The following article is from a series of online business automation articles and tips on the advantages of joining membership sites …
In other posts, I explain how internet business automation is not something you truly “experience” until you have reached the last stage of a specific business development sequence as shown below:
Reflection > Decision > Planning > Organising > SetuP > Systems Development > Business Automation.
In this article, we will analyze in more detail one of the most important components of the online business automation process you will want to consider investing in during the “Setup” phase … membership sites. In this article, we’ll be specifically addressing the topic of joining one or several membership sites, instead of discussing the idea of starting your own.
There are many types of membership sites online which you can join. There are free membership sites, and there are paid membership sites. There are sites that focus on delivering a specific type of product or service (e.g. content on a particular niche area, like “health”) and there are “Mastermind” membership sites, where the aim of the site is to share information and promote the creation and sprouting of new ideas. There are exclusive, or limited membership sites that “close” their doors to new members once a certain level of subscriber numbers is reached, and there are membership sites that have no capping on the number of subscribers that can join. We will be looking briefly at each of these types of membership sites.
Before we do this, however, an important question we need to address first is “why” are membership sites so important to the process of automating an online business?
There are several reasons why you should really consider joining one or more membership sites during the “Setup” phase of your business development process. One of the main reasons, is that the online universe is expanding in all areas at such an outstanding rate, that if you are not in touch with other like-minded people, you will quickly find that all of your ideas, knowledge, strategic planning, marketing plans, etc … will have been rendered obsolete. Other business owners, networks of people and online entrepreneurs that plan to compete for your market share, will overtake you in every aspect and your online business could become literally extinguished overnight.
Other reasons for joining membership sites are to increase your own technical, business, or marketing knowledge (e.g. by interacting with other members in a member’s forum), to leverage and synergize your efforts (e.g. by forming joint venture partnerships), and to outsource some of the necessary “production” requirements of your business (e.g. Private Label Rights, membership sites that provide you with content for your business - articles, information products, software, etc…).
So now that we’ve established that you will need to consider joining one or more membership sites in order to build and eventually automate your online business, what type of sites should you join?
Well, that depends on your business plan. You only have so much time to invest in networking with other online business owners, browsing forums for information, etc, so you will really need to be discerning regarding the number of membership sites you decide to join, especially if most of these are paid membership sites. Since most paid membership sites charge their members on a monthly basis, your membership costs can quickly add up.
The real answer to this question is found in your “Planning” stage. If you are planning to build content-driven sites, whether that’s just one portal site on a specific topic, or many sites on a range of categories, you will probably want to initially consider joining one or more good “Private Label Right” (PLR), membership sites. These types of sites pay for the cost of research and hiring content writers using a significant portion of member’s fees, then co-op the created products among all paid members. For this reason, good PLR sites tend to cap their membership numbers (normally between 150 - 500 members only).
Something you should be careful of, are membership sites that provide you with PLR or “resell rights” software. You really need to do your research before investing in membership sites that offer software which you can resell as your own, because at some stage, you will have to deal with customer support issues. Find out who is responsible for providing technical support, software upgrades, handling customer service enquiries and complaints, etc. before you join a software resell membership site. Preferably, this should not be your responsibility.
This brings up another issue regarding membership sites that offer proprietary software. If the cost of the membership is too low, don’t expect to receive great customer support or regular software updates to improve software functionality or fix bugs (and there will always be a ton of those in any kind of software application). In my experience, it’s definitely better for a good paid membership site to charge a reasonable recurring fee, provided they deliver a quality product, excellent customer service and are attentive to the needs of their members. In fact, the best membership sites on the internet, are those that effectively treat their subscribers as stakeholders of the business, and allow members to have a significant input in the future progress, development and direction of the membership site itself. After all, the members are ultimately the true target market of the membership site.
For more information on automating your online business, visit: Online Business Tips