Regular residual income.  Adsense income. CPA income. Big ticket affiliate income. Regular followers. These are just five reasons off the top of my head for you to own a membership site.  Now, despite what some gurus will tell you, setting up and running your own membership site is not easy.

On the contrary, I spent a painful amount of time researching my first ever membership site. I tried numerous paid and zero cost scripts. And, ultimately I spent a fortune having it developed too. Even today, I invest real time and money everday on my membership site, to keep it updated with the very best products, and to try and introduce new initiatives that my members would like.

So, why go through all the hassle? And why do I recommend all my clients have their own membership site business themselves? It goes something like this…

1. Membership Site Income Is Residual Income – The Holy Grail Of Incomes

Residual income is that which is received on a regular basis. It’s a little like having a monthly paycheck, only without the annoying backstabbing boss, or the rush hour commute. It’s not “money for nothing” as some of the membership site ebooks and courses try to make out in their sales pages. Far from it, you still need to invest real time to update your site. But, do it right, offer your clients good regular updates – and more times than not, they will stick around.

You’ll find that as you collect new members, your income can snowball quite dramatically without you having to do “extra” work.  It really is the sophisticated  internet entrepreneurs in come of choice.

2. Your Membership Site Allows You Space To Advertise More Targeted Products

Membership sites unlike ebooks/videos/static sites are dynamic. If you’re doing your job as a membership site owner, you’ll be updating your products regularly. That means people have a reason to keep logging in, and checking the new downloads. That’s a live audience there – and you know what they like. Hence, it allows you a highly targeted stream of responsive prospects to offer additional products and services to.
You can add in CPA links, big ticket affiliate links, Adsense…. And monetise your space effectively. Bottom line? Membership sites can yield multiple sources of income over and above the residual subscription income.

3. Membership Sites Offer You A Competitive Advantage & Brand Awareness

The more difficult something is, the less competition you have. That’s a basic rule in life. Membership sites are notoriously tricky to set-up. That’s why you don’t see them being offered for anything less than top dollar (check the rates on elance for yourself). That’s actually a good thing for you. It means greater barriers to entry, which helps you charge a higher price for what you offer.

It also helps to brand you – a membership site owner has far more flexibility and credibility than someone peddling ebooks for $1.99 from his sad HTML static site. A membership site owner has flexibility to do JVs. And to build a quick list into the thousands, simply by offering a free members level that can be upgraded later.

These are just a few of the advantages of owning a membership site. But, before you start licking your lips, let’s balance this review by talking about some of the challenges and problems that you’ll face when developing your membership site. You didn’t think it was all plain sailing did you?

1. The Technical Hurdles Are High (It’s Why Membership Sites Are Still The Minority)

There are a whole catalogue of membership site scripts – from the most simple (requiring manual member setup) to fancy scripts costing several thousands. And from ones that are painful to set-up to those that simply don’t work. If you’re not technically gifted, it could and (in all honesty) will be a struggle to install correctly.

I’ve used a variety of scripts myself over time – so I know the pain and strife involved.
2. The Importance Of Using A Cutting Edge Script (Not Yesteryears Junk)

A couple of years ago, a well known guru was selling a rather hyped up script for about 1.5k – a lot of people purchased the user rights for this script, which to be fair was quite good at the time. Recently, the same guru has turned around and offered the same script to everyone for f.ree as open source plr software (presumably making a lot of people who invested over a thousand bucks pretty upset – and in case you’re wondering, I didn’t promote it as it was priced far too high then).

The point here is, beware of “free” when you’re trying to set-up a business that presumably needs to be cutting edge, and rich with functionality. You would not feel safe flying in a plane made in the 1950’s – but internet technology evolves at such breakneck speed that using yesteryears free scripts can be highly costly in the long run. There are in fact many zero cost membersite scripts in the market, but I’ve yet to try one that did what it was supposed to, or was simple to install and maintain. More than likely, you’ll end up tearing your hair out in installing and configuring, only to find out some key element doesn’t work.  And then it’s back to the drawing board to try the next one. 
3. Aside From Setting Up Your Membership Site, You Need To Fill It With Good Products Before Offering It Online. That Can Take Time (And Money)

When people opt for a membership site, they expect  a large number of resources to access immediately. Even when you launch your membership site, you’ll need at least 50+ premium products to offer your potential clients something to enjoy. I would suggest 100 as a good start level, but this requires a large time investment to upload.
4. An Understanding Of Membership Site Promotion Is Crucial

Even after you get your membership site up and running, and after you’ve added a good selection of in demand resources to it, there’s still the matter of knowing how and where to promote it. In order to fill it with clients. There are some things that work very well for membership site promotion – and many things that don’t.  Again, if you don’t have a concise blueprint for this, you can end up losing a lot of time and money on hyped (and fake) schemes.

So there you have it – you can see an island of riches. But there are sharks in the water before you can get there.