Are paid membership sites a good idea?

I happen to have two sites with monthly subscribers. Paid membership is a good idea in small niches (like training roofers how to generate their own leads online for example).

No competition plus moderate to high demand means you can charge whatever you want.

I have one that I charge $22 a month for (not for roofers) and there's nothing sweeter than that PayPal email saying I received a payment.

But, I recommend doing it another way:

FREE Level one: Free article snippets or sample articles or 5 day credit card verified trial access membership to:
to
PAID Level two:
All of the good content/forums... yada yada...
 


Soupyone said:
I happen to have two sites with monthly subscribers. Paid membership is a good idea in small niches (like training roofers how to generate their own leads online for example).

No competition plus moderate to high demand means you can charge whatever you want.

I have one that I charge $22 a month for (not for roofers) and there's nothing sweeter than that PayPal email saying I received a payment.
Click to expand...

Added to that the resell value. Sold a membership site a while back on Sitepoint (now Flippa) that was 7 months old for just under $16k in less than 5 hours.

I kind of wish I held on to it now, though. Since it was just getting running well and most of the projects I siphoned the money to have plateaued. That, and the guy that bought it - for whatever reason - has just left it sitting and hasn't added a thing. Sad, really. I've often wondered if he'd take $5k from me to buy it back. :p
 
You've got 100s of articles?

Try putting a few preview articles on your public site, and try to add a new one every week or something. Put an opt-in box on your main page, and put a chunk of the articles (or preview) on autoresponder. Then send them a monthly/weekly email. Upsell them on how they don't have to wait every week to receive this kick-ass information or something. If you want a good example of what I mean, subscribe for David Deangelo's mailing list. It's actually great information for the freeloaders but you never know when one of those freeloaders introduces your stuff to a friend who buys.

Just my 2.5 cents.
 
Soupyone said:
I happen to have two sites with monthly subscribers. Paid membership is a good idea in small niches (like training roofers how to generate their own leads online for example).

No competition plus moderate to high demand means you can charge whatever you want.

I have one that I charge $22 a month for (not for roofers) and there's nothing sweeter than that PayPal email saying I received a payment.

But, I recommend doing it another way:

FREE Level one: Free article snippets or sample articles or 5 day credit card verified trial access membership to:
to
PAID Level two:
All of the good content/forums... yada yada...
Click to expand...

Since it's a monthly (presumably neverending) payment system, how frequently are you adding to the site? Do you have it setup like an online continuity program where everyone starts on day one with drip content or is it just $22 a month and boom, you can access everything? Stop paying/lose access?
 
dchuk said:
Since it's a monthly (presumably neverending) payment system, how frequently are you adding to the site? Do you have it setup like an online continuity program where everyone starts on day one with drip content or is it just $22 a month and boom, you can access everything? Stop paying/lose access?
Click to expand...
You start paying you gain access to past semester's content. You also receive updates via email and website with latest updates.

You stop paying, you stop receiving access.

I have it set up as an online college with content updates three times a week. Once a week live webinars, recorded classes of me teaching three times a week). Screen and audio recording only.
 
I run one , lots of work , decent bit of ongoing upkeep , but the money is there IF you can get traffic.


A few months ago I saw a membership site that had a $500/mo reebill and it was going along just fine, it all depends on your content and the niche.

Personally my biggest problem has been getting a CC processor to work w/ me. The double/triple checkout for paypal is a pain (and they won't let you have a real merch account w/ rebill) and CC processor hate non-physical products.
 
HALP!

Looks like I may run into some problems If I implement a members only area restricting access to a large number of articles.

I asked the question if google can crawl beyond the log in point to the pages which are restricted. So far one "top poster" has replied

"If there is some kind of login procedure that blocks open access, then no. You'd have to open the area to public access, which defeats the purpose of members only :D"

Does anyone know if this is true? Or if there is a way around it?

:1zhelp:
 
mrey86 said:
HALP!

Looks like I may run into some problems If I implement a members only area restricting access to a large number of articles.

I asked the question if google can crawl beyond the log in point to the pages which are restricted. So far one "top poster" has replied

"If there is some kind of login procedure that blocks open access, then no. You'd have to open the area to public access, which defeats the purpose of members only :D"

Does anyone know if this is true? Or if there is a way around it?

:1zhelp:
Click to expand...

You'd have to treat search engines as logged in members. It is possible, Invision Power Board (forum software) does have this option for example, I have no idea how to make this yourself but if you're serious about it you might wanna take a look at outsourcing this part.

Btw your articles will end up in the search engines cache so it will be possible for people to read them for free. But I wouldn't worry about that to much, 99% of the people won't even think about that.
 
There are plenty of ways to let Googlebot through. For example: WordPress › Are PayPal WordPress Plugins

You can even set it up so if someone clicks through to an indexed page of members content, they can see that one article. When they click through to another members only page, they get thrown to the sales page.
 
vinny lingo said:
There are plenty of ways to let Googlebot through. For example: WordPress › Are PayPal WordPress Plugins

You can even set it up so if someone clicks through to an indexed page of members content, they can see that one article. When they click through to another members only page, they get thrown to the sales page.
Click to expand...

I don't suppose you know of a plugin for joomla? I wish I started all this with wordpress but too late now
 
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