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Three Types of Membership Sites
By Jeanette
A membership site is a great way to make money online. While you can make a lot of money from the actual sale of memberships, you can also make a lot of money by marketing other products and services to your members. Plus, depending on the type of membership site you have, you may not have to put in a lot of work. But what type of member site should you have?
There are three major types of membership sites: traditional, fixed term, and newsletter.
A traditional membership site is probably exactly what you envision it is. It is the most popular type of site. A person becomes a member by paying a recurring fee and they remain a member for as long as they want. The site give them new content every month. Being a member continues to cost them money every month but it also continues to give them value in exchange for their membership fee.
These types of sites are excellent for member site owners because they continue to generate revenue every month for as long as you want to add content. However, they can be a lot of work because you have to continue to provide value. So while operating a traditional membership site can be the most profitable, it is also the most work to maintain.
The second type of membership sites is the fixed term site. Under this model a member joins a site for a specified amount of time. So they might join a site for a year (52 weeks) in order to receive a weekly lesson on how to lose 50 pounds in a year. They might pay once or they might pay every week, every other week, or maybe every month. Once the 52nd lesson gets delivered then they are no longer charged a membership fee and they stop getting the content.
Fixed term sites are often the least time-consuming to operate. This is because you just have to do the initial work of creating the site, getting it up and running, and creating the content. Once all that is done then you just have to worry about marketing your site. So you will continue to make money without doing a lot of ongoing work. However, every member you have will only pay a specified amount of money. You can’t count on one person being a member far into the future.
Another advantage to this model is that even though you only have to create the content once, you can continue to enroll members year-round. So it has the advantage of creating an information product for which you receive recurring revenue. Even though it’s for a limited time, this is still an attractie model - particularly for people who are afraid of committing to a long-term membership site.
The final type of membership site is a newsletter membership site (also known as an autoresponder membership site). A newsletter membership site can be either fixed or traditional. With this type of site you simply deliver all the content via email. So you would just send the content every week, month, or whenever you promised it would be. The members just open their emails and read the content or click on the link you provide for them to get their content.
Obviously the newsletter membership site is really fast and easy to set-up. You don’t need to worry about a site with specialized member’s software. All you have to do is set up the site with a sales page, a thank you page, and an autoreponder. Then load the content into the autoresponder and you’re done.
All three of these member site models have their pros and cons. Choose the one that fits you, your niche, and your topic best and then market your site.
Our topic for January is Member Sites 101. On the live webinar you will not only decide which model is most appropriate for you, but also get the full list of questions you need to answer for your member site planning. Without getting these answers, you can walk into a trap of recurring content and declining revenue. So join us to get this critical information.
Topics: Member Sites |
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