Membership sites are a pain in the ass. Let me start there.

I've had dozens of clients start membership sites, and the only ones who've kept it alive had huge audiences to begin with.

The problem is that a membership site has two things to offer: exclusive information and community.

Exclusive information is awesome, but unless you can create the membership fee's worth of perceived value in new exclusive content each month, people will wonder why they're paying. On top of the members-only content, you're ALSO on the hook for free, public-facing content to drive membership sales. So it's like having two content-generation jobs.

Community is even harder: for every 100 members, maybe 1 will create new content. Another 10 or so might comment. So that means if you want your community to look active, you'll need at least a few thousand members right out of the gate. It's a chicken-and-egg problem.

This all depends on the industry, of course, but in my experience, I've seen far too many failures — even from sites with hundreds of thousands of monthly users — to think it's a safe or sustainable way to build a business.

However, all that same info that would go into a membership site can be packaged in other ways to create passive income, and with half the content-creation efforts you can generate a similarly high monthly revenue. Whenever my clients took my advice and tried these instead, they saw real revenue and were able to grow it more effectively.

I'd be happy to share these alternative strategies if you're interested; drop me a line and we'll chat.

Good luck!