Membership Site FAQ
Here are some general facts about membership websites. This does not apply to any particular membership site software or membership site service. Just a general membership site FAQ that is food for thought.
#1 Will I Make Money with a Membership Site?
It is highly unlikely that you will create a great, profitable membership site on your first try, especially if you are doing all the work yourself. Worrying about membership site technology, membership site shopping cart integration, membership site content and membership site marketing is a lot of work. Your best bet is to outsource the parts you can and focus on marketing the membership site and guiding the content development.
#2 What Membership Website Software Should I Use?
Because it is hard to build a profitable membership site on the first try, we suggest not going overboard with expensive website membership management software. You can get the single licence of WP Wishlist for under $100 and you can get many wordpress templates for free to use for your membership site.
#3 How Do I Market My Membership Site?
Marketing is something you get better at over time. You need to build and test different landing pages for membership sites and try different advertising avenues. It also helps if you use a Search Engine Strategy to generate organic search results. If you target your niche market that is likely to join your membership site, this should produce regular members.
#4 How Do I Retain Members in my Membership Site?
The first thing you have to do is understand that you will not retain members forever. I have seen statistics that membership sites have an average membership retention of about 4 months. However, it really depends on your offer and what your membership site contains. For example, we have a much longer membership site retention at the Virtual Marketing Assistant network. The reason is that it produces regular job leads for the members and has tools people can use, like blog posting to a blog network and a directory where people can review the virtual assistant profiles.
What other questions do you have about membership sites? Leave your question in the comments below.
