e-Business-Formula Internet Marketing Discussion Forum

[Kevin Robb]

Whilst there is a mountain of "Free" information available via the net on a multitude of topics, interests, business, sport and so on, Membership Sites seem to be on the increase.

My questions are,

What do membership site subscribers expect for their money?

Do they require more detailed information or do they want to build a more personal relationship with a perceived expert in their field of choice?

Membership sites can provide video and or audio interviews, guides and tutorials, are these more successful than sites just offering written content?

If trying to promote a membership site what methods would you use and do they differ from promotion methods you would use for a conventional website?

I have many more questions, but in the interim let's start the discussion rolling and see where it takes us.

Cheers

Kevin Robb

[Steve MacLellan]

Hi Kevin,

[quote]What do membership site subscribers expect for their money?[/quote]

I guess it would depend on how much you charge. Another gentleman and I ran one in 1999, but I forget what we charged. Guess I'm not much help.

[quote]Do they require more detailed information or do they want to build a more personal relationship with a perceived expert in their field of choice?[/quote]

The other gentleman was a marketer and he fielded a lot more requests for personal help then I did for building a business website. What got me thinking that this was a bad idea, was that he delivered... if he felt like it, and sometimes for days on end he would ignore the site.

Which brings up the question of the reliability of your partners to keep up with members demands. Choosing the wrong partner(s) often means that other site leaders have to double-time to pick up someone else's slack. When you're trying to run a separate business on your own... this can really turn into a lot of hours in front of the computer. It is advisable that you send the wife and children away for a long time if you're going to run a membership site and a separate business too.

[quote]Membership sites can provide video and or audio interviews, guides and tutorials, are these more successful than sites just offering written content?[/quote]

While our site just had content, I feel as long as no-one is asking for their money back, it is successful. We didn't have any refund requests, but we only offered a six month trial membership. It was after this that I spoke to my partner about my wishes to dissolve our partnership with regards to this site.

[quote]If trying to promote a membership site what methods would you use and do they differ from promotion methods you would use for a conventional website?[/quote]

Most of our promotion was based on a free offer to a few list owners. We offered them free membership for promoting our offer to their list every time they sent out a newsletter.

One other thing I would like to mention.

We used PHP/Nuke (remember, this was 1999) to power the membership site. I would NEVER use a portal system again. Unless you have 20 partners who are pluggin' data into it on a daily basis, the membership site is going to look bare. It's a lot easier to make a main web page look busy, then it is to try and fill up an endless pit like a portal system.

Best Regards,
Steve MacLellan

[Rick Wilson]

Hi Kevin!

Steve certainly brings out some of the "pitfalls" of having your own membership site.

My thinking is that one needs to be able to constantly keep adding AND keeping up-to-date, interesting and relevant material on the membership site to keep the people subscribed month-to-month. Otherwise many will just sign up for the first month and download everything that's not "nailed down" and unsubscribe from the site. [img]http://www.cashjunction.biz/images/banghead.gif[/img]

If they're not sticking around, then your "residual income" from your membership site isn't either.

My 3 cents anyway ...


Rick Wilson aka CorpRebel

[Kevin Robb]

Steve, Rick,

Thanks for your interesting and thought provoking comments.

Clearly regular fresh content is a major factor in ensuring members stay on board.

Given all of the "Feeds" available today surely this could assist in keeping the site fresh and current....and reduce the amount of input required by the site managers

What do you think?

Cheers

Kevin Robb

[Steve MacLellan]

Hi Kevin,

Feeds could supplement the content. The only draw back would be if it is in the form of RSS headlines, then all the links would lead away from the membership site... unless you have the "linked to" articles "framed." You might need permission to do that though, and then that gives the author of the feed notice that you will be doing it. A week or two later you might find he/she is including links in his feed using target="_top" to break out of the frameset. This may not happen... just my suspicious nature kicking into over-drive.

Depending on who your partners are, maybe you have a few feeds of your own you can include. Take a look at this for an example: http://homebusiness-websites.com/krobb.html

There is a bit of a problem with the links parsing your feed because I had to link to a php file instead of the XML I should have linked to. Because of the PHP wrapper WordPress puts on the raw xml I was unable to find the right file.

Anyway... I'm sure you know where it is. This is OK for this example. The point is your membership partners could include their feeds into the site. If you don't know how to do this see my blog article at:
http://homebusiness-websites.com/news.html#newsitemEpAyFyyElEulzRHuci

Best Regards,
Steve MacLellan

[Kevin Robb]

Hi Steve,

Thanks for your feedback

I love your detailed responses...You obviously don't want members following links out of your site unless it is really relevant.

However without giving to much away here my thoughts are heading towards a membership site in the form of a JV, maybe with two but up to four partners and in this instance "Feeds" may be useful.

I am sure you can follow my line of thought here...so do you see any other issues that may be important to consider

Thanks for your Blog link, I will take a look and get back to you.

Cheers


Kevin Robb