Build Your Own Membership Site
So, why launch a membership site?
The answer to this can be summed up in just two words — passive income!
In other words, running a membership site means that your members must pay a regular subscription to retain their right to receive the information that you publish. In the most common scenario, this will be a monthly subscription which means that this money will come in from each and every individual member every month for as long as the individual decides to keep their membership alive. Now, stated in these stark, black and white terms, this message perhaps loses some of its power, so allow me to give you an example in order to demonstrate just how powerful this can be.
Imagine for a moment that you have the choice of launching one of two different business models, which for the purposes of simplicity we’ll call ‘model A’ and ‘model B’. In our ‘model A’ scenario, you simply create an e-book, which you plan to sell for $47. In the ‘model B’ scenario, however, you decide to launch exactly the same e-book, but in this case, it is the first monthly product for your brand new membership site, for which you plan to charge $19.95 per month.
Now, imagine that on launch both business models attracted 100 customers. The ‘model A’ scenario would deposit $4700 into your bank account, whilst the ‘model B’ situation would generate $1995. So, on the day of launch, the ‘model A’ scenario is considerably more financially attractive to you. Look one month down the line, however, and the picture changes significantly. Your ‘model A’ customers have bought your e-book, and as far as they are concerned, that is the end of the matter. On the first day of the following month, therefore, you will quite logically earn zero from sales of the same product to those same customers. In your ‘model B’ scenario, however, you will earn another $1995 with little further effort on your part. And the same thing will happen the month after, and the month after that, and the month after that and so on. Now, of course, you must provide constantly updated, fresh new content materials in order to persuade people to retain their membership. So, do not get the false impression that you can do absolutely nothing. But (and this is a critical point to understand), you only need to do every job once. For example, of course, you would need a new product to supply to your customers in the second month and another one for the third month and so on.
You would, however, only need to create this product once. After that, every new customer who joins your membership site would receive exactly the same information, and that information would already have been created. So, apart from updates and any additional information that you wish to provide, all of the work has already been done. Hence, you are earning money for doing very little additional work, which is a definition of the term passive income.
You should also bear in mind that the fact remains that in your ‘model B’ business scenario, you do not have to ’sell’ anything at the beginning of months two to four. The selling job is already done, and as long as you continue to provide what your members are looking for, then they will continue to pay you. Perhaps most importantly, the income from a membership site is reasonably stable. Sure, there will be fluctuations, as some new people join whilst others will leave, but the core income remains stable month to month.
Contrast this with the situation where you sell your 100 ebook copies this month, but nothing the month after. It’s a constant cycle of ‘have’, followed by ‘have not’, followed by ‘have’ and so on, ad infinitum. Does that sound like living the stress-free, relaxed life style that all internet marketers are supposed to enjoy? Now, of course this is an extremely simplistic version of what happens in the real world. For example, in the ‘model A’ situation, you would have added the customers to your mailing list, and would be promoting other products to them and hopefully thereby generating some additional sales. Some of your membership site members will drop off every month as well. But, having said this, in both situations, you will obviously try to make as many new sales is possible on a daily basis and in one case, by doing so, you will earn $47 and that is effectively the end of that, whilst on the other hand, you will continue to earn $19.95 every month for work that you only ever need to do once.
So, is A Membership Site Right For You? - Taking the ‘model A’ and ‘model B’ concept one step further, there is clearly going to be more work involved in building a membership site than in the ‘model A’ one time only sale situation. For example, selling an e-book $47 requires little more than creating the product (or, even easier, getting somebody else to create it for you) building a web sales page, and then promoting the new product.
It really is as simple as that, and an experienced marketer with basic skills can probably take this whole concept from a blank sheet of paper to going live in a matter of only a few days. A membership site clearly needs more than this. For a start, your members will expect to receive value for their subscription each and every month. You therefore need a constant stream of new product materials, which in themselves will need regularly updating.
The membership site itself is inevitably more complex than a simple one-page sales site, although, as you will see later on, it is very quickly becoming easier to build membership sites using both free and paid software resources. So, it is probably fair to say that creating your own membership site is only going to be suitable for you if you go into it with your eyes open, fully aware that you cannot realistically create such a site that is going to have any intrinsic value overnight.
You must understand from the outset that, in order for your membership site to be successful, you must provide specialized information or training that is difficult to find anywhere else, or that would be time-consuming for your members to discover for themselves. This information must be kept constantly updated and it must always remain relevant and appropriate to the interests that your members have expressed by joining your site in the first place.
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