There are all kinds of different websites. You can construct one so it’s free for anyone to use, or you might monetize one. Today, we’re going to look at membership sites, one of the most popular options you’ll find online.

If you’re not sure why you’d want to have a member site, there’s a long list of reasons why you may opt for this choice. Let’s go over four of those now.

You Can Protect Exclusive Free Content

If you’re going to use WordPress to set up a site, you’re in good company, since there are millions of websites online that use the WordPress suite as a foundation. You can also utilize a WordPress membership plugin to easily convert your site to this particular model. WordPress has many plugins, and they’re easy to implement if you know what you’re doing or hire a web designer to do it for you.

Most people think about creating a member-access website as a monetizing tool, and you can certainly use it that way. However, some individuals and entities make sites where they don’t necessarily want membership fees, but they still want there to be an exclusivity element.

Maybe you have a church group or some other entity, and you want privacy for some of the features, but you don’t want to charge the members money to access that content. You can set up a membership area and grant some individuals access.

You won’t charge them any money. You’ll give them login information so they can see the private website areas, and you can keep out anyone who you did not specifically invite.

You Can Sell Digital Products

Digital product sales are one of the most recent monetizing strategies. It didn’t exist a couple of decades ago, but it makes perfect sense today.

Perhaps you created a marketing course. You offer the first lesson for free, but then there are several more lessons for which you want people to pay. You can charge a fee, so they get behind the paywall. They can then peruse those lessons at their leisure.

Maybe you have some exclusive images or videos. You only want individuals to access them who are willing to pay for that privilege. You also might charge someone to read an eBook you wrote that you have behind a paywall.

You Can Build Recurring Revenue

Another nice thing about this business model is that you can use it to build recurring revenue. For instance, you might have not just one paywall on the site, but several.

People love the idea of exclusivity. If you have content for which you’re charging people money, there’s no reason you can’t set up a bronze package for a lower fee and then a silver, gold, and platinum package for higher fees.

The trick is having content at each level for which an individual will be willing to pay more and more money. As long as you have content that you feel will pry the cash out of people’s hands, you can have as many levels and paywalls as you like.

You Can Legally Protect Your Content

You can also use this business model if you want to protect your content. This way, you are publicly declaring that what you have behind the paywall is your sole provenance. If you do not allow people access, then they can’t see it, nor can anyone else online.

If your exclusive content appears elsewhere online for any reason, you now have legal recourse to go after the website or individual who posted it. You can take them to court and should have legal standing to collect compensation from them since trademark or copyright law should protect your content.

While there are different ways to monetize content or maintain its exclusivity, this is one of the simplest ones that has proven successful since the internet’s advent. You can set up a system whereby you charge users a single fee or a recurring one.

It’s one of the models that’s most likely to lead to repeat revenue. As long as you keep producing new content for which people are willing to pay, you can keep cashing in.

To begin, all you have to do is set up a WordPress website with a membership plugin. You can do that yourself, or you can hire a web designer. After that, all you need to do is create and post the content, then run an effective marketing campaign.