Creating a paid membership site is perhaps the best move an online business can make in these tumultuous economic times. Paid membership sites offer a constant flow of income that can grow overnight in some instances.
When setting up a paid membership site you are doing the work once, and then
reap the monetary rewards over and over again for as long as you offer information to your members. The site can be set to be accessed monthly or by a yearly subscription. No matter what, money will be coming in all the time. Passive income possibly at it’s best.
Knowing how much to charge for your paid membership site is something that is as individual as your company is to the whole of the Internet. Only you can decide what the price should be. Since the start up of a site like this is relatively low, it’s safe to assume you can expect to make your initial outlay back rather quickly.
Although you may have ongoing expenses, for the most part, once you repay yourself for the start up costs, the remainder of what you make afterwards is profit.
The potential profits are unlimited once you set your price. Let’s say you want to start out by charging $19.99 a month to let people have access to your membership site. You have 100 people who have signed up. This will give you a guaranteed $1,999.00 a month. Now imagine if you charged more?
You are in control of how much your site makes. You control the cost of the membership as well as the content inside. Speaking of the content, you need to make sure the content is actually worth the money you expect to charge to have access to it. This is a common mistake most newcomers make, they charge way too much for way too little content.
People want to be sure they are getting more than their money’s worth for anything they purchase or subscribe too. If you do not offer content that is informative, updated and current, you have made a crucial mistake and subscribers will catch on fast. A great site will include quality content more than worth the price you charge for it. In turn you lead yourself to people spreading the word and business growing over and over again.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Membership Sites Take Work
It seems that everyone is singing the praises of membership websites these days. Creating a membership site online is a great way to create passive income without being tied to your computer day in and day out. That’s not to say these types of websites don’t take work – quite the contrary actually.
While membership site ownership takes a lot of the hassle of working for an hourly wage in a service business or for someone else, you still have to put in some leg work. A membership site owner could easily say that’s all they do, however there is so much more involved in the process if you want your site to be successful.
Let’s take a very popular membership site idea seen more and more on the Internet these days – PLR Memberships. These memberships sell content in various forms such as articles, blog posts, sales pages, and more to Internet marketers and other website owners. The most common PLR membership is a monthly one where members receive new content each and every month.
Many mistakenly think the owner of a PLR membership site simply sits back and rakes in the payments each month. Not quite. Here’s just part of what all the owner is responsible for on a monthly basis.
• Plan ahead as to what members will be receiving months ahead of when they will actually get it.
• Write or have writers create the PLR content for each month.
• Review the content and edit as needed.
• Upload the content to the website.
• Notify members of the content’s availability.
• Handle any customer service issues (of which there WILL be).
• Handle all payments, refund requests and other billing disputes.
• Continually market the membership (you do want it to grow don’t you?)
• Constantly thinking of ways to improve membership to stay ahead of the competition.
Like I said, that’s just a partial list of what all is involved in running a successful membership site. If you think you can create a membership site, throw some content up and sit back and spend your checks as they come in, unfortunately this is NOT the case. Marketing a membership site alone can be time consuming to say the least, if not planned out and done correctly.
If you’re thinking of starting your own membership site, I encourage you to take the time to really find out what all is involved. Think your plan through before jumping in with both feet. You’ll be glad you did – no matter which way you choose to go once you’ve looked at all the steps necessary to not only create but grow your business.
While membership site ownership takes a lot of the hassle of working for an hourly wage in a service business or for someone else, you still have to put in some leg work. A membership site owner could easily say that’s all they do, however there is so much more involved in the process if you want your site to be successful.
Let’s take a very popular membership site idea seen more and more on the Internet these days – PLR Memberships. These memberships sell content in various forms such as articles, blog posts, sales pages, and more to Internet marketers and other website owners. The most common PLR membership is a monthly one where members receive new content each and every month.
Many mistakenly think the owner of a PLR membership site simply sits back and rakes in the payments each month. Not quite. Here’s just part of what all the owner is responsible for on a monthly basis.
• Plan ahead as to what members will be receiving months ahead of when they will actually get it.
• Write or have writers create the PLR content for each month.
• Review the content and edit as needed.
• Upload the content to the website.
• Notify members of the content’s availability.
• Handle any customer service issues (of which there WILL be).
• Handle all payments, refund requests and other billing disputes.
• Continually market the membership (you do want it to grow don’t you?)
• Constantly thinking of ways to improve membership to stay ahead of the competition.
Like I said, that’s just a partial list of what all is involved in running a successful membership site. If you think you can create a membership site, throw some content up and sit back and spend your checks as they come in, unfortunately this is NOT the case. Marketing a membership site alone can be time consuming to say the least, if not planned out and done correctly.
If you’re thinking of starting your own membership site, I encourage you to take the time to really find out what all is involved. Think your plan through before jumping in with both feet. You’ll be glad you did – no matter which way you choose to go once you’ve looked at all the steps necessary to not only create but grow your business.
