There couldn’t be a better time to start your membership website! Of course, you already know this and that’s probably the reason why you’re looking for membership site ideas to start with!
Great! Because when it comes to membership website ideas, the options are endless. That’s both a good thing and a bad thing because you literally would have to surf through options the entire day.
In order to make things easy (and to save you some time), we’ve done the hard work ourselves! This read is all about the best membership site ideas (along with a few membership website examples) you should go for in 2021. But before we start discussing that, let’s take a quick look at the basics like we always do.
What Is a Membership Site?
A membership site is a website where you’d be offering your users private/exclusive content for a reasonable price. The payments are carried out on a monthly or an annual basis depending on your pricing model. Interested users can simply signup for your service, pay the amount upfront, and start enjoying your services.
All you need is a good membership site idea and a foundation (membership site platform) to start with.
How Should Your Chosen Membership Website Idea Be?
Your membership site idea is going to take off if it,
Has a strong audience base
Is a skill that’s needed in the future
Is a narrow niche
By saying narrow niche, we mean cutting down the big picture. For example, instead of providing extensive movies & tv shows like Netflix, you can cut down to provide language-specific movie streaming services!
That doesn’t mean a Netflix-like membership site idea is bad – anything is scalable provided you have the right marketing strategy and a few bucks to propel the engine!
Since you’re kind of new to this, we wanted to start off with the most profitable & scalable ones. Once done with the read and knowing the possibilities, you’ll be able to figure out what your membership site idea is going to be!
So, let’s get started, shall we?
5 Best Membership Website Ideas To Make Money
No more small talk – to the big picture straight away!
1. Fitness Enthusiasts
The reason why we came up with the fitness as a membership site idea is because of the huge demand the fitness industry has now!
Let’s be a bit frank here! You might have looked for fitness tips at least once in your lifetime. And you would have ended up reading an article or watching a video on YouTube. But what if there is a dedicated platform for this?
You’d at least visit once to take a look! And that there is a lead that you’ll be converting later!
Now speaking of fitness, this is quite a huge niche. Take a look at this membership website example here,
Carb Manager is a membership website that lets users to signup for premium membership. The goal is to help people lose weight by following the Keto Diet plan. There are lots of competitors as well!
Similarly, you can come up with a membership site idea where you’ll be teaching your audience to build muscle from home using simple workouts. Also, relevant diet food recipes and cooking videos can help you cover more audiences.
Quick Stat: The average amount an individual would spend for fitness in 2021 is an estimated USD 18.30!
And that indeed shows how lucrative this particular industry is! Find out your super special niche under the fitness and see how much you can deliver to your audience under the same.
2. Sports Streaming
Sports! Who wouldn’t love it? We do! You do! And so do the billions of people around the world. Building a sports streaming website with a membership model is an opportunity that’ll help you make huge revenue. And a perfect example of this is Dazn Boxing.
As you can see, Dazn Boxing streams matches of popular boxers around. In fact, during the year 2019. Dazn Boxing witnessed a 121% increase in revenue (from $277.6 million to $614.6 million). Users have to pay a monthly subscription fee in order to view the matches.
Quick Stat: Dazn Boxing witnessed a 25% increase in users when they streamed the Alvarez-Saunders fight.
Similarly, you can stream multiple live sporting events and grow your business. With live streaming software onboard, you can start your sports streaming website in no time!
So, to the next membership website idea!
3. Community Streaming
Another super cool membership website idea is community streaming! A community streaming website is which streams videos and documentaries to a specific community of people. And Alchemiya is a website that does the same!
The website streams movies and dramas about the Muslim world. Users have to pay a specific amount monthly to gain access to the videos.
Do you see how lucrative that is? You can also come up with a monthly subscription-based community streaming website in minutes. Since websites like these use a Netflix-like model, all you need is a Netflix clone streaming solution to start off with!
Let’s move on to the next best membership site idea in our read!
4. Music Streaming
Like video streaming, music streaming is another profitable membership website idea. There’s Spotify, there’s SoundCloud and yours could be next! If you think this stream isn’t lucrative enough, hear this!
“During the year 2020, music streaming revenue crossed over 10 billion US dollars!”
