Subscription Membership Site as a muse

[bd301]

I just searched through the forums and couldn't find much, if any, discussion on this topic, so thought I'd create a new thread.

There's been a lot of discussion here on selling products/ebooks and such because they can really be 100% passive once you get established.

While I've made some money doing this and selling very high-priced consulting services via my blog (I know, not "passive" but I can pay all my monthly expenses by working for 1-2 days so good enough for me), I've also been thinking lately that membership sites could be the way to go for a lot of these ebook/info-product type ideas.

One of the most successful ebooks ever - the SEOBook by Aaron Wall, sold over 10,000 copies and made close to $1MM.

Not bad for an ebook.... but Aaron has since changed his ebook into a subscription membership site that charges $100/month for access and limits the total subscribers to 1000. Last I checked, he was at 650 monthly subscribers... making $65K a month.

Now, $65K per month is an order of magnitude higher than my TMI and most other peoples'... and it would be hard to get that many people unless you have his brand-name recognition.

But with 400 subscribers to my blog now, I think it is realistic to get 10-20 paying customers for a membership site like this and more when the summer/fall come around (my niche is highly seasonal).

The obvious problem with this type of muse is the amount of work required vs. something like product sales. While there will be more time required compared to, say, selling nutritional supplements, I think a lot of it could still be automated/outsourced. Here is what I envision:

-Offer online courses on specific topics, along with quizzes, Excel models for learning/training (my niche is finance), and video tutorials.

-Have a forum with other subscribers answering questions and give access to myself as well for answering any questions they might have, over email or online.

-For a fee of $100/month, I could not possibly offer everyone 1-on-1 consulting... but I could charge a very high rate, e.g. $1000/hour or something, if someone truly needs it.

After experimenting with other services, ebooks, and affiliate marketing, I'm really starting to think that membership sites like this could be very compelling for anyone who's an "expert" in some niche.

There's obviously considerable upfront work required here, as well as some ongoing work in terms of answering questions and such. But getting recurring revenue like this would be VERY nice and to me it seems easier than a lot of other schemes because I already have an audience.

Thoughts? Has anyone tried this before? Am I crazy? :P

[Sven]

Well, our webgal has, sort of.

I think that if you offer advice that someone needs and they can find you, you can make money. I like the idea...

I'd say start simple, expand as you go.

A dutch magazine for entrepeneurs has a similar concept. They started as a magazine and archived the articles for internet access. Added legal advice and made the site accesible by subscribtion.

I guess that again, content is king!

Good luck.

[webgal]

Sort of is about right. I've established forums for business clients. I think if you have an audience, you have a chance. Forums are VERY DIFFICULT to establish and get going. The one I did for a client, we got 100 members in the first couple of days. We have about 400 now. But this is the kicker. 10,000 or more page loads a day. It is the most active forum I have ever seen on the internet. We had to move it to a dedicated server to handle the traffic and bandwidth. But it is not private. But any email campaign I do so far has resulted in a 20% click through rate which is a pretty high click through rate.

It is a niche. It's colored diamonds. So if you offer something people are hungry for, a continuity program would be a great revenue. Make it free for the first 50 members. Then try a discounted rate for the next 50 and so on. Weave in some upsell.

If this is what you are thinking, start fishing and publishing some surveys on your blog so you can establish a strategy. One or two questions. With the traffic you have you will get feedback.

[bd301]

I realize forums are very difficult to get going. And actually one of my main advertising venues currently is a major forum in the niche, so I wouldn't want to compete with that.

I might offer some type of forum, but the main draw of the "members only" area would be 1) great content, tutorials and interactive guides not found anywhere else and 2) access to me (the "expert") to answer questions.

I honestly don't know whether people would pay $100/month for this, but 1) in my niche people often spend THOUSANDS to get what they want and 2) people have already paid me fairly high rates for consulting services, and I have some great testimonials.

My main hesitation is that I don't want to do a ton of work here and have this turn into nothing... it's a lot more time/effort to create all this stuff upfront vs. just creating an ebook, for example.

[webgal]

If you have a mailing list you could ask.

[Sven]

If the 100 bucks turn out to be a good investment people will be happy to pay ;-)

Indeed, communities are difficult to get going.

When I saw the activity on the wooden boat forum, which has posters with more then 20,000 posts I thought to get that going in Dutch asap. Before that I had set up a shorthanded sailing community.

But even with interconnecting all my internet activities, things grow slowly.

Keep adding your own contributions so there is allways something new to be found, even though others do not yet contribute.
I'm now trying to get classified ads on the sites which may draw in users.

Here is a tip that may help:
If you have made contributions to a php bb2 forum you can add a signature to your posts, as with most forums. If you change the signature it gets changed in ALL your posts. So add a url that you want people to visit! This is how I get most of my trafic to the new sites. maybe this works with other forums too?