Is a Membership site the Right Fit for your Business?

This post has been written to make you sit and think about whether a membership is actually right for you. There are plenty of options and paths available when it comes to starting a membership site journey. 

Read through this post before you start planning your membership, it’ll hopefully help you make a couple of good decisions and put your mind at rest.

Here are the 5 questions you should ask yourself to decide if a membership is right for you:

 

Is time slipping away from you?

Are you fed up of trading your time for money? Overworked and underpaid? Sounds like a lot of entrepreneurs and Businessmen (or women) nowadays. It’s natural to wish you have an extra pair of hands or three. At some points, you may even find yourself turning away work as you just don’t have any more time to work and that’s okay… for the most part.

So… If you’ve already hit your capacity for working, are you also hitting your revenue goals? 

No?

Here are a couple of options you could try

1. Virtual Assistants to help with the workload
2. Increase your prices
3. Turn away the extra work
4. Create a Membership Platform 

A good Virtual Assistant can be hard to come by and isn’t for everyone, sometimes they’re like a chef working with a blunt knife, they get the job done, but it’s shoddy work, other times they’re great and exactly what you need. 

You’ll have to think about how much extra work you have to do and how much money you can afford to pay them.

Increasing your prices is a great option under certain circumstances, others not so much… Increasing your prices may alienate your current customers and actually end up losing revenue in the long run.

Turning away the extra work is actually probably what you’re doing right now, it’s not ideal. You’re pushing customers ready to buy from you directly to your competitors, that just seems silly, right?

That leaves us with one major option really doesn’t it? Creating a Membership Platform or Website. A membership allows you to add predictable, scalable recurring revenue to your business every single month. Once set up, depending on the type of membership you create, you can leverage your time better without working 24/7. 

Don’t misunderstand me, memberships require a lot of work but are worth it in the long run if you’ve got a solid plan and developer behind you.

Do you have a good knowledge base or set of skills that people will pay money to learn?

This is possibly one of the most important questions to ask yourself! Do you or your team have the knowledge, skills, information or expertise that you can teach others to enable them to fulfil their particular goal? 

Can you teach people how to cook low budget, healthy food? How about how to play the piano for the first time?

As an entrepreneur, I’m sure you have lots of skills and knowledge – what learning experience can you offer that people will make them want to cough up their hard-earned cash?

One thing to note here is that you don’t necessarily need to be the leading authority on something to teach it to other people. 

You need to be ahead of the members that are learning from you. You just need to be more advanced than the people you’re wanting to teach.

When setting up a membership site or even starting your membership journey, you need to make sure the services you’re offering are actually worth something.

Are online communities your thing?

You might not think about this initially, but online communities are actually really important. 

Membership Websites can be a tricky thing at times, especially If you prefer to talk to people in real life, over zoom or on a phone call. Do you find yourself avoiding emails and leaving Facebook communities as soon as you’ve joined them? Starting a membership website may not be the right decision for you.

Membership sites are all about online communication. Most memberships have quite a big community element involved, this is usually on a forum or private Facebook group. This being said, not all membership sites have communities, and that’s okay. If the thought of engaging in online communities puts you off it may be best to work on a stand-alone course at first, or even writing an ebook, we can help you build a stand-alone course website too.

As part of this I’d also say that if you’ve never actually been part of a membership site yourself, join one, maybe even a couple if you’re feeling fancy. You can’t really know if a membership site is for you if you’ve never actually seen how they work before.

Our portfolio offers a lot of different membership sites to join from food to Facebook Funnels. We don’t earn any commissions from people signing up to our client’s membership websites. Click here to check it out.

Is content creation in your wheelhouse?

A membership website should have some kind of ongoing content. This can be things from text posts, video lessons, live learning (Usually done through zoom) Any kind of content is acceptable for a membership website, if you can think of it, you can publish it, as long as it’s relevant to your members.

The important thing is that you actually enjoy creating that content and that you can carry on creating it indefinitely, that may seem like a tall order.

 It is possible, some membership site owners employ content creators to create it for them. Usually, the owner gives a topic or subject, and the creator does what they do best… create.

Some membership websites are community-based and rely a lot less on regular content to keep them ticking over.

That’s not the case for most memberships though, for the majority of websites or platforms, when asking for monthly payment members are going to expect value month after month. Value usually comes from consumable content.

You should brainstorm and have a think about how much content you can actually create on a subject. Every membership topic should be able to be broken down into smaller bite-sized chunks. A good example of this would be on a Piano teaching membership.

The piano teacher wants to cover one topic a month for a year, so they need 12 main content categories PLUS enough content to give members value per month. Usually, that’s one or two videos a week. Is your membership capable of sustaining that sort of content? If not a fixed length one-time payment course may be a better option for you.

Is it the right time for a membership site?

We’re the first to admit sometimes we’re a little gung-ho when it comes to implementing an idea or new feature for MemberLab. 

When you’re excited about an idea, it’s quite easy to dive right into it and crack on however that’s not always the best idea.

You need to think about the logistics first.

A membership site is a huge commitment, you need to be in it for the long haul for it to work. Members will be able to tell if you’re not fully committed to making your site and content the best it can be.

Are you ready for another long term commitment? 

You haven’t got any huge life-changing events coming up? Other than starting your membership site journey of course 😉 

I’ll be the first to say I’m quite resistant to committing to long term plans. Setting up MemberLab as a business took longer than it should’ve, but the rewards have been worth it. I wish I had done it sooner. 

I wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to let anyone down, and that I was going to be around for the longest possible time for our clients. You, as a business owner, should look at yourself and your business and think about whether it’s the right time to build a community and leverage your expertise for your potential new members.

I always say a good website is never finished and honestly that translates perfectly to memberships too, they’re an ongoing project a lot of the time rather than a one and done situation.

Still unsure on a membership site?

You should now have a clearer understanding of what creating a membership site entails and how you can decide if a membership is right for you. 

You’ll probably be thinking one of two things right now…

‘Oh my god, I’m behind, I should’ve started my membership journey months ago’

Or 

‘Nah. It’s not for me. Maybe in a couple of months.’

It’s okay to still be unsure, you’re bound to have some sort of concerns. It’d be strange if you didn’t. 

My best advice would be to tackle those concerns head-on. 

That might be by doing some marketing research, starting to build a community, researching developers or even starting a course on Udemy or Thinkific first.

You could also read some more on our blog by clicking here or if you’d like to speak to our experts and find out more about our services you can click here to book a 30-45 minute free no-obligation demo call.