Membership sites can be a great way to earn recurring income each month. Nearly everyone has something they can teach that people are interested in. But, even if you don’t have something you feel comfortable teaching you can always find something you want to learn,  hire someone to teach you and then record the process with audio and video and turn it into content for your site.

We have four magazine subscriptions. Half the time I don’t even look at them. I find myself going online  because the content is more dynamic and interactive. Do I mind paying a little each month for certain types of content? No, of course not.

One of the keys to a high value membership site is narrow focus with highly relevant content. Here are some ideas I have heard of: cooking, magic, pottery making, technology training, glass blowing, dog training, investing, fitness, travel, employment, etc…

The content also has to be high value and not easy to get for free. I created a membership site a few years back. It flopped because the material was easy to get for free elsewhere and because the subject matter was something I really wasn’t into and I didn’t dedicate much time to the site.

I have also been a part of a few very successful membership sites. One of those sites was a specialized employment site for actors, models, dancers, and musicians. To this day the site does very well. There are thousands of people all over the country interested in finding fame and fortune in the entertainment industry.

Here’s the awesome thing about membership sites too. You don’t even need your own content. You can license other people’s. I worked on three more membership sites besides the one above and we used licensed content for all of them.

It might be the case that you can find a company or individual already in possession of the content you need. Often times they have attempted the same thing but for whatever reasons have been unable to monetize that content.  Sometimes they have monetized the content and see no harm in licensing it to you  for a small fee.

For instance, just a few months ago I helped put together a deal that involved the licensing of credit data and internet security software for a monthly subscription based identity theft prevention and credit monitoring site.  The company I was working with obviously did not have access to individuals credit data. We simply got on the phone with people in business development at the major credit bureaus and fleshed out a plan for them to provide our customers with their credit information.

Another example of a membership site I helped create from licensed content is that of  Saver Exchange. In the case of SaverExchange.com we licensed content from a coupon publisher who already had an online membership site.  By partnering with a well established company in business since 1962 we were able to leverage their existing relationships and license their content to provide high value content to our clients for small monthly out of pocket expense.

Finally, we found a company who had spent a large amount of money developing a fitness site with videos, meal planners, diet tools, shopping lists, food databases, a health library, and one where member’s could ask questions to real trainers and dietitians via email. The company had a good product but they were struggling because of bad marketing. We were able to rebrand their product and license the content to our customers for a very low cost per user per month. You can check out FitClubX here.

You can see from these examples that there is indeed money in membership sites. There are also a lot of ways to fail. Building anticipation for the launch of your site is a crucial part just like movie studios build anticipation for the opening of a movie.

This brings me to the conclusion of this post and the reason why I decided to write about membership sites. Yaro Starak is reopening “Membership Site Mastermind.”  You may already be familiar with Yaro from his blog Entrepreneurs Journey. I have also mentioned Yaro before on this blog and given some of his tips on becoming a professional blogger.

Anyhow, Yaro creates some of the best courses around on blogging and membership sites. Membership Site Mastermind goes into great detail on nearly every aspect of creating and managing a profitable membership site. This really is an awesome course and I highly recommend you get it if you are considering starting a membership site.

The cost of Membership Site Mastermind is something like $700 or three payments of $297. If that seems like a lot I can tell you that the money you will make by putting the techniques in this course to use will pay for themselves. Enrollment for the 2009 Membership Site Mastermind is only open for a little over three days from now then it will be closed until further notice.

If you are considering joining go here and download the free report. If you do decide to buy I am asking you to do so through one of my links here. I will receive a small commission if you do. In exchange, I will give you a copy of my $100 Online Profit Matrix course and digital versions of my books No Bull Internet Marketing and Results Based Internet Marketing absolutely free. Just send me a copy of your reciept for the course.

I hope this post gets you motivated. Do you have any experience with membership sites. Why not share your experience here. I would love to hear your thoughts.

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