Today, we are going to talk about how to monetize a high-traffic blog with a membership area.
This concept is not new and has been proven to work for many reputable businesses.
We have seen this idea – a membership area – for many blogs and businesses.
The way it works is simple.
You charge $20 – $100 a month for access to 1) a library of your materials and 2) the member’s area, where the group comes together and talks about their progress and sticking points.
If you are looking to make a nice residual income from a membership area, keep in mind it works best with a high-traffic blog.
If you have more than 10,000 monthly readers, then this strategy begins to make clear sense to you.
Otherwise, read on to gain knowledge about how to do this later.
Software and Tools to Build a Member’s Area
There are a few excellent resources for people looking to build a profitable member’s area for a high-traffic blog.
Here are those resources:
- Kajabi – $199 a month
- Thinkific – $149 a month
- Mighty Networks – $99 a month
- Podia – $75 a month
- Facebook Groups – Free
Kajabi
Kajabi comes fully equipped to handle membership sites to help you share knowledge with your members.
Kajabi Circles give an extra layer of community to your membership, creating a sense of belonging.
Kajabi costs $199 a month, and you can get started with a 14-day free trial.
Thinkific
Thinkific’s online communities and membership areas are perfect for people who want to build community around online courses.
Thinkific features flexible spaces, live events, community moderators, and trending posts.
Thinkific costs $149 a month to get started.
Mighty Networks
Mighty Networks is an LGBT-friendly community builder and membership area.
They help you structure a community design plan to get the most out of your online membership area.
Mighty Networks costs $99 a month and features a 14-day free trial.
Podia
Podia lets you build a membership area with forum-like commenting, and multimedia built in.
Your members can access your products and can also have membership fee for paying supporters.
Podia costs $75 a month to start.
Facebook Groups
Facebook Groups are an excellent and free way to run a successful member’s area.
As we will talk about more in the next section, Facebook Groups let you build community and manage a member’s area.
People can use Facebook Groups for free, though Facebook might not encourage asking for profits for Facebook groups – for this, we recommend the above tools.
Examples of a Profitable Member’s Area
We have found a couple of examples of member’s areas that are especially excellent.
One is called 7 Figure Agency and is listed on Facebook.
The group is free to join and is moderated by the owner of the group.
What is excellent about this group is that the owner makes 7 figures from his digital marketing agency.
He also has a $300 product and monthly coaching for around $1500 a month.
He has thousands of people in his member’s area, and he responds to every single post.
It is a very actively managed member’s area.
He makes money not only from selling his book and courses, but also his coaching, while the group is free.
Another example is called Smart Passive Income.
I have been reading Smart Passive Income for years.
Their member’s area has an excellent offer.
It costs $990 a year to be in the member’s area, for SPI Pro.
SPI Pro features community, courses, and content all in one place, and it has gotten rave reviews.
Note the difference in the 2 groups.
For 7FA, the money is monetizing a free group with products and coaching.
For SPI, the money is in a membership fee paid annually, and there’s products too.
What To Offer to a Member’s Area?
The most important thing to offer to a member’s area is your valuable contributions and feedback.
The best groups have people participating all the time, and producing new post ideas, sharing ideas, asking for feedback, etc.
Then, the group moderator responds with feedback on every post.
This hands-on approach makes an enormous difference to having a successful member’s area.
Generally, you can also offer your products – eBooks, online courses, etc., can all be offered to your members area.
You can also promote your affiliate marketing, too.
How To Integrate Email Marketing with Your Profitable Member’s Area
As you build your profitable blog, the key is to build a marketing funnel around all your marketing assets.
Obviously, your biggest asset is your profitable blog.
Then, you have your email marketing list, which allows you to message your followers repeatedly with high value messages that promote your blog, your members area, and your offers.
With email marketing, you might have an email sequence designed to attract people further through your marketing funnel.
For email marketing, we use ConvertKit, which we recommend here with Quick Blog Profit.
ConvertKit allows us to build interesting marketing funnels, including email sequences and marketing automation.
What is best, ConvertKit starts for only $10 a month, so it’s affordable.
When you want your member’s area to gain new members, share your member’s area on your email marketing channel, such as ConvertKit, and gain new subscribers and paying customers for your profitable member’s area.
How To Build SEO For Your Profitable Member’s Area
As you go about building your profitable blog, and your member’s area, you may want to focus on the audience.
Audience matters, and we rely on the SEO tool Serpstat to give us clues about the audience.
With Serpstat, you can find the topics most relevant to large audiences, and then get niche and find topics for your member’s area that are applicable to smaller audiences.
Serpstat gives us the ability to find those topics, and then share them with our member’s area.
Serpstat comes with a 7-day free trial, and we recommend Serpstat for all SEO activities.
Summary
You should now have some interesting insight into how to monetize a high traffic blog with a membership area.
We should mention that pricing your members’ area is key, and while some are free, others cost hundreds of dollars a year.
Membership areas can become 10-20% of your blogging income if you have a high traffic blog, and an audience that will love what you have to say.
Here are the software and tools that we recommend for building a membership area:
- Kajabi – $199 a month
- Thinkific – $149 a month
- Mighty Networks – $99 a month
- Podia – $75 a month
- Facebook Groups – Free
We looked at profitable membership areas, such as 7 Figure Agency and Smart Passive Income.
Note the actively managed groups, with plenty of discussion from moderators, as well as up-selling of products, courses, and coaching.
Offer feedback and offer your products and courses.
Be sure to integrate email marketing into your member’s area, attracting subscribers who will want to sign up for your member’s area from your opt-in list with ConvertKit.
Also, be sure to derive blog topics from Serpstat, which we highly recommend.
All said, you should be ready to start a membership area now.
Best of luck and get started on your profitable membership area now!
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