Most successful websites using the membership model

Hello there, I've been using aMember for 2 years and am 100% happy.

I am also doing some research on the most successful membership based websites (Other that Porn) and wanted to know if you knew of any.

Successful = large number of members generating 6 figure plus membership revenues.

Thanks in advance.

Hmm.. Looking to find new niches, or writing an article?

David

There have been several notable successes, though, of course, they are a little coy with actual numbers. Sharefile.com said May 2008 that they have 175,000 members and 2500 paid subscriptions. Their monthly subscription have 4 tiers, but using an 80-20, their gross revenue should be about 1.2 million per year. Stratfor claims 2,000,000 readers, but again no info on how many paid members. Using a converstion rate of 1.5% (a common experience, I understand) they would be doing about 10.5 million per year. They're annual membership $349. TheLadders.com has about 2,000,000 subscribers, but no data on paid members either. If they convert 1.5%, they would have annual revenues of about $9.0 million. They do have other products, as does Stratfor. MarketingSherpa also seems successful without divulging the membership. Their annual fee is $397.

The most important thing to remember here is that given the huge disparity between free and paid numbers, the sucessful programs will make money from both both paid subscriptions and free subscriptions. For example, suppose you get your 2,000,000 unpaid subscriptions to visit you 10 times per year and they are exposed to 8 ads gaining you $20.00 per cpm. That is $3.2 million of ad revenue per year. If you convert 1.5% at $300 per year membership, that is $9 million per year. So, they both are important.

Anyway, I'm launching mine. Part of the reason I am doing so is because I think it is fairly obvious that at least the upper quartile of income households will be migrating their radio and television viewing to Internet sources in the very near future. As they do so, many of them will be buying niche programming from niche sites. I want to be one of them.

Regards,

Michael Ferguson

I should clarify. I understand that my subscription plus advertising packed content model doesn't seem be used much outside of the conservative pundit sites (Rushlimbaugh.com, on top of everything else, is probably one of the most successful subscription sites out there). There is a European Fashion subscription site that is also full of advertising. But its not that common. Yet.

It is really based upon the old style magazine model. You pay an annual subscription and then got content loaded with ads. If you think about it, tv is run that way now, too. I pay $45 per month to have television jam packed with advertising pumped into my house.

Great post.

As price increases, conversion dramatically decreases, so I would not rely on the 1.5% conversion rate for $400 subscriptions. More like .5% or less perhaps.

"It is really based upon the old style magazine model. You pay an annual subscription and then got content loaded with ads. If you think about it, tv is run that way now, too. I pay $45 per month to have television jam packed with advertising pumped into my house. "

Wow that would be cool, paying $45/month to have television jam packed with advertising is great.

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TVwebi

Been using Amember for over 12 years now. I run Silver-Investor.com and PreciousMetalsWarrants.com. Both these site are very successful.

The most successful i have seen is wealthy affiliate academy they have more than 1,00,000 active members paying 47$ a month for affiliate marketing training.

Wow that would be cool, paying $45/month to have television jam packed with advertising is great.

A side note:

Tai Lopez and James Altucher are KILLING it:> According to his publisher, Altucher's Crypto product is Agora's biggest winner... by far. You might wanna create a 3rd product about crypto to "ride that wave."