Do Membership Sites Make Money? How to Make Yours Profitable

Membership sites can be a fantastic way to generate more income for your coaching business… or can they?

There’s a bit more to creating a profitable membership site than pressing the “publish” button and hoping for the best. You need to pick the right pricing strategy and optimize your content strategically to make sure you’re generating a profit each month. Otherwise, it could actually end up costing your business more money than you make! 

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

In this post, I’ll show you how to set your membership site up for success and ensure it is profitable the moment you launch.

What is a Membership Site?

Imagine if you combined the coaching content and courses you offer with a recurring subscription model that brings in money every month. 

That’s a membership site. 

A membership site is a website that offers exclusive content, products, services, or experiences to its members. The beauty of it? You charge for access. 

Membership sites come in all shapes and sizes, but they are usually built around a specific niche/interest and provide value to their members through regularly updated content and services. I’ll show you pricing strategies later on along with a few tips to ensure it's profitable. 

The Benefits of a Membership Site for Coaches

There are tons of benefits coaches can reap from launching a membership site, but if I had to pick just a few here are my favorites:

  • Recurring revenue: It’s the magic word for coaches and service businesses. Membership sites generate recurring revenue through monthly or annual subscription fees. This means stable, predictable growth for your business (and passive income). 
  • They build a community of fans: Membership sites create a sense of community among members, who share common goals or interests. This allows you to cultivate a network of motivated professionals and entrepreneurs.
  • Establishing authority and brand loyalty: By consistently providing valuable content and support, you can strengthen your authority in your niche. A membership site helps you build trust and credibility, which are key for retaining members and attracting new clients. 
  • Scalability: Unlike traditional coaching methods that are limited by your time and availability, a membership site can serve an unlimited number of members without an increase in workload.

If you’re already sold on launching your membership site, read on for tips to set it up for success and make it as profitable as possible. 

What are the Keys to a Successful Membership Site?

Keys to a Successful Membership Site

It’s basic arithmetic: the more you can charge for your membership site the bigger your profit will be. 

The best way to charge a higher amount (other than asking for more) is to amp up the quality of your site and set it apart from the rest. Here are three tips to make your membership site truly shine:

  • High-quality content: You’ll need lots of high-quality content to engage your members and keep them coming back again and again. Check out my tip at the end of this post for a shortcut to filling your site with a steady stream of new content without breaking a sweat (or the bank).
  • Structure and programming: A haphazard membership site that your customers have to struggle to find their way through won’t capture their attention for long. Engage new members with a clear structure and logical programming to guide them through your site and toward their goals.
  • Vibrant community: Community is key to the long-term success of your membership site. Encourage your members to introduce themselves, ask questions, and engage. It’s like having a full-time team of people working to build your site without any effort from you!

These are just a few tips to set your membership site up for success. Next, I’ll show you pricing strategies you can use to help maximize your profits. 

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Download a copy of the FREE Checklist now! 

Want a handy checklist for all the steps for how to create a membership site?

How to Price a Membership Site

Tips to Price a Membership Site

Before launching your membership site, you need to have a clear, easy-to-understand pricing strategy - and that’s going to require a bit more than picking a number out of a hat and hoping for the best. 

Pricing is part art and part science. It takes practice and experience to get it right. But the following tips will set your site up for success:

  • Price based on value: Price based on the value you provide rather than just the time involved or content included. Rather than think about the time you invest, think about the impact that you can drive for your clients and what that impact is worth to them. 
  • Make your pricing clear: Avoid complex tiers or options when starting out. Keep it simple with one main offer.
  • Offer a monthly and annual option: Let members pay monthly or offer a discount for paying annually. This lets you cater to different preferences and commitment levels.
  • Anchor your pricing thoughtfully: If you have other offers, be intentional about how your membership is positioned alongside those in terms of price.

Check out my complete guide to pricing your membership site for more tips and best practices. The price you set is obviously a big piece of how profitable your site is, but there are other ways you can maximize your profits by optimizing your audience and costs - I’ll show you how to do that next. 

3 Ways to Make Your Membership Site Profitable

3 Ways to Make Your Membership Site Profitable

You know how to stand out from the crowd and how to price your membership site, now here are three quick tips to making it as profitable as possible:

  • Build your audience before you launch
  • Leverage recurring revenue
  • Streamline your content with PLR

Build Your Audience Before You Launch

Membership sites can make money, but they require a bit of upfront investment to get started.

You need to:

  • Choose a platform for your site
  • Source and create a stream of content to share with subscribers
  • Design a member onboarding experience

And I’m just getting started. 

Between the platform and a few courses, your initial investment could be a few thousand dollars or more which means you’ll have a bit of work to do to break even so you aren’t costing your business money. 

That means having customers up front rather than chasing after them to play catch-up.

The easiest way to set your membership site up for success is to have an audience you launch it to. Having an audience of people who already know, like, and trust you makes it infinitely easier to build up your customer base early on and begin generating a profit. Check out my guide to building an audience for an online course for tips.

Set up Recurring Payments

Avoid the “feast and famine” of coaching and client work by turning your membership site into a source of consistent income for your business.

Yes, some successful membership sites get by with one-time payments. But to maximize your chance of a profit I recommend going with recurring payments. Whether you charge monthly, quarterly, or yearly, this will give you a source of income that can build up over time.

Streamline Your Content Creation with PLR

Creating content for your membership site will be one of the biggest (if not THE biggest) drivers of costs. To keep your members active and eager to stay subscribed, you’ll need a steady stream of fresh content to engage them. 

A single course can cost up to $2,000 to create (or more), so if you want to launch a new course every other month you could be looking at upwards of $10,000 per year just to keep your members engaged. You can cut that spend by 90% by purchasing ready-to-sell PLR courses.

PLR (Private Label Rights) is a license for content that allows you to purchase and resell under your name and brand (similar to white label). You can purchase a dozen or so courses and quickly customize and rebrand them - giving you a year’s worth of content with little more than a weekend’s worth of work.

Don’t let time or costs hold you back from launching a membership site that propels your coaching business to multiple six figures!

Scale Your Coaching Income with a Membership Site Today

Want to get off to a fast start with your membership site?

Speed up your path to profitability by filling it with high-quality content in a snap thanks to PLR.

PLR (private label rights) content is content that you can rebrand and sell as your own. 

When you purchase a license to any of our ready-to-go course kits, you get the rights to edit it any way you want (or leave it as-is) and add your own name and branding.

Click the button below to download my free checklist for creating a membership site with PLR and save 30% on your first order from my shop. Launch your next membership site like lightning and watch your revenue soar!

Click here to subscribe

Enjoy!

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