Mainstream membership sites - Lets talk about them...
 

I've always thought about running some sort of mainstream membership based site. I've had a few good ideas over the years but something has always pulled me away from them.

Have you come across any type of mainstream membership site? Anything catch your eye that was "thinking out of the box"?

Lets discuss...

I am a member of a poker site, video site, and music site. All offer great content that I don't mind paying for at all.

Sly, do you pay any monthly memberships for them?

LOL of course, why else mention? :-)

Poker is $30, video is $8, music is $9.

what type of video site?

I subscribe to Hulu Plus and Grooveshark VIP. Movies/TV and Music.

most private torrent trackers do pretty well...

we are building such a site now

no more details :)

You gotta tell us something...

spill a little...

I subscribed to a couple graphic design websites that have a membership. I see more and more news sites trying to get you pay for a membership to read their articles. NYTimes just added a membership base, but I would never pay to read news I can find else where for no fee.

I've joined some knowledge services and eletters that are monthly in the past, and some yearly things like Aweber and stock image/clip, etc sites. The wife subscribes to Hulu and Pandora, which I wouldn't pay for if she didn't get them. I like both, but personally I wouldn't pay monthly for them.

For me, I tend to buy what I need over what I want, so something like a kick ass newsletter that will teach me something will get my money over anything entertainment related. That for sure isn't normal though.

Oh I forgot that I also have a subscription to WSJ.

http://www.lynda.com < - i pay something like $300 a year for a premium acct with them ... well worth it

what do the information sites provide with the memberships? tutorials, one-on-one training, private forums?

One was a forum, very specialized information, had it for a couple of years before I changed directions. One was video site showing you new traffic sources - they quit after about a year. The newsletter was about extremely advanced email marketing techniques, the best of them all but when it missed, it missed bad thus I didn't feel the $150 a month for it was worth it anymore.

I got my sister into one, some low level, learning web shit type guy, was like $25 a month.. and it worked great for her, explained a lot of shit I long forgot about. He taught her how to tap into some traffic markets that I never touched, build sites in a way, I never have done... it was totally different than what I did, which is why I put her on it.

bump for a legit biz thread.

Anything with specialized information or analysis

Stock sites are the first to come to mind

You probably would have to filter a lot of traffic to get subscribers looking for subniche finance topics

Also, the other hurdle is finding expert-written content that is credible and have a track record.

I belong to a shoe/purse one ... probably not what you were looking for! justfab.com

I pay $40 bucks a month and based on my likes they show we a selection of 5 shoes and 5 bags. I pick one and they ship it. If i don't like any i can skip that month (still billed of course!) and it saves a credit for me.

I was sold on the fact it's decent product (great for fun trendy stuff i know i won't keep forever) and it's easy! If i'm too lazy/busy to pick something ... it stores a credit for me. So i never get the feeling of "why am i paying for this every month?" ... they have tricked me into thinking ... awesome saved credit incase one month i LOVE all 5 shoes and all 5 bags!

I've also been writing lots of coaching tutorials lately so depending on your niche, that's a good RECURRING revenue stream.

Wouldn't you like to know ? :1orglaugh

Ummm.. that's kind of the point of the thread... why is it funny?

Music and video are pretty explanatory. My poker membership has thousands of videos, forums that pros regularly participate in, etc.

So all in all... content, content, content.

Any type of information that you know that's not a "common knowledge" can be turned into a pay site. If you have skills you can have a "credit repair" or "how to travel around the world for free" type pay sites. Opportunities are unlimited there.
Go meditate on this.

I pay for a few stock newsletters.

i Subscribed to MLB I liked the idea of getting both home and away games. I figured a ticket to the game costs 75 that is the same as 3 months of getting it on tv. But MLB sucks. The quality is junk. Today it wouldnt even work through my bluray player. Netflix works great via the stream and is cheap monthly. I guess in away these are similar to adult paysites. you are getting video for a monthly fee.

QUOTED for TRUTH

Rapidshare members for years now, lol.

That's nice... So which ones do you use?

I have seen good results with micro subscriptions. Like $5 monthly for a new cookbook each month or a newsletter. People will pay that and rarely cancel such a small amount.

I also sell some software apps on a $2 monthly model. Works well :)

The software apps sound intriguing. Thanks for chiming in on this thread, I have seen some posts on wf from you and was like I know that guy! LOL

i saw you have a $500 a month product, how much work do you have to put into that, and do you have 50 or more members?

Running a mainstream site myself (sportsprofit.com) and it takes in more than all my adult paysites. Nice to do be doing something outside adult and yet take advantage of traffic ideas etc.

Macro memberships require a bit more work to maintain yes. :)

Yea this is what I was gonna say.. I've been a member there from time to time. Sure you can find other free tutorial sites, but typically not so many in one place.


3D Buzz is another interesting concept. I was around when that site first took off and actually went to the animation school the owner taught at (well before I ever started adult).


The site is based on the concept of giving free access to anyone for training, so it's not a full on profit site. However I'm pretty sure they pull a profit now days as they do member sponsor sections and also have deals with various software and gaming companies to do the official tutorials.

TBH, I'm amazed what that site turned into over time because I remember it when it was just a small forum community and only had a handful of videos that they used to actually mail out on CD's rather than serve via the web.

It just shows that finding the right niche and being an expert on it can allow you to build a very large site from your living room.

i cant afford to pay for anything...

nice looking site.

damn you made a site - writeswap - which i was thinking of doing for awhile now.

just shows when you think you have an original idea on the internet someone else has probably thought of the same thing and the race is on to execute it.

I'm tempted to go the membership site route. I have a lot of domains that'd be great for such sites, but development's such a pain, and it'd have to be ongoing work for a membership site. I've toyed around with the idea of doing an available domains membership site, but am leaning towards just doing a 1-time available domain database offering instead (well, might be multiple times but offered once than not again til months later and updated).

Yup. I kind of slack-assed on getting a monthly membership site together. Should have been done ages ago, but like I say, I dragged my ass on things. In the last couple months I've already seen two others pop up offering basically the exact some product, and there's probably half a dozen others I don't even know about (on top of the existing couple I already knew about offering similar products). I felt the couple programs up already were weak in their marketing, but the new competitors seemed to have that same idea and appear far more competitive in their approaches. I'm still not completed, and am behind the pack. Now I need to decide if I want to try and compete with a hopefully better marketing strategy on a paid membership, or go freemium and work out an alternative revenue stream.

Bump for biz...

I think the hardest thing for a mainstream site is the content... More so then adult...