This article was originally published on Restrict Content Pro.

Membership sites boast revenue-earning potential, among other unique benefits. But how exactly do you take this potential and make the most out of your membership site?

There are opportunities for maximizing your membership revenue beyond just selling more memberships. From optimizing for efficiency to expanding your reach and upselling, tackling the issue from all angles while having focused goals can take your membership revenue to the next level!

Here are 11 tips to start maximizing your membership revenue today: 

1. Think of value as your foundation 
2. Audit your product and processes
3. Don’t neglect member retention
4. Improve your marketing
5. Get efficient
6. Check your prices
7. Incorporate affiliate marketing
8. Repurpose your content
9. Expand your memberships
10. Upsell related products and services
11. Use gamification

Let’s dive in. 

1. Think of value as your foundation

Before you can get more revenue out of your memberships, the most important factor is the value you provide your members. Everything else can be built around, on top of, or expanded upon a solid foundation of valuable content. 

This content includes anything that helps solve problems or provides advice, inspiration, materials, or entertainment members need to succeed in their own goals.

Upselling, upgrading memberships, and improving member retention are only possible with a membership site that offers regular, consistent value. Make this foundation your priority to make scaling and maximizing your revenue easier. 

2. Audit your product and processes

If you want to increase your revenue, keep your product (membership content and website), marketing, customer service, and purchase processes in top shape. Maybe there’s a bug on your website, your emails aren’t converting sales, or you’re not replenishing your content regularly. It’s time to tighten those bolts!

Here are a few questions to think about:

• Is your site design losing members? There may be changes you can make to improve the overall experience for your members.
• Is your purchase process simple and straightforward? A clunky or confusing purchase process can turn off potential customers.
• Are there any technical issues left unattended? Bugs, broken links, and loading issues don’t make for a very enjoyable browsing experience.
• Are you using social media effectively? Social media is huge in the modern world, and you could be losing out if you aren’t using it (or using it well).
• Have you been providing great support? When customers have so many options to choose from, great support can set you apart from the competition.
• Are you getting enough traffic? It’s hard to make money if you’re not seen!
• Are your marketing emails converting sales? Is there something you can do differently to get more action from your communications?
• Do you have negative feedback (or any feedback) that’s not been addressed? Whether you’re responding to questions and comments to show customers that you’re listening or mining reviews for ideas on improving your site and content, staying engaged improves member satisfaction, brand perception, and consequently – your income.

3. Don’t neglect member retention

One of the beautiful things about memberships is that you can increase your revenue over time with recurring revenue and more members. But getting those new members to sign up in the first place can be a challenge, so focus on retaining the ones you already have. 

Memberships are all about ongoing value. You must tell people exactly how your content will improve their lives somehow. 

Enticing promotions and limited-time offers can create a sense of urgency that inspires action, but as a membership site owner, you’re aiming for retention. Getting new members to sign up is sure to boost your revenue in the short term, but memberships require people to stick around for the long term in order to produce reliable, recurring revenue.

4. Improve your marketing

When it comes to marketing your membership site, the methods aren’t always direct. Standard elements like regular emails, sales funnels, and calls to action are part of the plan, but with memberships, authority matters. This is why top-of-mind awareness is important and can help maximize your revenue.

Here are some tips to keep in mind:

• Publish regular content like podcasts, social media posts, and blog posts 
• Keep your branding and marketing materials updated and well-designed 
• Use clear, concise, and captivating language 
• Send regular emails 
• Research your audience before running advertising campaigns 

You might also think about how you frame your marketing messaging. Do you simply list your membership features, or do you make an emotional connection with the customer? Marketing the benefits of your membership site shifts the focus to real and relatable results that can go a long way in your marketing efforts. 

5. Get efficient

Every membership site has unavoidable costs, but reducing costs when possible can maximize your revenue. Maybe you’re overpaying on storage, hosting, or your email marketing platform. Check your subscriptions and services to be sure that the plans you’re paying for match your needs. 

In addition to reducing costs, streamlining your efforts can free up some money, too. Are there any redundancies or inefficiencies in your product creation process or site management methods? How about communications and support? Improving your productivity and efficiency can save you money and frustration. 

