Creating a Successful Membership site? Help!

That's a lot of subscribers. $10,000 recurring per month is a large goal to hit, and certainly couldn't be accomplished by a single person. You'd have to put together a team for it to really be successful... "some" working on SEO, getting the word out, providing support, creating content, etc. The biggest "something" you need to create is a great reason to join. You have to offer something really amazing for people to be paying $20 per month. It has to be extremely high-quality.

Wow! Being new and going after not only what would be a lot of work (a membership site) and in a super highly competitive market, would be a big order to accomplish.

I would definitely suggest you start with something much simpler and easier first and in a market and niche that is profitable and reachable by you.

Who cares how profitable a market like weight loss is if you can't reach it because there is so much competition. Read some of my recent posts about this and save yourself a lot of time, money and effort.

Pick a micro niche of that market if you must be in weight loss and just put up a fast blog or squeeze page.

When you see how difficult it is to get traffic and sign ups to something that simple, you will see that 500 subscribers to a membership site would be almost impossilbe and you will have saved yourself a lot of work.

On the plus side of doing this, what if I'm wrong and you get a ton of sign ups.

Great! Now you can refer them all to your new membership site.

So learn how to build a list for free with a simple squeeze page.

But again, I advise you to reconsider your market to a less competitive one.

work out program every month ad more and more difficulty level to the site sign up for nicheology is the best way to learn how to run a membership site I think

Hi,

Just a couple of things. You say "Get it rolling" You don't say what facets of it you don't know about so I'm thinking you mean all, so I'll throw in a couple of ideas.

First off if you are going to use Pay Pal for your payment processor their TOS on Membership sites is that you have to get them approved.

I suspect that thousands of Membership sites are operating without the approval from PayPal and given the current climate it's just a matter of time before even more PayPal accounts are limited while the subscription site owners comply with PayPal's TOS.

I got a subscription site approved by PayPal and it's not the nightmare one might think. It took less than two days to do so. The process is simply this, send them a user ID and Password to your site and let them in. Also answer a LOT of questions RE: your site. I did that and my approval came within about a day.

Another thing is your membership management. It can be a nightmare if you try to set up all the features of your site yourself. Third party services like Wild Apricot are good alternatives to self hosting.

Hope this helps,

George Wright

Thank you for all the replies.

I would actually like to create a team awesome idea. I not sure how to do this with my current knowledge base at the moment.

The weight loss area I would be working in is losing more than 50lbs. If they don't need to lose 50lbs or more I am concentrating on this market.

Of course if I could get someone to sign on for a commission per sign up or some sort of agreement. That has done this, it would be the best case scenario, but not sure where to find individuals who have done this successfully.

Suggestions would be great as I am learning, I know 500 subscribers is a tall order but this is over a time of about 24 months or longer.

I agree with TopKat on what he said. Try to build something simpler first and get the ins and outs of it working to your advantage. The advantage of something simpler is that you can start building a list for it now... provide them quality, make them enjoy being a member to your site, and so on.

If you manage to get things going well with the simpler blog or micro niche site, and you've managed let's say, in a year, to build a list of about 500 subscribers, you can then work with someone to do the membership site related to your micro niche, and then email them a blast... tell them you'll let them join for a discounted rate and offer that to them... incentive to join. If it's going to be $20, offer it to them for $10... or less. Have them also mention it to others as well and tell them to let their friends know that they can also get the $10.00 limited time only price so that the word spreads out. I'd guess if you built a real great list and relationship with your subscribers, then out of those 500 subscribers, let's say 50 of them opt in at the $10 and like what you have to offer. You're now making $500 a month from those... but that's just hypothetical. And let's say of those 50, they brought another 25 to you, so now you have 75 people x $10 = $750 a month.

Building the list first would be great, especially if you manage to do greater and build a list of 1000 or 2000 by year's end, and of those 2000, at least 200 people opt to join at $10.00 a pop for lifetime. See where going with a small micro niche site first could be beneficial? And you could get the feel of what you'd have to do to run your own membership site.

I'm aiming for a membership site as well down the line but right now, I need to continue to do what I can with the sites I have, and then, I'll blast an email to my 1000+ members once I'm officially ready.

I am actually in the process of building my own membership site. Focusing on building a pre launch list from a squeeze page. I'm hoping 3000 subscribers will turn into 100 paying monthly members.

What is your marketing plan? The retention rate for most sites is a few months, perhaps higher depending on your content. You might do better with a fixed term membership. Either way, make sure to allocate time for marketing to get your initial launch off the ground and to keep it going.

Hi there, i'm actually starting something quite similar within health and fitness, it's a specific niche and i've done my keyword research and checked the competition and it seems good to go! It's going to be a fixed term membership for 6 months and i'm doing Jimmy D's membernaire programme, I guess the only way to tell if it will work is to get it up and running? Maybe we could work together somehow? If you're interested give me a PM