Are you looking for new ways of growing your income online? Or simply want to set up a new and reliable revenue stream? Then you’re in the right place. Membership sites can be a great way to boost your online income and in this blog post, I’ll share with you the 5 top reasons why you need to create a membership site.
Passive income is a bit of a buzzword in the world of internet marketing, usually accompanied by pictures of people on their laptop on a Caribbean beach or otherwise travelling the world working an hour a week while the money rolls in.
Nice?
I personally don’t like the phrase passive income (in my experience the word passive is hugely deceptive as it takes a LOT of time and effort to correctly set up and market any product) but I do agree that having products that can be purchased without you having to deliver any of the content in person or at a set time is a great way to build your business.
Now hold on a second, you might be thinking how much you love your business and your clients and that you don’t want to have a business that doesn’t rely on you, automation is going too far and you can’t do better than the personal touch.
I hear you.
I don’t ever want my whole business to rely on passive income, I love my coaching calls, the content creation service that I offer, reviewing products and generally interacting with and TALKING to my customers. But I also see the value in being able to bring in a good base income without any of this.
I don’t think a membership site or other form of passive income should ever replace your main business, but with a little bit of time and effort, it would make a great addition.
For me, the decision to launch a membership site was simple. I have many amazing customers who I work with on a one to one basis and we achieve great things in their business.
But it’s not necessarily something that everyone can afford. I get hundreds of people every week who want to pick my brain for free, who want answers to questions and who need my help, but can’t afford to pay for it.
And as much as I like helping people out there comes a point where I can’t offer advice to everyone for free.
So for me, having a membership site set up as a passive income stream in my business is a smart move. It allows me to help more people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to work with me and brings me in that passive income that everyone wants.
Here are the top 5 reasons why YOU would benefit from having a membership site as part of your business structure.
Earn money while you’re travelling or working on something else
You can earn money while you take time off to be with your family, travel or do whatever you want. You can earn money while you are in the middle of working on something else. It can be a great way of bringing in some income and paying your bills while you concentrate on a different area of your life. Imagine if you had to go and care for a relative for a month, or became ill, or just decided that dammit you WOULD go to the other side of the world for your cousin’s wedding. You can do this and know that you will still be selling products while you are gone. Perfect, right?
Learn new skills & improve your knowledge
You learn new skills in designing and delivering this product which will be hugely helpful in other areas of your business. Imagine how you’ll feel when you’ve finished your membership site, when you’ve built it yourself or when you’ve worked with my team and me to build it for you. So many people are afraid of the tech needed to be successful online – but there is no need to be. If you have someone to guide you through it you will see that it is JUST a process. Just a step by step. And whether you decide to do it alone or with help the process will teach you so much, being brave enough to step up and step out of your comfort zone and design and implement something brand new in your business is a great self-development tool.
Use your membership site for upselling
It’s a great way to build relationships with people who might later come and buy your higher priced products and services. Think about it? If you were going to invest at a higher level with someone who would it be, someone who you had bought a passive income product from in the past (which you’d been really impressed by) or from a total stranger? Exactly. A membership site is a great way to build a relationship with your customers and be able to give them great value, and maybe even teach them to earn the money that they need to be able to invest in you at a higher level.
It’s passive income
Once you have put in the time and effort to build the membership site you don’t have to do any more work on it, apart from the marketing, promotion and creating content. The biggest piece of this puzzle is the ongoing content, we have a formula that we use which means that when we set up a membership site for someone we help them get the first 3 months content created and ready to go – this way you are not always having to remember to create content each week and share it. The content that you share can be anything from a live Q&A session to videos, PDFs, mini-courses, worksheets – whatever your industry and customers need. You probably have the content that you’ll need already and if you don’t have it on paper then you’ll have it in your head, you just need to go through the process of mapping it out and making it simple.
Give more value to your subscribers & get more membership site members
Having a membership site (especially if you go down the route of having a $1 trial) means that you have something which you can direct your newsletter subscribers to once they have signed up for your list. So if you give them a pdf to download as a thank you for subscribing, the thank you page can direct them to your membership site special offer join for $1 today deal.
This gives value to your customers as well as getting them used to the fact that you are a business who sells products and not just someone who gives away stuff for free.
Are you convinced that it’s a good idea yet?
Great. Then what are you waiting for? My advice if you are looking to set up a membership site is to first of all think about who your customer is and what you are going to help them achieve (maybe you run a social media agency, or are a copywriter who can teach business owners how to write sales pages and emails) and then come up with some content ideas and write a brain dump list of what you could teach them.
You’ll find once you sit down with pen and paper that it should start to flow easily. You can also ask your customers what they would like to learn from you or publish a survey to get an idea of what they are looking for.
If you’re ready to build a membership site and would like some support then please reach out, my team and I are experienced in building these and would love to talk to you about how we could help.
