Membership Sites: Can You Make Money from Them?

Recently I wrote 30 Real Ways to Make Money Blog­ging, and lots of peo­ple have expressed their enthu­si­asm in the vari­ety of ways to make money doing some­thing they love.  One of the best ways to make a long-term income online is with mem­ber­ship sites.  They offer a won­der­ful ser­vice to the cus­tomer and a way to con­tin­u­ally make a monthly income that could per­haps sus­tain your lifestyle indefinitely. 

What is a Mem­ber­ship Site?

Look­ing for the right infor­ma­tion online can some­times be very hard.  That is one rea­son why Blo­gus­sion was cre­ated.  To offer tar­geted blog­ging tips to inter­ested read­ers.  To go a step fur­ther then just your blog and it’s posts, some blog­gers have begun to use mem­ber­ship sites to offer con­tent to readers. 

The pur­pose of these sites are to cre­ate such incred­i­bly resource­ful infor­ma­tion com­piled in one place, that oth­ers think is worth pay­ing for.  Usually mem­ber­ship sites offer infor­ma­tion that can be found only through their con­tent and often it includes expert train­ing.  Many mem­ber­ship sites even have coach­ing avail­able from author­ity blog­gers in their niche. 

For exam­ple, I love to ride road bikes or cycle.  If I was to start a mem­ber­ship site about cycling I would want to have every­thing a cyclist would want to know about rid­ing.  How to buy a bike, where to buy a bike, rec­om­men­da­tions, how to fix a bike, do your own repairs, train for a race, track your mileage, diet, etc.  I would put together a site that has every­thing you could ever want on it, includ­ing some soft­ware that would track member’s progress and help them develop into amaz­ing cyclists.  To top it off I would pay so pro rid­ers to put together a video, arti­cle or occa­sional webi­nar with their expe­ri­ences and exper­tise.  Like maybe a 5 minute promo with Lance Armstrong.

If you are into road bikes and rid­ing can you see how valu­able this mem­ber­ship site would be?  I would pay upwards to $400 — $1000 to belong to it.  Espe­cially if I got occa­sional one on one train­ing with some experts.  These kinds of sites would make all the difference.

Now con­vert this idea into your niche.  Think about it for a minute.  BRAINSTORM. What could you do that would be so incred­i­ble peo­ple would clam­mer to sign up for it? Now that you have the idea how would you cre­ate it?

How to Set-Up a Mem­ber­ship Site in 15 Minutes

I am going to show you three ways to set-up a mem­ber­ship site and each of them are very easy.  Some will pro­vide much bet­ter pro­tec­tion, more pow­er­ful fea­tures, and much more pro­fes­sional tools to help you, but each can get the job done.

All you will need is one of the site build­ing options, an email list or pro­mo­tion tech­nique, and con­tent to get on your way.

How Much Can You Charge? 

This is a very good ques­tion.  It all depends on the unique­ness of your con­tent, the size of your mar­ket, and the qual­ity of your mem­ber­ship site.  To learn how much you can charge for prod­ucts or mem­ber­ship sites just start sur­vey­ing, ask­ing poten­tial users, and try­ing dif­fer­ent things out. 

Some sites I have seen for up to $1000 for a life­time mem­ber­ship to the site.  The site promised con­tin­ual updates and expert coach­ing. Other sites are as low as $20.  Just make sure to not sell your con­tent short.  If it really is unique and extremely use­ful, they will pay for it.

Option 1:Built in Word­Press Mem­ber­ship Site Maker

This option is free, easy to setup ini­tially, and built in to your cur­rent word­press dash­board.  Sounds good right?  Let me tell you how to make this happen.

The first step is easy: Write Unique and impor­tant con­tent in your word­press blog.  Then go into the “Edit” tab of your “Posts” menu in the Word­Press Dash­board.  Select the con­tent you would like to make part of your new mem­ber­ship site and open the indi­vid­ual “Edit Post” screen.  In the right side­bar, at the top there is a “Pub­lish” widget.  Go to the “Vis­i­bil­ity” option and select “edit”.  Then out of the 3 options choose “Pass­word Pro­tected”.  Input the pass­word and you now have pro­tected content.

The next step is to cre­ate a “page” with the title of your pre­mium con­tent, mem­ber­ship site.  Then use this page to describe the mem­ber­ship, offer a Pay­pal or other auto­mated pay­ment option.  Give out the pass­word to those that have bought the rights.  And watch your income start to come. 

Of course it is impor­tant to note that mem­ber­ship sites take a lot of work to pub­li­cize and get mem­bers to. 