Also, you don’t have to compete with the giants! You can simply start by streaming a particular set of artists or create something like what we saw above – relevant audios for a set of community people with a membership subscription model!
The ideas are limitless! You’ve just got to push boundaries to find your ideal membership website idea!
5. Pet Management & Animals Related Streaming
Before we start to speak about this, if you think this membership site idea is crazy, then you’ve got to take a look at this!
Pet Management Animals Related Streaming
This membership site is purely for horses – training, documentaries, riding, etc. And they’re doing pretty much well already! Also, the popular Discovery TV channel is already offering its audience a paid membership service called Discovery Plus!
So, why not you?
You can create a membership site that teaches about how to handle pets (not only dogs but all animals), how to deal with the most common problems, sickness treatment, food preparation, and more.
During the year 2020 alone, Americans spent approximately $99 billion on their pets. They wouldn’t mind the few extra bucks provided your membership site has really good stuff!
What say😉?
The Bottom Line
So, yes! As we said, we just gave you the 5 most profitable membership site ideas for you to start with! And if you’re looking for a membership site platform, you should probably get in touch with our experts for a product walkthrough!
Membership site businesses are sustainable today, thanks to the recurring payment model and the strong OTT direction the world is moving towards. If you’re thinking about it twice, drop it because it’s going to be glory down the road!
Now that you have a handful of membership site ideas and a platform to start with as well, why don’t you start acting on it?
Content can be delivered to the users in any form. Blogs, newsletters sent through emails, social media pages, and discussion forums are different ways of delivering content to people. Wait, were all the content marketing channels mentioned or did we miss something important? We did miss one dominant way of delivering content- the videos. When we hear the word ‘videos’, the first thing that would pop up in our heads is YouTube. YouTube is one among the topmost video streaming sites that have gained a lot of popularity over years and is now the most sorted streaming sites for any business to market itself. YouTubers who create video content are now huge money makers. Do you even know how much money do YouTubers make? Well, in this blog, we shall provide answers to the question and throw some light on how much money do YouTubers make per view.
Content marketing has come a long way and is one of the most important approaches used by businesses today to market themselves. With the increase in the usage of internet, content creation has become vital to each and every business’s growth in the market. Video content marketing strategy is now almost a must to every business keeping in view the competitive market. Video making has now become one of the most trending methods of not only furnishing content to the viewers but also some lucrative profession people are looking out for.
The number of subscribers of a YouTube channel is one important aspect that determines how much do YouTubers get paid. You already might have noticed that most of the videos at the end ask you not to forget to subscribe to their YouTube channel. And this makes the former statement clear. If we suppose that a YouTuber has around 1 million subscribers, for any video he makes, he can be sure that it would reach at least 1 lakh subscribers which would amount to having at least 1 lakh views. YouTube pays at least around $1 per 1000 views (maybe more depending on the viewer engagement) that would amount to 100$ in this case. So, YouTubers with subscribers in millions make money in ten thousand. However, these figures might vary depending on the advertiser’s willingness to pay YouTubers.
Now there is another way in which YouTubers make money which is by Google AdSense to their channels. When they do this, they get around 68% of the ad revenue. Summing up the above stats, YouTubers money making is entirely dependent on the number of subscribers of their channel, the number of views a video gets, the amount a particular advertiser is willing to pay and other factors. Check out below the most popular YouTubers and the money they make:
1. PewDiePie:
Felix Kjellberg is a Swedish based YouTuber who stands on the first position with more than 54 million subscribers from all over the world. With this huge number of followers, can you estimate how much money does PewDiePie make from YouTube? His annual income as per the latest reports is around $15 million. His ‘Let’s Play’ videos feature him playing various video games, with a box in the top corner of the screen showing his reactions to his moves in the game. His success as most of them suggest attributes to his constant communication with his fans.
2. Smosh:
Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox duo’s Smosh is also among the top YouTube gainers. The duo makes parody videos on pop culture and video games. The current estimate of their annual income is around $8 million with more than 22 million subscribers for their YouTube channel.They are the first YouTubers to have their wax statues at Madame Tussaud’s museum and also have a mobile app that provides their exclusive videos.
