How To Make Money From Your Membership Site In 5 Simple Steps

by Jeremy Gislason

Membership sites can generate a very nice income, allowing anyone to quit their day job and work from home. A freedom that many people would die for.

Starting a membership site is not as difficult as it may sound. With the tools available to us today, it can be a very easy process. You simply decide on a topic, put up a site, generate the content, launch and promote the site.

Let’s go through the steps one by one.

Step 1: Choose A Topic.

Before you pick the topic you will be building your site around, do some extensive research. You are going to want to choose a topic that lots of people are interested in.

Niche topics are best, and you want to make sure that there are enough people interested in the topic to enable you to generate a decent income. Creating your site around raising goats may not do the trick. Some examples that will draw a good crowd would be cars, weight loss, video games, traveling and so on.

Once you decide on the topic of your site, break it down into sub-topics, to create tightly focused discussions. This will help to make the site engaging to specific interests.

Step 2: Build The Site.

A membership site can be put together in a mater of minutes with the right tools. There are plenty of tools on the market that will get the job done quickly and easily. Some of these tools are free as well.

If you are going to be setting up your first membership site, I would suggest using a free tool, such as Wordpress. It is easy to use and has numerous plugins that will help you to get ranked quickly and easily in the search engines.

Using some of the free tools available will let you get started without investing too much money right off the start. Later on down the road, when you are making enough money from your membership site, you can purchase something like Dreamweaver or Frontpage to build your site. But it is not necessary.

Step 3: Generate Content.

This is probably the most difficult part of planning a membership site. What will you be offering your members in return for their membership fee? The options are unlimited.

For example, you might offer e-lessons on your niche. You could offer an e-book as well. People love information and it is exactly what they are searching for every time they open a browser window. If you have a lot of knowledge in your niche, you probably have some valuable information to offer. Make the offer exciting; entice them and over deliver on what you have to offer.

Set up a forum if you have the technical know-how, or simply hire someone who can do it for you. One of the great things about forums is that once they get going, all the great content will be coming from the members. These members make up for a great community and have a lot of valuable information to offer each other.

Step 4: Set Up Your Payment System.

You need to make a decision on how you are going to charge people for their membership. With the right topic, forums can become quite large.

You can charge a very low monthly fee, or a one-time payment for a lifetime membership. With a small fee to join, you can still earn a large amount of money. Charging a monthly fee will create a dependable income. This in turn, will allow you to spend a fair amount of time and energy on the membership site, building up relationships with your members.

Some marketers offer the forum of their membership site for free, but has certain sub-forums for paid members only. The site would need to have so much good information on it, that it will lead free members to wonder what was going on behind the secret door. Curiosity will get the better of them, and they will pay for access to the exclusive members area.

Once your forum is open and you have active members, it is just a matter of time before you build a relationship with the active posters. Once you do, you have gained their ultimate trust. It is at this point that you can begin to recommend products that you feel will be helpful to them. These products can be your own, or affiliate products that you promote, enabling you to earn money from each purchase they make.

You may also consider using Adsense advertisements as an extra way to generate income. Using Adsense to place relevant adds on the forums is easy to set up. Every time a member clicks on an advertisement, you will earn a little more money.

Step 5: Launch And Promote Your Membership Site.

This is the most exciting stage of the membership website. This is also one of the more challenging steps in the process. Getting the word out will take a little work. You want to use all mediums to generate excitement and attract members. You will want to use online and offline forms of promoting the opening.

-Write and submit articles to directories related to your niche.
-Start a blog about the upcoming opening of your site.
-Post at related forums, answering questions about your related topic.
-Write a press release
-Include the web address in your email signature.
-Use PPC advertising campaigns to drive traffic to your site.
-Purchase banners on targeted websites.


Completing all of the steps above is going to take a little planning on your part, and will keep you busy for a while. But if you are passionate about the topic of your site, this should be a fun challenge for you.

Once you have members signing up to join, and the posts are coming in, the hard work is done. At this point you can sit back, relax and get to know your members.


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