Over and over, I see people with membership sites and they are literally killing themselves maintaining these sites. I have been in that position in the past, where at one point, I was super excited about getting some membership site going, getting it live, but now, months or even years later, it’s become a chore. That is one of the worst things to happen because your business should be fun, your business should be something that you wake up and get out of bed excited about, not something you have to go and maintain because you have to. To keep your membership site from becoming a chore, follow these three rules: Be aware that membership sites do not have to be recurring, they do not have to cost your members money, and they can and should be fixed-term membership sites.
[audio:A4-GetOthersToWriteContent.mp3]Do membership sites have to be recurring? No, they do not. There is totally nothing wrong with making a site that costs $50 for access, somebody pays 50 bucks and they can get into this private protected member’s area where you’ve posted blog posts, videos, audios, and downloads and that’s it. If they refund, they are kicked out, but as long as the payment is okay, they can log in, recover their lost password, and maybe even leave a comment or a two forever.
There’s nothing at all wrong with creating a membership site that costs a one-time fee to join. And if you ever want to make it a two-payment option in the future, you can. If you want to make it a monthly option in the future, you can. But for starters, I would definitely recommend that your first membership site is a single-payment, meaning a not recurring membership site.
The next thing to keep in mind is that membership sites can be free. You have articles floating around out on the internet. You have videos floating around on the internet. Why not package them all up to a membership site and require people not to pay money but to sign up and get into a free membership site. Now, what is the point of this? The point of this is so that you can build an email subscriber list of all these members within the site.
And the final thing you need to know is that whatever your journey is, if it’s taking a single-payment site into a recurring site or a free site into a recurring site, it does not have to continue billing people forever. I know it’s tempting to charge 50 bucks a month forever and ever and ever, but most people stay in a membership site for three to six months. Why not make this membership site build them $50 a month for six months and then they are in for life. So, instead of creating this ongoing membership site, you create a six-month membership course, where there is a clear goal, a clear end date, and instead of them paying every single month, you are financing their journey into figuring out whatever your membership site sells.
Those are my three pieces of advice to keeping your membership site from becoming a chore. Don’t make them recurring at first, don’t always make them cost money, and make them fixed-term memberships, where there is a clear end date.
How long have you been trying to create that fixed-term membership site? Robert will show you how to get that site up and running this week, if not tonight, at www.membershipcube.com.