The Best Model for a Membership Site

13 replies
Hey everyone.

I will be launching a member site early next year. I'll probably be using the Wishlist Member plugin for Wordpress to run the site.

However, what exactly is the best way to run a member site?

I'm assuming that you drip content out to each subscriber? If they had access to everything in there from the get-go, they'd just read everything in a week and then unsubscribe, right?

Is there an optimal frequency to give out content? Twice a week?

What pricing strategy works best? I was thinking $1 for first week, then $47/month monthly recurring after that. Any thoughts?

What platform would be best to drip-feed content automatically? I'm not sure this is possible with Wishlist unfortunately.

Lastly, how do you take a vacation when you run a member site? lol. Seriously, I'll have a section in there where members can ask me questions. How do you guys take a break for a week or more when you are running this thing 365 days a year? Or is there a way to hit the pause button so to speak, so that members don't get charged, still have access, but can't submit questions to me.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
If there was a book on this, or a great article on the topic you could point me to, I'd love to read it.

Thanks!
#membership #model #site
  • Profile picture of the author Kurt@viewswin
    I hope you have some good content for $47 per month!
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    • Profile picture of the author IMstudier
      I certainly will. That's not a problem. But I'm open to hearing other pricing strategies.
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  • Profile picture of the author Oguzz13
    I'm also interested in the answers of this topic. Thank you from now who share his experiences.
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  • Profile picture of the author yakim1
    I have several membership sites and use my own software to run them. The answers to your questions are fairly simple.

    Before you launch your membership site, make sure you have one or 2 months worth of content to deliver. Since you are dripping your content will mean that it is mostly evergreen and will not out date quickly.

    So if you want to go on vacation or get sick and can't work on the content you will be weeks ahead. So it will not matter if you are not available for a week.

    I do use the $1 trial for the first week on some of my membership sites and those sites seem to get almost double the number of people paying to see the content inside as compared to the sites I do not offer the $1 trial.

    Make sure you use software that will allow you to have an affiliate program to help drive traffic to your membership site.

    As for the $47 price tag, you may want to lower the price and then raise the price for those that that become members after the price change. them member who remain members at the lower price will remain paying the lower price.

    If you use PayPal for the recurring billing you can't stop and then start up the billing again.

    I hope this has been helpful,
    Steve Yakim
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  • Profile picture of the author Coby
    For me I use FusionHQ Internet Business Platform to run my membership sites...

    In the past I tried drip-feeding thinking this was the best way...

    But now I just give them access to the majority of the content right away. The big "selling point" for my membership is weekly coaching webinars, so I'm not to worried about those that "get it and get out". Now, don't get me wrong some folks do exactly that - get in and get out, but not enough to matter...

    Now, about vacation...

    That's simple - you just outsource whatever small tasks need to be handled and any questions that come in can be forwarded to you via text or email (most phones have email these days). What I do is I hire a "guest speaker" when I'm on vacation or I simply take an hour out of vacation to conduct the webinar - I've done several of these from my hotel room while traveling. You can even get a mobile wi-fi hot spot and do it going down the road on a laptop or tablet.

    Don't stress - you can outsource almost everything.

    Cheers,
    Coby
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  • Profile picture of the author roblawrence
    In my experience, $27 month pulls best. Anything over that and you end up with a lot of "clock watchers".

    You have to provide a lot of value to get that high a price, especially for a consumer based site. If it's Business to Business, then that's a real possibility.

    I've been dealing with membership sites over 10 years now and have pretty much seen it all.

    There's a lot of money to be made, if you approach things correctly.
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    • Profile picture of the author TSDN
      In my experience, $27 month pulls best. Anything over that and you end up with a lot of "clock watchers".

      You have to provide a lot of value to get that high a price, especially for a consumer based site. If it's Business to Business, then that's a real possibility.

      I've been dealing with membership sites over 10 years now and have pretty much seen it all.

      There's a lot of money to be made, if you approach things correctly.
      Can I see some of the sites that you have built please? I recently built a membership site myself for my sports network and i don't know if I am doing it right. I already have over 10,000 members but I have yet to monetize anything cause I don't know how or what i should do.
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      • Profile picture of the author roblawrence
        Originally Posted by TSDN View Post

        Can I see some of the sites that you have built please? I recently built a membership site myself for my sports network and i don't know if I am doing it right. I already have over 10,000 members but I have yet to monetize anything cause I don't know how or what i should do.
        Take a look at my blog. I offer a lot of free membership site tips there in the samples area you can use to build your site.
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  • Profile picture of the author WillR
    A good membership site is one that can be left to run itself where you can upload months of content ahead of time. If you do have a questions and answers type section then don't make it weekly, make it either bi-monthly or just monthly. Anything that requires your direct input should not be weekly. That way you only have to update things every 2-4 weeks at most.

    People will also understand that you sometimes need a holiday just like everyone else. Just be honest with your community if you ever do that break and I am sure they will be fine. One thing I would do is setup a private Facebook group for members only. This could actually be in place of your Q&A section and you can just answer people's questions in there. That makes it easy if you are on the road to just check into that group every couple of days to keep a presence.
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  • Profile picture of the author mmchael
    I'd suggest testing a few membership sites now. Many can be very hard to work with. I have run through 6. Membersonic seems to be the easiest at the moment and I am using it on a few projects. Although I think InstaMember might even be better.

    Don't make your monthly fees too high. You actually want a lot of people at a lower amount that keep paying it even if they do not use it each month. Too high and its a big chunk of money they see vividly each month. Also consider a yearly prepaid option for a significant discount.
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  • Profile picture of the author roblawrence
    The biggest thing is the market and the content. Is the content WORTH paying for? And, will your market be WILLING to pay for it?

    That's the part people forget. Some markets are just too damn cheap! No matter how "good" your information is.
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  • Profile picture of the author Malcolm Thomas
    As others have suggested, the $47 price tag that you are wanting to charge may be a little bit too high and you are best offering in my opinion a $1 month free trial to really give people an incentive to try out your membership.
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  • Profile picture of the author shane_k
    I find it interesting that everyone feels that $47/month is too high.

    Maybe for an IM membership site

    But again in other niches this might not be true. It really depends on the value you are delivering and also what your target market is used to paying.

    Think about it like this...

    There are womens purses out there for $20, and purses for $300.

    Each targets a different group of people.

    If your target market is used to paying $20 than $300 will obviously be too high.

    But if someone is used to paying $200+ then $300 is not much of a stretch.

    You never said what niche you are targeting so it's really hard to say.

    What I would do is look at your competition and see what they are charging. That will give you an idea.

    Now, about the vacation thing just tell your subscribers that you will be going on vacation (or unavailable) to answer any submitted questions.

    I also agree that you should only be answering questions once a week or every two weeks.

    A part of the reason for this is you are going to get the same questions over and over again.

    Which reminds me you might want to create FAQ's page
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