What is a Membership Site?
A membership site is a private website, with exclusive content available only to the signed up members.
It usually provides members with the ability to interact with each other. They pay a monthly fee for being a member of the website.
Suitable For -
People who like to interact with, guide and lead a community.
Skills Required -
In-depth knowledge of any particular domain.
Ability to research new things and constantly generate new and helpful content.
Time Required For Creating A Membership Site -
Depends on the domain expertise of the creator.
Do Google search for Matthew Woodward's tutorial on how to create a membership site for free.
Tips -
- In the beginning keep the fee for joining the membership site ridiculously low.
Aim to create a minimum viable product instead of creating a perfect product. You can always improve your site in later stages.
If you’ve never been a part of any membership site till now, consider joining a few related to your domain. Study those sites.
Find what’s working well for you and other members of that site? What’s makes it worth the monthly fee and how could you replicate this?
Interact and engage with members. Your membership site shouldn’t be the one that only drip feeds the content, with little or no input from the owner.
You must provide insider access for your members who want to communicate with you.
Even if you’re busy, you must spend at least half an hour a day to get involved with your membership site.
You can do this by many ways, such as you can interact with the members answer their questions or even lead an interaction inside the forum.
- Run group events and challenges to increase members’ engagement with your site.
Organize regular events, challenges, or similar.
Make it easy for members to participate. Offer prizes, display leaderboards or similar such things creates a great incentive for members to participate and get involved.
- Periodically review what’s working and what isn’t. Try to adapt the site based on the member's’ needs.
For e.g. If you offer most of your content in text format but your members are engaging more with the video content then shift from text-based to video content.
- Try to introduce new initiatives and see how your audience is responding to it. Such as live Q&A calls or similar.
But be careful, don’t overwhelm members with several different initiatives at once. Introduce one thing at a time.
How To Monetize -
Monetization is very simple. More members sign up to your website more income you generate from the monthly fees that members pay.