The new Landlord Law site has been online for nearly a year now.
As you may have seen from previous posts, I have been introducing new content types – the repossession kits and the videos, and there have been some changes in the membership types to reflect this.
The +Plus membership
Annual members pay more upfront, and commit for a whole year. Monthly members can cancel at any time. So it is only fair that if new content types are introduced, they are kept for the annual members.
Therefore when I brought the repossession kits over, they were added using a content type which only the annual members could access. Likewise when I started doing the videos. Finally, I amended the membership type to allow access to both landlord and tenant content, making it ideal for advisors.
However this created some confusion. Last year when the new site went live and the annual membership fee went up, I promised annual members at that time that they could keep their membership fee so long as they renewed promptly. When I brought the new content over though, I decided that it would be unfair to give this to the ‘original’ members, as they pay so much less and this content was never part of the original site.
To make it clear that the new annual members get access to extra content, I have therefore renamed this +Plus membership. +Plus members will also get long term access to the School for Landlords content when that kicks off in a few weeks time.
New six months +Plus
Quite a few people have mentioned however that £180 is too much for them to afford right now. So I have therefore created a new six months +Plus membership for £96 which went live yesterday.
The six months +Plus get all the benefits of the annual +Plus members except that they don’t get the free telephone advice on joining.
Standard membership
Standard members, who pay by the month, get a more limited service. First of all they need to chose whether to join as a landlord or a tenant member. The tenant membership is £15 and the landlord service is £20.
The landlord membership is by far the most popular. Landlord standard members mostly join to get the tenancy agreements and the general support from the information FAQ and articles, and the forum where they can ask me questions.
The ‘Original’ members get an annual form of standard membership (which is no longer available – so don’t ask). However for ‘new’ standard members I have introduced two changes.
Tenant standard members
Most tenants join up because they have a problem which they want a bit of help with. They are not normally going to want more than one month.
However sometimes a tenant will want support for a bit longer, for example if their landlord is trying to evict them. To make it a bit easier for them I have now set up a new three month membership for the price of two – £30.
Landlord standard members
I have been feeling a bit guilty about long term standard members. Over time they pay quite a lot and it seems unfair to exclude them from the +plus content. So I have now introduced a rule that once they have been a member for five months, they can apply to be upgraded.
However they have to ask for it. It is not something that can be set up to work automatically – I will have to do it manually. So I need them to tell me when they have reached that stage. I wil then need to keep a sharp eye on the pay pal messages so I can switch it off again if their recurring payments are cancelled or skipped.
Multi User membership
This is the third type of membership, which I have set up for businesses. I explained it all in this post, so will not say much here. Other than that the multi users will all get a +Plus membership type.
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Its taken me a while to work all this out, but I now feel happy with the different membership types. So I shouldn’t be dong any more changes for a while!
You will find a complete list of all the membership types and their entitlements in the new re-vamped services guide page.