Ten Reasons To Start A Paid Membership Site
Out of the various sites I’ve ran over the years membership sites have, by far, been the easiest to profit from. Easier than forums, classified sites, safelists, niche sites, ad boards, surfing sites and blogs. From my own personal experience I have listed my top ten reasons to start a membership site. If I had a membership script to sell I might offer reasons like viral traffic, low investment, little overhead, no inventory to ship or stock, no billing, and huge potential for growth. While all true, I want to go a little deeper than
that.
- Subscription Payments: If you haven’t been on the receiving end of ’subscription payments’ you are truly missing out. Whether you call it passive or residual income, automated or autopilot profits, subscription payments quickly add up to a nice income from the daily payments you receive from your members. Do you want to wake up every single morning and smile as you see the subscription payment notifications in your email? Start a membership site! I haven’t gone a single day without making money for a couple of years now.
- List Building: Most membership scripts have list and mailer functions built right in or automatically add members to your autoresponder. As a personal preference I prefer a third-party list management integration rather than mailing from your own shared or dedicated server. Using a professional service such as AWeber makes sense for many reasons. [See The Battle For Email Deliverability]
- Backend Income Potential: Upgrades, one-time-offers, bonuses, limited time offers, upsells and other rich features are built into the higher end scripts.
- Cross Promotions: You can use your membership base to drive traffic to other related sites that offer products, services or affiliate products. Have a new e-book you need to get out there? Offer it at a discount to your members. Of course you still have the basic options such as banner ads and programs like AdSense.
- Advertising Potential: Once you have a significant amount of site traffic you can easily sell banner and text advertising. How about offering a featured member spot? You could even have a little fun with it and use an auction to sell the ad. You have a new list now why not offer ezine ads?
- Keeping It Real: A paid membership will help keep the spam and free loaders out and keeping the numbers honest. Anyone will join a free membership but only those truly interested will pay to join.
- Establishing Yourself As An Expert: This may seem a little cliché but even if the media isn’t knocking on your door your members will consider you an expert. If they don’t you will have little success. That recognition and reputation will carry into other online areas. Keep your members happy, a unique and fresh site, and you will quickly gain respect in that field.
- Affiliate Base: If you have an affiliate program built into your membership site it wont take long at all to see who your top sellers are. Building this base of top performing affiliates is a priceless benefit that can pay off big with future projects. Build those relationships as quickly as possible and keep them active.
Other more directly beneficial reasons to run an affiliate program with your membership site are the extra advertising, traffic and back links provided by your affiliates. - Unlimited Possibilities: Membership sites are everywhere and many are doing very well. A site providing valuable and unique content in any niche has the potential of being a paid membership site. Are you or do you have access of a professional dog trainer? How many people would join a paid site loaded with weekly videos on actual dog training techniques? We see some pretty big named marketers with membership sites that resell digital products with various resell rights. Others are providing specialized courses and online training. How about an interview site where a new expert is interviewed every month? A coupon club membership? How about a site that gives great personal one-on-one investment advice? Well, you get the point. The possibilities are limited only by your imagination.
- Saleable Asset: An established membership site with a proven track record can bring in a nice sum when it’s time to sell and move on.
There are many things to consider before investing in your own membership site. Time is the big one. Time is a variable factor depending on what your membership site will offer. Just like a blog, fresh content is a must – only now your visitors are paying for it. That puts the pressure on you to do it right. Developing and marketing the site can also take up a lot of your time. Then you have the updates, upgrades and support issues. These things are easier to deal with once you establish a regular income 
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Brian on June 27th, 2009
You may notice, other than AWeber, I didn’t use any affiliate links or recommend a specific membership site script. Don’t let that stop you from recommending one. Our Comment Policy allows a relevant link or two
Brian´s last blog ..Ezine Advertising Myths