Niche membership site help

1. The scope of your site is pretty general, so the number could vary widely depending on what exact features/customizations you need, but a good starting number is $1000. This is just based on what we would charge and what our competitors may charge. You could hire an overseas worker for substantially less, but then the results are hit-or-miss.

2. Given that you're already well-integrated with the community, I think it makes sense to focus on local traffic from the web. Rather than focus on longtail, non-local keywords that won't bring in people who know you or who you can personally reach out to, it would be better to bring in local traffic. You would be able to meet with these people or otherwise personally interact with them, plus your site will spread through the community much faster given you already have clout.

3. Any kind of social presence is always good for a business. In this case, I think it would be more beneficial to have a Facebook as you can more easily interact with the masses, but it would not hurt to also open a LinkedIn. Some other options to certainly consider are Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram.

5. No good marketing campaign should rely on the domain name, as the domain should be reserved for your brand. Your campaign should build your brand, not domain recognition. Understandably, a domain with your keywords may prove beneficial initially for SEO, but ultimately, you're marketing a brand, not a website.

7. Remember that SEO does not build loyal visitors. SEO builds new traffic, which is then your job to convert to loyal visitors. You could obtain 25-50 loyal monthly visitors without an ounce of SEO work just by local outreach. Once you've got the traffic, if your site proves to be beneficial to the masses and provides them the content or charitable opportunities they need, that is what will bring back the loyal visitors, not SEO. Some other things to tie in to your site are newsletters or perks for joining in order to keep traffic returning.

Thank you for sharing your advice. $1000 start up is a bit much and was hoping a quality membership site would cost at least $500.

Hi,

$1,000 to start a membership site?

No.

You could easily start off by using Wordpress and a "Membership" plugin
that you can install onto your Wordpress based membership site dashboard
"Plugins" area.

You can take payments, automatically create passwords for your members,
automatically refuse re-entry for those who stop paying to be a member etc.

A membership plugin can do all this for you and...

...Allows you to add and organize content, create menu navigation tabs for your
members, create longevity of paying members by showing them what they'll receive
in months 2, 3, 4 5 and so on if they stay on as members of your's.

Maybe you want to outsource some of the content creation etc so maybe that's why
you mention the $1,000.

But to actually set up the membership site and get to get it live you only require a
domain name, hosting, membership plugin(s) and your pretty much good to go.

Adding your content can be done as you add your members into your site.

You only need to create your 1st months content and then build as you go.

Don't over think this membership sites are very powerful tools when it
comes to building consistent monthly online incomes.

Hope this helps
Gavin

My suggestion would be to sign up for the 30 Day IM Challenge at...

Welcome To The 30-Day IM Challenge! (no affiliate link)

This is a huge course for free. My business partner is a coach and this is her system. If you upgrade to I think $15 a month or maybe a one time fee still, you will also get to attend one of her group coaching sessions each week.

The reason for recommending this free course is that it will help you target your audience better because you will learn your numbers. It will also help you with the content you already have and you maybe able to create multiple products from your content in different forms.

I do know she has a Student that is in the exact same niche as you.

The url to this students website is...

http://caregivingwithpurpose.com/7-d...hip-trial-pgb/ (No Affiliate Link)

Maybe you can get some ideas from this site or even contact the owner. Could there be a possible joint venture here?

I hope this has been helpful,
Steve Yakim

Thanks everyone for your support and advice. So if I were to create an ebook first, what's the best recommendation to build a list? And sorry if I sound a little confused but are you saying the proper steps would be to write an ebook, collect names and emails, then start a membership site? I'm interested in doing a fixed-length membership and good dripped-content system.

You can build a membership for less than $1,000 as has already been stated. Their are WP plugins and other cheaper solutions that would likely suffice to get you up and running.

If you have a foothold in the local community leverage it. Makes no sense not to.

There are several channels you can go through that will bypass the technical side of running a membership based website like one of the members mentioned above with the 30 day challenge. Without a budget and without technical experience this is the way to go. Clickbank would be a good starting point with their ready to go sales pages as you will also have a pool of affiliates working in and around your niche that you can tap into.

Thanks everyone. Ill work on a product first and get a blog going.
Any good copywriter material to write catchy targeted content?

If you were to create an ebook first, one of the best ways to build a list is to give your ebook away for free in exchange for their email.

For your fixed-length membership with dripped-content, you don't need to write an ebook first. You can do that, and collect names and emails, while you are running your membership site.