Over the past few years, the increase in low cost membership sites, especially continuity sites, has made many people wonder whether or not free membership sites are still a good option. Of course, there is always going to be more inherent appeal to generating income from paying members rather than hoping to monetize a free membership base. At the same time, there are still some very real benefits to creating a free membership site. This is especially true if you consider some of the ways that free memberships have evolved. The big question is whether or not these benefits are great enough to outweigh charging a small monthly fee. Here is a quick look at how free membership sites stack up.

List Building

Both paid and free membership sites are a great way to build your list. The question is what kind of list you want to build. In general, a paid membership will create a smaller list, but it will be full of people who have already made a purchase. On the other other hand, free membership sites will help you generate a much larger list, although some of the people on it may just be freebie seekers or only signed up to get a better idea about what it was all about. Both of these types of lists can be very useful, it is really a question of which fits better into your overall strategy.

Profit Potential

This is an interesting variable to look at because of what members expect. In general, people who sign up for a free membership site will expect to see a lot of offers and promotions. Since they are more receptive, they could be easier to monetize over the short term. At the same time, paying members are already monetized and the back end sales are simply a bonus.

Another way to look at the profit potential is completely reliant on where your membership site is in your sales funnel. If your paid membership site is the primary end-product, then the long term monetization could be smaller than a free membership site which is designed to introduce people to more high ticket items over time.

Combining Free and Paid Memberships

As you can see, there are benefits to both paid and free membership sites, which might be why more membership sites now offer a free membership level. There are two different ways that this has been done. The first is simply a straightforward free membership level in which members get access to the most basic content. The other option, which has grown more popular is combining a free trial with a free membership level. When a members initially signs up, they get a free trial that includes access to the entire website. Once the free trial is over, they revert back to a basic member. This is effective because it gives them a taste of what a premium members gets, plus they remain a member even if they don’t upgrade. Using this method, your membership site can actually use two completely monetization strategies to achieve their income potential.

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Getting you content ready to go before you launch your website is absolutely essential. There have the been a number of membership sites that looked promising, but didn’t succeed because they launched before they had enough content to keep their first set of members happy. On the other hand, there are membership sites that were full of fantastic content, but didn’t know when to quit adding content and actually launch their website. Here are some simple tips to helping you get your content in order before your launch.

The first thing you need to do is make sure that you have enough content to ensure that your first wave of members are happy. They are going to be the first people who are telling others about your membership site and you definitely need them to be saying good things. It is impossible for most membership sites to recover from a poor initial review. Even if you do manage to recover, you will have likely wasted months doing damage control when you should be riding a wave of new members.

In the perfect world, you should have about 90 days or 3 months worth of content already created before you launch your website. This will allow you to focus most of your early efforts on the launch itself and the post launch promotions that are common for new membership sites. By recruiting a large number of members during your first three months, membership sites can almost become self-sustaining as far as marketing is concerned (almost). These three months are too important to spend them creating content that you can easily do before you launch.

Another aspect of content creating and content management that is commonly overlooked is the importance of free premium content. The best membership sites provide free, premium content to visitors. This means that the content is of a very high quality and truly value to the people who are getting it. This will boost their confidence in your product and make them feel much more comfortable with paying for additional content, as long as the quality remains high. It is impossible to say exactly how much of your premium content should be free, but it seems like the general tend is to make about 20% of the content free to visitors.

Content is definitely one of the lifelines of a membership site. If you launch with either too much or too little content, you can quickly miss out on a great opportunity to profit and if things go poorly enough, you could doom your membership site before it ever begins. In order to avoid this, make sure that you create about 3 months of worth of content before your initial launch and make about 20% of that content free to website visitors.

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It doesn’t matter if you plan on creating a paid or free membership site, there are certain features that every person, in every niche, expect to see. Without these items, you are devaluing your membership site because may view it as shoddy or unprofessional. Fortunately, all 5 of these features are extremely easy to include, but terrible to forget.

1. Security
This one should be obvious, but it is surprising how many people never really think about the security of their premium content. If you are leaking your content via an RSS feed or are not properly protecting your members area, you will quickly lose out. If people can get into your site for free, they definitely will never pay.

