Today we continue our Membership Riches series and I like to discuss the importance of offering regular publishing schedules.

The people who have paid to join your membership site depend on you to provide relevant and timely information. It is their right to expect that information to be updated on a regular basis because they may be depending upon it to make decisions. When a person joins your membership site they should be told what your publishing schedule will be so that they know when they can expect to get fresh information. Adhering to that announced schedule is vitally important.

Deciding what your publishing schedule will be for your website is important. Keep in mind the kind of information you will be supplying to your membership. Information that changes hourly will require a RSS feed. Information that needs to up-dated on a daily basis will most likely require a content management system. For weekly publishing of content, you can do that yourself but a content management system can make it a lot easier. Read the rest of this entry

Basically, a free membership site is a site where the user is not charged a membership fee to use the site but is required to supply their e-mail address, choose a user name and password to enter the site, participate in the discussions and activities. Sometimes free memberships are limited to less useful information or access while paid memberships have full access.

A large entity like MSN, for example, allows members to access most things on their sites without the need for any sign in procedure at all but, in order to join a group, you must supply your email address, choose a user name and a password. The use of the site is still free. However, to use MSN as your ISP or to gain enhanced email resources you will be required to pay for it. Read the rest of this entry

People are willing to pay for online content. In fact, the “Online Publishers Association” said that pay-for content is emerging as a hot revenue model. Business content, personals/match making, and entertainment are the hottest niches. But even smaller niches, like DVD authoring, sports coaching, marketing services, and dieting are producing profits.

You can sell subscriptions for online content with your own Membership Site. Selling online content by way of a password protected website has become big business. Not only is it fast to set up, but the start-up and running costs are minimal. Work-from-home entrepreneurs and big businesses alike are tapping into this new-found revenue source. Read the rest of this entry

Let’s talk today, about starting a Paid Membership Site. Whatever you call them – member only, membership, subscription, or mentor websites, the “normal” membership sites all have one thing in common.

They are bringing in steady and constant cash flow for their owners, month after month, from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands of dollars. The array of the topics of these websites is endless. Examples are articles, eBooks, iPod Movies, Audio Books and mixed models.

Some of these paid membership sites provide mentoring or coaching, others publish useful articles or information in a particular field, product or niche. Read the rest of this entry

As you will notice, I have been less active in posting as I have been trying to get those membership sites to work.

Well the good news is that we are testing Members 3, it had some bugs with the MySQL database and after hours playing around with it, I think I’ve got it going.

So why not give it a try and register, just to get a feel for it! Members 1 is still being worked on, as there seems to be some cookie problems.

All in all I suggest to get your Webmaster involved in setting it up as this turned out to be more complex than I thought. As I got these 3 scripts for free, I guess you get what you pay for!

Anyway, I will prepare a complete site for download for the ones that are interested in it as I learned quite a bit along the way, not mentioning my lost time that should have been used on my other sites!

I already can see time is running out, as to design this site with membership content, images and products is going to take some time too!

But as usual we will just push along, as we are still will learning another lesson along the way!

Cheers,

Bert

Hi Friends,

Just got back from a nice much needed one week break at a tropical island!

I have been brainstorming a lot about the type of membership site that we will start with and going to spend some time on searching the keywords and market potential for it.

I have given one support access to one of the download I have problems with, and am still waiting on other for password to the administration panel. Judging by the comments received so far I am not surprised to see that others are also having problems with the installation.

In general support is non-existent except for one guy Chad, whom is still trying to help me  to solve my downloads for one of the membership sites!

Tomorrow we going to discuss about the different options to market the site.

Cheers,

Bert

Welcome back, a couple of days ago we discussed about the use of free membership sites, well today we will be discussing the paid membership model.

Whatever you call them – member only, membership, subscription, or mentor websites, the “normal” membership sites all have one thing in common.

They are bringing in steady and constant cash flow for their owners, month after month, from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands of dollars. The array of the topics of these websites is endless. Examples are articles, eBooks, iPod Movies, Audio Books and mixed models. Read the rest of this entry

Affiliate programs are important to membership sites for a number of good reasons. An affiliate program isn’t really a program. It’s a business arrangement such as Clickbank or Commission Junction.

Affiliate programs are also known as associate programs, associates programs, referral programs and even bounty programs. Most affiliate programs are free to join.

Affiliate programs are a way to earn money without producing your own product.

Affiliate programs allow a membership website to generate additional (other than the membership subscription) income by advertising products that are relevant to the site’s theme.

Read the rest of this entry

When you are deciding on the theme for your membership site, it is best if you can choose a theme that concerns something you are really interested in, even passionate about. Remember that you will be spending a lot of time keeping your membership informed, keeping your website interesting and keeping relevant and timely content on your website and in your ezine that you send out regularly.

If you choose to start a membership site about, say, .dogs. Just dogs in general won’t attract many members. You will need to choose a specific breed, .and possibly even narrow it down further. Instead of Poodles, your theme should be; Tiny Toy Poodles, Miniature Poodles, or Standard Poodles, for example. Millions of people are dog lovers and the theme of a specific breed of dog should do well. Read the rest of this entry

There are basically two types of membership sites. There are fr.ee 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 fr.ee network sites that might be used for your purposes. Two examples of fr.ee 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. Read the rest of this entry