Membership Sites: Should You Offer Some Kind Of Community At A Low or High Price Point?
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When you make some kind of membership site you want to make it a site that people will revisit every day, or at least once per month, that way they have a reason to keep buying from you and possibly to keep paying a monthly fee. When you create this membership site forum you need to keep a few things in mind.
First of all, are you giving your members a reason to read that forum? Is the price point attractive enough to get enough people, and valuable enough to keep people posting month after month? Do you have some way to stir up the conversation?
The number one mistake that happens with forums or message boards is that there's no reason for people to talk. If I go to your forum and no one has posted in several months, I'm going to assume no one is reading any of the content and there's no reason to post. That's why you should make it a point to encourage your members to always post to your forum, and you should post there as well to keep people reading and talking.
The next thing to consider is can you get enough people talking? If you have a free forum, you can get more people talking but it's not going to be a very closely connected community. Likewise, if you charge money for that forum you can have people paying you month after month, in an exclusive area, but you won't have a large number of members and you'll have to make it a very valuable conversation. In doing that, a great idea to get people talking on your forum is to present a contest. For example, who has the best answer or who asks the best question. You can reward the best poster in your membership site with something like an Amazon gift card, a free month of membership site or some special bonus, or even just recognition of that member of the month.
In addition to setting up your forum you need to be posting there, replying there and keeping the conversation active. The price you charge for that forum doesn't matter so much as how many people can you get in that forum, can you give them a worthwhile reason to read and can you reward people for posting the best content.
Robert Plank will show you everything you need to know about membership sites, including the forum and community component at www.membershipcube.com.