2. Password Abuse
This sort of falls under security, however it is a different beast entirely. There is a good chance that multiple people will try to share a password so that only one of them have to actually pay for a membership. There are a variety of different ways to handle this situation and it is up to you to determine which one is the best fit for your membership site.

3. Recurring Billing
Being able to automatically collect future payments is vital. People do want to have to go through the trouble of making a payment every month. They would much rather just have you deduct the payment for them. The more you make someone do to remain a member, the more likely they are to cancel their membership. It is surprising how many website overlook the importance of automatic re-billing Make sure that you are not one them.

4. Remember Me?
It is increasingly important that you give your members the option to use the “Remember Me” function to access your website. This not only makes it easier for them, but for you as well. Members will quickly get frustrated if they cannot remember their username and/or password. Especially because most people use a different username and password for every important login that they have (which can be a lot). Always keep things as easy as possible for your members. By giving them the ability to check the Remember Me box, you will always ensure that they can easily access the members area.

5. Member Control Panel
Your members are going to have some type of control panel. It could be a single profile page or it could a very complicated method of social interaction. Regardless of what it is, you must make it look good and be easy to use. Members expect to have a bit of personal space that they can call their own, so make sure that it looks good and feels good.

There are a number of things that you can do to make your membership site as member-friendly as possible, however these 5 items should be considered a must.

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When you create a membership website, one of the biggest mistakes that webmasters make is not leveraging the power of their members. Aside from paying the subscription fees, members provide a number of additional benefits as well. It is important to understand how to leverage the power of your members to help take your income to the next level.

One of the best ways to leverage the power of your members is to use their questions and feedback to create new products. The easiest way to do this is to have polls or open question and answer sessions to find out what your members need. Ideally, your members will represent the general views of buyers within your target niche. By finding out what common questions or needs that they have, you can continually create new information products that they would be interested in.

Since your members represent the niche at large, your new products should be profitable throughout the entire niche as a standalone product. An additional advantage is that you can give your members a preview of the information product to get feedback about the content, way that it is presented, and even what it is worth. This will ensure that your products are not only useful, but also priced correctly. If customers are willing pay $50 for a product, but you didn’t realize this, then there is chance that you would either charge less and be giving away profits or charge more and getting less buyers and more refund requests.

Another way to leverage your members is to take advantage of their opinions. You can get quotes to not only promote your website, but also additional products that you may create. Having a pool of members that are willing to provide positive testimonials and reviews is invaluable.

Additionally, having satisfied members inherently provides word-of-mouth advertising. You can even reward members for helping get the word out about your site by giving them commissions, just like an affiliate, or even paying them a small amount per lead. Satisfied members carry a huge marketing advantage, but you have to know how to take advantage of it.

Members of your website should be considered much more than just paying customers. By leveraging the power of your members, you will be able to create great new products that their niche currently needs, get testimonials about your products, and even use them to market for you. If you are only treating your members as paying customers, then you are overlooking the true potential that they can provide.

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There are basically two types of membership sites. There are free sites and there are paid for sites. The two types of membership sites have one thing is common. Their memberships are made up of people who share a common interest or have a common need.

You can, of course, buy a domain, set up a website and not charge for memberships but choose who to admit and who not to admit. This is done when the profit is intended to come from sales to members after they join the site. There are free network sites that might be used for your purposes.  Two examples of free membership sites are Group sites on MSN and groups on Yahoo. It costs nothing to set these sites up and there is no charge at all for a person to join. There are no paid administrators or moderators.

Each site sets its own rules for how to join and the code of conduct for the site. The site topics are many and varied. There are many “support” sites for those with health problems or concerns and for those who have suffered the loss of loved ones. There are sites for those who are passionate about crafts like quilting or woodworking. There are sites for those who love to travel. There are sites for different age groups from teens to seniors. The sites include chat software and a limited amount of space for posting pictures, documents and links per member.  The free sites do not have such things as access to specialized data or lists. They don’t give access to such things as music lessons.

Paid for membership sites are set up by businesses or individuals with the objective of making money by supplying hard to find information, access to specialized data or lists, or instruction in various fields. Membership sites are owned and operated by people who either own the sites or who are hired by the site owners to monitor and administer them. The topics for paid for membership sites are even more varied than the free sites and certainly more specialized.

