Membership Site Warning
Warning: 7 Things Guru’s do not tell you about starting a membership site.
- Selling your membership site is not easy. You will need to test and write multiple landing pages and learn about seo and/or Google Adwords to generate traffic and sales to your membership site.
- Affiliate programs need to have some valuable JV partners that are heavy hitters. The average affiliate produces little sales and traffic.
- Creating Content is tough – While you can try to charge for some general articles each month, you are only going to retain a decent number of members in your membership site if you produce great, valuable content.
- Charge Cards Fail – A surprising number of charge cards simply fail after a month or two, and those people often do not update their cards.
- Creating community is hard – Getting people to participate is hard work and you really need to reach out to people.
- Focus – you do not want to keep adding things that are outside of your core value proposition. You end up with membership site creep and it is hard for people to figure out what they should focus on.
- Lax Usage – One of the hardest things for me was the fact that many users paid each month but did not use the site. I know, I should not complain, I am getting paid. However, I want everyone to be wildly successful with our membership site and it was a hard lesson to learn that many people do not want to take the time to use things they are paying for.
I hope this is helpful to you. Membership sites are great, but instead of selling you on how great and easy they are, I’d rather see you know what some of the issues are before starting your membership website. Then you can make an educated decision.
