Membership site - free or charge

Better get some reviews after you have made the site. As experts would make it easier to deal with things after that only. Its hard to understand your concept and goals if its only in talks

I would say, free membership, and once inside you up sell your upgrades, Ive always have had good experience with that.

Have a low front-in fee (between 2.99 to 5.99) for the 1st month.
subsequently, you then charge the normal rate.
You can also provide a OTO to pay for a year at a great discount (30%-40%)

This pricing is optimised for membership website.

Let me know if you need more helps. cheers.

Every thing for free to get more traffic and then offer OTO'S with free products as well as earn by advertising.


This way both the users and you will be happy.

For paid membership, you should always have fresh ebooks on a weekly/monthly basis. Otherwise, give a few up front for free and imitate butterfly marketing script that Mike filsame used to upsell it as oto for everything if you don't plan to add ebooks down the road.

Just my 2 cents.

Thanks for the feedback all, but you can see why I was asking. All great advice but all different. This thread is like the inside of my head. There will be quite a few additions on a monthly basis.

I have a lot of membership sites because I'm testing a new membership software that I'm getting ready to release later this year.

I have found the most success in getting paid members by giving a $1 trial membership.

If the trial member does not want to pay for the membership and cancels, you just down grade his membership to the free member and send him an email stating why his membership has been down graded an he can still login as a free member at...

Give the login url so he can now see just the free stuff. Put your free members on a list by their selves and email them every time you add a new product to the member area even if it is just for paid members.

This gives you a chance to then remind them that they can easily upgrade for $x.xx after they login.

If the trial member does not cancel, then you have a paying member with the member not having to do anything extra. The trail makes it easy for the trial member to stay.

This is the most successful membership model for me.

I hope this has been helpful,
Steve Yakim

I would go with b... bring in a whole bunch of people and let them see all the value then charge them to take advantage of your material.

I have both free and paid levels on my site. I would tier it. Have a free membership that gives them access to a few basic products. Then a paid level for the lot, and also keep a few of your best products as purchase options, with three prices : non members, free members and paid members.