Membership Models: Publisher Site

Posted on 30. Dec, 2009 by Charly Leetham in Membership Sites

Many people will be familiar with the publisher model of membership sites.  This style of membership site is like an online magazine, where fresh content is added on a regular basis.

A publisher membership model can require a lot of effort on the part of the site owner, so it shouldn’t be undertaken lightly.  If you are considering using a publisher model, be certain that there is LOTs of interest in the subject first.

Developing Community

When a new member joins a site like this, they generally gain access to all the content that has been published. The risk to site owners is that anyone can join one month, gain access to all the previous months content and download it and then cancel their membership.

To reduce the risk of people signing up and cancelling quickly, as the site owner you need to develop a sense of community around the content you are publishing. In doing so, you will take the focus off the content you are providing and encourage members to return to be part of the community.

Certainly, your members will initially come to your site because of the content however, if you develop your community the members will continue to return to your site.

You can develop a community for your publishing site by soliciting and incorporating your members opinions into your content and then asking them to post their thoughts, questions and opinions on a topic and to respond to each other.  You can offer competitions to encourage participation in the community.

Set The Expectation And MEET It

If you decide to implement the publisher membership model, consider how often you will publish new content for your members.  In many cases, site owners ‘go all out’ in the early days and publish lots of information for their members however, as time goes on they loose their motivation and the amount of information published drops off.

It is extemely important to set your members expectations before they join your membership site, and then meet that expectation every time.  This means that if you feel that you can publish one piece of great content every month for your members, and do that all the time, this is what you tell them to expect. If you have extra information to share with them in other months, you can add these as membership bonuses.

Offer Bonuses

Another great way to encourage your members to continue their membership, is to offer bonuses.  You may offer a special bonus for remaining a member for 3 month, 6 month and 12 months – these bonuses could be special downloads, access to specific information or even a 30 minute free consultation (if you are offering a mentoring or coaching membership).

Have you implemented a Publisher Model membership?  If so, share you’re experiences with other readers below…

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