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Paid membership sites are one of the leading business models online today. This is mainly due to the fact that paid membership sites offers more advantages compare to other type of business. What are these advantages you ask? Well, there are three basic advantages and one is the steady stream of income.

With paid membership site you can have the steady income of a CEO but without the tedious responsibilities that comes with it. You see, subscriptions to paid membership sites are set up for a certain amount of time usually about by month or by year. So for instance you have a hundred people subscribe to your site for $20 a month. That would give you a steady cash flow of $2,000 for months to come, so long as your members remain satisfied and subscribe to your site. In a year you could make $24,000. That is more than the annual income of some people with normal office jobs.

Another advantage to having your own paid membership site is that the start-up cost is considerably low. Compare to other business, paid membership sites only requires a low capital. All you need to start up your site is a website design or template, a website host, a content management software or membership software (this includes all that you will need with the exception of the content itself) and of course the content. Most of which, you can do yourself to eliminate cost. As for the cost associated with website hosting services, they are very affordable with some as low a $5 a month.

The third advantage is actually the combination of the first and second advantage — high profit margin. The profit potential gained from paid membership site is unlimited. The actual amount of profit you gain would depend on how much time and effort you devote to your site. So if you are looking for a business that could provide you with steady income at a low start up cost then paid membership site is the one for you.

What’s great about starting your own paid membership site is that you are in control. You choose what kind of site you want to start up and how much to charge for it. It can either provide mentoring or coaching, or contain articles or information about various subjects. You can even offer some sort of specialized service like social networks. It’s all up to you! Just remember that your main goal is charge people before giving them access to your website.

So how would you get people to pay just to gain access to your website? Well, the key here is “specialized”. May it be information, product, coaching, or service it needs to be specialized. Why? Because these are hard to come by and would be too time consuming if it were to be done on your own.

When the Internet first came into being no one thought to charge for access to a website since just about every piece of information can easily be obtained for free. However, times have change. Not everyone has the time to devote to looking through endless pages of results just to gain a certain piece of information. So what do they do? They pay for it! Consumers nowadays are willing to pay for the information they need without the hassle of going through pages and pages of information. And that is one reason why it is the perfect time to begin your own paid membership site, the demand is high!

Now, how do you start your own paid membership site successfully? Well, the first step is to choose a topic. This is the critical stage, since it will decide the future of your business. So make sure that your topic is either in high demand or at least interesting enough to catch the attention of consumers.

A good place to start is within your own world. Ask your friends and family members for advice. It might also be a good idea to find a topic that you are passionate about and what would interest others. Since you will be spending most of your time working on your site, why not choose a topic that you can enjoy?

The next step is to creating a niche. You cannot start a paid membership site for the profits alone. You need to target your market and in order to do that; you need to find a niche that will target those who are looking for what your website is offering.

Make sure that your niche is fresh and innovative, but most importantly that it is not being offered for free on the Internet anywhere. This might proved to be a challenge but it is not an impossible feat.

Once you have your niche, next is you need to find prospects. This one is easier to accomplish and can be done for free. All you have to do is post offers on various message boards or forums. Just make sure that your posts can easily be seen by your target consumers. Interested prospects can easily reach you by simply using the private message feature right on the forum.

The next step is to set up your site. There are many tools available that can help you build and maintain your own paid membership site. You have the option whether to leave the website creation to 3rd party services at a very affordable cost or to simply do it yourself.

Another idea is to avail of one of those all-in-one membership management software systems. This will get your website started in no time at all, even if you do not have the technical knowledge, since most of its administrative features are automaton. These membership software programs will reduce your workload by 75%, it’s easier and faster!

So you already have your topic, niche, prospects and site. The next step is to decide how much to charge. This will depend on what your site have to offer, whether it’s worth paying for access or if it can be found somewhere else at less cost. Most paid membership sites charge anywhere from $19.95 to $69.95 a month. Whatever you decide remember that your product or service has to be worth its price. Otherwise, your customers will not continue subscribing to your site.

All across the globe, people are enjoying the large amounts of profits gain from their own paid membership site all of which are comes in regular basis and earned from the comfort and convenience of their own home. So do not be left behind! Start making money online with your own paid membership site.

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