The reasons memberships are lucrative are many and varied. But, the fact is, with the right plan you can make a full-time living online adding membership to your product list. Having a continuity plan can change your business life for the better. You know it works because big business does it too. Think about Netflix, Amazon Prime, and even your local Massage Envy which offers membership programs.

Here are ten reasons why membership is lucrative.

1. You’ll Feel Good – When you can offer something to others that they need, you’re going to feel great about it. This makes a membership more lucrative because you’re going to not only make money, but you are also going to want to keep adding to it. Going to work will feel like a joy.

2. Inexpensive Start-Up Costs – Relatively speaking, if you choose your software properly and take into consideration your own level of knowledge, the start-up costs are low, which means your profits will be higher.

3. Steady Income – If you haven’t experienced the consistency of regular income, you will when you start a successful membership site. People start them for a reason, and people also join them for the same reason.

4. People Love Privacy – Members join a club for privacy. They can go to a membership site and talk about what they want to without worry that it’s searchable on the net.

5. You Can Do It Alone – You don’t need a huge staff to help you build or run a successful membership website. Once you get the technology set up, you just have to add to it on a regular basis and participate in the forums if you choose. If you do a drip membership, you can set it up and forget it. Less staff equals more profit.

6. You Have Something to Offer – Anyone who has something to offer, even the smallest niche, can start a membership site that is successful.

7. Add Value to Your Current Business – If you already have a business online, adding a continuity program will take your business to the next level.

8. People Want Exclusivity – Membership makes people feel special as if they’re part of a secret group of movers and shakers. Therefore, getting people to join isn’t hard. Getting them to stay is a little more work but if you focus on value, you can do it.

9. People Expect a ROI – People join membership sites expecting to get huge value out of the membership. And as long as you can provide that to them, then not only will they feel they’re getting a return on their investment, you will too.

10. People Are Curious – People will join simply out of curiosity to see what’s inside. It’s up to you to hold them there to increase your profits.

If you market your membership correctly, you will have a successful online membership business – provided that you’ve done your homework on starting it in the right niche. People want to feel as if they belong, and they like having privacy. If you have information to offer, membership is the best way to do it.

When you create a membership website, you’ll need to determine what you’ll choose for membership benefits. The benefits you choose will vary depending upon your niche, your audience, and the cost of the membership. After all, if the price is higher and the number of members is limited, the member will expect much more than if the price is lower and more people are able to join.

Some examples of member benefits might be:

More Access to You

You are probably the most important part of the membership website. People want to feel as if they can get direct help and advice from you. If you can promote more access to you as a benefit, then the members will appreciate that enormously – especially if you offer more expensive coaching to clients.

Private Message Boards

Feeling part of a close-knit community is a wonderful thing and a wonderful way to keep members wanting to pay their monthly membership fee. If you can keep the message boards busy, you can keep your members a lot happier. Promote a busy message board as a huge benefit.

Learning

People love consuming information products that teach them about a small aspect of their business, and you can provide continuous monthly products that help your members become more successful or happier (depending upon your niche). Information products can provide this benefit.

Accountability

You can offer your members the benefit of accountability by setting up goal-setting groups and forums. This is such a great aspect of membership websites that even the members themselves jump in to offer this to each other.

Special Offers

You don’t have to stop selling to your members just because they’re members; you can use the membership as a way to offer the members first chances at special offers, new programs, and more. They’ll appreciate being an insider, and you’ll get to test out new products on them first.

Connections

One of the many benefits of membership is the ability to find great connections that can become joint venture partners. Your members will benefit from being introduced to wonderful people with whom they can form partnerships and take their goal setting to the next level.

And More

There are so many benefits that you can promote that should be based on the niche, your audience and their needs. Always put the needs of your audience first. And remember, you can start with a few benefits and then add to them as you go. Nothing has to be perfect from the get-go.

Membership websites are full of benefits for their members. Which benefits you choose to put into place is completely dependent on your knowledge of the niche, as well as what the audience needs and feels are important.

One of the most important things you need to make your membership program successful is an enormous amount of content. The content cannot just be any old content either; it must be relevant, focused, and high quality to meet the standards of a membership website. However, there are simple ways to find all this content and make it work.

* PLR – Private label rights content is a great way to find plenty of content to use in your membership website. You can find all kinds of PLR, from eCourses to full-fledged packages that cover all aspects of a particular niche. The key with using PLR is to rewrite it and change it up to make it your own. A great place to get PLR is All Private Label Content.

