Moving From Adsense to Membership Sites

I cant complain..ive earned good money with adsense and have nothing against the program but i think i need to move a notch higher with making money on the net. The "problem" with adsense is that you need a lot of traffic to make any decent amounts of cash...and for you to get that traffic you need to work extra hard to build backlinks to your site with a lot of odds against you

I have one membership site that will remain free forever to join and ive been able to build over 500 members in over five months..

I'm thinking of now moving to building paid membership sites..if i can get 500 members paying $10 per month...thats over $ 5,000 recurring income ever month..

 

Good luck but you will need something special to charge people $120 per year. Most surfers don't like registering on sites, let alone paying!

 

Yes..i'm aware of the challenges ahead..think about this..if people can subscribe to get their favorite hardcover magazine i'm sure there are niches that people will be willing to pay for content for them to get on the net..the perception is that everything on the net needs to be free..but with proper research i'm sure there are hungry untapped niches out there

 

so u decide not to use adsense on ur membership site

 

Just follow your dream(s).

Good luck

 

Any better suggestions/proposals?

 

So far this year i've generated almost $20,000 in subscriptions - you can read more about exactly how made so much in a blog post i just did a few weeks ago titled "How I make money with subscriptions"
One of the things i learned is that it is very difficult to get people to pay very much - you have to find the right "price point" - i started out too high and had to lower the fee before i was successful. Unless your site gives away free gold or something I dont think you'll be able to get very many people to pay $10/month.

if your site has something of value that people want, and if you find that right price-point, reoccurring subscriptions can do quite well..

 

Hi Tearabite!
I've actually printed out your case study of how you build your membership site weeks back!
I've been studying these sites and i'm thinking of joining/buying one of them to learn more:
http://www.membershipsuperstars.com/
http://www.membershipsiteowner.com/
http://www.joomlamembershipsite.com/

 

I would really be careful. Folks have literally hundreds of choices when it comes to online communities to hang out in... If you start charging for the sake of charging... many will simply find another place to spend their time.

You need to keep the free membership... but then offer an "enhanced" membership experience that gives folks something they think is worth it... perhaps an ad-free browsing experience... access to pages/content that others cannot access... things like that.

 

Interesting idea, i'm thinking of building a free online car site in a year or so, but charging people should make it a challenge........be careful and good luck

 

The key to making a successful membership site is to give them some high quality stuff. In order to make them stick around you need to over deliver meaning you have to give them more than what they were promised to get. Basically adsense is very useful for new sites which do not have repeat visitors but once you have lots of visitors which trust you and they keep on coming on your site then you could start something like a membership area. Anyway there is no harm in continuing with adsense so that you can continue generating revenue with new visitors to your sites (which are not registered)

 

If you have a membership site can you not put adsense code on it? Sockmoney definately has the right idea though. I see a lot of websites that have a ton of free content, but the premium content is gonna cost ya.

 

How about affiliates 3 mice? Let me tell you what I am doing right now. My site is a nitch dating site and free. While I get about 350,000 page views a month I have watched my earnings drop from $32 to $15 a day. I've tried everything but after 6 months I realized I could spend my energy doing other things besides changing ad colors, moving the position of the ads, trying to block crap paying sites, and after all my hard work I am still were I am. You cannot fight Google when they decide to pay you 6 cents when they use to pay you 12 cents a click. Life sucks you move on.

I have a major competitor in my nitch dating market, actually I have several, and reviewed their affiliate programs. I chose one that gets about 10 times as much traffic as me, has been around for a long time, and pays very good referral fees. I have 2000 members they have 75,000.

In the last 11 days i have gotten 5 sales... my cut $99.99, $99.90, $49.99, $24.99 and $9.99. What is that $280? I just really started pushing this site hard about 20 days ago and of course you have to wait for the affiliate to start paying off... People sign up as free members and later choke up the money after getting emails about their "matches".

I still have Adsense on my site, but it will now become 2nd on my energy list, and it may even drop further. My point is that there are lots of ways to make money on the web if you have decent traffic and when Google decided I was worth 6 cents a click I found someone else that thought differently.

 

i forgot to say 3mice. I do not know exactly what type of site you have but I would really really build a base of like thousands and thousands and keep your site free before even thinking of charging.

In my case I have a very loyal group of members, but most admit they would not have paid to join my site. Some people are just wired that way. They like the personal touch of my site, the community atmosphere. Many of these people keep coming back and I am building a good base.

However, some take one look at my site and say you do not have enough members to keep me interested. I want a site that has tens of thousands to choose from. Those people see my affiliate ads for the mega sites and they move on. Some of these ones that leave to the affiliates are the ones willing to fork out the cash.

p.s. Donations have been good for me. I have donation button and many people that would not pay to join my site will donate to help me out. Go figure

 

If you have a dating site is it a good idea to promote your competetor who are ofcourse big and pay commission?

 

Depends. If your competitor has a fulltime "staff" and you are a one man show with a job and a family, you need to be realistic. It is all about knowing your limitations.

 

got this email from Amand Morin to this site:
http://www.drivingtraffic.com/30days/ relating to memberships site

Looks pricey though..

My membership site is a one man show..so i have to do everything