Membership sites are extremely popular these days for a number of reasons. When I first came online in 2006 it was very expensive to set up your own membership site. You had to purchase one of the interfaces that were available to that time, and then you needed a technical person to work with you on an ongoing basis to make sure the content you added was installed and set up correctly. This meant that only a limited number of people could benefit from this online business model.
Now, because of the development of a simple and inexpensive – less than one hundred dollars – plug-in for your WordPress blog, everyone can become a player in this lucrative field. The WordPress plugin I am referring to is called Wishlist, and you can see a video on setting up your membership sites here. No matter what you niche, the various types of memberships are now easier than ever to set up. The only thing you must think about is how you will set yours up, which content you will include, and how you will handle the marketing to have access to an unlimited number of potential prospects.
My first site was a free membership model. This meant that I could invite everyone on my list to join at no charge. I was able to experiment with this so that the new members would provide me with ongoing feedback about what was available to them in their member’s area. I did this for three months while I tweaked and perfected the process of adding content on an ongoing basis in order to make my site appealing to my market.
Once I had a good idea of what people wanted, I opened up a paid level to new people coming in for the first time. I gave them the option of paying by the month or for the entire first year in advance, at a reduced fee. The majority of the new members chose the annual option, and I made a mental note of this. Soon I had more paid members than free ones, and even some of the people who had been there at no charge could see the benefit of being a paid member.
Now it has been more than two years, and I have more than a dozen membership sites set up in the various sub-niches I work in on the Internet. I actually look forward to adding content to one or more of them each month, and my goal is to offer material that will help each member to achieve their goals.
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