Do Membership Sites Really Provide Passive Income?

I was reading an article recently that talked about the benefits of having a membership site. It centered around the fact that they generated passive income - that is, income with hardly any work. Income that was regular and dependable.

Sounds great, doesn't it? I'm lying on a beach daydreaming in the sun right now back to reality!

The reality is that like life, most membership sites are not this stuff of dreams. Most require that 'w' word - work. Unless you're blessed with the start-up capital to outsource the work needed to build and maintain a quality membership site.

When I interviewed a number of people who ran successful membership sites for my ebook, the Easy Membership Toolkit, one of the common themes was that these guys spent a lot of time on their sites. They were adding content daily. Maybe not just to the members area, but to the public area as well, where they pre-sold their prospects with great content.

And these were all membership sites that had been in business for a few years, and were doing extremely well. Incidentally, they weren't in the internet marketing arena.

There's also the actual promotion of your site. Ideally, you want to be constantly bringing new members in. At least until word-of-mouth and viral advertising techniques really kick in.

The fact is, membership sites are a great way to set yourself up financially for life. But they do require regular input on your behalf. That's why it's so important to pick a topic you like. Until you can afford to outsource things, you're going to need as few impediments to getting the work done as possible. Picking a subject you don't like is an easy one to avoid.

So, what are the kind of things you'll be spending your time on when you're running your membership site?

Fortunately, it won't be the tedious stuff like manually adding members and chasing lost passwords. There's a lot of software, and all-in-one content management systems, that take care of all that for you. You'll be doing the things that can't be automated. Namely, adding content. Replying to members questions. Surveying your members to find out what they want or need most from your membership. Monitoring the members-only forum.

All of these things are important if you want to create a truly successful membership site. And it's these, not the half-hearted lazy man's version, that really provide great revenue, year in, year out.

If you'd like to learn more on how to create successful membership sites, click here.