Link – http://allprivatelabelcontent.com/

* Videos – Making videos doesn’t have to be that hard; you don’t even have to appear in the video if you don’t want to. Record your desktop doing something that you want to teach your members to do. Record an interview, or post videos members made. You can also hire people on Fiverr.com to make explainer videos for you, or use a service like YumYumVideos.com.

* Reports – A report is really a small eBook that talks about one specific problem or issue and how to solve it, or it can be an overview of many problems with links to solutions for each problem. It’s up to you how you might want to do reports. But you’ll need to have them for your membership website.

* Infographics – An infographic is a pictorial depiction of data that is hard to explain with words. Usually infographics are quite in depth and long. You can use a service like Piktochart.com to help you create awesome infographics. All you need is the data.

* Podcasts – A podcast is an audio recording for the net. It is a lot like a radio show that is just not live. You can record interviews using software like Audacity or Pamela for Skype to create your podcast. You can hire someone in Fiverr to make a wonderful promo opening for your podcast and sell advertising spots too.

Links:
Audacity – http://web.audacityteam.org/
Pamela for Skype – http://www.pamela.biz/en/

* Webinars – You might not think of webinars as content right off the bat, but it is. Plus it’s an easy way to get more content for your use on your membership website. Spend an hour a month having a Google Hangout that you record. Transcribe it, repurpose it, and use it multiple times.

* Teleseminars – A really great way to produce more content is a teleseminar. You can do teleseminars simply with software like Instantteleseminars.com and what’s more is that they can play again as “live” anytime you want.

* Event Information – Whenever you have a podcast, webinar, teleseminar or other event, you can promote information about the event to your membership. This event is a great way to use the words that get attention from your audience, as well as to get new members. When you say members go to the event free and non-members have to pay, you’ll get attention.

* Memes – A great type of content to use on social media are images with quotes or data that you find interesting and that your audience will find useful. Add a compelling graphic with the quote and you have a winning meme that might go viral. Be sure to watermark it. You can create memes easily using Canva.com.

* Research Data – To develop enough content for your membership website, you’ll need to continuously research data about your niche. You can report on that data in a straightforward way, and then you can use bits and pieces of the data to create even more content.

* Presentations – Using PowerPoint and SlideShare.net you can create slide shows about any topic with research to back it up. Don’t forget that you can repurpose a slide show or presentation into a podcast or a report.

All of this is content that will improve your membership website. Having a mixture of content types is going to make your membership website a lot more interesting to members, and make members more likely to stay connected and renew their membership each month.

One of the things you’ll need to figure out when you decide to start a membership site is how you’ll run the technology. Thankfully, today there are many options available at your fingertips for running your membership website.

Before you even look at membership software, though, write down the features you want it to have and the budget you’ve set for the software. In addition, consider your technological background and how much it will cost you to get professional assistance if you need it for any of the software mentioned.

* JigsawBox.com – This software is mostly directed towards coaches, offering a lot of features that will benefit coaches like drip content, eCourses, integration with autoresponders and so forth. This is a cloud-based service so you don’t have to worry about the technology; you just have to set it up and start collecting revenue.

* aMember.com – This is a plugin for WordPress that works very well and is very popular with online marketing experts who have membership websites. The software turns your WordPress site into a membership site and an affiliate program. You would need to purchase separate forum software if you wanted a forum.

* Wishlist Member Plugins (http://wishlistmemberplugins.net) – Another plugin for WordPress, this turns your site into a membership website and it integrates with PayPal, JVZoo, ClickBank and other payment processors. It also integrates with ONTRAPORT and Maropost and other autoresponders. With this membership software you can do everything that you need to run a great membership site.

* iGrOOps.com – Another cloud-based solution that has an enormous amount of features, from message boards, to drip content, to meetings and more. It’s exhaustive but can also be confusing and look oddly old-fashioned compared to a WordPress-driven membership site.

* Rainmaker Platform (http://rainmakerplatform.com/) – Built by the people at Copyblogger, this is an expensive option. However, it does a lot and comes with Copyblogger Authority membership. Run from a WordPress platform, they handle hosting, all the technology and more for you.

* SocialGO.com – A cloud-based solution that seeks to help you build a social based website, this can work as a membership site if you pick the classic version. However, it might not be responsive and has some limitations over some of the others. It also has some pluses which is that it’s simple to use and implement and get started.

* EasyMemberPro.com – Affiliate program, forums and more are all yours with this software. It really is as easy as they say to set it up. Plus you can integrate it with WordPress and more. If you’re more advanced technologically, you can get a lot out of using this software.

