5 Reasons Why You Should Build a Membership Site

Membership sites are one of the hottest trends on the Internet today. Entrepreneurs in a wide range of specialties are learning how to leverage their time, information and clients into an ongoing income stream that keeps adding to their bank accounts month after month. If you've haven't started your own memberships site yet, here are five good reasons to get started today.

1. Passive income beats working for a living every time. You can spend your time creating content for clients on an individual basis and then searching for new clients on a daily basis. If you are providing quality content at a reasonable rate, you will earn money this way. However, wouldn't you rather do the work once and collect the paycheck on a regular basis? Of course you would- that only makes sense. Creating a membership site is the perfect way to generate passive income. With an autoresponder, you set up your content one time and then distribute it on an ongoing basis to your members without lifting a finger. Each month you upload that month's content and through your membership site, every member has access to it.

2. You can add products to your membership site for additional income. You can add digital and physical products for sale to your members and create more sales without having to sell through a list or drum up new prospects. You already have all of your members' information within the site, so making new sales is a piece of cake. Members will be inclined to purchase products at your recommendation, because you have already established a bond of trust and because they can do so at the click of a mouse.

3. Split the work and share the wealth. You can offer your members an income opportunity by creating an affiliate program for the site. Members can earn a percentage of the profits by recruiting new members to join. Because they are selling with the additional power of being satisfied customers, current members are a perfect choice to do your affiliate sales for you and spread the word about your membership site.

4. If you do it right, you really can work less and earn money while you sleep. We all hear it and secretly wish we could find it- that magical way to earn more and work less- ever since we were teased with the idea of a Four Hour Work Week. A membership site may be as close as you can get to truly passive income - and that can buy you the one thing you want more than money - time. Time to spend with your family, time to have some fun, time to work on dream projects. If you find the right niche and create a quality membership site, you can make a lot of money. If the price of membership is $40 and you have 100 members, that is $4000 dollars a month. If you have 1,000 members - it's 40,000 a month. With $40,000 coming in every month, you really can afford to lie on a beach somewhere and work from your laptop.

5. Membership sites have a long life span. If you create a growing membership site, you've got a long-term stream of income - as long as you continue to provide quality content to your members.


                   Do You Have What It Takes to Start a Membership Site?

Before you jump into creating a membership site in your favorite niche, take a little time to make sure you have what it takes to do the job right. After all, if you're going to take on a job this size, you want to make sure you can do it successfully!

Do You Know Your Market?

Ideally, if you're developing a membership site, you've chosen a niche you have extensive knowledge or experience you can use as a storehouse of information for your content. If you've had a highly successfully business of your own or you have a great deal of education on a particular topic, you're probably good to go. What do you do, however, if you aren't an expert in your target market? It doesn't mean you cannot go forward with your ideas. It does mean you need to ask yourself a few questions and prepare yourself for a little hard work.

Why have you chosen this market? If the only reason you're moving into a certain niche is for the money, it might not be enough. Keep in mind you will need to continually add fresh, USABLE content to your site in order for your members to continue to pay their monthly fees. If you choose a market you have absolutely no interest in, you'll have a tough time finding and creating fresh content. Things will go much easier for you if you choose a topic you enjoy and want to continue learning about in the future.

Do You Have the Technical Skills?

There are services you can hire to build your membership site and have all the standard features already set up for you, but you need to pay a fee for them. While a monthly fee may not be a problem once your membership fees start rolling in, it can be tough for some new businesses at the beginning. Some services provide a trial period of one to two months, which can help you get around that detail. However, you may decide to go it on your own to build your membership site. This option can save you some money, but either way you will need a few technical skills.

You will also need some software that makes it possible for you to create your site. Here are a few items to add to your checklist before you start building your site:

HTML or WYSIWYG Software and Skills - If you know HTML, you're a step ahead of the game, as you can design your pages however you like them. You can find WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editors that allow you to bypass the HTML, but you won't have quite the flexibility.

