Make Money with Membership Sites Using a Membership Plugin
October 31, 2018 12 min read
Earn Side Income Working on a Business with Membership Website Plugin
It is impossible to be away from the digital marketing trends. There is a huge shift to working online and remotely and around 71% of businesses have launched their Websites. Around 29% of all business activity is conducted online. This suggests the growing importance of the internet in today’s business world. To gain benefits from this and earn a side income, you can launch an exclusive membership website.
Now why would anyone join a membership site? Well, 64% people join in for networking opportunities, 39% for continued learning, and 33% to up-skill and learn best practices of their profession. If you are aiming into any of these three, your membership site is going to be a sure shot hit.
Well, let us first understand how a membership website is different from a regular website.
Difference between a Membership Website and a Regular Website
You watch freely accessible YouTube videos to workout and join a special workout programme or a gym. I am sure you get the difference and that’s exactly the difference between a regular website and a membership website. With a regular website, you get what everyone on the internet gets. While, in a membership website, a user gets exclusive content tailored only for the members.
Thus, when users need a personal touch and something specific for themselves, they are bound to join an exclusive membership that solves their pain point. Aren’t people subscribing to Netflix to enjoy shows or buying Spotify Premium to avoid ads?
Advantages to Launch a Membership Site:
Earn Side Income
Every business can use a little extra cash and an opportunity to diversify their offering. By creating a membership website, a reliable and a recurring side income can be laid down. However, you must think of an innovative membership model or solve a problem differently to attract members in a quiet saturated market of memberships and subscriptions.Monetize Your Skills
Think deeply and identify your expertise. It can be public speaking, email drafting, guitar, piano, ballet, Hip-Hop, painting, doodling, anything! Remember what’s that one go-to thing for which you’re summoned like a mom. Utilise these skills for your membership Website and start offering tutorials, courses, tips, or exclusive content.Imagine if Monica from F.R.I.E.N.D.S had this opportunity back then. She would’ve created an exceptional food blogging site and avoided all those professional hassles and mishaps!
Benefit from Increasing Online Education
Around 69% of students prefer online or hybrid learning. This is a huge number and the reason for an increasing trend of providing online courses by famous platforms like Udemy, Thinkific, or SkillShare. With the help of membership plugins, you can provide online courses and tap into this lucrative trend. Share your skills with a global audience and earn a passive income out of it.Add Value to Current Product Offering
Add tremendous value to your business with a membership site. Think of a membership module that is an extension of your products. If you are a nutritionist, create online diet programmes and charts and build a community. This would expand your practice and provide you clients from across the world. If you are dealing with stationary items and books, create a membership around art and craft or provide e-books.
Different Membership Models to Earn
1) Best Membership Model: Online Courses
As we discussed earlier, online courses are heavily preferred among youth these days. Teach Italian or create a course on spirituality, the arena is limitless. Identify your passion, skill, or an activity you deeply enjoy. Teach it to others and gain side income with it. Make sure you provide genuine information in your courses.2) Stock Photos to Leverage your Existing Skills
For photographers and designers, selling stock images on a membership site is a very profitable side income. Nowadays, bloggers, content creators, content writers, need a lot of images for their content. You can identify the demand and create stock photos accordingly.
One more idea is to sell templates. Create a template of visiting cards, resume, business proposal, social media posts, and the like. Make sure you create exclusive and premium templates as the market has many free options available. Keep giving innovative options and sell it on your membership website. Selling WordPress themes is also a huge market which can be tapped in if you have coding knowledge.
Look at the subscription plans for Pixtastock!
3) Paid Articles and Exclusive Content for Your Members
If you are great with writing and have a specific niche, write gated content for your members. This kind of a model would require a specific user base to already know you from your other work. This kind of a model is beneficial for authors and writers who already have a reader base. The membership platform can be used to put out opinion articles, extended versions of a book, twists, share other short works and so on.
Look at the Website of Paulo Coelho for inspiration.4) Podcasts and Audio/Video Content
The Podcast Industry has around 460 million listeners worldwide. Production wise, there are 5 million podcasts spanning over 70 million episodes. Looking at the Video Content, it reaches 92.3% of the audience worldwide.How can you let go of this vast market opportunity? The podcasts have become a preferred mode of news, stories, perspective, guides, and even books! Launch your podcast based membership site and divide it in various episodes. Similarly for videos, provide exclusive video content and make your mini Netflix website.
You must survey regarding the prevalent trends in the market to understand how you need to stand out. It can be a saturated market but if you find a niche that serves an audience around you immensely, go for it. What better example than Audible for a podcast industry leader.
5) Storytelling Model
Just like there are drops of different episodes for a visual series, start a storytelling model in a drip content format. If you are great at creative story writing, divide your stories in several parts and let your members enjoy your creativity. This would be a very successful model as users will have to keep logging in again and again to understand the story further. Keep their interest piqued with an engaging story.6) Foster a Community
A community based membership like Photographytalk brings together like-minded people. Such a community helps people network, learn deeply about their profession, and share real-life stories. This community for photographers gives them access to conferences, meetups, special blogs, tutorials, guides, and a supportive network.You think you can create a community of students, medical practitioners, dancers, musicians? If yes, then this is a very scalable model in the long-run. Make sure you define the community rules well and lay down its functions.
