Memberships seem to be the new buzzword with more websites and social media accounts promoting the benefits of memberships.
But are they all they are hyped up to be?
Table of Contents
- What is a Membership?
- Are Memberships a Viable Business Model?
- Efficiency of Time
- Online Business Entrepreneur
What is a Membership?
A membership is where customers pay a recurring monthly fee to have access to information that is not available elsewhere.
For example, I run 2 memberships. One focuses on building online businesses and the other focuses on investing in business, property, shares and commodities.
Included in each membership is training that is live each month along with a community where people can engage and support one another.
There are additional bonuses such as ebooks and resources that although they are available elsewhere would have to be bought. In the membership they are FREE.
A membership is a way to access things such as coaching, support and resources for a monthly fee.
Are Memberships a Viable Business Model?
This really depends on the type of business being run but generally, there can be a membership attached to most businesses.
Image your business is selling homemade soft furnishings. A membership might be focused on how you make them as other people may be interested in doing what you do. It could look at how you photograph the furnishings for posting on line. The types of material used and why.
A membership would be a bonus to the business. Sometimes the business could make more money from the membership instead of sales.
In my case, the membership came about as I set a monthly payment fee for the coaching rather than a one-off price.
This encouraged more people to join and the membership took off.
The second membership was created when some members of the first group wanted access to certain live sessions but didn’t want all the other information. They wanted to focus more on building their online businesses before starting their investing.
Members Only is focused on building an online business while KNI Mastermind focuses on investing.
Two different types of memberships with different pricing to reflect the content on offer.
Efficiency of Time
Memberships help you to be more efficient with your time by bringing more people together for coaching than if you sold coaching direct.
With my course Online Business Mastery, I run one live training session per month. It lasts for 2 hours. Thereafter, questions and suggestions are posted in the community to encourage people to do the work on their websites.
There is no limit on the number of people who can attend the training. Previously, I would advertise the coaching, wait until there were sufficient numbers and start the training. If numbers were over subscribed I would create a waiting list for the next time I ran the training.
In the membership environment, I repeat training over a specific period and members come in and out as they want.
The membership offers more flexibility and freedom of time.
Online Business Entrepreneur
The Online Business Entrepreneur has more resources and posts about Memberships.
In What Are Memberships and Are They Right For You – there is more information about different types of memberships.
Memberships are a personal choice that can be beneficial to a business but they do require consistency in creating content and providing training/coaching and resources.