Income Idea #3: Start a Membership Site

Overview:

If building passive, monthly recurring revenue sounds appealing to you, then there is probably no better way to do so other than by starting a paid membership site.

Essentially, a membership site is a password protected website where people pay monthly recurring fees to access the information within it.  The information can be anything from:  exclusive articles, tutorials, specific services provided by an expert, how to’s, podcasts, webinars, or exclusive newsletters.

If you have a hobby, specialized knowledge, or are passionate about anything that you could build a community of like minded people around, this may be a tremendous business model for you.

How Membership Sites Work:

Just a few years ago the idea of paying for access to a website was unheard of.  Now, thanks to dating sites, financial information services, and the overall flood of information online, people now gladly pay monthly subscriptions to access information on paid websites.  They will do this if they feel the information is highly specialized, provided in real time, of a high quality, provided by someone they want to listen to, or if it saves them time and effort.

Membership sites are generally built around a particular area of expertise (or that features a particular expert in their field), and they exist in literally every industry in the world.

Income Potential:

Unlimited.  This is one of the premier business models for building long-term wealth.

If you think about it, if each month you are able to sell 10 people something that is worth $10, you will make $100 / month.

However, if each month you are able to sell 10 people 10 subscriptions to a membership site for $10 / mth, by the end of month 1 you would have $100, by the end of month 2 you would have $200 (the $100 subscriptions from Month 1, plus the 10 new members this month), and by the end of month 3 you would have $300.

Now imagine you are doing 10 sales / day, and this is the kind of business that can snowball very quickly.

How to get started:

Knowledge and Mentorship

Like anything else, you are best served avoiding gurus and product launches, and better off paying a little bit of money for access to premium tools, a community of people who will help you along the way, and access to all the resources and support you need to get something like this off the ground.

Our three favorite resources for knowledge and mentorship on this technique are:

• MemberShipSiteOwner.com - a great resource with startup checklists, how to articles, and a forum of membership site owners that help answer all your questions.  You can get a risk free trial for $1 here, and then if you like it, you can continue on for only $27 / mth.
• MembershipAcademy.com - a little more technical, but literally everything you need in one place to run the nuts and bolts of a profitable membership site.  The best feature here is their “Dashboard” which shows you a visual overview of everything you need to think of to create a profitable site.
  

Tools:

While you don’t have to know anything about website design, it does help if you know a little about some of the free blogging platforms that are out there, as you can create entire membership sites using free tools like Wordpress or Typepad.  If you want to make your sites look really professional on the cheap, pick up some professional looking Wordpress “themes” like:

Revolution Theme
Thesis Theme

Recommended Resources

• MembershipSiteOwner.com
• Membership Academy
• Wordpress
• Revolution Theme (From Studio Press)
• Thesis Theme