6. Check your prices

After your membership site has been up and running for a while, you might decide that it’s time to change your prices. Perhaps you want to account for increases in costs that go along with scaling up your member base, or your product is becoming more refined and an increase is justified. Whatever the reason, this is an important part of your business to assess periodically.

When pricing your membership, consider the following: 

• Know your value. If you’ve added more benefits to your members, upping the price is justified. 
• Figure out your costs. If those have changed, your prices should, too. 
• Research your niche. You may be undercharging, so stay in tune with your competitors. 

7. Incorporate affiliate marketing

It’s one of the most time-tested and effective ways to increase your reach and maximize your revenue, yet affiliate marketing seems to fly under the radar for many businesses. 

An affiliate marketing program can create significant revenue streams for you and your affiliates, and that kind of win-win situation can motivate everyone involved. Here’s how it works:

• You choose creators in your niche, like social media influencers or other content creators 
• These creators become affiliates and receive a unique referral link 
• Affiliates share this link on their channels to send people to your website or landing page 
• When someone clicks on the link and signs up for your membership, that affiliate earns a commission 

Affiliate marketing is a great way for you and an affiliate to earn passive income. Plus, it’ll help you:

• Increase leads
• Increase sales 
• Promote your brand 
• Build trust 

You can easily track performance, control how your affiliate program runs, and adjust things as needed. 

8. Repurpose your content

Repurposing your content increases the value you provide to current and prospective members. It also saves you time and effort so you can entice members and earn more without additional resources. 

Here’s how you can repurpose your content:

• Split content, like videos, into multiple parts
• Provide transcripts from podcasts and videos to turn into blog posts 
• Turn articles into infographics, emails, or social media graphics  
• Combine pieces of content into comprehensive guides 
• Update or recreate old content 

Think about all of the ways you can mix, match, and transform your content, and consider the best formats for the channel you’re on. 

9. Expand your memberships

If you don’t have several membership tiers, you might be leaving money on the table. Some audiences would prefer to have more affordable options at first. This approach is referred to as tiered rates. 

Tiered rates offer flexibility for your members, which can increase your revenue. For example, if your membership is currently priced at $99 a month, that may seem too expensive for some. As a result, you lose that potential member. But by offering another tier at $79 (and fewer benefits), you’ll recover those members who are on the fence. They may upgrade to a higher membership level once they experience the value you provide. 

But you don’t always have to lower the price. You can offer a higher one, perhaps priced at $119. All you need to do is expand the benefits, such as more premium content or exclusive community access. 

Whatever you decide to price them, be sure to name your membership tiers creatively. 

10. Upsell related products and services

Membership sites are fertile ground for creating entire ecosystems around one core set of content, which means that there are various opportunities for upselling. Add-ons, extras, and related products and services that complement your content can appeal to your members and bring in extra revenue.

Consider custom services, one-to-one coaching, training and online events, downloadables, or merchandise. For example, do you run a membership site that provides graphic assets? You could upsell custom designs. Do you create video tutorials? Offer individual consultation!

Take inventory of every resource available to you, including your own skills (or the skills of your partners or team members), and you could find money-making avenues seemingly hiding in plain sight. 

11. Use gamification

Gamification takes common elements of games and integrates them into your site. Incorporating things like a points and rewards system, achievement badges, leaderboards, and the like can greatly impact on your memberships. It can:

• Encourage participation 
• Increase engagement 
• Improve the user experience
• Reduce member churn 

Gamifying tasks can help members feel excited about their membership. Use gamification to boost participation by offering rewards when activities are completed, such as:

• Referring a friend 
• Consistently logging in  
• Being a member for a certain amount of time 
• Completing a course or other content 

Gamification brings healthy, fun competition into your membership site, so give it a try if you want to retain members and increase your revenue. 

Maximize your revenue with MemberDash

It can take time to get the most out of your membership site, but fortunately, there are many strategies to work with. In addition to these tips, remember to build everything around your valuable membership content. 

If you’re looking for a platform where you can build and grow a membership site, consider MemberDash. It’s a flexible and powerful tool that allows you to create membership tiers, restrict any content you want, and easily manage billing and reporting. Explore the demo to see what MemberDash has to offer!