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Monthly membership site question - your advice?

by Derek_Thomas
4 replies
Hello Warriors,

I've been running a fairly successful membership site for some time now, but I'm looking to shift gears a bit. As it stands it's a pretty typical membership site (using WishList Member) in which new content is added every week. When someone joins they have access to all the past content, plus any new content so long as they're an active member.

My question: I'm looking to move away from having everything archived and instead just sending out monthly reports to my members. I guess it's just as simple as having all my paying members in an autoresponder sequence (of which they're removed if they cancel), but I guess I'm just asking if there are any other ideas/methods/services available that maybe I haven't thought of.

Hope that question makes sense. Do let me know if you have any thoughts.

Thanks,
Derek
#advice #membership #membership site #monthly #question #site
  • Profile picture of the author Jack Gordon
    Hey Derek,

    If you don't need to provide a web-based resource for your members, that makes things about 1000% easier.

    If you decide you do, probably any reputable membership platform is equally up to the task.

    All depends what you really want to be able to offer.
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    • Profile picture of the author Derek_Thomas
      Originally Posted by Jack Gordon View Post

      Hey Derek,

      If you don't need to provide a web-based resource for your members, that makes things about 1000% easier.

      If you decide you do, probably any reputable membership platform is equally up to the task.

      All depends what you really want to be able to offer.
      Thanks Jack. It was one of those things where for a minute I was thinking it might just be too easy, like maybe I was missing something!

      Derek
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  • Profile picture of the author Jack Gordon
    I do both. I have a newsletter for free subscribers to one of my services, and a full membership site for paying clients.

    They are very, very different animals. I deliver extraordinary content to the paying clients, and a by-product of that content which costs me nothing more to produce is given to the free subscribers via the newsletter

    I am a huge fan of the membership site model, but it can be a double-edged sword. If you do not have a steady flow of new content to keep it fresh, don't bother committing yourself to it in the first place.

    However, if you have that endless supply and it is something that fills a need, there is nothing better in business.

    For me, the deciding factor would have to be this: is the content you provide something that you can keep fresh for long term subscribers AND is it something people will keep paying for for the minimum duration you need them to (preferably indefinitely)? If you can answer yes to both, you have a model worth strong consideration.

    For those cases, I am partial to aMember Pro with Wordpress. It costs a bit more, but it is extraordinarily powerful and flexible.
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  • Profile picture of the author John J M
    It's been a while since I've tried to piece together a membership site, but I know a couple plugins I was looking at for the job drip feed the content and can also take the content away after a certain amount of time. That would still be on your website.

    One thing you could do is run monthly "classes" or whatever you want to call them, in which only a certain number of people can join. During that time, you can either use the autoresponder technique, teaching via a skype group, or letting them have access to new content you post on the site.

    What might be good about the last one is that once you create the content you'll use for each new class, you'll have it for next time, so you can just hide/show it when it's needed.
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