No matter what kind of website you have, content is king.
However, when it comes to running a membership site, you have to make sure that you’re offering something that justifies the cost of paying for access.
For many membership websites, the challenge is making sure that your content is both exclusive and shareable. You want to have your members enjoy things that are unique to your brand, but you also want to be able to use that material to promote your site to entice new users to subscribe.
Today we’re going to discuss several tips for making your site content valuable enough for your customers so that you can continue earning money with this passive revenue stream.
Before creating content, you need to understand who your audience is. Ask yourself:
Use surveys, feedback forms, and analytics to gather insights and tailor your content accordingly.
Before we get into specific tips, we want to discuss the difference between a paid and free membership.
In either case, your content needs to be valuable, but your goals are slightly different. Yes, you’re trying to earn money in both situations, but with paid memberships, your earnings come from your subscribers. In a free scenario, it’s coming from advertisers.
In both instances, your goal is still to increase the number of subscribers, which is why content is still so vital to your success.
The best way to determine your site’s success is by looking at how engaged your users are on a regular basis.
With free memberships, your impressions and site visits matter because advertisers want to make sure that their ads are reaching a wide audience. With paid memberships, people who aren’t engaged are much more likely to cancel quickly, which can dry up your revenue stream.
Unlike a traditional blog or website, your content is going to be formatted a little differently. With a blog, you’re writing a bunch of different text posts (augmented with pictures and video), which you want to share with new visitors.
With a membership site, however, you can’t just have an article or post that can be shared anywhere. Instead, you want to create content that is exclusive to members and offers more than what they could find somewhere else.
Live Webinars
Downloadable Worksheets or Files
Video Clips (Streaming or Download)
Community Engagement (i.e., Q&A or forums)
Podcasts
Let’s break down the different options and how you can make them more engaging to your users.
The great thing about live content is that it creates a sense of urgency for members. Because they have to log on at a particular time to see what’s going on, it’s much better than having an archive of clips that can be browsed at your leisure.
That being said, archiving your live content is still a good idea, but you want to have a delay between when you went live and when it’s accessible as a download. If the content is available immediately afterward, then it cheapens the impact of “going live.”
When you have live content like a webinar or on-site interview, you want to make sure to hype it up to your members, as well as promote it on various marketing channels to increase subscribers. Also, consider how well you can broadcast the content, as no one wants to see something if it has a ton of lags and buffering issues.
One of the most common elements of any membership site (free or paid) is downloadable content.
These pieces can be worksheets, videos, or other things that you’ve created that will add value to your site.
E-Learning courses are a perfect example of downloadable content that will keep users engaged.
Because they’re trying to learn a new skill or subject, making these courses available will ensure that your audience stays engaged.
When it comes to downloads, you want to be strategic in how you offer it. Sometimes, people will sign up specifically to access these materials (i.e., for e-learning courses).
In other cases, the content may be a bonus aspect of the site.
Sites like Netflix have so many paying subscribers because they have a ton of content available online. Streaming has quickly overtaken traditional methods of consuming videos and movies, which is why it can be an integral part of your site experience.
For example, if you have an archive of live interviews or webinars, you can maintain the integrity of your membership model by having each clip available only for streaming (not download). This way, you can ensure that people won’t simply download the content they want and then cancel immediately afterward. Imagine if Netflix allowed people to download and keep the movies they watch – subscribership would drop significantly.
While these tips can help you ensure that you’re producing the right kind of content for your site, the fact is that you have to make it desirable for your members.
A live webinar on a topic that subscribers don’t care about won’t make any impact on your engagement, which means that it could be a waste of time.
Getting feedback from users and listening to them is an excellent way to ensure that you’re making the right choices for your site.
This is why community engagement and online forums can be so helpful since they can give you insight into what they need and want the most.
In simple terms, a membership site is a members-only area of the internet, accessed by a restricted group of people who subscribe – either with a payment, or not.
People generally set up membership sites as a source of revenue, and to drive customers to their content.
However, membership sites come in all shapes and sizes – also covering volunteer communities, internal intranets or student resource centres. Membership sites can be added to existing online businesses, or set up by entrepreneurs with a passion for sharing their expertise.
Interested in setting one up? Read on to educate yourself about everything membership!
Anybody with a set of content that they can sell could run a membership site.
Equally, anyone that wants to bring together a community of members could run a membership or subscription site.
