the price, right?

it's similar to Direct Buy furniture outlet, you sign up and get below retail prices.

OR, we could still sell at cost and don't charge anything. Certainly our sale volume will increase but what would be the point? sell ad space?
Right now we are averaging about 2K unique visitors monthly with approx. 9K pageviews
Thoughts/opinions please...
Regards,

[stomachmonkey]

Instead of offering just one pricing model offer the subscription as an option and see what happens.

Forget relying on the advertising model. You are no where near serving enough impressions.

[djmcmath]

Costco (discount club-based warehouse type shopping in the PNW) has a setup like that. Different membership levels get more advance notice of sales, better prices, etc. Non-members can still browse costco.com and buy stuff, though it's not at a discounted price.

The model works fine for Costco (and Sam's Club, and some others, I'm sure), but I'm not sure why.

My thought would be: allow discounts for members, but even non-members can see the prices that members would get.

[on-ramp]

Wayne,

I've had to deal with some bad customers as well.. it's tough. But the internet is a nice barrier, no face-to-face unpleasantries. worst case they call the 888 # and threaten a lawsuit. ha ha
anyway, I appreciate your comments, especially coming from someone with tons of experience in this field. You are absolutely correct about the type of buyers we attract. They tend to be more educated, and not necessarily looking to fight for every dollar, although price is certainly a factor in their decision making process. From the people I've spoken to calling to get more information on our products and services, they definitely sound a lot older than myself. In some case, much much older...
Our orders conversion rate now is avg. 1/2% .. the industry standard, ie. Amazon, is about 1%, if you are at 1.5 to 2%, then that's phenomenal. If adding a subscription service will decrease conversion rate, then that's not good. I can't imagine falling down to 1/4%.. because there's a cost to get visitors as well. it all adds up in the math model.

I realize a subscription service might be another hurdle. However, B&N uses one, charges 25 dollars a year, and they offer discounts of up to 40%. But they don't sell the high end stuff we do. Their prices are anywhere from 2 dollars to 100 dollars, whereas in our case we have products all the way up to 5 thousand.

you're right about the math model. Time to get cranking on my stats! Thanks...

stomachmonkey, the idea was to offer the subscription only to customesr that want to sign up. In all cases, both prices are displayed. We've had some repeat customers. The incentive is the more you are going to buy, anyway, the more you can save. Similar to that Direct Buy infomercial on TV regarding home owners who purchase at below-retail prices when they sign up. If you can save 10K on a brand new kitchen with a 100 dollar subscription fee, it's certainly worth the price of admission.
But as always, further research is required because implementing this effectively will take time & money.