1 Year Option Removed, 3 Month Option into 2 Month Option, Preparing for Expansion
I made the following announcement on the premium membership 3 month order page:
"July 4th, 2012 - The 3 month option has been turned into a 2 month option. We are adjusting the format of the membership of the site in early fall 2012, to accomodate more content with a greater focus on individual member needs. Announcements will follow in August officially on the main page. Until the fall, we will continue the same format, with the same amount of content (10-13 standard videos, and another 10-13 premium videos each month). Beginning in the fall, we will be adding more content with a new format that better serves our member's needs. Email membership@husng.com with any questions."
Details are not finalized, but we're basically changing formats to better serve the various needs of members. With the addition of hyper turbos and the further segregation of player pools in various countries (France, Italy, USA and more), our customers are as diverse as ever. Not only do the needs of our customers differ more than at any other time since our opening, but we also have access to even more content than ever before. However, in order to best serve members and make the site run most efficiently and effectively, we need to alter our format. Beginning this fall, you'll see more videos, and a new and improved format.
Just to be clear, we're not getting into anything like 6 max cash or 45 man sngs. We're a heads up poker site and always will be as far as my eyes can see. I'll announce more details in August, and we'll be changing formats sometimes in September, perhaps October, after the 3 month premium members from June expire.
1 year premium users will be compensated very generously (and will have the option of just pro rate refund if they so choose, but I'll make sure that they have the option of receiving even more content for the value of their remaining memberships, so that the choice is win-win for them).
Things like rakeback/vip deals will stay the same. Costs will vary as they do now, but we'll see both an expansion in entry level material and options as well as some more premium level options. Again, more details next month, until then, let me know if you have any questions about the info above.
Looking forward to hear more about this :-)
IMO, a better structure for the site would be really great - something like putting videos into categories (format, stakes, etc.), maybe have some kind of "video channels" where you could subscribe to specific kinds of content like for instance hypers at higher buy-in levels. That would make it a lot more easy to quickly find specific content.
For instance, one big problem with the site's current structure is that if you're a long-term customer, but only visit the site every couple of weeks, then it's kinda hard to quickly see what you missed.
I would also prefer having more content and less pictures per page - for instance, at the moment there are only two videos on the front page and http://www.husng.com/node?page=1 has four. Of these 6 videos, 5 don't really need a preview picture (people know how a poker table looks like), coffee's with the power point being the exception. The next page only has 3 videos - so the 10 most recent videos are scattered over 4 pages.IMO, this could really be compressed a little bit - get rid of all preview pictures that only show a single poker table on the front page, instead have a little bit more text about the video. This would also allow you to have more videos on the front page and having it load a lot faster at the same time.
It would also be great to have a text-only list of new videos - like the recent forum posts, blog entries, etc. at the bottom of the page. - especially on mobile devices. How about simply replacing that "Recent comments" section at the bottom with "Recent videos", for instance ?
Visiting the site on a mobile device is really horrible at the moment - the front page takes forever to load due to all these pictures and the search is close to impossible to use on these devices. I have a very fast mobile connection, but it still took about 15 seconds to load. After enabling wifi, it only took 4 seconds, which is still too slow (takes a bit less than a second on my laptop, which is ok).
Another feature that I'd love to see is the ability to bookmark videos and mark those that you've already seen.
Oh, I didn't know about that search engine thing. Well, I didn't want to get rid of the previews anyways - I really love them - just move them from the front page to the individual video pages.
That http://www.husng.com/videolist should really remember the selected options and maybe the defaults should be tweaked a little bit (for instance, I miss chadders and coffee in that list). And that selection is very cumbersome to use on a mobile device.
Instead of selecting individual instructors, how about putting things into category and provide some pre-defined, text-only lists for these categories ? For instance have one category grouped by month, another one by format (hyper, etc.) and a third one by target audience (beginner, etc.).
And yeah, the search really sucks badly.
I totally agree (see my reply to Barrin) about improvements to the search engine. That will be a priority in the near future, after a few other pressing things are done.
Please, work on the video search engine. Every time I use the advanced text search, it breaks my heart when I see the results. First there is a video from april 2012.......second video is from 2011.....then there is may 2012 just so that a video from june 2011 can follow....I seriously have on idea, what I have to do if wish to find ALL hyper videos available for the standard membership filtered by the date they are released. Of course, once I have found the video I download it and have it on the computer but if - by any chance - I close the tab I will not go back search it again, just to put a rateing / comment up, which kinda pains me - sometimes.
Other than that I appreciate that you stay with HU.
Thanks. I agree, the search engine sucks. We'll work on getting something better up. It shouldn't be too difficult, we have a second webmaster working very hard and another webmaster on call/consulting. It's become a priority to get things done in a technical way, and now that the blogs are up, properly showing up on the bottom of the main page, forum notifications are up and facebook auto updates, there are only a few other backend things to do (moneybookers automation for example) before we can start tackling things like search engine, automatic video count updates and automatic news updates.
