How To Operate A Profitable Membership Site – Part 2
Copyright 2009 by Willie Crawford
In part 1 of this article, we looked at how you hold a membership
site together by creating a sense of community, and encouraging
member-generated content. Now let’s look at a few more secrets
to operating highly-profitable, low-maintenance membership sites.
1) Keep the membership affordable so that members don’t really
“feel the bite.” If a membership costs only $20, members who
don’t get the opportunity to visit for months will probably
remain. We all get busy at times, and go off into our own little
corners of cyberspace. If that same membership was say $47 or
$97, then members are much more likely to question the wisdom of
those payments each month.
Look at your operating expenses and your income goals, and base
your membership fees largely upon that but don’t drive members
off needlessly.
2) Allow members to promote their products and services to each
other. Since members of your community are likely to need the
goods offered by other members, why not allow them to make this
fact public.
In my membership sites, I actually set up a section on the forum
just for members to advertise. I’ve seen other sites turn this
into a profit center by charging members to run a special offer.
One danger of this is that every now and then you will get members
selling worthless products. However, the communities often
police themselves, and a “snake in the grass” is usually quickly
pointed out. This may be where a moderator, or you as the site
owner, may need to step in. You may even need a ban certain
members. If you need to do that to protect the community, then
don’t hesitate to do it.
3) A big key to a successful community is reliable software, where
all of the features work properly, and keeps the site secure. If
members have trouble accessing certain features, or the site is
frequently down, they’ll quickly go off into other corners of
cyberspace – canceling their membership shortly thereafter.
4) If your membership site is large or resource intensive, you’ll
likely need a dedicated server. If you’re on a shared server, and
your site is continuously using so many server resources, your
host is likely to notice and ask you to leave. Even if your host
doesn’t, you’re likely to slow your site and other sites to a
crawl or cause repeated server crashes. Your members will be
discouraged by this and not stick around.
5) The moderators, and you as the site owner, DO need to visit
the site frequently. This is especially true if you, or one of
the stronger personality moderators, is largely why certain
members joined. You are THE part of the community that they
want to learn from, so you may have to make more frequent
visits. That is actually a balancing act. You need to
structure your membership site so that it’s not so dependent
upon you that you can do little else.
6) A final tip I’ll offer is that you should periodically
give your members free bonuses that weren’t previously
announced. You can also encourage other members to do this.
Those valuable freebies can often keep members hanging around
much longer. Many of these free gifts may also be just what
they need to accomplish some special project.
All of the tips I’ve given you on operating a successful
membership site come from personal experience. I’ve
not only operated numerous membership sites, I’ve been
a moderator on many huge membership sites too. I’ve seen
behind-the-scenes what it takes to keep membership sites
thriving.
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Willie Crawford is a 13 year internet marketing veteran. One of
his favorite, relative hands-free methods of generating revenue
is operating simple membership sites. To see how you can set up
a profitable membership site in just 6 minutes, using all free
resources visit: http://YourNewMembershipSite.com
Tags: how to operate a membership site, membership site maintenance, Membership Site Secrets, Membership Site Software, retaining members