3.5 How to Make Money
How can you make money with a membership site model? There are a number of different avenues through which you can generate your own revenue.
The first way to make money is to charge a one-time fee or monthly fee. If you're unsure of whether or not you will be able to constantly add updates to the site, then charge a one time fee of around $67 to $197. If, on the other hand, you know you'll have the time to update the site, then use a monthly fee structure; however, it would be wise to pre-plan your material for months in advance to make sure that you don't run out if you don't have enough time.
The second way in which you can make money with your membership site is to sell advertising space in your member's area. You can do this in several different ways. The most basic, perhaps, is basically setting up contextual advertisements from YPN or Google Adsense.
You can also make money through advertising space by selling it to corporations or individuals. For instance, you could sell a certain amount of link spots on your right or left sidebar – or at the bottom of your page. You could also sell monthly, yearly, or permanent image advertising spots, such as skyscraper ads and banner ads. |
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Last, you can generate revenue from your membership site by using it to send out emails to your subscribers. You can then advertise products as an affiliate – as well as your own.
Our Underdog Marketing Challenge is a good example of a site using the membership model.
Membership sites do not necessarily have on-going fees. Charging a one time fee, as we mentioned, frees you from the commitment to the site later down the line. Instead, all you have to do is create a new product whenever you deem it necessary. Additionally, you can sell advertising space on promotional emails to generate revenue.
Now, by no means am I trying to introduce an exhaustive model. Rather, I'm trying to explain a number of different ways in which you can do this successfully in order to push you to think of all possibilities.
Next: The art of reselling digital products |