* MemberPress.com – Integrates with WordPress as a plugin to build WordPress-based membership websites. You’ll gain control over who sees your content. It enables sales of digital products securely and accepts payments right on your website.

* MemberGate.com – This full-featured software is amazing and has so many features – from an affiliate program, to a shopping cart, to podcasting, to forums and more. There really isn’t anything this software cannot do and the support is incredible. Once again the website templates look a little outdated, but they all work well.

Memberships are lucrative, but you need to choose the right software for your needs. Consider your budget, how many members you want to attract, how much you plan to charge members, what you want to include in the membership website and more, as you pick and choose which software is right for your membership.

A mastermind group is a small group of people who share information, education, and support. As an expert in your niche, starting a mastermind group is a lucrative and promising venture. If you have a good following already, starting a mastermind group is almost a sure thing. But, if you are not quite established you can still start one; it will just take more work to get members.

* Understand the Purpose – If the purpose of your group is to earn revenue while helping others, establish that from the start. Otherwise you can easily start small mastermind groups on Facebook for free. Setting everything up from the start with a vision for what you want your mastermind group to be like is essential.

* Set Goals for the Group – What do you want to accomplish with the group and what do you hope individual group members will accomplish? These goals will directly determine the type of content you’ll need for your mastermind group, plus even dictate the potential platform you may need to use.

* Narrow Down the Target Audience – Try not to reach too far with the audience in terms of the mastermind group. Casting a wide blanket will just cause confusion. A mastermind group by definition is a small group of like-minded people sharing resources and information.

* Establish Rules and Procedures – When you set up the group, you want to establish strict rules and procedures to ensure that the group works together to reach the common goals. If no one in the group understands the expectations and standards, then you may not have much participation.

* Set Limits – Don’t open your group up to an unlimited membership. If it grows too large, it will be difficult to have a real mastermind situation. The number of members you can handle will depend on your platform and what you plan to do personally for the group. Remember not to bite off more than you can chew.

* Decide Your Platform – Depending on your goals you can pick different platforms of delivery, such as NewRainMaker.com or aMember.com. Or if you want to offer the group free, you could use Facebook’s private groups feature.

* Get the Ball Rolling – Once you set it up, get the ball rolling by planning some promotions like a blog tour, pay-per-click ads, and free giveaways, up until the day of launch. Blog about it, talk about it, and bring it up when you can. Give a sneak peak to super affiliates.

* Promote Your Group – Once it’s established, even when your group is full you should actively promote it. In this way, you will always have a list of people who want to be in the group at your fingertips so that it will never be empty.

Mastermind groups are wonderful for getting support and giving support. But as the leader of the group, the resident expert, you will be relied upon to provide direction for the mastermind group. Take it seriously, and remember to cover the areas that will interest your members most, depending on your audience.

Once you have developed your membership program, the fun starts. The fun is promotion. If you want to attract enough potential members to earn a full-time living, you’ll need to figure out how many members that represents. For example, let’s assume you want to make 10,000 dollars per month from your membership program. This will cover all expenses and give you enough to live on each month.

If you are charging $50.00 per month for members, this means you need only 200 paying members on a monthly basis. Since we know from research that most members drop out after three months, this means you’ll need to attract about 10,000 potential members to your website monthly though promotion activities, or about 334 per day.

1. Study Your Target Audience – The more you can know about your audience, the better you can make your products and the easier it is to write and craft marketing materials that get results.

2. Use Social Media – Use social media to promote your new membership by making a free group that you use to attract people and tease information about the membership to. You can also use PPC to promote on social media.

3. Outstanding Landing Pages – Never skimp on your landing pages when it comes to membership websites. A great landing page can make all the difference to your audience and convert more visitors into members.

4. Killer Sales Pages – If you plan to have affiliates, you need killer sales pages that convert visitors to members. If you aren’t sure how to make a great sales page, you can hire someone to do it for you.

5. Content – You’ll need to produce a lot of content to promote your business, educate your audience, and inform and engage with your audience. You’ll need both content open to the public and content that requires a membership to get results.

6. Guest Blogging – Get out of your comfort zone and blog on other people’s websites as a guest. Your authority quotient will go up, and your bio will help people find your membership website.

7. Webinars and Teleseminars – Webinars and teleseminars offer a very high converting platform to membership site marketers. Offer one each month and get affiliates to promote it, and you’ll keep your membership site full.

