Setting Up a Membership Website – Part Eleven in the Website Template Series

Membership websites are a very nice website model but would appear to be getting a little bit of bad publicity lately. What has happened is that the internet marketing world has been promotion the idea of owning a membership website as the best thing since sliced bread, and have caused such a huge influx of membership websites to appear and some are very badly done. These bad ones have caused a bit of a backlash from the general public.

Now I firmly believe that if you offer a great product that people would be very happy to become members and be even happier to remain members for years to come. Before you even consider the idea of owning a membership website I ask you to consider the following aspects.

Popularity

You will need to know that there is a demand for your particular type of club or membership before you blunder forward and build a website. If you are fully aware of the potential of this niches membership potential then by all means go ahead.

Content

Members of a club or membership website are not going to be happy to pay a monthly fee to belong to a website that never adds new content to the website. Some membership websites are only meant to be a six week membership, and that is fine if your website is set up that way, but the long term websites need to have a lot of content, news and stuff like features and freebies added all the time or you will lose your members.

Originality

If your membership website is competing in a specific niche where there are already a lot of other membership websites then you had better have something that makes you stand a full head and shoulders above the crowd or your site will die.

Website size

Here again this would depend upon the original topic, and if your membership website is aimed at antique steam train enthusiasts then you are not likely to be getting a lot of fresh news daily in such a niche, and would therefore need to be certain that you still have new and fresh content to add weekly. It would be easier with a more popular topic. What I am saying here is that you would be encouraged to be adding hundreds of quality items a month to make even the most jaded member happy and keep increasing your membership site. I am a member of one of the best membership websites online and the guy who runs it keeps us all astounded with the quality that he adds daily. Very few people bail out of that membership website.

Focus

Do not lose focus as to what your original intentions where, and you need to remember that that reason is why most of your members joined up in the first place. The idea of adding a fun element like a daily competition might seem like a good idea, but sooner or later you die-hard members are going to be asking questions. If the original intention of your membership website was to keep old car enthusiasts up to date with all the gathering dates and happenings, and you stop telling them those details they will run away.

Name

If you feel that the word membership has started to get a bit of a negative feel to it then I suggest that from the word go you call your membership website by a different name. you can play around with the options like club, team, group and a whole lot more and some will work and others not. Be careful that you still keep the integrity of the original idea intact.