That’s a pretty broad spectrum of potential site owners. If you have expertise and a collection of content – course materials, training guides, videos – then you are in a position to invite subscribers to join a membership site.
Beyond attracting members, the key to a successful site is retaining them: through varied, timely, fresh content and an active and well-moderated community.
Consider this: What do LinkedIn and Netflix have in common? They are both examples of global membership sites. One is free, one is paid. However, the “free” site includes a premium payable version. Could your business offer free content, with the option to upgrade to include a more personal service?
Given the variety in the membership site landscape, members come in all shapes and sizes.
Some come to your site because they are interested parties – charity workers, for example, or parents with an interest in your topic.
Others are drawn to the payable content because they want to learn new skills, or access resources that would be difficult to find elsewhere.
If you run a payable subscription site, you need to think carefully about your charging model – and how to allow for cancellations mid-subscription.
Make the subscription an engaging and exciting experience, and your members will come back for more – rather than shopping around.
Did you know? Most member site target 75% retention, but the actual retention rate is slipping with only 65% of sites reporting that they meet this target. New sites should focus on surveying and engaging their members to stop this negative retention creep.
A membership site is usually a gated barrier via a plugin like Memberpress, which allows access to a WordPress site.
Custom themes and plugins can be created by working with developers, who can tailor your site to your organization and its members. They will handle the security implications, which are considerable when dealing with member data and payment information.
Individuals are able to use standard WordPress themes to employ a desired style to their membership site, if they are content with a more basic site.
There are plenty of guides that can help you create a quick, community-focused membership site that individuals can use to get up and running.
With a commitment to maintaining a lively community, and updating fresh content on a regular basis, there is a huge amount of revenue potential for membership site owners.
We can all search for, and find, wildly optimistic stories of people making vast sums in our desired field.
There is plenty of evidence, though, that if you are prepared to put in the work – creating unique and valuable content, and offering something you can’t get elsewhere – then you will be able to make a good living as an entrepreneur through your membership site.
If you have these three things in place, you can expect to do well from day one with a membership site:
Consider this: If each of your members paid you even a $10 monthly subscription, you’d be taking $500 per month if you managed a fairly conservative 50 members. That provides an enticing prospect to incorporate a subscription model into your new venture.
Fashion, groceries and entertainment brands are all across subscription ecommerce – meaning members pay for regular product deliveries, but benefit from reductions due to scale.
You only need to look at the success of Amazon’s “Subscribe and Save” offer to see this is an important element in online retail.
But, away from retail and the bigger companies, member sites that do best offer real value to their members – building up a healthy base, and keeping them interested with personalized delivery.
The relationship between site and member must feel individual, relevant and incentivized.
Give your members a reason to join – and stay.
Consider this: Both the UK Times and the New York Times have introduced paywalls for premium content, making their online offer a subscription model. This is seen as the future of “print” media – can your business afford to miss out on subscription revenue?
If your design and usability isn’t thoughtful and thoroughly tested, your members will experience nothing but frustration.
As with every good development, users shouldn’t really be aware of the interface – just on the quality of their interactions with the site.
Developing a membership site that isn’t mobile-first?
Then good luck catching your members whilst they are a captive audience: on the train, waiting for a meeting, killing some time.
Make it easy for your members to respond to your invitations and participate in your online community.
While you’re putting member experience first, don’t forget to secure their financial information – failure to work carefully on security considerations for your site will put your members, and your business, at risk.
Membership sites are everywhere. If you have an idea for a niche subscription site, promoting your own content that is unique and available solely through you, then you should be in the process of building a membership site.
If you are, remember to focus on quality design, fresh content and member retention. If you aren’t – then look for a great membership site developer to give your business an important advantage.
If you’ve ever wanted to let your BuddyPress members submit (and publish) content from the front end but never found the right plugin for the job, I might just solve your problem.
Today, I’ve got my hands on BuddyForms, a simple BuddyPress / WordPress plugin that lets you enable your users to submit content from the front end. It does just this one thing. But I found to be really good at it.
If you’re looking to create a site that uses a lot of user-generated content, BuddyForms is a great option, as it lets you add any WordPress post type from the front end. If you have a plugin that creates a custom post type called “Events” for example, and you want to let your users add new Events from the frontend, you can use BuddyForms to do so.