The First Steps for Starting a Membership Site of Your Own
A membership site is a website that provides information or services to those people who register and pay to be a member. Most membership sites bill their members on a monthly basis. Once someone signs up as a member, depending on the owner’s set up, they are automatically billed each month. Those who sign up to become members have access to member’s only information provided by the site owner on a regular basis.
In order to start a membership site of your own, you must first determine who your market is. Next, you’ll need to put together a product, service or other information your market is in need of. Remember, it must be valuable enough they will be willing to pay for it on a recurring basis.
Once you have this information it’s time to think about how you will receive and keep track of member payments for each billing cycle. Popular payment options for members include credit cards or Paypal. Clickbank is also a popular payment gateway for membership sites, since they’ve recently added a recurring billing feature for publishers. The payments are still made by your customer via a credit card or Paypal, but Clickbank deals with all the accounting for you. This saves you a lot of time each and every month. You receive your check after all returns and fees have been removed and that’s it.
Next you’ll need to determine which type of membership site software you want to use to manage your members, the content, and all the important confidential information such as logins, etc. that come with a membership site.
If you’re looking to save a bit of money with this step (some membership management software can be a bit pricey) one way you can handle how you offer your content and member access to it is to set up an email list. Each month send an email telling current members where to go in order to access their new information via a special link on your website.
In order to start a membership site of your own, you must first determine who your market is. Next, you’ll need to put together a product, service or other information your market is in need of. Remember, it must be valuable enough they will be willing to pay for it on a recurring basis.
Once you have this information it’s time to think about how you will receive and keep track of member payments for each billing cycle. Popular payment options for members include credit cards or Paypal. Clickbank is also a popular payment gateway for membership sites, since they’ve recently added a recurring billing feature for publishers. The payments are still made by your customer via a credit card or Paypal, but Clickbank deals with all the accounting for you. This saves you a lot of time each and every month. You receive your check after all returns and fees have been removed and that’s it.
Next you’ll need to determine which type of membership site software you want to use to manage your members, the content, and all the important confidential information such as logins, etc. that come with a membership site.
If you’re looking to save a bit of money with this step (some membership management software can be a bit pricey) one way you can handle how you offer your content and member access to it is to set up an email list. Each month send an email telling current members where to go in order to access their new information via a special link on your website.
Strategies for Making More Money with Membership Sites
The whole point behind setting up a membership website is to make money through recurring payments sent in each month by members. But, there’s more to making a decent income from membership sites beyond just the member payments. Here are a few ways to make money with a membership site once your members are in.
Information Strategy
If you have information about a certain subject there are a couple of ways you can go about setting up a membership website and making money from that knowledge. You can set up a blog type of website where people can subscribe, for a fee, to receive regular information updates from your website.
You can also set up an informative website where members have a clear way of participating with your as well as the other members on the chosen subject. This is useful as it makes them feel as if they are getting special information from you directly. You don’t have to be a constant presence either. Simply state that you will be available X amount of times a month or week from say 12pm to 2 pm to answer questions. Another option that won’t require a set time commitment of you is to create a forum where you can pop in and out to help members as you can.
Member’s Only Benefits
Offer more information or your services to members at a reduced rate. For instance, if you have a fellow business owner who sells a product your members would find useful, see if you can set up a special discount for your members only.
Do you offer a service or know someone who does? Again offer your members a discount created specifically for them.
Affiliate Programs
Affiliate programs are another way to generate income from membership websites. If you promote products as an affiliate, be sure to include those promotions in emails and posts to your members. As with the previous money-making option, you might even be able to set up a discount just for being a member or give them an added bonus of your own when they purchase through your affiliate link.
However you go about adding to your membership website profits, one thing is essential; Make certain the information or discounts you’re offering is relevant to your membership and valuable to its members.
Information Strategy
If you have information about a certain subject there are a couple of ways you can go about setting up a membership website and making money from that knowledge. You can set up a blog type of website where people can subscribe, for a fee, to receive regular information updates from your website.
You can also set up an informative website where members have a clear way of participating with your as well as the other members on the chosen subject. This is useful as it makes them feel as if they are getting special information from you directly. You don’t have to be a constant presence either. Simply state that you will be available X amount of times a month or week from say 12pm to 2 pm to answer questions. Another option that won’t require a set time commitment of you is to create a forum where you can pop in and out to help members as you can.
Member’s Only Benefits
Offer more information or your services to members at a reduced rate. For instance, if you have a fellow business owner who sells a product your members would find useful, see if you can set up a special discount for your members only.
Do you offer a service or know someone who does? Again offer your members a discount created specifically for them.
Affiliate Programs
Affiliate programs are another way to generate income from membership websites. If you promote products as an affiliate, be sure to include those promotions in emails and posts to your members. As with the previous money-making option, you might even be able to set up a discount just for being a member or give them an added bonus of your own when they purchase through your affiliate link.
However you go about adding to your membership website profits, one thing is essential; Make certain the information or discounts you’re offering is relevant to your membership and valuable to its members.
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