FTP Program - You need a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) program so you can upload your pages to the server and store them there

Graphics - You need to know how to upload both graphics and text to your site.

If you don't have the software you need, you can find most, if not all, of it free on the Internet. If you don't have the skills, never fear. You can easily learn the things you need to know or you can hire someone to take care of the technical issues for you. Many times you can get your questions answered in forums or on social media sites like Twitter, so don't be afraid to ask a few questions.

If you have these basic bases covered, you're ready to get started creating your site. Keep in mind; you don't need to be an expert to get started. Many Internet entrepreneurs learn as they go and create highly successful sites. Jump in and get started on your membership site today.

                        Driving Traffic to Your Membership Site

So, you've decided to begin a membership site in your niche and you have a lot of the design and creation under way. You've researched your niche, chosen scripting software, set up a payment processor and loaded your autoresponder with email messages. You've created the content for your site, with a nice mix of articles, audios, videos and downloadable digital products for your members. You've chosen your prices, secured your domain name and set up your web hosting. You even have enough content in reserve for next month. Whew! You've been working hard and now you're ready for the big bucks to start rolling in, right? After all, what more do you need? You need traffic, that's what.

So how do you get traffic to your membership site? Driving people to your membership site uses the same tactics as driving traffic to any other website. It all starts with a sales letter.

In order to drive traffic to your site, you need a great sales letter. Many people throw up a sales letter without giving much thought to the quality of that letter. That's a big mistake because your sales letter is KEY to how much traffic your site will receive.

A good sales letter starts with a great headline. You need a headline to catch the eye of someone who is casually surfing the web looking for something to solve their problems. Your headline should speak directly to your target market. It should announce your benefits in a single concise phrase. Ask a question, offer steps to solve a problem, let your readers know you are tuned in to what they want.

A good sales letter has a hook- something that reels your customer in and makes them want to read more. Often the best hook is in the form of a question. Ask the reader a question that your membership site answers. "Are you looking for a new approach to marketing?" might be a good question for a membership site regarding Internet marketing. "Are you looking for love in all the wrong places" could be a hook for a dating membership site. Another way to hook a reader is to call out your audience in your headline like this: ATTENTION: Calling all Internet Marketers or Do You Make These Marketing Mistakes?

The next step in writing an effective sales letter is to deepen your customer's problem. If your membership site is a credit counseling service, use your opening paragraphs of your sales page to show your prospect you understand their problem. Debt got you down? Are you having trouble paying your mortgage? Losing sleep because you can't pay the bills? Drive home the problem so your prospect is a bit uncomfortable thinking about it. You need to remind your prospect of their problem so you can show them why they need your membership site to help them solve it.

Next up? Tell them the benefits of your site. Show them how you can fix their problem. While you will want to talk about the features of your site, like the forum, the newsletter and the content, remember that features are not benefits. Benefits are the good feelings the customer will have after your site solves the problem. Benefits to the credit counseling site might include restoring their good credit, no more phone calls from angry collectors or having the peace of mind of knowing your financial future is secure.

Use links throughout the text of your sales letter. You never know at what point you make the sale with an individual prospect, so offer the sign up link often throughout your text. Some people will click the link immediately, while others will scroll down to the bottom of your page looking for it. Still other prospects will be ready to by when a particular phrases resonates with them, so having links spread throughout the text is your best bet.

Your sales letter is the first and the most important step in driving traffic to your membership site. Take your time and make sure you develop a quality sales page. Don't rely on hype or misinformation, but make the test interesting and compelling for the best success.


                           Membership Sites - How Do I Start?

Membership sites are a great way to create a mainly passive form of income. Once you have your membership site up and running, you just need to keep it updated with fresh content. Setting up a membership site can seem a little intimidating, however. Just take it a step at a time and you'll soon be ready to launch your new site and get on with the business of making money.

The first step in creating a membership site is making sure you have an audience who is ready to join. Like all types of content sales, you need to find a target market hungry enough to want what you have and willing to realize they need to pay for it.

