Many people find choosing a niche for their membership site difficult, but it shouldn’t be. There are thousands of potential niches out there if you keep your eyes open. Choosing a niche for a membership site is a little different, however. There are a few things you need to be sure of before you pick your market. We’ll discuss several of them in this article.

The first thing to determine is whether or not the market is well-suited for a membership site. Is there enough information in the market in general to keep creating content on an ongoing basis? And is the niche one where people are going to want to continually learn more?

Looking at internet marketing as an example, a site that teaches how to make money online is probably a good one because there are so many topics you could cover. A site that teaches how to build a WordPress site probably wouldn’t be as effective, because there’s a limit on the number of topics you can cover.

Choosing a niche that has plenty of interest is another important consideration. You want to choose a niche that your members are going to want to continue to learn about, otherwise your drop-out rate for your membership site will be pretty high.

Another thing you need to keep in mind is where you’re going to get content for your membership site, are you going to create it yourself or are you outsourcing it? It’s going to be hard to keep coming up with new content unless you either know the topic well yourself or can find knowledgeable outsourcers.

When you’re looking at potential niches, it’s a good idea to look and see if there are any existing membership sites that are similar to yours. This might seem a little backwards, but the fact is if there aren’t any other membership sites out there on your topic, it’s quite likely that people have tried them and failed.

There are very, very few undiscovered markets – other marketers have likely already considered the niche you’re thinking about. If you can’t find any other membership sites that are in the niche you opted for, then the chances are good that other marketers have already tried it and it didn’t work out.

No matter how popular the topic of your membership site is, or how great the content might be, without traffic you’re not going to get many members. Generating traffic for a membership site isn’t much different than any other type of site, but there are some strategies that are more effective. In this article, we’re going to discuss a few of the most effective traffic generation methods.

Affiliates & Joint Venture Partners

Probably the most effective source of traffic to your membership site is from affiliates and/or JV (joint venture) partners. You can get a good number of new members quickly by tapping into other people’s networks on sites like Facebook and through their email lists.

One of the main reasons this is so effective is the recurring income that comes from a membership site. Many affiliates and joint venture partners prefer to promote things that create recurring commissions that pay them even if they aren’t actively promoting it.

By offer ongoing commissions for all referred members, you can attract more affiliates than you would with a one-time commission offer.

Guest Blog Posts

Guest blogging is another effective strategy because once again you can tap into other people’s popularity. Plus, in addition to the traffic you can generate, guest blogging on a popular site in your market will help to develop your reputation.

The key here is to provide the absolute best content you can in your guest posts. Make these posts at least as good as what you write for your own blog. Your post will be seen by a lot of people, so you want to be sure they’re impressed by it.

Paid Traffic Sources

A lot of marketers are afraid of paid traffic because they see the potential for losing money. Doing it right, however, means you’re not going to risk very much.

Start with a small budget and target a limited number of highly-targeted keywords, in the case of pay per click. If you’re doing banner ads or other ad placements, start with a small investment to get some conversion data.

Track all your data – conversion rates, customer value, etc.. Once you know these numbers, you can judge whether or not a particular paid traffic source is a good investment.

And remember, it is an investment, not a cost. If you could spend $5 and make $10 in return, wouldn’t you want to do it over and over again?

An evergreen niche is one in which the information doesn’t change often, if at all. Gardening, for example, is an evergreen niche – there hasn’t been that much change in the last 20 or even 50 years. Technology-related markets, on the other hand, aren’t very evergreen. Every few months things change enough that information prior to that becomes outdated.

If you choose an evergreen topic for your membership site, it not only means you won’t have to update the information very often but you can continue selling to new members and using the same content for months or even years to come.

If you use a drip-feed mechanism of some sort it works well in evergreen niches. When someone signs up, they start at the beginning of the series and receive each new update on a pre-set schedule.

eg. Let’s assume your membership delivers new content on a weekly basis. If someone signs up today, they start at module 1 and four weeks from now they will be on module 4. Someone who signs up four weeks from now starts at module 1, and gets the content on the same schedule.

As long as you don’t have a community like a forum where members can interact with one another, it makes no difference if different members are at different points in the content stream – it’s evergreen content so it’s always relevant.

There is another option, however, if you’re planning to have a forum or the content is such that everyone should be getting the same thing, no matter when they join. Allow current members to buy past months’ content.

This works well in a case like a PLR membership, where all members would expect to receive the most current content every month. If someone signs up six months down the road and receives a PLR pack that others have been using for six months already, that’s probably not going to go over very well. Instead, you could let those newer members pay to access any previous months’ content that they might be interested in. Provided they’re evergreen topics, they would still be useful to newer members.

The recurring income that you earn is one of the big advantages of running a membership site. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to supplement that recurring income. In this article we’re going to look at several strategies for making even more from your membership sites.

Personal Coaching

One strategy is to offer a coaching upgrade to your members. Some of your members will likely want more personal attention than others, whether it’s to get more detailed information or just to bounce their ideas off of you.

You could offer this on a one-on-one basis or you could use a webinar or Skype group to do group coaching. For one-on-one coaching you could do it with Skype, telephone or even a private forum.

Upsells

Offering multiple levels of membership or other types of upsells is another effective way to increase your income. For example, you might have a membership that teaches how to build websites. You can offer an upsell to a “done for you” service where you or your team do the work for your members.

You could also offer different levels of content every month. For example, if you offer a graphic design membership you could have different levels, each with a different number of projects included in the monthly fee.

You can either offer these upsells immediately after people join, or you can offer them as future options to your existing members. Better yet, offer them in both places – new members get a discounted price and if they don’t want it, they can get it later but will pay more.

Affiliate Promotions

Offering related products to your members through an affiliate link is another way to earn extra income from your membership. Provided you are promoting high-quality offers, your members will be glad to hear about things that can benefit them.

This option works best if you recommend things that are directly related to the topic of the membership, especially things that can help make things easier and/or faster for your members. For instance, a software program that automates some repetitive task they have to perform would work well.

Membership sites are a great way to earn recurring income that keeps coming in month after month. Many internet marketers expect to need membership plugins and various other pieces of technology to put it all together. Those types of sites work great, but they’re not the only option. In this article, we’re going to look at three types of membership sites you can set up without a huge amount of effort, and with a minimum investment.

Fixed-Term Memberships

Fixed-term memberships, or FTMs, are one of the easiest to start and maintain. These memberships run for a fixed amount of time, say 3, 6 or 12 months, and when the members reach the end, their commitment is over.

The big advantage for you is that you don’t have to come with new content indefinitely – your commitment ends as well. In fact, you can determine up front how much content you can develop, and then set your FTM to run for that long.

All you really need to run an FTM is a simple website and an auto-responder – there’s no tricky technical stuff to get set up. Your buyers land on a page where they can opt-in for the members’ email list, and then all the content is sent by auto-responder.

PLR Memberships

In this type of membership you provide PLR (private label rights) products to your members. You can either buy these products from places like the Warrior Forum, or other PLR marketplaces – or even have them created exclusively for your members.

You can use part of the revenue you generate from your paying members to buy the products, and keep the difference as your profit. As long as you have enough revenue coming in to cover the costs it won’t actually “cost” you anything. And your members get far more than their money’s worth, comparing the membership fee to what buying all the product individually would cost.

This can be managed through an auto-responder as well, or you can set up a secure members’ area on your website.

Service Memberships

If you offer services such as graphic design or script installation, you could offer a membership where your members get a certain amount of work every month, at a flat rate.

You need to careful, of course, to be sure you can keep up with all the work you’re offering, but this can be a good way to “lock in” your customers so you get paid every month.