Memberships are part of our everyday life even when we don’t realize it. It’s a business model most people are comfortable with. You can join memberships for massages, chiropractor care, medical practices, gyms and more. It’s obvious the concept is lucrative. But, how do memberships really earn and why?

1. People Love Feeling As If They Belong – Being part of a community of people who enjoy the same things you do is a very special feeling. They say birds of a feather flock together, and memberships prove this point over and over again. You can have a very small niche and still attract members in enough numbers to be profitable if you price the membership right.

2. You Offer Unique High Value Products – No membership is complete without at least monthly new products or services added to the membership to keep the members interested. The products need to add value to the consumer to the point that they say, “Wow, this is awesome.”

3. You Participate in the Forum Personally – The forum is the lifeblood of any membership website. Without a forum you will have very little opportunity to keep your audience excited to pay the membership fee month after month. Mostly, you should spend time on the forum every single day.

4. The Content Is Regularly Updated and of Exceptional Quality – Aside from products or services, the content that your members consume is important too. You need to update content daily with a blog post, plus contribute more content each month such as white papers, checklists and so forth.

5. You Know How to Over Deliver – It’s easy to get carried away with marketing words and make your audience feel as if they’re going to get more than they are. This is a huge mistake. Membership sites that make money deliver far more value than the person joining believes they’ll get.

6. Startup Costs Are Low – All you need to start a site is a way to make sales pages, landing pages, membership site software like aMember.com, and social media pages for the membership site, plus an email autoresponder and forum software like phpBB.com. You can install it all yourself or hire someone, and be up and running for $500 to $1500 dollars with monthly ongoing expenses between $100 and $500 dollars.

7. You Can Charge More People Less for Superior Value – The other attraction people have to memberships is that it is a way to spread the cost of resources over many different people. Something that might cost thousands a month for one-on-one work will now cost just a fraction of that when you spread that cost over many members.

8. You Offer Unannounced Extras – The real trick to memberships is keeping the consumer interested, and you can do that with unannounced extras that make your customer want to see what comes each month. Make these really special and super hyper-focused on the audience, and you’ll have a winning combination.

Earning money from membership sites is easier than other methods of earning money online, but you do have to continuously wow your audience to keep them interested, plus devote a fair amount of time to marketing the membership.