Membership Website Strategy
By Amanda MacArthur • 07/15/2010
Gain immediate access to our free report Membership Website Strategy: 9 Deadly Membership Website Mistakes & How to Avoid Them and discover tips for properly creating a membership website
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Nine deadly membership website mistakes—and how to avoid them
On the surface, it looks like easy money.
Post your premium content on a website, set up password-required access, add a shopping cart, and start processing the credit card payments.
Customers should be lining up to pay for your premium content, right?
And the recurring billing ought to be a virtual cash cow, right?
Put it on automatic pilot, sit back, and rake in the money—that’s the membership website dream.
Unfortunately, it’s only a dream.
Reality check: Building a membership website for a magazine, newsletter or book series requires a great deal of forethought and evaluation.
The membership website business model doesn’t work for every publisher. Success involves much more than just having an archive of past issues and articles.
Membership Website Strategy: 9 Deadly Membership Website Mistakes & How to Avoid Them—What every magazine, newsletter and book publisher needs to know before launching a membership website, based on our 15 years of experience with more than 100 successful membership websites.
Claim your FREE digital copy of Membership Website Strategy: 9 Deadly Membership Website Mistakes & How to Avoid Them now.
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We call them “deadly” mistakes, because any one of them can kill a membership website’s success.
By taking note of these common mistakes, you can determine—before investing valuable time and money—whether a membership website should be part of your online publishing strategy
Membership Website Mistake #1: Choosing the wrong format for your membership website
Misunderstanding the characteristics and attributes of a membership website is common when launching a paid-access-only website.
There are nine membership website content models, and each works differently.
Get the facts before you launch, or you could really spin your wheels and get nowhere fast.
Discover how to choose the right content model for your membership website by answering three specific questions.
Membership Website Mistake #2: Having too much content
That may initially seem like a simple way to increase revenue, but bringing an information library online can be a very bad decision.
It may be surprising that too much content can be an issue. However, it can be, when you are utilizing too many content models in one interface.
Discover which content model is the most prone to this problem, along with six content models that can avoid this problem easily.
Claim your FREE digital copy of Membership Website Strategy: 9 Deadly Membership Website Mistakes & How to Avoid Them now.
You have our promise not to sell or share your email address, ever! Please read our Privacy Policy.
Membership Website Mistake #3: Lacking in content
Consumers expect membership websites to be comprehensive in regards to the amount of content they hold.
If a publisher expects to succeed with a membership website, they must have a massive archive of content that can account for thousands of pages worth of content at its launch.
Discover examples of websites that provide an adequate amount of content for their consumers.
Membership Website Mistake #4: Charging too much
Selling access to a membership website is not like selling fish.
The price you charge for access to your membership website must be based on the price consumers are willing to pay—not on the volume of information you make available.
If publishers charge too much for access to their membership website, they will not achieve the sizable audience they need to succeed.
Furthermore, if there is significant competition in their market, the rate of success may diminish even more if you charge too much.
Discover which pricing method works best for online publishers so they can offer their audience the amount of content they desire for a price they are comfortable paying.
Membership Website Mistake #5: Charging too little
Overestimating markets is common to online publishers preparing to launch a membership website.
In doing so, they look at current traffic numbers and assume they can get higher penetration than what’s already being experienced. And even though a lower price might mean more market possession, it will most likely mean the price point makes the business not viable.
Discover a trick for finding the most relevant penetration levels so you can assign a viable price to your membership website’s price point.
Claim your FREE digital copy of Membership Website Strategy: 9 Deadly Membership Website Mistakes & How to Avoid Them now.
You have our promise not to sell or share your email address, ever! Please read our Privacy Policy.
Membership Website Mistake #6: Lack of market access
In the world of niche, special-interest publishing, acquiring a large enough market share to succeed can be difficult for some publishers.
Fortunately for today’s online publishers there are options… This truth is particularly important as most membership websites will fail if only one channel is used to reach audience members.
Discover three ways to gain more market access so you online business can grow when you download a copy of Membership Website Strategy today.
Membership Website Mistake #7: Ignoring legacy business model
Every article you have ever published in your magazine, newsletter or book series is an asset.
How have you historically monetized those assets?
You need to pay attention to this model and take it online with you instead of utilizing a completely different model. Since the tablet and e-reading devices have gained more popularity, publishers have a much better opportunity to bring digital products to the Internet than ever before.
Becoming more familiar with the expanding business opportunities for membership websites is crucial to online publishers during this digital revolution.
Claim your FREE digital copy of Membership Website Strategy: 9 Deadly Membership Website Mistakes & How to Avoid Them now.
You have our promise not to sell or share your email address, ever! Please read our Privacy Policy.
Membership Website Mistake #8: Ignoring organic marketing
All online publishers need a plan for driving online traffic. Savvy online publishers attract online traffic with free content. Site visitors then register for, say, a free email newsletter, and become part of an email database.
You can use that database to sell products—including access to a membership website. But if you place virtually all of your content behind a firewall, there’s little or no content left to build an audience, and no incentive to visit your site.
That means you must pay for external media to attract users to your membership website—an expensive proposition.
Discover organic marketing tips publishers are using to share their content and promote their premium membership websites in the process.
Membership Website Mistake #9: Lack of cost-effective paid marketing
By only utilizing organic marketing, and not paying any attention to cost-effective paid marketing, you are ultimately limiting the size of your only business.
There are five cost-effective paid marketing efforts that you can employ, which will help you build your audience for a percentage of the revenue you generate.
Discover these methods today and formulate a more comprehensive marketing plan for your membership website.
What should you consider when starting a membership website?
Membership websites are relatively expensive to build compared to other website models.
Once set up with a good content management system, however, they can be an excellent revenue opportunity for a competent online publisher.
Before you launch, get the facts from the free Mequoda White Paper, Membership Website Strategy: 9 Deadly Membership Website Mistakes & How to Avoid Them and discover what every magazine, newsletter and book publisher needs to know before launching a membership website.
Claim your FREE digital copy of Membership Website Strategy: 9 Deadly Membership Website Mistakes & How to Avoid Them now.
You have our promise not to sell or share your email address, ever! Please read our Privacy Policy.
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