Starting Your Membership Site

Intrduction

Creating a membership site is probably the best way to earn a steady residual income every single month.

Before you set up a Membership site however, there are a few things you should be aware of. The average “lifetime” of a membership is around 4 month on most membership sites (!), forcing you to continuously recruit new members. This article should provide you with some helpful tips on how to extend the membership lifetime and to build real residual income.

Over Deliver and Exceed Expectations
The most important tip to consider before creating your own site is to make sure that you’re able to provide value to your members. You need to over deliver in every way possible and provide the most value, in order to keep your members satisfied and so they continue to come back every month.
In order to accomplish this, you have to make your members feel as if they are getting more for what they are actually paying. The products and information provided have to exceed the monetary value. By doing so members will stay and you will continue to get paid.

Plan Your Product Distribution
Another important tip, which goes hand in hand with creating value, is to make sure you do not reveal all your cards from the start. It’s a bit like playing poker. Don’t put your best products or information in your first month open on the table, and then be left with poor products or information,  or even worse with nothing at all for the following months.
You want to put out something of good value to start with, but you also want to make sure that your future products keep your members curiosity alive and willing to spend money for the following months.
In order to do this successfully, it is good practice to have a list of products already on hand and to breakdown their distribution on a monthly basis.

Build Hype
Yes, hype! Or if you don’t like this word: publicity! You have to make sure that you are sending your members frequent updates of the site and letting them know about upcoming releases. The best time to do this is shortly before their monthly membership fee is due.
This creates anticipation and curiosity within your member base and a lot of people will stick around just out of fear of missing out on the “next big thing”. Keep that in mind when creating a product. Ask yourself if you would want that product and how it would be beneficial to you. If so, you have a great chance that your members will want to have it too.

Gather Case Studies, Reviews and Testimonials
If you have the possibility, run case studies with a few handpicked members. Give them the beta version of your product to try out and ask for their feedback. This will give you the chance to modify the product, if necessary and you will get first hand reviews and testimonials
People love seeing reviews and testimonials from others who are actually using your product. Of course, in order for you to get these reviews and have people sharing their success with you, you need to make sure that your members can successfully use your products or information. The worst case is when member get products from you which they don’t know how to use. To overcome this problem you should provide support or setup a forum.