3. Lilly Singh:
IISuperwomanII is what Lilly Singh is mostly known as to the YouTube world. Popular for her parody videos, this Canadian vlogger’s annual income is estimated at $7.5 million. She has gained popularity for her comedy timing in her videos and has also written a book by name ‘How To Be A Bawse: A Guide To Conquering Life’. Her YouTube channel has more than 11 million followers from across the world.
4. Roman Atwood:
Roman Atwood has become popular for his prank movie ‘Natural Born Pranksters’ which was released in the year 2016. This got him many subscribers for his YouTube channel, and eventually, he became more popular. His channel ‘RomanAtwoodVlogs’ now has more than 12 million subscribers and earns around $2.5 million every year.
Though the above YouTubers haven’t been listed according to their ranks, they are the ones who rule YouTube and are earning millions through their videos. Now as we see that every coin has two sides, YouTube has got some disadvantages too. This takes us to thinking about creating YouTube like website rather than creating a YouTube channel.
Reasons to start your own YouTube-like website instead of a channel
1. SOCIAL MOOD OF THE VIEWERS:
When people watch videos on YouTube, they watch them more in a fun mood rather than watching them for some purpose. If you think, you are going to use videos for promoting your business’s sales, creating a YouTube channel is not recommended. Instead, it would be better if you create a video streaming website like YouTube since most of the viewers do not concentrate on purchases while they watch YouTube videos. By creating a website of your own, you can ensure that the videos have an impact on viewer’s buying decisions.
2. EQUAL IMPORTANCE GIVEN TO YOUR COMPETITORS:
When you upload your video on your channel, you do so by using some keywords that would help the users to find your content easily. Even your competitor would almost the same keywords as your businesses are related to the same industry. When a user comes across your video and watches it, suggestions about your competitor’s video would also be made visible to him by YouTube in the ‘Suggested Videos’ section. This would distract the users from focusing on your product leading you to losses.
3. RESTRICTIONS ON VIDEOS:
YouTube imposes certain restrictions on the content of the videos. It doesn’t support customization of videos which might even lead to compromising on the quality of videos. This would be highly disadvantageous in case of promotional videos of your business. One such restriction is on Call to Action (CTA) feature (which directs the user to your website directly), being limited by YouTube. However, if it is your own website, then you are free to promote your business in a flexible manner.
4. RANDOM ADVERTISEMENTS:
Random advertisements are scheduled by YouTube to appear while your video is being viewed.This might even annoy the user making him skip your video, though your video has some promising content. And it is not in your hands to control which advertisements must appear while your video streams.
While YouTube has some very good advantages over video streaming sites, it has got some serious disadvantages too. Keeping the pros and cons of YouTube in mind, it is up to you to decide to choose between creating a YouTube channel or your own website like YouTube.
If you are looking to create YouTube-like website, try StreamTube, a popular video sharing script power-packed with many growth hacking features. You just need to have the gumption for starting a YouTube clone. This video CMS will help you become the next Roman Atwood with its following stunning features:
Ad Manager:
Ever wondered how YouTube makes money? YouTube makes money through advertisements. StreamTube’s Ad Manager is a monetization program which sets ceremonious standards to help you maximize your earnings. For instance, there is a provision to post featured advertisements on banners. This triggers higher clicks and high paying customers pile on your website.
SEO Manager:
Identifying and targeting top ranked keywords will ratchet up your live streaming website rankings. To ensure that your videos are in line with SEO standards, this module helps you create SEO friendly URLs.
Subscription Manager:
What is true of Ad Manager is also true of Subscription Manager. This is yet another monetization feature which lets curious visitor try your channel for free for 2 days. Once the users are convinced with the aesthetics and content of your channel, they can be converted to premium customers. By the way, this Subscription Manager is extremely promising and has all ceremonious features to convert casual customers into paying and loyal ones.
Video Manager:
This video CMS comes with another interesting module called Video Manager. Thanks to this module, you can upload videos in various supported formats by using Amazon S3 bucket, YouTube link, and website link beside normal uploads.
If you have any doubts or concerns, feel free to drop a line or two in the comments section. I shall reply in a day or two. Keep watching this space for insights on video CMS open source platforms and trends in live streaming industry. My best wishes are with you and your YouTube clone. Cheers!
