Starting a Successful Subscription Website

Many of the world's most profitable websites are subscription websites. Even on a small scale, subscription websites can earn a lot of money for much less work than single-sale websites.

Read on to learn more about all the reasons why you might want to create a subscription website, as well as how to go about doing so.

The Benefits of a Subscription Website

One huge benefit to building a subscription-based website is consistency of income.

Traffic to websites is often inconsistent. If you're making money from AdSense or advertising, your income could go up or down by as much as 40% on any given month. That makes it very hard to plan a business.

A subscription-based website on the other hand is guaranteed income every month. Even if traffic drops off for a month or two, you still have income from your past subscribers.

Subscription sites also benefit from the "snowball effect." Instead of just getting sales, you're getting subscribers that pay you every month.

That means that as time passes, your monthly income is guaranteed to continue increasing as long as you keep getting traffic - even if your traffic numbers don't increase! Where other webmasters might feel like their earning power is capped, yours will keep growing simply because of your business model.

The Components of a Successful Subscription Website

A successful subscription website needs to have a few ingredients:

1. Trust - People need to know who you are or who your company is. It helps a lot to build a reputation in your space. Getting someone to pay for something every month is a lot harder than getting a single sale. Trust is a crucial component to making the sale.
2. Unique content - What are you promising that's worth paying for every month? Make sure that whatever you're selling, you really offer something that your customers will find valuable.
3. A great sales pitch - Have a great page that explains all the benefits of being a member and why they should join.

Getting Started

Starting is easy. All you need is a monthly product to sell and decent copywriting skills.

Create your website. Make sure that your site has enough free content or proof such that people can really get a sense for who you are and the quality of your content.

Process your payments using a processor that can handle recurring payments. These include PayPal, ClickBank, Authorize.net and 1ShoppingCart.

Drive traffic to your website through SEO, PPC, social media or through various online communities. Convert people who land on your web page into subscribers through a compelling sales page. Then, as long as you're driving traffic and providing the monthly content, you get to collect the checks month in and month out.