Here are some Pro’s and Con’s of this Word­Press Option:

• Pro’s- Free and very easy to set-up ini­tially.  Already built into your cur­rent Word­Press dash­board and eas­ily con­verts all of your  blog con­tent into pre­mium content.
• Con’s- Admin­is­tra­tion of the mem­ber­ship site and con­tent will be tedius and dif­fi­cult.  Keep­ing track of mem­bers, chang­ing pass­words for secu­rity rea­sons, updat­ing sta­tus, get­ting paid, and run­ning the mem­ber­ship site will be chal­leng­ing and long.

Option 2: Free Mem­ber­ship Site Word­Press Plug-in

 The next option is also free, offers more options and is eas­ier to admin­is­ter the site with.  Mem­ber­Wing is the com­pany and name of the mem­ber­ship plug-in.  It also touts that the plug-in works seam­lessly with The­sis Theme and offers great seo.

Just like any other plug-in, you down­load the mem­ber­ship plu­gin from their site and load it into your word­press blog.  Then con­fig­ure it and in no time you have a mem­ber­ship site.

Here are a few of their options:

• Insert {+++} any­where into a post or page to cre­ate a text marker.  Every­thing before the marker is free to see (a teaser) and every­thing after­wards is paid content.
• Con­tent and Down­load Pro­tec­tion to stop “guess­ing” and unau­tho­rized links to your pre­mium content. 
• 4 Mem­ber­ship lev­els: Bronze, Sil­ver, Gold, and Plat­inum options allow for dif­fer­ent pric­ing option and con­tent availability.
• Works seam­lessly with Pay­pal, Ejunkie, Pay­Dot­Com, Click­bank and other pop­u­lar pay­ment programs

Pro’s — Much bet­ter admin­is­tra­tion then with pass­word pro­tect­ing your blog.  Allows you to have more con­trol with spe­cific cod­ing and scripts to do much of the work for you.  Addi­tion­ally the free plug-in allows you to see how well the mem­ber­ship site will work with your content.

Con’s - The plug-in is free, but to receive all of the options there are mul­ti­ple lev­els of plug-ins.  So to get the best sup­port, fea­tures and help you will need to have the pre­mium ver­sions of the plu­gin.  I also think that although func­tional, the free ver­sion is not very appeal­ing to the eyes.  It could use some design work to make it look more professional.

Option 3: Pre­mium Mem­ber­ship Site Plug-in

 This is my favorite option.  Of course it is the high­est qual­ity and best value.  No it is not free, but the value comes in what you get out of it for what it costs.  The Wish­list Mem­ber­ship Plug-in offers both a pow­er­ful and lite plug-in to get your site opti­mized and up and run­ning as quickly as you can cre­ate content. 

One thing that is par­tic­u­larly great is that you can cre­ate con­tent in waves.  For exam­ple if you start the mem­ber­ship site and want to cre­ate 10 lessons, you only need one to get mem­bers to start on.  Then automa­tion takes place where they are upgraded to new con­tent based upon your pref­er­ences of time, con­tent, or choice. 

Also, unlike the free choices the pre­mium mem­ber­ship site offers a very sleek look that lets your mem­bers and poten­tial clients know that they are work­ing with a pro­fes­sional site that will offer amaz­ing content.

Here are a few features:

• Unlim­ited Mem­ber­ship Levels
• Easy Instal­la­tion with New or Exist­ing Blog
• Flex­i­ble Mem­ber­ship: Free, Trial, Paid and any com­bi­na­tion of them all!
• Shop­ping Cart System
• Grad­ual Con­tent Deliv­ery System
• At-A-Glance Mem­ber­ship Admin­is­tra­tion: easy to see all mem­bers, import/export files, upgrade mem­bers, pause or delete, sta­tus checks, and more.
• Secure RSS Feeds
• Content/Download Pro­tec­tion
• “Sneak Peak” Con­tent Display
• Cus­tom Error Pages
• 30 Trial Period with Guar­an­teed Money Back Offer
• Sleek Design
• Easy inte­gra­tion with Cur­rent Theme
• Free Upgrades to your plug-in for life
• Great free support
• Sup­port Videos and tutorials
• Auto Response and Auto Pay­ment options

 

The best fea­ture I found is the abil­ity to make the con­tent and then auto­mate the process com­pletely.  I have been amazed with the sys­tem and know that if you can lever­age your traf­fic, build extremely unique con­tent, and use a pow­er­ful mem­ber­ship plu­gin you will make money.

After look­ing over the options and check­ing out the fea­tures, check to see if start­ing a mem­ber­ship site is right for you.  Many of the Problog­gers are using these options to max­i­mize their income online and build their author­ity online.  At the right price, you can do it too!

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