Online Business Tips - Subscribing To Membership Sites
Sunday, November 18th, 2007 Subscribe To Our Feed
The following extract is from a series of online business automation articles and tips on the benefits of membership sites …
In other articles, I explain how online business automation is something you do not truly “experience” until you have reached the last stage of a specific business development sequence as shown below:
Reflection > Decision > Planning > Organising > SetuP > Systems Development > Online Business Automation.
In this post, we will analyze in more detail one of the most important components of the online business automation process you will need to consider investing in during the “Setup” phase … membership sites. In this article, we’ll be specifically addressing the topic of joining one or more membership sites, not starting your own.
There are many types of online membership sites which you can join. There are free membership sites, and there are paid membership sites. There are sites that focus on delivering a particular kind of product (e.g. articles on a specific niche area, like “parenting”) and there are “Mastermind” membership sites, where the aim of the site is to share information and promote the creation and sprouting of new ideas. There are exclusive, or limited membership sites that limit their intake of new members once a certain level of membership numbers is reached, and there are membership sites that have no capping on the number of members that can join. We will be looking briefly at each of these types of memberships.
Before we do this, however, the question we need to address first is “why” are membership sites so important to the process of building an automated online business?
There are several reasons why you should really consider joining one or more membership sites during the “Setup” phase of your business development process. One of the more logical reasons, is that the virtual universe is expanding in all areas at such a phenomenal rate, that if you are not connecting with other online business developers, you will quickly find that all of your ideas, knowledge, strategies, marketing efforts, etc … will have been rendered obsolete. Other business owners, networks of people and entrepreneurs that plan to compete for your market share, will overtake you in every aspect and your “virtual” business presence could thus be literally extinguished overnight.
Other reasons for joining membership sites are to enhance your own technical, business, or marketing knowledge (e.g. by interacting with other members in a member’s forum), to leverage and synergize your efforts (e.g. by forming joint venture partnerships), and to outsource some of the necessary “production” requirements of your business (e.g. Private Label Rights, membership sites that provide you with content for your business - articles, information products, software, etc…).
So now that we’ve established that you will need to consider joining one or more membership sites in order to build and eventually automate your online business, what kind of membership sites should you join?
Well, that depends on your business plan. You only have so much time to network with other members, browsing forums to post questions and find answers, etc, so you will really need to be discerning regarding the number of membership sites you plan to join, especially if most of these are paid membership sites. Since most paid membership sites charge their members on a monthly recurring basis, the costs can quickly add up.
The real answer to this question is found in your “Planning” stage. If you are planning to build content sites, whether that’s just one portal site on a specific subject, or multiple sites on a range of categories, you will probably need to initially consider joining one or more good “Private Label Right” (PLR), membership sites. These types of sites pay for the cost of researching and hiring article writers using a significant portion of member’s fees, then co-op the articles among all paid members. For this reason, good PLR sites tend to offer only limited membership numbers (normally between 150 - 500 members only).
Beware of membership sites that provide you with PLR or “resell rights” software. You really want to do your due diligence before joining sites that offer software which you can resell as your own, because at some stage, you will have to handle customer support issues. Find out who is responsible for providing technical support, software upgrades, handling customer service enquiries and complaints, etc. before you join a software resell membership site. Ideally, this responsibility should not be yours.
This brings up another issue regarding membership sites that rely on using proprietary software. If the cost of the membership is too low, you should not expect to receive satisfactory customer support or frequent software updates to improve software functionality or address bugs (and there will always be a ton of issues that need fixing in any type of software). In my experience, it’s definitely better for a good paid membership site to charge a reasonable recurring fee, provided they deliver a quality product, excellent customer service and are attentive to the needs of their members. In fact, the best membership sites on the internet, are those that effectively treat their members as stakeholders of the business, and allow them to have a significant input in the future progress, development and direction of the membership site itself. After all, the members are ultimately the true target market of the membership site.
For more articles on buiding automated online businesses, visit: Building An Automated Online Business
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