Financial Models for Membership Sites
There are a variety of membership site financial models you can consider and experiment with.
- Reoccurring Membership Site - One thing you can do is charge a monthly fee and people can stay in the site forever. However, the challenge with this kind of membership site financial model is you need to keep fresh content in the site and the reality is that you will not always keep people a long time. This kind of membership site is a lot more work.
- Fixed Length Membership Site – The nice thing about a fixed length membership site is that you do not need to keep adding more content. It is a course people take and at then end you stop charging them – and they either no longer have access, or you leave them in the course but there is no new material.
- Course with Small Purchase – The most popular membership site I am seeing today is the free or cheap product in exchange for a $1 membership course trial. This then translates to a certain % of the people not canceling the membership. This is great for getting people to try it but can be a lot of work since many people will not stay in it. You also need to be clear that there is not a refund after the trial if they do not cancel before the next billing. I found this model annoying because of the amount of people that said “I forget to cancel….please credit my account.” I did it, but I was spending too much time doing these kinds of things.
