Thomas Griffin May 7, 2021 Running a membership website is a great way to earn passive income. And during the current pandemic situation, it’s a means for people to start a new business or earn additional money.
If you don’t have a membership website yet, then consider building one using a membership plugin. Businesses that typically use membership portals are eLearning platforms, coaching services, or any company that wants to provide more value to their customers through gated content.
When you create a membership website, you can offer access to exclusive content that people access with a subscription or membership fee. And you’ll be able to build a vocal community around your brand.
But there are other ways you can boost your income on your membership site. Check out these suggestions to create other sources of revenue.
Create an affiliate marketing program
The most effective type of marketing is one where your customers talk to their peers and tell them about your business. When people get peer recommendations for a brand or a product, they take these suggestions seriously. It’s easier to convert these audiences into paying customers.
You can motivate your current customers to promote your products and services with the help of an affiliate marketing setup.
Give customers rewards for bringing in more customers and you will leverage peer-to-peer connections to grow your business. And you can automate this process by using an affiliate marketing plugin to help.
There’s another effective way to leverage affiliate marketing. You can collaborate with other brands or just create an affiliate account on top eCommerce platforms like Amazon. Everytime you create a link to products on your blog posts and a customer uses it to buy something, you can earn a small commission.
If you have a large enough audience and engage them over time, this can lead to substantial earnings.
Offer one-on-one services
People are willing to pay more for individualized experiences such as a one-on-one call, personalized feedback, or a custom-made offering.
For this kind of service, you can charge a much higher rate than you can for pre-made products or a group activity. The higher price limits the number of people who apply for these services, meaning that you don’t get overwhelmed with having to personally cater to too many customers.
You boost your revenue and get other benefits: you can learn more about your customers, build material for a case study, find out new pain points that you can fix with a helpful solution.
Create mastermind groups
If you’d like to increase your charge rate without spreading yourself too thin by doing individualized sessions, then a mastermind group is the right solution for you.
You can coach people, do a Q&A session, create personalized assessments, and more but with a larger group.
In this model, you can cater to a larger group of people and also charge a higher rate than you could for your regular services.
This gives you the chance to build a community and to create a forum where people can ask questions and get answers from their peers. Many businesses that use such models create a membership portal for sharing exclusive content. And then your audience can communicate via a forum on your website or through social media groups and messaging options.
Upsell your products
When creating your marketing strategies, keep thinking of ways to cross-sell and upsell your offerings.
For example, during the checkout process, ask your customer to add an extra service or tool to the basket at a significant discount.
You can also add upsells after a customer has joined your membership site. Create time-bound offers to upgrade to a higher product tier. Or upsell an online course, a guide, or personalized feedback as your audience uses their existing subscription.
However, the key is to offer real value and not to push your upsells in an aggressive way. Focus on offering value and when your members are satisfied with their current experience, they’ll be more open to buying your other products.
Add live events
One potential type of upsell is a live event. A live event gives your audience the chance to engage with you and your business at a deeper level.
You could structure the event so that people can ask questions or you can create discussions around a topic. Another way to use live events is to teach your audience to use your product effectively by teaching them insider ‘secrets’ and other tips.
Interviews with a guest, former customers, or anyone interesting is another way to provide value with live events.
These limited and time-based events can add excitement and other positive emotions in association with your brand. It gives you the chance to connect with your audience and build their trust in you.
Back to you
The gated content you offer like online courses, blog posts, forum discussions, etc are not the only way to create revenue from a membership site.
You can add other strategies that give value to your users and also increase the chances that you make more money.
Work with the tips in this post and make small tweaks to your existing membership model. You’ll see an increase in earnings which you can scale to great effect.
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