Starting the business

[bluet]

When you have a membership site, your profit is the registration fee. So the main key is to attract people to pay the registration, and maybe also the monthly fee. You can offer a free bonus like software or plr articles, but its also important to keep your content up to date. What do you think?

[kingdogol]

My membership sites are a one time payment for life and usually relatively cheap. This way I build my opt in lists while also getting more people joining by paying the cheaper price.

In the future I'm looking at upgrading a few of the sites to complete video content and then I will charge new members the once of joining fee and then a cheap monthly video fee, otherwise they won't be able to access the video content. Or at least something similar to this.

What are you thoughts on the best way to omake money from registration sites?

[artemis]

You have some pretty good ideas - just make sure that the content is worth paying for otherwise you'll get a bad reputation.

[louiseg]

I am actually going to be starting up a membership/forum type website in the near future. It's my understanding that recurring monthly fees are best if you want to bring in good money.

If you're going to start a membership site, what would the clients be paying for? You've really got to make sure that whatever it is you're asking them to buy it's worth the investment. And what sort of benefits do they get for becoming a "member".

Sure you can give away free things, but just make sure the backbone of your membership site is strong.

Once my membership site is up, I can contact you if you like to advise on how it's going and give you tips. Just let me know.

[betsyparsons]

What type of sites make good membership sites? Are there one's that stand above the rest? And is this market played out? I am wondering because I give away a lot of information and I am in the middle of writing a book but I have a great idea with earning money on the web but now sure it is overplayed.

What are your thoughts?

[billmcintosh]

Hi Betsy. I'm glad to see you here in the forums!

Memberships sites are definitely not played out. It's basically a model that's been around for a very long time & will continue to be around for ages. (after all how long have magazine or newspaper subscriptions been around) I have a 7 year old site that is a small monthly membership model and it's going stronger than ever.

It's true that there are a lot of membership sites in the Internet Marketing niche, but outside IM I don't think this model is nearly as saturated. However, even in marketing circles this is still a viable model.

[iain]

It is definetely a monetization model that has always worked well. It is something I have looked into doing with my sites, moving on from affiliates or certainly working with them. I think this model works extremely well when you have a dedicated traffic source that love your content and are willing to pay a small fee to view it.

[dianar]

I thought membership sites were concentrated mainly in the adult markets, like web cams and video clip sites.

Where else are membership sites profitable?

[loyalknight10]

I think attracting and gaining members is the most important part of affiliate marketing. Further there are many sites which pays its affiliates on pay per lead and pay per signup basis which according to me are a profitable source of income.

[hawkmaster]

I have a forum that I now charge a yearly fee for and this is for extra privledges on the site. It seems to work well but I could only do this after 6 years as I needed to become the biggest in my niche first.