For an Internet marketer, the biggest reason for setting up a paid membership site can be summed up very easily – recurring income. A small amount paid monthly by every member can quickly add up to either valuable extra income or even a full-time income if you have several membership sites and if you have a higher priced membership fee, you can quickly earn a very substantial annual income.
People will buy information that they could probably find on the Internet themselves if they had time and knew where to look, but often there is a higher perceived value when they have paid for it.
The challenge then is to find customers and then provide them with such good value that they will retain their membership month after month and hopefully also recommend your site to others because you pay them a generous affiliate fee.
There are four main criteria you need to consider to achieve this and they are:
1. Your site must be in an established membership type market.
2. You must provide excellent value content or service
3. You need to use software that will password-protect your site so that non-paying members cannot get the content for free.
4. A marketing system to attract new subscribers and retain them once they sign up.
Criteria 1 – Your Membership-Site Market
In assessing your potential membership-site market, consider both online and off-line habits. Ask yourself whether people with an interest in this subject would buy monthly magazines, belong to a club or organization about it and perhaps whether there are books on the subject on Amazon’s best popular seller lists. Online, check if there are eBooks that sell well, blogs, forums or other on-line communities about this subject. Continue reading »