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How to Adopt a Membership / Subscription Business Model

Dec 9, 2022

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    It's easier and more affordable than you think!  

This guide will give you information to help your business move to a membership model.

In the beginning, we'll discuss some advantages of the membership model before taking a look at businesses that are well suited to moving to membership. Then, you'll be given ideas on how you can change your business.

If you're looking to end trading time to earn money and add a new revenue stream to your business or even move your business away from the current structure and establish a membership website This guide will help.

Let's begin...

Benefits of the Membership Model

One of the greatest benefits of changing to the model of membership is the prospect of regular income.

Recurring Revenue

If you are able to sign for members through a subscription model, you'll be receiving payments at regular intervals, on a consistent basis.

Predictable Income

With recurring revenue comes predictability. If you're working as an independent contractor or managing an agency, you'll be familiar with the cycles of feasting and eating.

One month you might face more tasks than you are able to handle. Other times you experience a drop in income. The membership model can help create a predictable income stream that makes budgeting more efficient.

Passive Earnings

One of the major benefits that comes with membership is the potential for passive income. Although your venture will likely require a lot of work in the beginning in addition to regular maintenance and updates in addition to the admin tasks associated with an ever-growing list of customers The potential for passive income is greater than if you're just operating as a service company.

If you decide to take a few days, or a week or even longer off work depending on the way you've setup your membership-based business, money will still be coming in from your existing members and sign-ups from new members.

Scalability

If you're used to managing a business where you're the principal asset, and also the one responsible for all of the tasks the other advantage of the membership model is that it offers more opportunities for expanding and outsourcing.

If you're planning to offer an online training course (more suggestions for membership sites can be found later on in this article) You can employ staff to work on managing your training course while you focus on creating content.

For those offering access to assets, like stock images or code snippets that are available on the basis of subscription such as, for instance it is possible to hire individuals to assist in the creation of those products.

The membership model has lots of opportunities for automated procedures, which makes it much easier to scale and outsource over a normal freelance gig.

Recycle and reuse your Content

Instead of developing a great WordPress website for a single customer, and then moving on to your next client, you could instead produce the highest-quality WordPress theme that you can make accessible to all your clients.

The same applies to many other items that you might create for clients in a single-time basis. If you provide coaching or consulting for your customers, you can reuse your expertise and create videos and other instructional content you upload to your membership site.

Instead of working one-to-one basis with people that you assist, the membership site model allows you to reuse and recycle your skills, knowledge, and other assets to work in the context of a one-to-many connection.

We now know some of the main advantages of membership models, let's see what types of organizations can take advantage of the transition.

Businesses that are able to transition into the Membership Model

It's a good thing that with a bit of imagination, the majority of businesses can transition into a membership-based model in some way or another.

Coaching and Consultancy

Experts in their fields or who are knowledgeable enough to know that others have already paid to spend their time are ideal candidates for embracing the model of membership.

The sharing of your experience and knowledge and making it available through the paywall of your site is an effective means of helping other users while earning regular revenue.

Service Providers

Professional service providers like freelance graphic designers and coders could transition to the membership model too.

Illustration and design professionals could establish an online subscription program where members get access to a certain number of stock images or editable templates per month for a recurring cost.

The developers could develop products that are similar as those they create for their customers and then make the products available to their customers.

Product Businesses

Also, it is possible for the creators of physical products in the future to switch into a subscription model. The subscription boxes are getting more popular.

Instead of offering products which can be bought in one time it is possible to switch to letting your customers register, join who then get products on a regular basis.

It has been successful for the coffee industry, beer, clothing, and books to name the few. It doesn't require you to be the creator of the items, but just someone who knows how to curate an attractive every month's subscription box.

If you're still not sure the best way to move your company into a membership-based model, the final section of this article offers suggestions on how to use your talents and knowledge to create a new membership project that's independent of your existing business.

Ideas for Transitioning to the model of membership

Offer Productized Services

Another option is to shift from providing bespoke services to making a service that is productized. A good example could apply to freelance writers.

Instead of approaching every client with a different approach and providing them with customized services based on their specific needs, try creating just one bundle and marketing that to the people you want to reach. For example, this could be a subscription plan with 4 blog articles with 500 words per month for a fixed price.

When you have a productized solution, your customers enroll, and join your member program. Although you write unique content to each subscriber, everybody receives the same information with the same format every month. This takes away a lot of the negotiating and other time-consuming duties that go with giving each client something different.

A further benefit of providing productized services within the membership program is the fact that you'll work using strict guidelines and protocols instead of treating every work as a distinct task. Due to this, outsourcing and scaling will be more straightforward since your employees can follow these systems in order to offer the same services to your entire membership. As companies like Design Pickle have shown, this approach can be used with graphic design. There's the possibility that it can be beneficial for the products you offer.

Create Educational Content

As mentioned earlier, if your customers pay you for your expertise, then you could make money from that expertise and make it available to the members who pay.

Create an Community

Your job could involve organizing or hosting online events or anything less involved, such as moderating the interactions of your members. Completely transitioning your company to a membership-based model using this approach could involve including more information and features to your membership, so that it can be more beneficial, allowing members to pay more for membership access.

Start a Completely New Venture

There may not be the way to allow your business to make the transition but you'd love to reap the advantages of the membership model, such as recurring revenue and a greater reach.

If that's the case, then you could start a completely new venture in a field that's unrelated to your business or at least distinct from the business. Do you have hobbies or areas of expertise that could be of interest to people who are willing to pay to connect with you , or to learn from you?

Maybe you're an experienced pianist and want make money from this passion by creating online training material to teach others how to play. You might be a fan of fitness and want to inspire other people to become healthy and fit.

It's possible to create a membership site that's separate from your business but teaches others how to start working in your current field. For example, if you're photographer who is freelance, rather than moving that company to a membership model, you could make a distinct membership site that teaches others how to enter the world of freelance photography. Or maybe a membership site which helps users to take better pictures is a more appealing way to make money from your talents.

With the right tools and commitment to creating valuable content, as well as an eagerness to promote your site to the right audience, creating a profitable site for membership is possible for lots of users.

Remember you don't have to be the best in the field you're interested in, you just need to know more than the people who you're serving.

Final Thoughts

Hopefully, this guide on the steps to transition your company into a membership model provided you with the advantages of this and provided you some ideas on what you could do.

This won't be an easy task, and will drain you of the time you could devote to your current business. But the rewards can be worth it, particularly in the case where the concept of recurring earnings and regular income as well as the ability to grow and create the passive income you desire, sound appealing.

 Can your business transition to a membership-based model? Please let us know or post any queries in the comments section below.

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