8. Send Out Press Releases – Don’t overlook the good old-fashioned press release as a great way to promote your membership. If you can frame it as a newsworthy story then you’re going to be more likely to get it published.

9. On-Page and Off-Page SEO – This is an ongoing process that needs to be done for everything you do in terms of online marketing. On-page SEO covers content, headlines, keywords and more. Off-page SEO covers social media, guest posting and things you do off your website.

10. Make YouTube Videos – A great off-page SEO way to get links and views for your website, YouTube videos are also a great way to give your audience deeper information about your membership.

Building a membership site is not the only thing you need to do to be successful. You must promote the site and get members to sign up on a regular basis, month after month. One more way that you can use to promote your membership website is to form an affiliate program where you get people to promote the membership for you. This is a great way to get free marketing and move your website up on Google Search rank.

As you create a successful online business, one of the ways to stop income disparity from getting in the way of your success is to start a continuity plan. A great way to get monthly continuity income is to start membership site. A membership site means that the public is blocked from the content available only to members who pay a fee to access the membership area.

1. Develops Community and Builds Relationships – One way to earn more money online is to build a community and nurture relationships. What better way to do it than a private membership site with a forum that is not open to the entire internet?

2. Makes Fans out of Your Customers – When you spend time in a forum with members, they will become more than customers. They will become your fans. This is an excellent opportunity for building a lucrative affiliate program.

3. Gives You Deep Insight into Your Customers – By observing the things your customers talk about in the private forum, you can come up with new products that they’re basically asking for or showing a need for. They’ll feel as if you are reading their mind.

4. Provides a Captive Audience for Testing – Before you put any products out to the world, you can test them on your members. They will give you feedback that will assist you with making needed changes before you put them out as individual products outside of the membership.

5. Simple to Set Up and Easy to Maintain – Today, technology is a lot easier to use. Even a complete beginner can find the right technology to build a functional and lucrative membership site. If you can come up with just one new product a month and four blog posts, and commit to participating one hour a day in the forums, you’re set.

6. Adds Value to All That You Do – Remember that you can sell each product you create individually too, outside of the membership. The membership will add value to every product that you create as a way for buyers to get assistance. You can charge for the membership, or you can throw it in free for large ticket product purchases.

7. Add Life to Previous Products – If you already have several products that you’ve created in the past, you already have things to add to your membership site. This breathes new life into the old products. Update them a bit and put them into the pipeline, and you’ll be ready to go.

8. Earn Reliable Income – Membership sites allow you to earn, once you get started, a relative consistent income. The lifetime of most memberships is about four months but if you market well, you’ll keep a consistent number so that your income is reliable.

Membership sites are easy to set up, easy to run, and can provide a solution to producing regular and dependable income for your online business. If you have at least one product, and can produce regular content and products on a monthly basis for your niche, you can start a membership site today and have it up and running tomorrow.

Building an online community, and participating in online communities, is an important way to market your business online that is going to really take off  and beyond. The technology has become simpler, and anyone can start a community today. The trick is building it into a productive and valuable extension of your business.

1. Start Your Own Community – If you have your own community focused on a certain niche, you will be able to control what happens and market yourself easier without having to follow anyone else’s rules.

2. Release Limited Programs – If you release limited programs only to the group, they’ll feel as if they are special and unique and be more likely to give you a good testimonial and referral when the product goes live to the rest of the public.

3. Ask Questions – Keep the discussion going by asking at least one question of the community every single day. Not only will it keep the community active for others who are just visiting for the first time, it will help people get to know you by seeing your name and face every day.

4. Conduct Polls – Some online communities have a way to conduct a poll. This is where you ask a question but have set answers that they can choose from. It’s a great way to ask about your future products, such as, “Should I Name my Product X or Y?” By making them part of the creation they’ll be more likely to purchase.

5. Have Weekly Twitter Parties – Choose a topic or goal for the week and ask the members of the community to participate in a Twitter party with prizes, special hashtags, and fun during the Twitter party.

6. Plan a Monthly Webinar – Your community is the best place to tell about the monthly webinars and they are the ones you should invite to it. Plan it around a particular topic that is applicable to your niche.

7. Promote Yourself Via Your Signature Line – It’s important to have a really well filled out profile as well as a good signature line that sends the members of the community to a special sales page just for them.

8. Invite Others into the Community – Seek to selectively grow the group by inviting others who are interested in the same niche to the community. Keeping new members coming in on a regular basis is a way to keep the community fresh and active.

