Is Setting up A Membership Site the Best Way to Monetize?

Have you thought of trying Google Adsense?

If you can create fitness books then Kindle is another option.

Anything where the reader subscribes and you get a monthly recurring payment, like a membership site is the ideal business. I would stick with it.

Just re-purpose your premium material in a lite "free" version.

Here is a good example. For one of my sites I create royalty free music. For free YouTube content I put the first 60 secs of a song in a video free to listen to. But to actually download and use the track in their own video, the user needs to pay.

Thanks for all your replies.

I'm leaning towards a member site for $$ reasons, as opposed to a free blog monetized with affiliate links and/or ads.

My niche is fat loss information for those over age 40.

I guess I just can't see how I would ever get Google to "see" a member site that has all it's content behind a paywall? It'd be like it doesn't even exist it seems?

Since I'm not keen on gambling with PPC or Adwords for such a competitive niche, it seems at the very least I'd have to still provide a lot of free content that search engines could index, to drive traffic.

I know some member sites have a free blog to drive traffic and build credibility, then simply put the best stuff behind a paywall.

I guess maybe I'm answering my own question here....in that I feel a 100% free blog is VERY HARD to earn a stable monthly income from, whereas a member site could potentially provide a very nice and STABLE monthly income. (Although I've also flirted with a "mini member site" that would just charge a yearly fee for access or a one time fee)

And as far as getting traffic to my member site, I probably just need to accept the fact that I'll have to produce some good FREE content to get people to the site in the fist place. I know some membership software also allows the member site owner to recruit affiliates, so that could be another option perhaps for getting eyeballs to look at the site.

In a way I guess I'm just looking for reassurance that a member site is a better use of time than trying to monetize a blog via affiliate links. Assuming I can drive traffic of course.

I feel very comfortable with the idea of doing a free blog, but building an entire member site seems a bit daunting, and only worth the effort if it pays off.

I may still write a fat loss book for kindle, which could also be part of the marketing mix.

Sorry I'm kind of rambling...a bit sleep deprived and not thinking super clearly this moment.

Hi coachjeff,

I don't think you made the wrong choice. You can still make money from your membership site. How you do this is by becoming the guy who sells his courses through affiliate marketing. You can register as a business on clickbank and let other affiliate marketers sell your courses for you. If your courses are good quality then Im sure you should be able to get a high gravity.

You can also start a blog on your membership site. The content from the blog should get indexed by search engines which should result in some organic traffic for your site.

Yes what dollar bills said above is one idea. If your product is good, you shouldn't have a problem marketing it on CB.

OP, you mentioned a FREE Blog. Stay away from those. A lady who had great content and lots of traffic lost OVER 5 Years work because she hosted all of her stuff on a freebie wp blog.

Not enough control over your content.

You also mentioned that you don't want to 'gamble' with Paid Ads.

Paid advertising is not a gamble. It's a reliable source of traffic that has a learning curve.

Ok, so I'm going to quit talking about doing a member site (like I've been doing for years) and actually do it. I think I have a narrow enough niche to be able to be a dominant player, yet big enough to actually have enough subscribers to justify the time and effort I'll put into it.

I really want to focus on creating articles and videos rather than doing any techie crap. I know how to setup a wordpress blog and use member plugins, but cobbling all that stuff together seems shaky to me, as sooner or later some of may stop working together.

I'm leaning towards an all-in-one cloud based member-site solution.

So far, I'm strongly leaning towards using valueaddon.com

I like their pricing and simple user interface.

Anyone use them with success?

I'm a personal trainer and weight loss coach, who has been told many times he's a very good writer. But how best to monetize this skill-set?

- Write Kindle books or articles?
Yes, write eBooks, sell them in WSOs or create a membership website to access to it.

- Set up a blog and hopefully build up a big readership which I can monetize via affiliate links and honest product reviews?
Nope, since you are a personal trainer and weight loss coach, create your own products, sell them and profit at full price. This way you earn much more than being an affiliate.

- Set up a membership site?
Yes

Those are my advice, wish you all the best for your upcoming work!

A couple options that I haven't seen mentioned to help with the SEO aspect while keeping your premium stuff behind a paywall are to:

1. Use snippets or previews that are freely readable by anyone including Google. This may be a set certain amount of characters or you can do it manually. The idea is to whet the appetite and get people to click on "Read More". Once they do, they will be presented with a "you need to login or register to see this content" type message. Many sites use this model including big membership sites like ESPN's Inner Circle.

2. Put out a free newsletter every X number of days. It doesn't have to be much or long but it should add enough value that people will want to pay to see your good stuff. Then have a free section of your membership site, open to all, where you post the archives.

As far as you saying you don't want to do 1-1 coaching anymore, that's understandable. But doing a weekly or twice a month group coaching call for an hour let's say, can give you an upsell, provide more value to your customers, and add to the bottom line. You can record the calls and put them in the second price level area. (I assume you'd charge more for this type of access.)

Mark

I think you can try doing everything that you mentioned.

Running a blog as a fitness coach is a MUST. You can engage with your readers there and you can build a serious audience out of it.

Writing Fitness Kindle books is also profitable. Health & Fitness sell extremely well on Amazon. I am a nonfiction author and I am telling you... if you build your own audience and then sell them your books there, you will make thousands per month.

The membership site will work well if you create lots of videos and and add a lot of content to it. In exchange you can charge a decent amount of money for those who are committed to work outs.

You see, if you build an audience (an email list through your blog) you can use it for almost anything online - books, courses, membership sites, etc.

If I were you, I would start a blog right away and then I would probably write a 100-200 page book to see how well it sells.The membership website will be the last one to do.

I definitely recommend you continue to create the membership site and you can also start the pre-launch phase.

You can invest in paid traffic to get things going quickly, or you can build up a blog and use social media platforms such as YouTube and Facebook to build up a following. I would focus on getting people on an email list so you can update them on the launch of your membership site and the value of it. So, once you launch your membership site you will have people eager to jump in.

I would go for this option...

Write quality articles and try to get traffic from Google, build a fan base on social media and even an email list. Regularly post new stuff and promote affiliate offers from time to time. You can either promote informational products from Clickbank (weight loss, muscle gain, healthy recipes etc) or supplements from bodybuilding.com

This option might take more time than others, but it will definitely worth it on the long term (3-5 years)