Just after 11 pm, I logged on to Facebook to check my notifications and see if there was anything new in my inbox. I’ve been following the different Internet radio groups and saw someone post to the Internet Radio Support Group about an issue I had experience with. I replied to the original issue and scrolled to see what other issues I could help with.
I scrolled to the very next post, which was someone asking for help looking for alternatives to a competitor of ours, saying their product was too expensive. They were asking for help finding something that fits within their more modest budget.
Of course, I offered up Radio Station PRO as a solution. Right now, at $14.50 per month and $149 per year, Radio Station PRO is far more economical than the solution offered by this company. Their pricing page shows their Starter plan at $55 a month if you pay for an annual plan upfront or $70 monthly. The Plus plan is $110 a month if you sign up for the annual discount. It’s $130 a month when you go monthly.
Admittedly, they have a few more features for monetization. But their package is an all-in-one solution that is built on top of a theme and a proprietary controlled platform whereas our system is for users who are working in WordPress and want the flexibility to customize, use shortcodes, or even export data to other apps via our API, which many of our competitors don’t offer.
Plus, when working with WordPress, you can do so much more; for example, you can add a WooCommerce shop to sell products, Gravity Forms to build data mining forms, Opt-in Monster for lead generation, and All in One SEO PRO for search engine optimization. WordPress is a canvas where you benefit from the collective efforts of all of these developers, instead of being stuck with largely proprietary systems.
While their product is slick and has many nice features, it is expensive for the small broadcaster. $1,050 a year for an annual Starter plan and $1,320 for an annual Plus plan.
Radio Station Pro is $149 for an annual plan…TODAY!
Let’s get back to my epiphany.
After I posted my recommendation, another group member, Marc, responded with this comment:
Thoughts began to whirl in my head. Wait a minute, I thought. This person seems to think that Radio Station PRO is “just for a schedule.”
That could be further from the truth. And, that’s when I had my epiphany.
This guy doesn’t really know what Radio Station is or does. He’s just making an assumption based on reading the title of a social media share. He hasn’t even looked at our website, yet he’s assuming the only thing you can do with Radio Station PRO is build a schedule.
“Is this what people think?”, I began to ponder.
Of course, if you’re reading this, you probably know Radio Station PRO offers far more than just a Show scheduling system for WordPress. It’s much more powerful with so many of the features a radio station needs today to publish relevant content and make their WordPress websites sticky to increase audience engagement, all with the goal of finding new revenue sources. Yes, of course – the scheduling system is the core of the product – but it’s the same for any Radio Station theme, plug-in, or software as a service application doing something similar.
Why?
Because for radio stations, it all starts with your show schedule.
He ended his comment with, “in WordPress, we can just get plug-in for calendars or columns and build our own.”
{Here’s me, shaking my head)
Let’s address this assumption.
Bu first, let me ask you this: what’s your ideal hourly rate? What is the hourly rate you would charge someone who wants you to work on a project, as a radio show host, or as a show producer?
Mine is $135 per hour. That’s what I charge as a WordPress consultant in my other business, Digital Strategy Works.
But let’s say you think yours is $45 to $55 an hour. That’s probably a decent hourly rate for someone with three to five years of experience in just about anything nowadays. It’s not low wage at $15 an hour, but it’s not expert range up in the $80s and above.
In Marc’s world, he seems to think that he can build, in three hours, a better system than Radio Station PRO or any radio station show scheduling system, for that matter. A Show schedule system with multiple layouts, a conflict catcher, and an API to sync that data to any external application.
And therein lies the epiphany. What Marc is telling me, at first glance, is he thinks he can do what Radio Statio PRO does…in all of three hours.
Maybe after all these emails, rebuilding our landing page, and relaunching the product at a 50% OFF discount, we’re still not effectively communicating the value of Radio Station PRO.
You and I both know what Marco is proposing is virtually impossible, but some people make immediate assumptions, which oftentimes are inaccurate based on limited experience.
For $149 a year, which equates to Marc’s three hours to build a simple schedule out of any available Calendar plugin, in Radio Station PRO you can:
- create and manage a schedule with our visual schedule editor, which includes a conflict catcher, show overrides, and encore presentations
- set up Show, Episode, Hostt, and Producer pages with all the associated data and audio players
- publish Playlists
- give the listener the ability to display showtimes in their time zone
- launch a continuous audio player that sticks to the header of the footer of your website, which the listener can engage with uninterrupted while navigating your site
- choose from various Schedule layouts (table, tabs, grid, calendar)
- use shortcodes to place content anywhere on your website
- use widgets to display content in sidebars or wherever sidebar widgets can be located in your theme
- use the Role Manager to assign Hosts and Producers to Shows
For me and our Lead Developer, Tony Hayes, Radio Station PRO has been two years of steady, patient development work while supporting both our free and PRO versions. it’s been over 500 hours of commitment in one affordable plugin that you can get today for $149 per year.
After conveying this to Marc in the thread, I went to bed. Got up this morning and this post was the first thing on my mind. Let me know your thoughts in the comment section below.
With gratitude,
Tony Zeoli
Radio Station PRO by netmix®
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