Starting up a Membership based business online: what you need to know

Starting up a Membership based business online: what you need you know

By Amy Hufford

Entrepreneurs are risk takers, but when it comes to investing their money and time, most prefer the safety of proven success. The subscription business model utilized by membership websites is among the most popular for startups, making it a safer bet than many other choices. The reasons are two-fold:

• The ramp up is less challenging than other startups. With a large array of choices for membership software, It’s possible to build a membership website without custom code or reinventing the wheel.
• It’s easier to test out a membership website concept without a large investment or commitment.

And it’s not just startups who use membership software — associations, chambers of commerce, clubs and networking groups also love the way membership systems can streamline operations and better serve members.

The upside of the membership model

Accountants appreciate that recurring revenue from dues income allows membership businesses to budget more accurately month to month. With a membership startup, there often aren’t physical products to manufacture (although there are exceptions) or expensive real estate to lease.

But building and running a membership website isn’t without challenges.

Challenge: Minimizing Startup Investment

Solution: Choose an all-in-one membership software with the features you need.
It’s important not to get carried away in the early stages with setting up a bunch of different services that could each have significant costs. If you are building a membership community, you’ll start thinking about all the functions you might need on your membership website such as:

• Recurring membership payments and billing
• Members only content
• Member directory
• Event registration and online calendar
• Shopping cart
• Online forms or surveys
• Communications tools
• Reporting and more.

There are a number of membership platforms that offer all of these services and others you may need in one package and at a lower cost than you would pay when purchasing separately. In addition, having various features in one platform allows you to:

• Avoid troubleshooting errors if you are trying to integrate multiple systems (if integrations are even possible).
• Access unified reporting information.
• Have one place to turn to for most of your membership software support needs.

Challenge: Choosing a platform

Solution: Consider WordPress
If WordPress is on your radar, you’re headed in the right direction. WordPress runs 34% of the internet and 60% of websites that use content management systems. Because WordPress is free and open source software, many developers choose to create plugins that work on top of a WordPress installation.

Challenge: Selecting membership software

Solution Part I: First identify which type of membership software you need.

There are membership plugins and platforms for just about every type of membership business or organization you can dream up. There are also membership systems that are flexible enough to work in a variety of contexts. Sometimes the more specific the platform is, the more expensive it will be. Some examples of various types of membership software include:

Club management software

Membership directory systems

Membership management software for content subscriptions

Learning management systems

Association management software

Event listings platforms

Co-working and event space rental platforms

Constituent engagement software

Church management software

Product subscription ecommerce platforms

Solution Part II: Create a comparison spreadsheet to fill in with your research

Document your membership process expectations, read feature lists, sign up for demos, and ask questions of software providers. In your spreadsheet, create the following columns:

• • Membership process requirements (e.g. members must be able to create a directory profile at sign up time)
  • Must-have features and “maybe” features (one feature per column)
  • Cost and fees to start
  • Types of support available

Use the rows to list the membership software vendors under consideration and fill in each column with yes, no or details as you wish. Note that if any vendor is unresponsive in the sales process, they might not be great in the support process as well.

Challenge: Building your membership

Solution: Start social
Before you spend any money, you can test out your membership idea in a number of ways. Create social media profiles and begin posting content that would be of interest to your target member. If your content is educational, consider creating videos for YouTube or Facebook live. Content creators can begin by creating a LinkedIn or Facebook Group to share their knowledge.

Creators should also start a blog and allow people to subscribe by email to see if they can gain a following. The blog subscriber list as well as the social group members will become the initial audience for the announcement your new membership website. You can survey your followers to engage them and get ideas about meeting their needs.

Challenge: Where’s the money?

Solution: Start slow and don’t quit your day job until you absolutely must.

An article in Fortune reported that nine out of 10 online businesses fail. I don’t say that to be discouraging; it is simply important to be realistic. Many things have to fall in place for an internet-based business to succeed. One research group examined entrepreneurs’ self-evaluation of failure. The results identified these the prime reasons:

• Insufficient market for what was being sold.
• Marketing/promotion problems.
• Bad timing (going slow may hurt in this case if someone is about to beat you to the membership idea you are trying to execute).
• Pricing/cost issues.
• Wrong team of people to execute.
• Running out of money/lack of investment.
• Good customer service.

As you work to avoid these issues, it’s a good idea to maintain your current source of income. For a while you will have to balance the investment of time in your membership website along with your “real” job, and it may be painful. It’s worth a try to see if the risk you take in building your dream will lead to reward.

Amy Hufford is a Technologist at MembershipWorks. MembershipWorks offers membership software as a plugin for WordPress, SquareSpace, Weebly and other platforms in Ireland, Canada, the United States, United Kingdom and other countries.

More information about Irish Tech News and the Business Showcase

FYI the ROI for you is => We now get over 1.5 million monthly views, and up to 900k monthly unique visitors, from over 160 countries. We have over 860,000 relevant followers on Twitter on our various accounts & were recently described as Ireland’s leading online tech news site and Ireland’s answer to TechCrunch, so we can offer you a good audience!

Since introducing desktop notifications a short time ago, which notify readers directly in their browser of new articles being published, over 16000 people have now signed up to receive them ensuring they are instantly kept up to date on all our latest content. Desktop notifications offer a unique method of serving content directly to verified readers and bypass the issue of content getting lost in people’s crowded news feeds.

Drop us a line if you want to be featured, guest post, suggest a possible interview, or just let us know what you would like to see more of in our future articles. We’re always open to new and interesting suggestions for informative and different articles. Contact us, by email, twitter or whatever social media works for you.

If you would like to have your company featured in the Irish Tech News Business Showcase, get in contact with us at Simon@IrishTechNews.ie or on Twitter: @SimonCocking