Search out your market as you would any type of content product. Start by choosing a topic that either you have experience in or have a strong interest in. Do some keyword research to be certain of your market. Use Google's keyword tool to find out how many people are doing daily searches for your niche. Next, spend some time doing a little research to see how many other membership sites are already operating in your chosen field. Just because there is a little competition in your field, doesn't mean you should pick another topic. Competition can be a good thing- it gives you a benchmark to work toward and beat! However, if there are a lot of heavy hitters in your market, you need to know you're in for a challenge. Your best research can be done by joining a few membership sites and checking them out from the inside. Mind you, you still need to create your own content and fresh ideas, but you can see what is popular and what isn't, which can help you choose topics and features in your own site.

As you look at different membership sites, take note of the special features they use. One of the most common features is the forum. A forum gives site members a dedicated space to discuss ideas, share information, ask for help and interact in a number of ways. Forums will also allow members to send private messages to one another. As the site administrator, you will set the rules for the forum, as well as interact with the members yourself. It's usually a good idea to keep forum rules to a minimum, although you will want to notify members of the rules against spam. You will also likely want to set some ground rules regarding tone and etiquette. While a forum is only as good as its diversity, members should agree to a policy of mutual respect and avoidance of abusive remarks.

You can also use your membership site to sell additional products and resources to your members. Choose these resources wisely. Your members are already paying to participate in your site, so be careful not to push other products too heavily. Instead, consider setting up a resources section members can check out at their own leisure. Choose only high quality products that offer a good value to your members. You don't want to violate their good will or trust or you will find yourself losing members.

These steps are obviously just the beginning of creating your membership site, but they are an important beginning. By starting out in the right way, you have a much better shot at ending up where you want to be- at the top of your market, making a great income from your membership site.

Putting Together the Pieces of Your Membership Site

A membership site can be a great way to start creating some serious income. They can be a bit work intensive on the front end, but once its up and going, you'll find it practically runs itself.

There are a few components you need for a membership service. As with any service, you should shop around and find one with the features you want at a price you can afford. In order to get a membership site rolling, you need to consider three things: your script, your payments and your autoresponder service.

Scripting Software

The easiest way to develop a membership site that meets the needs of your clients is to find a scripting service with the functions you want. There are dozens of these types of services available, so here are two tips to keep in mind.

1. Shop around - Look for as many features as you can find in one script. You may not find one with everything you want, but if you do your research, you can certainly find some great deals. Membership sites are hot and that means scripting services are enjoying heavy competition. Like any type of sales, competition means benefits and deals for the buyer. You may be able to find free trials of a scripting service - which might be a great deal - but remember that switching services can be a real chore, so be reasonably certain your first choice is the best choice. The cheapest route may not be the best route, but the most expensive isn't necessarily the best either, so do your research.

2. Look for reviews of the various membership scripts you're considering. Find out what others think of the service before you choose one. Look at some of the sites you like and check around for the scripting software company. You'll likely discover the scripting service information available - although it may be in the fine print somewhere.

Payments on Your Site

Obviously, you can't make any money from your membership site without a payment processor. Many scripting software services include a payment processor, but if yours does not, you need to set one up right away. You can choose whether to accept credit cards, checking account payments, debit cards or other online payment services. Most sites accept a variety of credit cards as well as PayPal. PayPal is a very common payment processor that allows users to make online payments without needing to share their financial details with merchants. Many people are familiar with PayPal and will expect to be able to use this feature.

Autoresponders

A third component you need for your membership site is an autoresponder to handle your mailing list. Autoresponders let you capture email addresses as well as names and other information you might need. You can then load up your email messages to the autoresponder at your chosen service and have them delivered automatically, regardless of when a member joins or how long they remain. They will receive your messages in the order you load them. You can create several different mailing lists with your autoresponder service, including separate lists for different levels of membership, as well as a newsletter, if you choose.

These three pieces are all critical to a successful membership site. Once you've made these decisions, you are well on your way to creating your own site and a new stream of income.