My daughter and I have been building niche blogs for lots of clients lately. Most of them are monetized with affiliate links.
But one recent client wanted a membership site. The timing was perfect, as a brand new web-based solution was just released this week. Today I’ll show you how it works.
First things first though…. Why would you want a membership site in the first place?
Well let me ask you this…
Do you have a plan to generate passive income online?
Income that comes in whether you are working or not?
Every small and home business owner needs at least one passive income source. One of the best ways to do that online is with a membership site.
There are countless customers in just about every niche online, who are willing to pay anywhere from $10-$40 a month or more, for real help with something they are passionate about.
Customers are happy to pay a fair price for solid training, advice and insight, product rights, and much more.
Here’s an example from my own personal experiences…
The very first year I opened a membership based site it easily earned more than six figures all by itself. Since then I’ve gone on to open other subscription-based web properties that earned automated, passive income.
The numbers just make so much more sense than selling products for a one-time fee.
For example, let’s say you offer a product for $27 and make just one sale a day. We’ll call it 30 sales a month and 360 sales over the course of a year. You’ll earn $9,720.
However if you expand a little on the product, maybe convert some of it to video and offer personal help along with the content, you can easily package it into a membership site instead.
You can then sell access to the membership site for $27 a month.
Sure, less people may buy it because of the monthly fees, but I’ve found that the number is not significantly lower. Let’s say that instead of 30 info-product sales a month you get 20 new monthly members.
That’s $540 the first month and then $540 a month additional for the whole year. By the end of the year your earnings would look like this…
| Month | New Revenue W/ 20 Sales per mo. | Total Monthly Revenue |
| 1 | $540.00 | $540.00 |
| 2 | $540.00 | $1,080.00 |
| 3 | $540.00 | $1,620.00 |
| 4 | $540.00 | $2,160.00 |
| 5 | $540.00 | $2,700.00 |
| 6 | $540.00 | $3,240.00 |
| 7 | $540.00 | $3,780.00 |
| 8 | $540.00 | $4,320.00 |
| 9 | $540.00 | $4,860.00 |
| 10 | $540.00 | $5,400.00 |
| 11 | $540.00 | $5,940.00 |
| 12 | $540.00 | $6,480.00 |
When you total up the year’s earnings, you’ll see it adds up to a whopping $42,120. That’s more than 4X what you would have making one-time sales.
Of course you need to factor in churn rate and attrition. And that will cut those income estimates. The fact is, people will drop out no matter how good your membership value is.
Member sites with below average value for the cost can see dropout rates of close to 50% within the first three months each member joins. However member sites with very good value get less than 20% drop outs. And some members stay on-board with you for years and years.
I won’t go into all the attrition and churn rate math, but assuming your site loses 25% of members by their third month of membership, at the end of the year you would still have roughly 100 members paying $27 a month.
That’s a nice little recurring income stream, especially when you have a handful of web properties doing that. When you compare it to selling products for a one-time fee, you would still easily be earning 3x to 4x what you would with the non-membership model.
Of course these are small numbers compared to what many web properties experience. I’ve had new member sites get more than 200 members the first month alone. That was before I opened an affiliate program and ramped up sales even faster!
That’s right, another great bonus you get with your own membership site is the ability to offer residual income to affiliates who promote for you. Give them 50% of the monthly dues for all the members they refer and you can expand your program easily.
So this all leads us to the logical question…
“How do you get your own membership site?”
Well, there are about 50 different ways to do it. Of course, you’re going to need content, but that is usually the easy part. Find something you’re passionate about and start shooting videos. Or just BUY content with private label rights.
Next, you’ll need to deal with the membership site technical details.
You can buy a member site script and have programmers install it. Or you can buy a WordPress membership site plugin and do it yourself. Or, there are now web based solutions available to simplify things further.
I’ve done all three. And I can tell you from experience, that unless you are tech savvy, you want the simplest solution possible. Because it’s the technical hurdles that keep most people from achieving their goal of a profitable member site.
