What is a Membership Website?

Last week I ran a workshop, about making money from online content, for an audience of writers. After speaking for an hour and a half we stopped for lunch and one of the members of the audience came up to me and said "I was too embarrassed to ask during your talk, but what is a membership website?"

It is me who should have been embarrassed for not making this fundamental point very clear. Having been immersed in this industry for so long, I often wrongly assume that people know a lot of what I take for granted.

So here is my definition of what a membership website is.

A membership website is a website that has pages of content that are only available to members. People visiting the site usually have to register their details online in order to be provided with a user name and password to get access to the member-only information. The content is usually articles, but may also be video clips, audio, course material, an image library, access to a forum or downloads such as ebooks.

Membership can be free or paid.

On a free membership web site the site owner provides access to their premium content in exchange for a persons contact details. The goal of these sites is usually to build an email newsletter list through which other products and services can be sold. Getting personal details is also a way for the site owner to monitor an individual's activity in the member's area. This is particularly important on forums or on sites where people can leave comments. If a site owner knows who is leaving comments they can ban people who are unpleasant, argumentative or rude.

Paid membership web sites offer access to premium content in exchange for a monetary payment. This can be a one-off payment e.g. $10 for 24 hours access, or more usually a recurring payment for ongoing access e.g. $5 per month. Subscription rates vary from $12 to several thousand dollars a year. One site I know of charges $300,000 a year for a corporate license for access to their membership website.

Subscriptions for membership are usually done on a monthly, quarterly or annual basis. These payments are processed automatically via the website.

Examples of Membership Websites

The Wall Street Journal - www.wsj.com

The Wall Street Journal charges either $99 a year for print and online, or $79 a year just for access to the subscriber content on the website.

Marketing Sherpa - www.marketingsherpa.com

Marketing Sherpa offer all their content for free for 10 days. After this period is up the content is archived in a member-only area, available to paying subscribers.

Webmaster World - www.webmasterworld.com

Webmaster World is one of the leading websites covering web design, online marketing, domain names, etc. Nearly all the content is in forums, most of which is free to view.

The site charges a subscription of $149 a year which gives members the right to contribute to forums and to get access to some member-only discussion groups.

The Membership Website Checklist

If you are thinking about building a membership website these are the things you must consider.

1) Security of the Premium Content

You must ensure that people cannot get access to the membership area of your website without signing up.

2) Collect Sign-up Details

The website must have a means of collecting member's personal details in a secure database. The database should be easy to search.

3) Password Distribution and Monitoring

The site must be able to distribute passwords and monitor the time that they are valid so access can be disabled when a subscription period runs out.

4) Password Access Restrictions

Subscription websites often have different levels of membership e.g. gold, silver and bronze. The website application must be able to determine what passwords give access to what content.

5) Password Abuse Detection

The website software should be able to detect password abuse i.e. when password is illegally being used by more than one person. Sometimes passwords get distributed on forums and suddenly hundreds or thousands of people can try accessing a site with a single login ID and password.

6) Integration with Payment Processing

If the website has paid membership, the online sign-up process must be integrated to a payment processing service such as PayPal.

7) Recurring Billing

It is essential that a paid membership website has the capability to automatically collect subscription payments.

8) Autoresponder Messages

An autoresponder automatically sends out messages in response to pre-programmed events. On a membership website there should be an autoresponder that sends out a message that acknowledges payment, sign-up and sends out a password reminder. An autoresponder should also be set up to remind clients when they ther subscription is running out and what they have to do to renew it. Sending out these messages is a legal requirement in many countries.

9) Remember me Login Option

The login application should have the ability to automatically login members who are coming back to a website on their own computer. This avoids the need for members having to type in their details every time they return to the website.

10) Easy to Use Control Panel

There are many different facets to administering a subscription website, so it is very important that there is a single, easy to use control panel that brings all these activities together.

Conclusion

A well built membership website is simple to run. A poorly built site is a headache and will lead to more time being spent on administration than on adding content and building the business. Getting it right at the outset, using a dedicated service like SubHub ( www.subhub.com ), will pay for itself many times over in the long-run.