Setting up the plugin is pretty straightforward. Just install it like any other WordPress plugin and you should be able to see the option to add a new form under the BuddyForms tab.
Just name your form, choose a post type to be created upon form submission and select (or create) a page where users will be able to view their submissions.
Once you’ve created a new form, you can use BuddyForms’ form builder to add different fields to it.
BuddyForms offers a lot of form elements. Depending upon your needs, you can choose the most relevant fields. You can also mark some (or all) fields compulsory.
BuddyForms form builder supports drag-and-drop. So you can reorder the fields easily. Once you’re happy with the form, you can save it. To preview your form, click on the “View Form” option.
I created a quick 4-field form and here’s a preview:
When I went to a different browser to submit an entry from a user account, I got a permission error. So I went back to the plugin’s Roles and Capabilities settings and found that all permissions are denied by default.
While BuddyForms enables your users to do a lot from the frontend, it still lets you control who gets to do what. You can give/deny different permissions to different roles. Each form has its own permission settings.
Once I reset the permission for the form I created, I was able to see and make a submission via a neat form on the frontend.
I’ll have to admit that the submission confirmation message isn’t perfect, but it gets the job done.
When I accessed the My Notes page from my profile, all my form submissions were listed there.
BuddyForms comes with a handful of add-ons that you can use to extend its functionality. They’re all free and available on WordPress.org. To display BuddyForms within your BuddyPress member profiles, you should install the BuddyPress extension. This extension will enable all the frontend publishing features for your site members.
BuddyForms is a handy solution if you want to power your site with user generated content. And it works great with our Boss theme. I found the setup, the form creation process, and even the submissions easy. The options for monitoring the content and managing user capabilities are also good. And support for custom post types is an extremely useful feature. All in all, it’s a great bet at $59. Thumbs up.
Here are 50 BuddyPress sites with unique and inspiring designs. 99% Guaranteed to blow your mind! Enjoy.
EasyOutsource is a site where Filipino online job seekers and international employers can connect. It's 100% free to use. (Full disclosure: EasyOutsource was built by BuddyBoss!)
FoxyForex is a site that takes a unique approach to Forex trading education. Their site uses BuddyPress and s2Member to restrict content to paying students. (Full disclosure: FoxyForex was built by BuddyBoss!)
Irrational Games is an award-winning video game developer. They use both wordpress and buddypress for their site. They also have a community with a blog and a forum.
Bettercodes is a community of software developers. Here, they can connect with other software developers from all over the world and share thoughts, ideas, and information.
Hello Eco Living is a social networking site for people who is conscious about our environment. They call themselves “the best green network on the planet”.
Tasty Kitchen is Pioneer Woman, Ree's, community of kitchen enthusiasts. Here, you can share recipes from appetizers to desserts. Since Ree is also an avid photographer, the pictures of food in this site are good enough to eat.
Solo Practice University aims to build a networking community of solo-practice lawyers and law students. You need to “enroll” to attend courses, participate in the community, create blogs, etc.
I Live with a Disability is a social networking site of people with disabilities, their family, and friends. Here, they can meet other people who share the same fate and share their love, support, and empowerment.
We Heart This is a place for women to convene and gush about the stuff that they love – from the trivial to the substantial. Girls will absolutely love this site.
Unstructure is a discussion platform where business professionals, bloggers, and contemporary thought leaders meet and discuss their ideas about business.
Flokka is an online blog community of women with an interest in business. Here, they can promote their business and even find new clients, share ideas and inspire each other.
Human Operating System is a community of people who want to change their lives for the better and live a life of purpose.
CUNY Academic Commons is geared towards helping faculty development, research, and teaching for the City University of New York.
Sheepworld is a German website that sells sheep-designed gifts and postcards.
Ride Oregon is a site promoted by the Oregon Tourism Commission, doing business as Travel Oregon, and is primarily focused on promoting bike tourism in Oregon
Ooizit.com is a UK music social network. It's a place where music enthusiasts in UK meet and discuss their passion.
VW Tank Wars is a community of VW drivers. Volkswagen has developed social media apps like “Smileage” that allow users to record and share their driving experiences and interact with other drivers.
My Telegraph is the social networking arm of the Daily Telegraph, one of UK's major publication. Here, one can discuss news, politics, sports, finance, etc.
| Temple Fox MIS is the Fox School of Business, Temple University’s social media site for its Department of Management Information Systems, known for its comprehensive programs and industry connections. |
The site focuses on research and teaching related to the development, implementation, management, and impact of information systems.
