10 Reasons You Should Start a Membership Site

[Nikola]

Reason #10: Membership Sites Aren’t NOT Magic

When you start a membership site, don’t expect to get rich overnight. You’re not going to earn a million bucks
…in a weekend
…while you’re sitting on the beach
…in your pajamas.

What a membership site will do for you, however, is provide you with a business model that has been used successfully and profitably in offline, “brick and mortar” businesses for hundreds of years.

Here’s what I mean…

I’m a member of an auto club and I’d wager you are too. We pay them a fee – usually once a year – to enjoy all of the resources, facilities, and amenities available only to members of our club. These auto clubs have been in existence for years. And they’re so profitable that credit card companies, auto manufacturers, and even insurance companies are now trying to get a piece of the pie.

Then there are health clubs. Health clubs have been around for hundreds of years. They charged fees which their members paid in return for access to the facilities, the resources, and often the exclusivity of the club. Today, we call them fitness centers and memberships are much more universally available because enterprising businesses saw the potential in offering health club memberships to regular, working class individuals. But the basic concept remains unchanged – members pay a periodic fee for the right to receive the benefits provided by the club.

We pay for golf memberships, we subscribe to magazines and newspapers, and we join discount clubs like Sam’s Club, Costco, and BJ’s just so we can have access to the facilities, resources, and information available only to members or subscribers.

These are all examples of solid, successful, profitable, membership based businesses – real “brick and mortar” businesses that are using the membership model to bring in big-time dollars for their owners.

So, what’s so great about the membership business model?

It’s a business model that inherently does one thing really well. When you start a membership site you’ll be forced into doing the single thing every successful business MUST do – provide ongoing value to your members.

It forces you to refine and improve you products and processes to make sure your members are satisfied and continue to renew their memberships. Unlike the business model most companies are built on – where no one really keeps track of unsatisfied customers or one-shot customers (customers that buy just once and never return) – large numbers of non-renewing members is concrete evidence of a problem with your business.

If you don’t fix the problem… if you don’t start giving real value to your members, you’ll lose them. They won’t renew their memberships your membership site will fail.

If you continually provide an obvious value to your members, they’ll continue renewing their memberships - and continue buying your products - over and over and over again.

Reason #9: Membership Sites Offer a Dependable Income Stream

When you start a membership site, the very nature of the business model forces you to do the one thing every successful business MUST do.

You are forced to provide ongoing value to your members.

If you don’t, they won’t renew. If you do, you’ll have customers that will stay with you month after month, year after year.

The ongoing value that keeps your members returning is what leads to reason #9 – You should start a membership site because the membership site business model creates a dependable income stream.

Compare your membership site business model with its monthly member payments to a one time product sale. To keep making money with the single product model you need to keep finding and selling new customers, you must continually make and sell new products, and your financial success often depends on going from one product launch the next.

In contrast, your membership site will provide you with a steady income each month, and while you’ll still need to create new content to keep your members happy, you won’t have to re-sell them. They’ve already committed to buying this month’s “product”.

That dependable income stream has the obvious benefit of giving you a consistent cash flow. But there’s another, less obvious benefit that a steady cash flow allows. Having the income without having to chase sales gives you the time and resources to let you concentrate on providing value to your members – which, as we discussed earlier, is the one thing you must do to run a successful business.

One more thing about that steady, recurring income – something that sets the membership site model head and shoulders above any other internet business model you might choose. When you start a membership site and your members sign up – they actually give you permission to take money from their checking account or credit card for months into the future.

Now, how the heck can you beat that?

What’s even better is that a well designed membership site with the right membership site software will automate that entire process – from sign-ups and initial payments to renewal payments and cancellations. You won’t have to deal with billing or collecting money from your members. 90% of that grunt work will by handled by your membership site software using a robust payment processor like PayPal, or ClickBank.

So, when it comes to internet based businesses, there isn’t any better way to create a steady, dependable income stream than with a membership site.

Reason #8: Membership Sites are Like List Building on Steroids.

You’ve probably heard it over and over again – from both online and offline marketing gurus.

“The money is in the list.”

And for the most part, they’re right on. A great list of responsive buyers can be a goldmine.

But anyone who’s been around marketing for any time also knows that…

The real money is in the RELATIONSHIP you build with your list.

All profitable, long-term businesses are built on relationships. That’s a rule you can’t to ignore when you start a membership site. As long as you’re maintaining a great relationship with your customers, they’ll come back to support your business over and over and over again. They won’t just renew their memberships, but you’ll get backend sales and downstream sales and even referrals – because your members know you, they respect you, and they trust you.

Why, then, is a membership site like list building on steroids?

First, there’s the membership site registration process. When your members sign up, the standard membership site registration form captures, at the very least, your members’ names and email addresses – automatically adding them to your list.

Secondly, you have the visual nature inherent in a website. This makes it easier to promote your brand to your members in a way that’s much harder to do with other membership options – like using an email autoresponder to deliver content to your members. You can try to create that visual appeal with fancy, HTML-formatted emails, but it takes a lot more work and, even then, isn’t nearly as effective.

And lastly, the membership site forces you maintain an active relationship with your members. It forces you to communicate, to take feedback, and to really build the kind of trust that every business needs to have with their customers.

It’s the very nature of a good, well conceived, well constructed membership site to do all of the things you need to do to build, maintain, and cultivate your list of good, satisfied, buying customers.

Read more - http://www.peomedia.com/blog/2009/11/start-a-membership-site/