Membership sites are a great way to make money online. When you have consistent members paying you each month you’ll make a lot more money in the long run.

If you’re considering a membership site for your niche, you’ve got a few decisions to make about the nature of your membership site. Not all site models are created equal and some models may be more appropriate for certain types of sites than others.

Here are the membership models to choose from and what type of niches work best with them.

Autoresponder membership site:

This model is all handled through your autoresponder program, like GetResponse.

You set up weekly or monthly training for your members and can have a fixed length of time that the messages will be delivered (like a year or six months). Once the autoresponder is set up, you just have to promote the site.

All the new members come in at the start of the autoresponder sequence and proceed through the lessons.

This membership site type is appropriate if you don’t need to consistently update the content.

You could use this model for something timeless, like parenting or gardening. You wouldn’t want to use it for stock trading or something dealing with the world of high tech.

Your training might be out of date for these niches within six months and you’d have to update it consistently.

Forum-based membership site:

These membership sites are based in forums, primarily. There may be supplementary reports or other training, but a lot of the action takes place in the forum. You’ll need to have a forum platform installed and make sure to moderate posts, or assign moderators.

Forums work best if there is some type of challenge or team effort involved. Group participation can really help add more content to a site and older members can teach younger members.

If your niche would thrive with a group participation element, and you don’t mind being very hands on with your site in its initial stages, a forum-based membership site can be a good fit.

Just make to sure establish clear rules for your forum and keep the content fresh.

Blog-based membership site:

A blog-based membership site is a password protected blog where you make new training posts on a regular basis. Only members can gain access to the posts and they can leave comments on the posts, or you can block comments.

Blogs are easy to update and they can be a good choice if you are intimidated by more complex website building. Unlike forums, blogs allow you to maintain the authority within your website and deliver the majority of the training yourself. You’ll need to be there to post several articles, or pre-load your content for several months at a time.

You can also use the blog as a platform to deliver audio or video training.

These membership site choices are among the most popular out there. Once you decide how involved you want to be and consider the needs of your niche, you’ll be on your way to selecting the right membership site model.

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