This post was originally published on Restrict Content Pro. 

The subscription model has evolved into an online membership site in nearly every niche you can imagine. 

After all, memberships bring a lot of immediate and ongoing value. But membership benefits don’t end with the customer. Let’s look at the top six benefits of the membership model from the perspective of a membership website owner. 

1. A Reliable Stream of Income 

A dependable source of income is crucial for small business owners. Your website members will pay a yearly (or monthly) fee in exchange for direct access to your exclusive content. This translates to revenue in your pocket every time someone signs up.

The best part is that a membership site is easily scalable. The work you need to put in to generate members-only content is the same whether you have 10 paying members or 10,000.

Plus, you could save time on efforts to market to your customers. Their memberships (and your revenue stream) will be ongoing as long as they don’t cancel.

2. Promotes a Strong Community

When you build a membership website, you’re also building the foundation of a community.

Typically, members pay to join because they’re interested in or committed to the niche your website serves, whether your website is for fanfiction writers or business owners. Since your members are invested in their niche, they’re often looking for an interactive and exclusive community around that topic. 

A well-run membership site provides an opportunity to build a strong online network where your members can talk amongst themselves in forums, activity walls, or with direct member messaging. It also gives you a chance to use your community to vet other content ideas, test out new content, get feedback, and more. 

3. An Audience for Marketing and Upselling

Your site members are already interested enough in what you have to offer that they’ve decided to pay for a membership. This means your paying members could also be good candidates for your targeted, segmented, and retargeted marketing campaigns. 

Here are some ways you could upsell other offerings to your community members:

• Offer one-on-one coaching or mentoring.
• Host exclusive webinars.
• Provide access to downloadable products for continued education.
• Extend access to premium versions of products for members.

4. An Opportunity to Refine Your Content

If you want to bring in new members and keep the current ones renewing year after year, you’ll need to produce quality content. That also means consistently updating and replenishing what you have to offer. 

By running a membership site, your paying audience will push you toward growth and new ideas as a content creator—and this can be one of the greatest benefits of membership site ownership. 

Use the inspiration and motivation you get from your members to help you further refine your content and improve the way you do business.

5. Credibility and Industry Authority

When you launch a membership site, you’re announcing to the world that you’re an expert within your chosen field. 

Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to have a pile of tangible credentials. Rather, being an industry authority really means that you’re producing volumes of content that members find valuable. 

The impression you make with your membership site and related content can help establish your industry authority and expertise, which will continue to grow stronger over time as you publish more content to your site.

6. Exponential Growth Potential

There’s no limit to how many members you can acquire. This makes membership site ownership a potentially lucrative business model. Plus, it’s easy to scale up without drastically changing your core operations.

Generally, even if you’re comparing membership websites with sites that only sell low-overheard digital products, a membership site is much less resource-intensive to grow and maintain.

As your membership base grows and your body of work evolves, your site becomes more valuable to people and to your industry as a whole. You may even experience a snowball effect that leads to a well-oiled machine that feeds back into itself. It would look like this:

1. You produce recurring in-demand content at regular intervals.
2. Your site and community grow with each new piece of quality content you produce.
3. More new members sign up because they see how active your community is.
4. Your revenue increases, allowing you to devote even more time to create the content people are looking for.
5. Even more new members find you and sign up because they want to be a part of what you’re doing.

And the machine churns on.

There’s No Better Time To Start a WordPress Membership Site

A membership site isn’t just a powerful business model with unlimited earning potential. It’s also an opportunity to grow, adapt, and refine your business alongside your community of members. 

To start your own WordPress membership site, download MemberDash or try out the live demo. MemberDash offers features like easy content restriction and customizable settings so you have everything you need to build and grow a membership site.