Membership websites as a business.

 

Membership sites pay monthly.

If there is interest in a subject, You can make a membership site.

Think about it… Sports, beauty, teaching, training, financial, health, there are literally thousands of membership website opportunities.

You build it properly and people will happily pay for a monthly dose of great new fresh content on that passion of theirs.

My favourite subject ideas are the massive niches online, weave hairstyles, fishing, homesteading, survivalism, dieting, yoga and at least 100 more very good ideas.

If you have a lot of knowledge on a subject or are willing to get experts to write for you on that subject, you have the bare bones of a perfect online business.

How cool is it that people find your website (you can do organic traffic or pay for traffic) they then get a free trial.

And fall in love with your content and happily sign up for a monthly payment.

This is just like people paying for a magazine subscription, and millions and millions of people do that for the things that they love every day.

 

Let us get started, shall we?

 

Membership websites

Description – You build a website that is the equivalent of an online magazine or club where people are happy to pay you a monthly fee for what you supply them. This could be training, news, content, videos and a dozen other things. Clubs and magazines are a proven model – you just mimic what is already successful and earn a beautiful residual income.

Building a membership website is one of the strongest online business models simply because you combine two things – people’s passion for an item/product/service/subject and the fact that they pay a recurring monthly fee to belong to your site.

This gives you massive stability from an income point of view.

The popular memberships sites are the following…

(I am taking this out of my head as I type – so I might forget a few)

Training – People are very willing to pay a monthly fee for a few weeks or months of training in a subject that they want to improve themselves in. Photoshop, make money online, art, cooking, baking, kids stuff, educational etc

Hobbies – If they are passionate about their hobbies – they will pay to be surrounded by like-minded friends. Toy trains, radio controlled models, paper crafts etc. thousands of options here.

Interests – This is basically any magazine you have ever seen on the bookshelves from fashion to bodybuilding.

Sports – Sort of the above, but sports fans are amusingly fanatic.

I would pay for a decent formula one membership site.

How does it work?

You set up a WordPress site adjust it so that there are different levels of access – free, gold level, silver level, platinum level etc, and then you add content that is really valuable and interesting enough to keep people paying to belong to your club.

There are membership business models that just deliver the content via email for a set period of time.

I personally think those are likely to be “light-in-the-pants” or if you prefer – a bit weak.

Do you need a website?

I would say definitely yes – see my last line above.

It should be WordPress – they have the best and easiest membership systems available

Do you need any skills at all?

Definitely – on the subject, you are offering on your membership website.

BUT, let me give you a quick (great) example for a membership site.

You start a fishing membership site.

You build it etc…

Then 80% of your newly added content will be interviewing you do (on video) at the actual places where people are catching fish.

So you spend a weekend at a lake interviewing 20 people. Then on Monday, you publish those interviews.

You get the interviewees to have free membership for a month, and they must share the video via FaceBook etc. Their friends can also have a free membership for 30 days.

Plus you add general fishing stories facts etc. Just like a magazine.

This is very lightly described here; I could do more details for you if consulted.

Because you will be offering fresh, real, local fishing advice for all the dams and rivers in an area (Like South Africa or New South Wales) the people you interview will very likely pay to remain a member of your site.

That way 50% of the people you interview will join up, 10% of their friends will follow suit, and they will share and share their interviews with their friends etc. (OK, so I cannot be sure of those numbers, but if your content is great, your writing style its the members etc…)

Over time you will be adding a lot of members every month. Once your income is good enough to advertise, you can grow the site really fast.

Imagine having 5000 members all paying you only $5 a month.

Now think of those membership sites charging (and getting) $50 a month…

Do you need complicated skills?

If you had the website built, and you were already skilled in the subject of your niche, you will not need more.

If you are not skilled on the subject yet, your constant daily research will make you an expert within days. 

Do you need to spend money?

Not really, unless you pay to have it all built for you (the membership site)

You could also contract staff to go and do the interviewing/content creation and even the posting and maintaining of the site.

Or you could do it all yourself without needing to spend big money

Do you need to have detailed knowledge of that subject?

Eventually. See the comment two questions higher

How much income potential does this niche/method have?

Massive – But it will be strongly linked to the demand for that service/membership. For example, there might only be 100 000 potential toy train fans out there so you could only ever have a club size of a few hundred members.

BUT if you had the biggest soccer (football) site, you could have a million members all paying you $5 a month. Would $5 million a month be enough?

How fast would I likely start to earn money?

Unless you buy visitors/traffic you should expect to work on the site at least 50 hours a month and not see any income for the first four months at all. BUT once your members start to join you can buy traffic and grow faster.

Would I need one or many websites?

Most of the time one is enough. But you could choose to build “automatic” membership sites that release the content at a preset schedule. That way once it is built you could go on and build another. This works for smaller training sites, like Photoshop courses, or how to build garden structures or ABC of bookkeeping etc.

So What Now?
Read – Learn – Click

This website is not a glorified sales page.

You are supposed to learn, read, follow links, get advice and slowly find your feet.

Once you get the hang of my laid-back style and see how I am helping you, you could skip to the blog section and see what is new, what has changed, what I suggest and follow the ever-changing pulse of online marketing.

Make yourself a cup of tea or coffee, or get a beer, ad some snacks, and then settle down and start to educate yourself right here – pretty much for free.

I do not need to push you to start your business, or your part-time thing – YOU need to do that yourself.

I will simply explain it all to you, and leave the rest up to you.

The best of luck!

Where to next?

Use the menu – or follow the core links that I will list here for you below to those pages that really will help you get started with your new lifestyle.

The main source of new deals, opportunities and ideas will all come from the blog section as I post and review and do things that will help you make your income online – Please use the links below.

Local Business Lead Generating Cheat Sheet

This cheat-sheet is full of simple to apply tips that you can do today to start increasing the calls and leads that you need for your local business.