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Passive Income With Membership Sites
It’s the holy grail of passive income; the membership website.
They ain’t easy to build and it takes some work – but after setting up everything, it runs on autopilot.
This article explores ways in which you can create recurring passive income that increases month after month from membership sites.
How you can increase passive income
Increasing your passive income should be one of the laid down goals when starting your membership site. This passive income is built when members come on board your platform and pay for the content that you offer. The passive income can then further be increased when other new members register on the site.
Assuming a membership site where no member leaves and one is added each day, this site gets 30 new members a month. Each new member pays just $10, at the end of the first month there is an additional $300 to your passive income.
The second month, assuming the same thing occurs again, you now have $600 as an additional amount to your passive income. This pattern recurs each month and the passive income keeps increasing each month. The existing members continue to pay their subscription fees while the new members pay for their registration.
One thing to note however is that no single membership site has a 100% retention rate of its members. This means that the number of members might vary from time to time and this will also affect the passive income that you earn.
This can, however, be worked on by improving your value proposition to the members on your site as well putting in more effort in promoting your membership site.
Start With What You Have
Membership sites can work with literally any business model. This simply means that if you are looking to venture into a membership site, you can start with what you have. You do not need to do an overhaul of your business model or anything like that.
You also do not need to set up an entirely different website form the one that you already have. Ordinary websites can be transformed into membership sites by simply installing plugins on your already existent website.
Building a membership site from this helps you to capitalize on the already existent traffic.
Stick with the business model that you have and think of how a membership site can benefit the traffic that you already have. Once you have decided on this, it is time to focus on the content creation part of the membership area.
Value Proposition
The ability of your membership site to attract and retain subscribers will largely depend on your value proposition for them.
The main question to ask yourself here as the owner of a membership site or if you wish to transform your site into one is what do I offer to my audience that they cannot get elsewhere?
Having the right answer to this question will require that you understand the journey of your subscriber from problem identification to solving it. Once you understand this, it is then that you can tailor your content in such a way that it helps the subscriber arrive at the solution to his or her problem effectively.
This is your value proposition and your content should provide for this. Your content should add value to the life of your members and it should not just be some other chunk of information that you are giving them.
Format of the Content on your membership site
Content is what will keep subscribers on your site. You, therefore, need to decide what content angle you will use and in what format specifically is it going to be delivered in. The most common formats in which content can be delivered in are;
1. Articles- This is the most common format used in delivering content, not only on membership sites but even on regular websites.
Articles need to follow all the rules of writing and journalism in order for them to deliver rich content. Also, ensure that your spelling and grammar is checked.
2. Videos- Videos are the second most commonly used format in delivering content across to people on the internet.
Your membership site can take full advantage of this interactive format of content delivery to do tutorials and even webinars to members on the site.
3. Podcasts- Podcasts are coming up real fast in the world of digital marketing as a way of putting out content.
Podcasts are best suited for interviews and open discussions where visual expressions are not really necessary.
Deciding on the format to use to deliver content helps you as the owner of the membership site to come up with these content regularly and in time.
The use of formats is not however limited and therefore, depending on your audience, you might blend all three of them. Most times, however, you will combine two formats when delivering your content to members.
Payment Options
On your membership site, you will have to come up with a policy for use in charging for the content that you offer to your members. Here it is best to look at how you can reach your financial goals without necessarily charging too high for your content.
Most digital marketers offer monthly payment options for their members and they attest to this working well for them. This, though recommended, does not have to be the same for you. You can offer yearly payment options for your content.
Note however that with yearly payment, you will have to charge a little bit higher as compared to monthly.
A blend of both can be a very great tool as there are subscribers that may prefer one over the other. You can also decide to offer a free trial to new members for a given period of time. Free trials work well in driving new traffic on to your membership site.
Membership sites if leveraged well can help create a recurring passive income source that grows month after month. You too can capitalize on this by adopting the tips that I have offered above in this article.