1. Traditional membership sites require too much work setting up. One of the biggest reasons why people don’t get their membership sites going in the first place is because there is a lot of work that goes into the initial setup. When you factor in writing a 30 to 50 original pieces of content to “stockpile” in your member’s area, getting training materials in place, setting up a forum, installing scripts, assembling a “library” of materials, downloads, training videos and other things most membership sites include, it’s just too time-consuming for the average person to ever get in place; especially if you still work full time.
2. Traditional membership sites have built-in pressures to create content. It can be easy to burn out running your own membership site. You think going in that you’ll never run out of ideas to write about; I consider myself quite a prolific writer and someone who turns out a LOT of high quality information every month…BUT, let me tell you that I face this problem. Almost everyone does. And, even if you have super powers and can continue coming up with new ideas for years and years, the demands of updating your site 3-5 times per week with new content requires discipline that most of us just don’t possess.
3. Traditional membership sites require pricey and complicated scripts. By running a membership site, you have to manage passwords, protect your member’s area, keep up with who’s active and who’s stopped paying you, manage your content and at least two dozen other things. This requires a membership site “script” or special software. If you’ve done any research you’ll see that there are dozens of ‘cheap’ membership site scripts out there, however, most are poorly constructed and ineffective. Others are way too expensive (thousands of dollars) or have so many “bells and whistles” that you need to join a membership site just to learn how to use them. The first membership site I ran I paid nearly $5,000 for the software to run it!
4. Traditional membership sites demand a large investment of time. You have a forum to moderate, cancellations to process, content to add, technical problems to troubleshoot, password problems to fix, and a variety of other tasks that usually get left out of the “salesletter” for a product or service trying to convince you to start a membership site. The truth is, a traditional membership site requires a large investment of time. Now, if this is the ONLY part of your business you’ll have, you might pull it off. But, believe me, it will leave the average person with virtually no time to do list-building, traffic generation and develop other products.
5. Traditional membership sites face a continual battle to keep subscribers. Here’s a figure most people don’t tell you about: the “average” subscriber will stay active for 3-4 months and then they’ll cancel. Now for the membership sites I run the average length of stay is much longer than that and it’s down to the experience I have and what I’ve learned over the years running membership sites.