I don’t have a source to link, but believe that the conversion from free trial to paid subscriber averages greater than 10%. Obviously it differs based on a number of factors and Quibi had a very long and generous free trial. The Amazon channel store usually offers 7-day or 30-day, Hulu trials are often 7-day or 30-day. I’ve never seen a 90-day free trial for a streaming service until Quibi.
Whatever the case, the numbers for Quibi are under 10% conversion (I saw 8% quoted in one article). We didn’t pay to renew, so we’re not part of the sub 10%.
Streaming service Quibi only managed to convert a little under 10 percent of its early wave of users into paying subscribers, says mobile analytics firm Sensor Tower. According to the firm’s new report on Quibi’s early growth, the short-form video platform signed up about 9 10,000 users in its first few days back in April. Of those users, only about 72,000 stuck around after the three-month free trial, indicating the app had about an 8 percent conversion rate.
Quibi reportedly lost 90 percent of early users after their free trials expired – The Verge
What could have improved Quibi’s conversion rate? The big one is the cast to TV feature (see: Quibi “accelerating” engineering roadmap for cast to TV feature, was “always” planned, says Whitman) that is on the ridiculously slow track to completion, but another would be the obvious: having better content. They spent so much money developing content, but there just aren’t any break-out popular shows.
Is it the quick bite 7-10 minute episodic length or is it the content at any length?
If you run a streaming service and don’t have movies and/or shows people want to watch, why should they pay? I think the reason the service continues to suck is because they miscalculated the features in their service and don’t have any killer shows. They have a few decent ones that we watched, but not that amazing “must-see” show to keep more people subscribed.
Look, Amazon Prime has had a lousy user interface since its inception, but they have the second most number of subscribers. One could argue that it’s because it’s a gimme for those who have a Prime subscription, but even Disney+ that came out less than a year ago has already amassed over 53 million subscribers. Quibi is lagging because they don’t have the content people want to see nor do they have any other business like Amazon to sweeten the deal.
Anybody reading currently have a paid Quibi subscription? What do you watch there? Any recommendations for those of us on the outside of the paywall?
Movies, Movies, Movies 
Mentioned this yesterday; think Quibi’s big audience would have been commuters, and with the world suddenly not commuting, I’d have shelved the whole thing for a year.
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Yeah, they weren’t willing to put the brakes on the launch and that was just one of numerous mistakes.
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What I find interesting with Quibi is that one of my favorite podcasts left and went over there but now they are back with these 8-1- minute episodes in virtually the same format as before; little changes except the music…the content is literally the same. I just started noticing it about a couple of weeks ago. They started dropping them in my podcast feed. So I was scratching my head wondering why are they doing this? Then I thought maybe it is to get paid subscribers to come over to Quibi but why would I do that if I can listen to the same content for free in a podcast? Perhaps Quibi should convert to a podcast format? ? The small increments are better suited, I think.
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Extreme episodic format might suit a podcast … then again I’m thinking like Joe Rogan has used YouTube for makes the most sense. Chunk up interesting portions of his long form show and share those.
Of course you raise a great point in that if most people are only interested in the snippets, they won’t pay to subscribe to the entire thing. Then again, the most ardent fans will be willing to take on an additional subscription. In that case, why not just monetize directly? Why use Quibi? That’s the part I really don’t understand. Joe Rogan, that I mentioned before just made a $100 million dollar deal with Spotify and he can still chunk up his show as he always has done on YouTube. His full channel shows will be at Spotify where presumably you will have to pay $10/month … but then there are all the other music ad-free you can listen to there. I guess that’s where Spotify is seeing the value.
Quibi doesn’t have enough anchor content at present to make that pitch, they have no deep well of quality legacy material to offer. They just have a bunch of new shows (mostly, I guess, except for the podcast you like that went there), and it’s not enough to attract and retain a large % of subscribers … yet.
My guess is somebody like Apple will buy what is worth buying at Quibi for pennies on the dollar. They need more content. I’m not sure how much Quibi content is worthwhile, but that seems like something they might be interested in. To a lesser extent Netflix and Amazon might be interested, too .. but not right now. They will wait and let Quibi sink further into distress.
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Yes, I have to agree with you on all of that. We will just have to wait and see.
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