A WAHumorous World

Membership sites are hot right now. Some are expensive and lousy while others are cheap and excellent. Rarely you find one that's both expensive and excellent, but it's not so easy.

The worst of all are the ones whose owners fade away like the Cheshire Cat after reaching a certain membership level or being distracted by other opportunities, leaving only that big satisfied grin borne of lots of juicy monthly fees.

Not to mention the cost of the software, the setup involved, etc., etc. It then becomes a monster demanding lots of time and attention. Blah.

Lately I've seen a clever alternative to memberships sites: private group forum categories. If you have a well-established forum and are recognized as someone who knows what they're talking about, you can slap this up in a flash and start seeing cash. It's as easy as setting up one more category on your list of topics and creating a private registration for members. The only outside thing you need is a subscription payment processor like Paypal to take those monthly payments.

If your forum is really hopping, you're there anyway. Why not offer private consultations and discussions to your faithful fans?

But don't think that you alone are enough of a draw to make them stick around. Offer some meaty free downloads of whatever you're into. Oh yeah...keep it cheap, cheaper than the cheap membership sites. Push the fact that they'll have direct access to you and your responses to their specific concerns, not prepackaged one-size-fits-all autoresponses that lack that human touch and rarely answer the question anyway.

Why complicate matters?