9. Don’t Allow Anonymity – If you own the group, ensure that people are themselves and aren’t allowed to be anonymous. The reason is that if people are required to use their real name, they’ll be much less likely to be scammers and you need to keep your community safe.

10. Become the Go-To Resource – Within the boundaries of your niche and subject matter, seek to be the go-to resource by always answering questions when they come up. In addition, start discussions and share content that relates to your niche.

Using online communities to build relationships with other people is an important way to grow your business. This is because businesses that have longevity have always known that putting the customer at the center of everything is what works.

When you join memberships, the most important thing you can do is to get involved. Getting involved means that you work to build relationships with the members of your group through the actions at meetings – as well as before, during and after. The importance cannot be overrated, because it’s an essential component that works well if you’re using memberships to advance your business.

* You’re Not Selling – When you get involved in groups, it’s really not as much pressure as you might think. For one, you’re not supposed to sell anyone anything. You are simply getting to know different people, spreading your wings and letting people get to know you.

* Building Relationships Is Vital – One of the best things you can do for your business is to get to know others, build relationships with them, and them with you. It’s great to get to know a lot of people so that you can be in their mind and they can be in yours when the need arises.

* You’re Supposed to Network – When you go to network meetings and get involved, the thing is that you’re supposed to network; no one is turned off by your networking attempts. It’s not like going to a normal party where people are sticking around with their family or clique. Networking is designed for you to step up and do something.

* It’s Good for You – Believe it or not, being involved with something outside of your own business directly is a very good thing to do. Being connected to a community is good for your health, both mentally and physically. Plus, you just can’t know enough people.

* It Will Boost Your Business – It might not happen overnight, but the more people you know, and who know you as someone that gets involved and gets things done, the more business that will come your way.

* It Builds Momentum – Sometimes you may think networking isn’t working, but what you do today will build on what you did yesterday and so forth. You will be happy in a year that you did the networking you did and that you got involved, because your life will be completely different and your business will feel as if it’s on autopilot.

* Puts Experts at Your Fingertips – Not only will people refer you to work, you will be also able to refer others. Being a resource to others is an important role to play, because when you do good deeds for others then they will return the favor.

* Puts You in the Mind of Your Audience – Just like you have experts at your fingertips due to your involvement in memberships, you are also going to be at the top of their mind if you get involved with the groups you join. They’ll see your example and they will like you and trust you to do what you say you’ll do.

The importance of getting involved in any membership is vastly underrated. It doesn’t matter if you have an online or offline business, just step out of your four walls and communicate with others – both online and in person. Getting involved with memberships and your community will pay off exponentially.

If you want to join an online community rather than build your own, it’s important to look at several communities to ensure that you spend your money and/or time wisely before getting too involved. It’s pretty easy to tell quickly if a community is one you want to stay involved in if you know what to look for.

* Uses Real Names – You don’t really want to waste time in a community where everyone is anonymous. You want to make real connections with real people with whom you can conduct business. When you are dealing with a lot of anonymous people that isn’t going to happen; instead you could end up scammed.

* Has Active Discussions – The owner of the group should be working hard to ensure that discussions stay active and productive. If no one has started a new discussion in the last week other than to spam the group, it’s probably not a very good community.

* Offers Plenty of Content – You want to be part of a community that offers informative content to the audience that is helpful to their business. If the content and information that is available is old and outdated, it might not be a community that you want to waste time on.

* Has a Podcast – A really good addition to any online community is a podcast where the host interviews members and also experts in the niche. This keeps everything new and fresh for the members and keeps them coming back.

* Community of Customers – The best community you can join is a community full of potential clients for you. For example if you’re an author’s VA you might want to join a community of authors.

* Community of Colleagues – Alternatively, you might want to learn more about your niche by joining a community full of your actual competition. It can be very enlightening to learn from others who are doing what you are doing.

* Notice Who Is Commenting – When a discussion starts, who is starting it and who is commenting on it? You may notice that the same people are always involved in the discussions. That is okay as long as the comments are well formed, intelligent, and there aren’t a lot of disagreements without someone checking the discussion.

* How Many Blatant Ads Appear? – Some measure of promotion is okay because it’s their community that they started likely to promote themselves, but you want the promotions to be well thought out and not the only thing the community is about.

* Do They Offer Live Events? – Webinars, teleseminars, Twitter parties, and even in-person live events speak to a well-organized and established online community that will continue to grow and thrive.

Choosing an online community to become a regular part of is an important thing to consider, because it takes a lot of time and effort to create value from the experience. You don’t want to spend your time in the wrong place.