How to Set Up a Membership Website to Start Earning
Before you gain traction, you need to start taking steps to reach there. Let us look at the basic, initial steps.Platform, Domain, Host
You must look out for a platform to host your site and also purchase a domain name. WordPress is one of the best Content Management Systems to host your Website. With hosting providers like GoDaddy, Hostinger, or BlueHost, you can get an exclusive domain name and get started with your WordPress website.Perfect Membership Plugin
Without a membership plugin, it would be impossible to launch a member specific website. ARMember plugin is an all-rounder product that would support all the required membership features and more. The best part, you can begin with a free, lite version of the plugin and understand how it supports your Website and goals before committing full-time.Scope of Content and its Quality
Define a scope of content based on the selected niche. You must plan what you want your members to see beforehand. Having at least a 2-month plan is important before you launch your site. Further, you must be consistent in providing content or courses and keep up the quality so that the members retain on your Website.Membership Levels
You can set-up various levels of membership based on which you release content. If you feel you want to give a cheaper plan and a premium plan, you can divide them as Gold and Silver, and segregate the content accordingly.Marketing and Spreading the Word
Letting the mass know regarding your plans and membership website is a must. Understand your target audience and utilise Social Media Marketing, Digital Marketing, Email Marketing to reach them. Keep your campaigns engaging and informative to hit the spot and convert them to members.Engage and Retain Members with Various Strategies
It is very crucial to keep the members engaged using various strategies. Regular content drops, scheduling content, using gamification tools, creating an engaging community using social connect features, and providing various coupons, discounts will help retain members.Features Supporting a Membership Website
You must understand the features that support a membership website to function in an optimum way. Let us have a brief look into the basic features, all of which are supported by ARMember.Different Membership Plan Levels
You must be able to set-up different levels of your plans and choose from various types of memberships like finite, infinite, recurring subscription and so on.
Multiple Payment Gateways
To expand globally, various Payment Gateways are very important for a seamless transaction experience. ARMember supports 15+ payment options like PayPal, Mollie, Stripe, Paystack, Skrill, Pagseguro, Paddle, MercadoPago and many others.Content Access Rules and Drip Feature
To keep the members engaged on your plan, you can use the feature of content access and drip so that the content is released to them step-by-step instead of all at once. This helps in controlling theft and also aids you with more time to create new content.Pay Per Post
If you want to sell a separate post or digital product instead of the entire membership, use the pay per post feature. Herein, the users can buy what they need, thus, increasing sales mindset.Online Courses Management
An online course module is important in a plugin if you want to create an LMS Website. You should have the feature to launch various lessons and also post video, audio along the course.Member Management
Member Management is another such important feature wherein you can see member’s list, edit it, and see their plans. You can also manually add members with a good member management system.Community Forums and Interaction
It is crucial for your members to internally engage if your goal is to provide networking. With features like Social Connect, you can create your own social platform limited just for the members. You can even limit your community based on the plan and provide the features of commenting, liking, posting, following, direct messaging, and so on.Examples and Tips for Launching Your Membership Website
- Start Small: Start with your basic idea and then think of expansion as you understand the arena better.
- Offer Free Trials: Free trial is a feature that allows users to take a look at your content before they commit a long term membership.
- Provide Value: You should not ghost your members and provide them with valuable content consistently.
- Engage with Members: Engagement from your end is important for the members to know that you are involved and equally invested.
Let us look at some of the examples of such membership sites and their models.
- Crochet Coach: This website provides a lot of free lessons and an exclusive membership as well by creating a community around the art of crochet.
- Inma:A Community based membership site that brings together media and news enthusiasts for idea and knowledge sharing. They have an interesting model and are very widespread.
- Farnam Street: This is an interesting membership site that offers knowledge in the form of podcasts, books, articles, and a lot more with a very catchy phrase of ‘Invest in Yourself.’
- Vogue Business has different levels of membership model that offers weekly briefings, trends, global insights and a lot more. It’s fancy!
- For fashion, beauty, and culture lovers, Elle has launched a membership community that gets a lot of benefits. You get to experience the life of an Elle Editor with it as well.
Wrapping It Up
If you want to monetize your skills and earn a side income, membership websites would help you immensely. It can even help promote your main business by being an added offering. Get some inspiration to come up with your idea for a website. If implemented well, you never know, it can be your main income source from a side income.
FAQs
1) Is membership website content different? How?
The membership website content is available to the registered members only. It is a high quality content tailored specifically for a group of premium members and meets their needs and interests.2) How to Set Up Membership Levels
You can create different levels of pricing and membership by using the Manage Plans module of ARMember. It provides you with four different types of plans that you can set. This allows you to cater to different segments of your audience and maximise revenue.3) Is Netflix a Membership Website?
Netflix is a subscription based module, thus, yes, a membership website. The users pay a monthly fee to get access to the exclusive content including movies, TV shows, and documentaries. This model is a prime example of how a membership site can offer valuable content and generate consistent revenue.4) Is the membership and subscription model the same?
Often used interchangeably, however, both of these are different. A subscription model is focused on a recurring revenue model while a membership is community driven and provides various related resources.
Brian Denim
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