Join Our RSS Feed and Receive Cool Blog Money Making Tips - Click Here!
Powered by MaxBlogPress  
Browse > Home / Making Money Online / Membership Site Business Model?

 Powered by Max Banner Ads 

Membership Site Business Model?

August 15, 2007

There's a lot of hype online about owning and operating a membership site. And why not, it's a good business model.

I have one membership site that makes me a consistent revenue stream. And I know I should put more time in and build more of them, but dang, they are a lot of work, at least the set-up stage is anyway.

I know people say how easy they are to set-up and get going, and that you can put them on autopilot. After running one I completely disagree with this thought process.

Do you really think that if you put your membership site on autopilot that people will be willing to pay for it?

Membership Sites take work, just like anything worthwhile. But if you're willing to put in the long hours, you can create a very profitable site. Once it is set up, then you can drastically reduce the hours necessary to keep it going.

Or the smart thing to do would be to outsource the daily activities to somebody else.

But I digress…

There are three major things to consider, or at least think about, before you start your membership site (assuming you have already identified your niche):

1. What type of Software are you going to use to manage your membership site? There are a lot of good ones on the market but I like two that are cost effective and have all the tools you would need:

  • aMember Pro - I use an older version on my CallCenterCafe.com membership site.
  • EasyMemberPro - I've watched the demo and heard a lot of good things about this software. It looks really easy to use and has a lotof the bells and whistles.

2. Subscriber retention - After you spend time and or money to recruit new members how are you going to keep them active and paying? I had to do this with my membership site.

My marketing was pretty solid but I was losing about 38% of the folks that registered. So I brainstormed ideas and asked customers that canceled why they were canceling. With this feedback I was able to reduce my cancellation rate to 9%.

3. Quality Content - How are you going to be able to track down the content you need to make your membership site worth paying for. Are you going to hire people? Maybe allow them to submit content for free so they can advertise their offer. Anyway you need to think about this.

Your goal is not to manage the site but bring it up, get it profitable and repeat. Doing this will generate a very nice income and a business that has value. Others will eventually be willing to purchase your site from you.

Here's a goody. A fellow blogger has put together a four-part series of post on this very subject. I'm going to link to the fourth post in the series because it list all the previous post in that series - Does that make sense?

Make sure you read the entire series…Here is the post:

How To Launch A Membership Site - Part 4: Content and Pricing

May your membership sites bring you wealth!

Technorati Tags: memberhsip site, make money online, amember pro, easymembershippro, membership software

Powered by ScribeFire.

Share on Facebook Share on Facebook

Content Valuable? Please buy us a Delicious Cold Beer

Share This

Random Posts

Written by gmeares · Filed Under Making Money Online 

Comments

2 Responses to “Membership Site Business Model?”

  1. Nancy on June 5th, 2008 11:28 pm

    One software that I recently found while doing research was VTribes, I have been reading up on it, and as you said there is a great deal of work involved in starting and running a membership site, you should save yourself the headache of all the initial set up. I put a link in above to a blog that has some really good membership software info.

    Nancy’s last blog post..More Tips for Engaging Your Members

  2. gmeares on June 6th, 2008 1:12 pm

    Hi Nancy,

    Thanks for stopping by and adding your resource. Hopefully the readers will find value wih it. Funny thing is that I was looking at that resource last night.

    Greg
    http://www.marketingsoftwaretools.com

Got something to say?





Close
E-mail It