Making Money with Membership Sites

Membership sites seem to have become a really popular way to make money online. And, this is understandably so.

One great thing about membership sites is that if you do have a great product/site, then chances are, you will have recurring income – weekly, monthly, quarterly, or even annually – through membership or subscription fees. Your best strategy is to make sure that you take care of your existing members and to encourage them to keep their memberships.

So, how do you get started with setting up membership sites?

There’s a lot to cover regarding this topic, so I’m hoping to break this down in to a series of articles/posts. This one’s just an introduction to the whole idea of membership site building.

In any case, here’s a quick overview on what to do to set up and to make money from membership sites -

1. Choose what kind of membership site that you would like to run. Consider your niche and your target audience. What kind of products/benefits will you offer? What’s your “hook”? What would make people want to pay money to be a member of your site? This is really a very important part of your planning process when it comes to creating memberships. So, take your time in considering your options.

Just remember that all paid membership sites offer premium services that you can’t find easily for free on the web. That’s why it’s vital to think about this aspect of your business.

Some examples of paid membership sites that I have come across include:

• a guitar or piano membership site where you can download free music sheets
• a blogging services site where they offer free installation a blog software plus some premium plug-ins
• a food site where they offer restaurant vouchers and other freebies
• an educational site that have printable lesson plans and other resources
• a web design site where they offer free premium blog/site templates

2. Decide on the technology that you wish to use for your membership site. Although this may seem daunting, there are many ways now that you can run membership sites with just very little programming and designing expertise.

Some ways of setting up a paid membership site include:

• Running a Wordpress blog and adding on membership plugins
• Using third party services such as Ning to run membership sites and then charging member fees
• Creating a website with both free and premium content. You can then charge for the premium content. To help you to automate the process, it is highly recommended that you use a membership programme/software.

3. Decide on your membership programme. You need to consider things like: What’s the membership duration that you wish to offer? Weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually? How much will you charge for membership? There are no hard and fast rules here. It will really depend on the kind of site you have and the services and products that you offer.

4. Think about how you will market your membership sites and attract members. Just putting up a membership site isn’t a surefire way to make money. It’s important to know how you can actually encourage your people not just to sign up to become a member of your site (this in itself is a challenge, even for free memberships!)… but to part with their hard-earned cash just to be a member.

Some questions to consider: Will you advertise your site? If so, how? Will you run ads on your member site? Can paying members have the option of turning off those ads? What kind of functionalities will members get? Will you offer a free membership? If yes, what are the benefits of becoming a premium member? For example, popular photo sharing site Flickr has a free membership option. However, they offer a premium (”Pro”) version by giving paying members some benefits like increased upload limits and other improved functionality.

5. Have a plan to keep your existing customers happy! Although it’s very tempting to focus a lot of your attention to gaining new members, you must always remember to think of ways to encourage existing customers to remain loyal. Give them a reason to be a member for as long as possible. And perhaps, even talk about the benefits of being a member of your site to people that they know.