What is a Membership Website: How Can You Start One?

What is a Membership Website: Turn Your Hobby, Specialised Knowledge, or Profession Into a Membership Website.

A membership website is any organization that allows or requires people to subscribe to that website in order to view content.

• Often such membership websites requires members to pay a membership fee or subscription.

Basically, a membership website is a group of people brought together through a common interest. It can be to learn something new, achieve a common goal or promote ideas, etc.

• Turn your hobby, specialised knowledge, or profession into a membership website.

If you have knowledge to convey, an idea, a product or anything else you want to share with an audience, then you can make a membership program and hence a membership website out of it.

Definitions: Membership;

• the state of belonging to or being a part of a group or an organization : the state or status of being a member.
• all the people or things that belong to or are part of an organization or a group: the body of members.

Membership websites typically have a particular purpose which involves connecting people together around a particular profession, industry, activity, interest or mission.

There are many not-for-profit (UK National Trust) and commercial membership websites (Chris Farrell Membership), on the Internet. There are others which are a little bit of both.

Examples of memberships include; the Church, your local Gym and the many social networking sites. These are all groups which you join, become an active member and share ideas. A membership website is a community of like minded people working towards a common goal.

Membership sites can offer solutions to problems people are facing right now.

Size of Membership Websites

Membership websites vary in size from small, just a few dozen or so members, to very large like the UK National Trust and many of the social networking sites.

• Chris Farrell Membership is a private, members-only website that will teach you the skills needed to make money online. The annual membership fee is $287.
• UK National Trust are a not-for-profit charity that relies for income on membership fees, donations and legacies, and revenue raised from their commercial operations. They have over 3.7 million members paying annual membership fees of £58 for individuals and £98 for families.

Membership organizations typically rely on Membership software to provide their services to their members.

Membership Software

Membership software (also known as Association management system) is a computer software solution which provides associations, clubs and other membership organizations with the functionality they require to provide their services to their members.

No matter what type of membership website you intend to have, you need to think very carefully about both your current and future requirements.

• You need to ensure your membership software gives you everything you need to easily manage a successful online membership business both now and into the future.

Whether you intention is to have a not-for-profit membership website or sell digital products, subscription content, software as a service, or ship physical goods, your selected membership software must provide a flexible platform that you can quickly shape to your business, preferably with absolutely no programming required.

Some of the things you will need to consider when selecting membership software are:

Customer Management

You will need to register new members (both free and paid memberships) and accept orders using several billing methods with highly configurable and easy to use checkout pages.

Protected Member’s Area

The protected member’s areas must have password protected pages to deliver premium content, PDFs, videos, software, etc. There must be a members only area where you can deliver both drip and scheduled content as required.

Support Automation

Customers should be able to update their profile, billing details, email, password, and cancel subscriptions, etc. This self-service facility will reduce support requests.

Reporting and Analytics

You need to know critical metrics including sales, lifetime value by source, member retention statistics, etc. You definitely need a members activity log.

What is a Membership Website Conclusion

If you really want to create a steady recurring income from your hobby, specialised knowledge, or profession, learn how to create a membership website and implement it as soon as possible.

• Allocate some time and resources to building your own subscription based website and you will see your income grow.

Well that’s all for this what is a membership website article. You can find more information on membership software in my article, Top Membership Management Software.

Don’t forget to let me have your thoughts in the comment box below. Thanks for dropping by.