That’s why I recommend you have a look at this easy platform — it is called MemberVio and in my opinion, it is the simplest member system there is.
There’s nothing to download or install. No site to build. Heck, you don’t even need web hosting!
“YES, It’s literally easy as pie”.
Here’s a List of Membervio Features…
- Create your own premium membership site with online courses, coaching programs, and much more
- Create multiple options for monetization including direct sales, free trials, subscriptions, upsells, and affiliates.
- Connect & automate everything about your business in one place…Your content, your marketing, your transactional emails, & your products.
- View reports, user forecasting, customer progress tracking, and see how customers are engaging with your business.
- Simple, seamless integration with PayPal, Stripe, JVZoo, W+, and 6 more platforms… get you paid easier, faster.
- 100% Beginner Friendly. Fully Cloud-Based
- 5 Ready-To-Sell Professionally Created Courses Included
- Enjoy complete automation to manage users… from subscription to cancelation requests and everything in between
- Pick and design your membership site from an extensive set of themes
- Easily manage member statistics, product statistics & enjoy rock-solid security controls
- Customize your site with your brand aesthetics & colors (you can even add your own domain and logo)
- The onboarding guide includes easy to follow videos for smooth onboarding of users
- Get detailed reports about the product, location, devices, visitors, traffic inflow details, and lots more!
- Replicate or reuse your existing lessons with just one click to create more than one stream of income.
- Create coupons to offer discounts & deals and watch your conversions skyrocket.
- Get important insights into the number of quizzes taken, lessons completed, total money spent & login details for each member
- Access members’ info. regarding basic information, products purchased & transactions
- Step-by-step tutorial included
- Keep your members engaged with Quizzes & Worksheets
- Enable Content Drip Feed to allow users to access more modules as they complete one section
- Make your course time-bound to add the scarcity factor
- Deliver your course in modules
- Allow users to interact with you, ask questions and provide feedback using the comments section
- Disable right-click (and the copy-paste option) to ensure that no one steals images & content from your course
So what are you waiting for? You can have a complete membership website set-up literally today.
No messy plugins to install, no custom code to write, no web hosting to configure.
No matter what membership site solution you choose, here’s hoping you get lots of members!
Click here to watch Membervio it in action.
To your Success,
Jim Daniels
Jim,
I finally have gotten my act together and am just about
ready to kick off my business. This is the one you helped me get a domain name for.
Using the membership platform how would be the best way to cover each aspect of starting over and making a
new life for one’s self?
Would you try and include everything at once or how could you add each aspect on a timely basis.
Looking forward to your expert advice.
Thanks,
Jim Jarvis
That’s great news Jim. You’ve been on my subscriber list a long time now, I’m glad to see you making some progress.
In answer to your questions, I would put yourself in the position of the person who needs the help. Create an outline that will take them through each stage of progress. Then make a series of videos that will help them tackle each stage one at a time. If you need help with the videos, there are lots of gigs at fivver than can same you time.
Jim
Jim,
Thanks for your encouraging words because they really mean a lot to me.
One question I have is regarding s2 member.
Can the free version be used with recurring billing?
You can answer this by sending the answer to my email address.
I tried using fiverr for my website and still can’t get them off my dashboard.
Thanks again,
Jim
From their site Jim: The free s2Member® Framework supports only PayPal® Standard Button integration. s2Member® Pro adds PayPal® Pro integration (highly recommended), PayPal® Pro Form Generators, and additional support for Recurring Billing via PayPal® Pro.
s2Member® Pro also adds support for several other payment gateways, including Stripe™, Authorize.Net®, ccBill®, ClickBank®, Google® Wallet, and AliPay®. See the below for a complete description of the specific payment gateway integrations included with s2Member® Pro.
Great post Jim! Membership websites can be a great way to earn income. They require effort to setup but it’s well worth it!
Great Article Jim, gave me a lot of “Food for Thought!”
I wouldn’t mind having a membership site, but only if it was automated someway for the content. (Like a newsletter, with weekly content in the auto-responder.)
Something to think about!
Thanks,
Sam