Running membership sites is not easy work. Producing content continuously, posting them online for your readers, and maintaining your website can be quite challenging. When you invest so much of your time in something, you would want good returns to benefit you professionally and financially.
Content in exchange for membership sites fees
A lot of websites provide content without any charges. But all the content you post need not necessarily be free. When you provide premium content for your users, it is entirely reasonable if you charge for it. But it would be best if you made sure that your content needs to be worth it when you are providing content in exchange for membership fees. It should be good enough for people to join your membership sites and to stay as members. It should not be like any other content that is available on any other website or platform. This is why it is referred to as ‘premium content’ because it is exclusive to your members. There are several strategies by which you can restrict access to your premium content on your site by making it available only for your members.
Strategies to Restrict your Content
Keep a login requirement
When you have premium content on your website, you should always protect it from being accessed for free. One of the easiest ways to do so is by setting up a login requirement for any user who tries to access such content. With a login requirement, your users will have to make themselves a username and password to log in to their membership accounts to read the premium content you post on your website.
Subscribing gets you to benefit from new and existing members equally.
When you set up a login requirement, it is not just the new members who have to sign up before they can access your premium content, but your existing members also have to log in each time they read such content. Once they have logged into your website using their username and password, they can start browsing through your restricted content. And for the new members who are yet to sign up will be redirected to a page where they will first have to set up an account on your content membership sites. And if they choose not to sign up, they can continue to read the free content available on your website.
Always offer free content along with premium content.
This is an important thing to remember when running a website is always to have free content alongside premium ones. This is because free content benefits your website in several ways. Free content is the key to rank well on search engines. Just like new users who have not signed up to your website, search engines cannot access your restricted content, so they might not display it in their search results when people do a related search. Free content also works as an excellent sample for your new users to know the quality of your premium content and, in turn, encourage them to subscribe to your membership website.
What type of free content works best?
The free content that you offer can be in different forms. It could be a small ebook that is available for your users to download without paying any charges. It could also be a part of your premium content itself, such that only a couple of paragraphs are visible for every user, and to access the entire range, they would have to subscribe to your website.
Allow free membership
Another way is to provide free membership for the initial few days. It could also be such that the free membership sites will give you access to which is limited to only some portion of your premium content section. If the users find it suitable, they can also be given an option to upgrade their membership by paying some amount as membership fees. Once they pay for an upgraded membership, they can be allowed full access to all the premium content available on your website.
Make careful choices for your premium content.
But just having strategies will not be sufficient to benefit your website. If the content you are providing in exchange for a membership fee is not good enough, you will not attract many users to subscribe to your website. Thus, you should be careful about the type of content you are providing as premium content. The safest options for premium content are paid online courses, premium quality essays and articles, content archives, or even a forum for the community of members who subscribe to your website to communicate and interact. You may also offer unique benefits like discounts, downloadable content, reference material, webinars, etc., exclusively to your subscribers.
Conclusion
Being a content writer or web developer is hard. So, you deserve all the benefits you can draw from your hard work. Therefore, it is always a good business strategy to not make all of your best work available for free. So, try out all these strategies for your website. Restricting access and providing premium content in return can actually boost your earnings and reach and help your business grow to new heights.
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