Why Own A Membership Site?
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 site like this. 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 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. It Gives You 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 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 Protected Content Site Allows You Space To Advertise More Targeted Products
Protected content (member) sites unlike ebooks/videos/static sites are dynamic. If you’re doing your job as the 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? this type of site can yield multiple sources of income over and above the residual subscription income.
3. They 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 – the protected content site owner has far more flexibility and credibility than someone peddling ebooks for $1.99 from his sad HTML static site. Plus the 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.
4. As Your Member Site Grows, You Offer More And More Versus Your Competition
If you operate a model where as soon as the member joins, they access everything in your protected content site, it’s a real advantage – especially if you have been around for years, your clients can feel they are getting an unmissable bargain.
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5. If & When The Time Comes To Sell On Your Virtual Real Estate – They Can Fetch Five And Six Figure Sums
A while ago, I wrote a book called Site Flipping Tycoon (you can download it free here). It’s about how to acquire quality internet websites on the cheap, make tiny modifications and flip (sell) them at multiples of your investment.
If you are in the website flipping business, then this type of site can be an extraordinary source of income for you. Especially when you can prove that you have a base of existing members, and you have a flow of organic traffic coming in.
The Challenges & Problems In Setting Up A Protected Content Site
We’ve seen the many benefits that having your own powerful site like this can bring. So why is it that less than 1% of sites on the internet are membership based ones – when this model is so profitable?
It’s to do with the many challenges that present themselves in setting up a membership site such as:
1. Finding quality membership site software that performs well is difficult – and the best scripts can cost several hundred (to over a thousand) dollars to purchase.
2. They can be a technical nightmare to set-up. Even with a good script, you will frankly need a certain level of tech savvy or you’re almost certainly going to struggle. You should of course spend time to train yourself getting technically proficient, but in reality this can take far more time & patience than most people have. I know in my early days as an internet entrepreneur I tried and tried (and tried) scrip installations…it never worked, and I ended up paying someone to do it (it saved me a lot of stress, and the investment paid for itself in multiples shortly after launching my first site). The fact is most people are NOT website experts – and the expense and difficulty associated with setting up a good protected content site is a real hurdle for them.
If you’re technically proficient this is less of an issue – but if you’re not familiar and experienced with terms like server Cpanels, MySQL, cgi, FTP then I’m sorry to tell you that there is a lot of pain ahead. That’s just a fact.
For those of us who can side step this, it’s a real opportunity, because the competition from similar site types is far less intense than other non-complex sites.
3. Another huge factor is the sometimes jaw dropping costs of finding quality scripts that do as they’re supposed. You see many low end or even free membership scripts – and typically they will leave you pulling your hair out trying to get them to work (only to find that fundamental flaws in the script means you’ve just wasted countless hours on something that just doesn’t work). At the other end of the spectrum, some membership site software solutions sell for thousands of dollars (and still require high technical ability from the user). Again, this is one of the big reasons why so few people are able to set-up quality membership sites…it’s far harder than you may imagine.
4. Carefully researching a cash generating niche where the protected content model will work well. The model itself is not suited to every niche. It’s important to do a lot of research and only pick a niche where these models are accepted by the core prospects – and of course the niche should be one with millions of cash rich prospects, and have a good affiliate infrastructure so that you can earn the “good stuff” (like the CPA & big ticket affiliate commissions that we talked about above). All of these factors are vital in making sure your membership site business has a good chance of long term success.
You’re going to be spending a long time promoting and managing each membership site you own – don’t make the mistake of picking anything but the best niches to get involved with.
5. Finding new products and/or content for your site. A good membership site is one where the member feels compelled to stay, month after month. In order to keep members happy, you must offer constant new products/content on a monthly basis. You must have a plan for this before launching your membership site. How much new content/products will you source (as a rule of thumb, find the industry norm and then provide 20% more)? Where will you source this, and how much will this cost you? If the cost for new products/content is high – you will need to figure out how much to charge your members so you can come away with a tidy profit.
6. Successfully marketing your site. You could have the best website in the world – but unless you manage to attract qualified traffic that are interested in the content of your protected content site, you still wont make any money. There are specific tactics that you’ll want to employ to meet this goal.
So, you need to juggle a lot of balls about to make a success of your site. Believe me, making even one membership site into a profit spewing juggernaught (sorry, I’m subscribed to all the guru newsletters) takes a LOT of dedication, time and know how. But, get it right, and the rewards are lavish – and may just last a lifetime.
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