Kodingen is a cloud development environment, code editor, hosting service, database administration program, and collaboration platform.
Cultura Digital is a social network by the Brazilian Digital Culture. It is run by the Brazilian Culture Ministry.
Startup Weekend is a 54 hour event that builds communities, companies and projects. It is a community of developers, business managers, startup enthusiasts, marketing gurus, graphic artists and more.
h Mag is the website of Hoboken's high-end luxury magazine. It also has a community where they can create profiles, invite friends, create groups, etc.
GigaOM Pro is a membership research site. Once you subscribe to the site, you can view and download research papers and notes that have been provided by a network of independent analysts.
Wanna Network is an online real estate networking community. Here, people in the real estate business can expand their network and reach more clients.
Food Network Humor is a website that pokes fun on the Food Network's hosts and shows. You can register to be a member, upload photos, write comments, and connect with other members.
Androinica is a blog whose focus is on the Google Android operating system. They help users make the most out of their android phones. They review applications and phones, give tips and tutorials, and post the latest news on the android market.
Blog Bowler, as the name suggests, is a blog about bowling. It is an online network of bowlers of all ages, from all over the world, can meet and share about their hobby.
Runners Buzz is a social network of runners from all over the world. Here, they can connect with other runners, share links, training and diet tips, etc.
Culture 360 aims to stimulate the cultural engagements between Asia and Europe. It's the place where you can share and discuss ideas about the culture of Asia and Europe.
ScenePR is a media, arts, and entertainment network. It started in 2004 as a small gathering of filmmakers that has since grown into 5000+ members from the art, film, fashion, music, social/digital media industry.
Loving Futbol is a community of people who shares the same enthusiasm for the sport.
CSS Activity is a social networking site for anybody who can appreciate beautiful website design. Members can take screenshots of websites that catch their attention and bookmark them on the site.
Blogatize is a social blog network. It gives members free use of a ready-made blog. Members can also interact with other bloggers in the network.
Gleeks Online is a network of people who are into the TV series Glee. The site gives updates about the show and members can interact with other “Gleeks”.
Fisherbook is a magazine-style social network dedicated to Italian fly fishing. It is created by Marco Rossi. It is free to join this site.
New York Blogs is a blogging platform and a social blogging community in New York City. The site aims to bring readers, blogs, and bloggers together.
Ancestry24 was South Africa’s premier genealogy website offering a comprehensive online platform for family history research until its closure and integration with Ancestry.com in 2013. It is South Africa's most extensive ancestral and genealogical database.
Sofa Stop is a social community of backpackers and travelers. They give assistance to their members by helping them find a place to stay for their travels.
Ecoerth is an online community that offers information on living a healthy lifetsyle. This is a place where members can learn and share information about stuff about health and wellness.
KevJumba is the personal website of Kevin Wu who also has a popular YouTube channel named “KevJumba”. He became popular because people found his videos funny and “mesmerizing”. This website has a blog, a community, and sells merchandise.
GooCine is a community of movie enthusiasts.
Students Circle Network aims to deliver over 10,000 academic course resources, course materials and help and advice from top 200 partner universities for free with a focus on under-developed countries. They aim to provide world class education for free to the youths while giving them the opportunity to network with fellow students from across the globe, get live help from lecturers, and have project discussion and study groups.
The Secret Bistro is a social network of cooking enthusiasts. You can meet other people across the globe who is also interested in cooking, share recipes and cooking techniques, and talk about anything. It is free to join this network.
Rising Models is a social networking site for models, agencies, make-up artists, photographers, and others related to the industry. Here, they can create their own blog, chat with fellow members, and upload their photos and portfolios.
Film Maker IQ is a community created for and by filmmakers from all over the world. Members interact and share knowledge and techniques related to filmmaking.
Caryl is a french web community which was created to share the experiences of expatriates in Morocco.
Virgin Media Pioneers is a UK website that aims to connect young entrepreneurs with established business experts. Their purpose is to bridge the gap between young people with great ideas with the people who can help them make it happen.
Hopped Up Beer is a community of beer fans and a venue where they can discuss and review their favorite brews.
O Teatro Magico is a brazilian social networking site dedicated to a brazilian band.
