The Pros and Cons of Starting a Paid Membership Site to Make Money Online

Anyone can set up a membership business to profit online. All you need is a topic or subject, a membership website and the right tools to build and get your site up and running.

There are many paid membership sites on the Internet. Some of these membership sites provide a service such as mentoring, dating services, etc. Others offer helpful content or information in a specific field. All these membership sites make money the same way: they are charging a fee to anyone who wants to gain access.

Now you may have a question. Why would anyone pay to access a website?

Well, it is just too difficult and time consuming for people to find all the information and resources they need from search engines and resources sites. Paying a fee will grant them access to a membership site and immediately download the content and information they want. Also if a membership site offers some sort of valuable information that cannot be found elsewhere, then people will be more than likely willing to pay for accessing the valuable info.

Moreover, membership sites that provide a service that can solve a problem of a group of people or meet a need of a target group will also attract a lot of people paying for a sign up in order to use the service.

Membership business seems to be a very lucrative online business you can start to make money on the Internet. However it is always best to check out the pros and cons of membership business before getting into it.

The Pros
A successful membership site can bring in a steady and consistent flow of income from time to time. This is the biggest advantage of paid membership websites. It provides a recurring source of revenue month after month.

Other types of online businesses have to keep on selling their products to new customers or looking for new advertisers in order to maintain their sales revenue except membership business where you only need to sell once to your target prospects then they will pay you every month until they cancel their membership. If you can establish a good relationship with your members and service them well, your members will become loyal to you and stay as paid member status for a long time. This will mean a long-term steady and lucrative stream of revenue to you.

And you don’t have to increase your advertising budget in order to increase your income. If you maintain your membership site well with a lot of satisfied members, you will see your membership revenue grow from time to time as new members are getting in from your advertising effort continuously and most of the existing paid members choose to renew their memberships.
On the other hand, the cost of maintaining a membership business is minimal, especially those sites selling memberships to people for accessing information based products. Unlike physical products, information based products don’t need storage space; there are no shipping and handling charges your customers have to pay, and it costs you nothing to store such info products.

In addition to that, once the info products have been created, they can be sold again and again and sold to many different members. There is no product manufacturing process involved as info products are generally in digital format. The only thing the membership site owner needs to do focus is market those info products effectively on the Internet.

The Cons
Unfortunately, every business venture that has a number of advantages always has some drawbacks. Internet membership businesses are no exception to this rule; they do have a few disadvantages.

The biggest disadvantage of a paid membership site is that the site owner has to add in good content frequently for the members. When members join a website and pay a fee to get access to the information they interested, they will have the expectation that the information and content they are getting are valuable and even exclusive. It cannot be something that they could find easily by typing in a few words into their favorite search engine.

Writing original, relevant and helpful information pertaining to whatever the theme of your paid membership website can be time consuming and involve a lot work. Audio and video content are even more difficult to create and cost you more money.

You can hire professional freelance writers to write good content for you, but you have to be prepared to pay for their expensive writing service charges.

Content is the key to keep your members wanting to renew their membership. If you don’t invest the time or the money required to keep your content up-to-date and relevant, you will not be able to entice your members to continue paying for membership renewal.

Another drawback of this business is that the message boards, forums and blogs that are associated with a paid membership site have to be monitored closely and updated regularly.

People who pay money to join membership site expect to get what they are paying for. And many of them will even expect to get more than what they are paying for. It is necessary that the owner of a paid membership website schedule chats with experts in the field that is the subject of the website on an on-going basis and that the membership site owner answers the questions of the members on a daily basis.

Conclusion
Membership business is just like other business models. It takes effort, time and patience to achieve success. When you have started your membership business venture, you must be prepared to faced the challenges and overcome the obstacles to get your membership site to top level