No, no, you have it wrong!
We are changing the format in a few months, so we had to get rid of the longer options because we didn't want people buying memberships that run into the new format.
Since we removed the 3 month on July 1st, nobody will go over October 1st (except previous 1 year members).
For those previous 1 year members, we will offer them an option of a lot more content for their remaining membership value, or simply refund them the rest of their membership, whichever choice they prefer.
The new format won't have 1 year memberships though, it will have a format more suited for our ever changing game, various formats, and different markets.
2 month option removed.
New membership videos will continue to be made until the end of September.
Starting in September, and officially launching in October, will be more package offerings, focused on more specific needs and demands (buyin levels, game structures, even game types will have individual video packages).
We will also be expanding free content, with video clips, lessons and full videos going up as regular strategy content each week, with more interviews and the continued high stakes rail and news.
Bumping this to paste a response to pocaja in the other thread:
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Memberships will go away. Standard and Premium will become video packages of material (same as now but no new content).
New content on the main page will be free (as described above) and we will be building video packs to sell separately (beginner hyper, high stakes turbo, mental game, even heads up cash type packs). Rates will vary by packs (beginner content lower, high stakes content higher).
There will be a newsletter that goes out in the next week or two. I've been trying to balance being informative with not trying to hype it up too much since it's still 5+ weeks away. I also want the changes to stand on themselves, not look good because I talk about them a lot or talk them up as the greatest thing. It should naturally work out a lot better for existing and future members, more of what everybody wants for fair pricing, and coaches will be more aligned with success and continued high standards.
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To expand, here are the difference between the current format and the October 1st+ format:
Current Format
20 Membership videos in Premium, 10 for Standard during an average month
Occasional free content
Limited video packs (2 in the last 2 years)
Coaches paid per video
Wide range of coaches make membership videos
Limited selection outside of NL HUSNG Hyper and Turbo speed videos
New Format
No membership videos
20-30 pieces of free content making up our main page monthly content
Many video packs for individual sale, from beginner to advanced, NL HUSNG structures of all types, and expanding into mental game, heads up cash and possibly other domains
Coaches paid per video and/or revenue sharing (to increase accountability and increasing quality incentive)
A more limited range of coaches making video packs, but a wide range of coaches making free content
Wider selection of games, game types, structures and audience levels
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One other detail: Users that bought a 1 year membership that doesn't expire until after October will be given a lot of extra value to make up for the extra membership time they have left. I will email every 1 year subscriber in late September to give them their full options, but I plan to reward them over equity for their loyalty and long term purchases. It will be situational, as a user that has a 1 year membership expiring in April should receive more value in the new system than a user that has their 1 year membership expiring in January.
Hi Ryan,
In the old format, if I rake $250 in a month I can get one month Premium.
How does the new format affect VIP deals?
Thanks,
We'll allow people to earn video packs.
There should be plenty of video packs to earn, more than 12 a year (though some may not interest you, if we end up doing a PLO HUSNG, that might not interest some people).
We'll make clearance rates once we finalize prices on the initial video packs. Something like beginner hypers will be a lot less rake to earn for players than advanced hypers.
Knowing you though, you'll basically continue to get every bit of content that goes up on this site, since you're a solid raking player.
I'm curious about the current premium videos as well. Will they still be available for a membership fee as well or will they be grouped into packages for the newer/October format?
The existing premium and standard memberships will become packages to purchase for a set fee, and likely 3 months access. Similar pricing to what it has been basically, but no new videos.
We may take out a few small selection of these videos to fit in with some very relevant packs, but that will be the exception. We're not creating new packs with old material.
The only current exception that I can think of is Coffeeyay. He will be doing a video pack on Math in HUSNGs, that will include all his Math in HUSNGs videos plus a few hours of brand new material for a fairly affordable price point. In that case, the math videos are just super relevant, and I think it's better to do it this way, than to just delay their release for the new format, I don't want to strangle the last month or two of the membership format and hold anything back.
The only other exception that I think MIGHT happen at this time would be a few Mers videos going into a majority new video Mers package. I'm not really sure on that though, we may just make a brand new Mers video pack for October.
Thanks Jack.
- http://www.husng.com/videolist You can view a video list there, and even separate by instructor (it's the first link on the top of the Videos page for future reference).
- Unfortunately, we need the images and preview videos, for search engine purposes (google likes both). Outside of that, the images are fairly useless, I agree, but the preview vids are good (and we're doing more preview vids in the future, less images, but we can't get rid of both bc of the search engine part).
- Mobile is something we hope to get to, but it's going to be awhile, there's a lot we have to do first and the big changes are about content format mostly.
- Bookmark and navigation stuff though will basically happen. It may not happen in the exact way you imagine, but it's going to be very easy to see what you have downloaded and watched under the new format.