10 Ways To Get Great Quality Content For Your Membership Website
By Joan, Magat
March 30, 2016
Your website content should do more than just present information. It needs to engage the reader, boost your search engine rankings and reinforce your brand. Great content drives free traffic, creates loyalty, and ultimately leads to success. Here are 10 ways to get great quality content for your website.
1. Reuse Your Content
You may have already some content that you have written for other purposes (magazine articles, journals, books, hobby notes, academic study, etc). Try to repurpose what you already have, rather than starting everything from scratch. You can also break long articles up into shorter posts.2. Create It Yourself
Nothing is better than creating your own unique content. This eliminates the fear of being repetitive, irrelevant or plagiarizing. What differentiates great content sites from average ones is exclusive, relevant and timely content. To maximize the effect of your content plan, be sure you have a timeline figured out in advance.3. Hire A Freelancer
There are thousands of freelance writers who can create articles for your site. You can brief them about what you want, the preferred tone and the length of your content, and they will write to a deadline. To find writers, check Upwork or do a Google search on ‘freelance writers’ followed by your subject e.g. 'freelance writers fashion' or 'freelance writers food'. Make sure you see previous work and check references or ratings.4. Free Article Websites
There are websites where you can find and legally copy thousands of articles. Many of the articles are poor, but there are some gems amongst them. Anyone can use them if they acknowledge the author and include a link. The downside is that these articles can appear on dozens of sites across the web. Make sure to use them sparingly to maintain your sites quality. 5. Third Party Contributors
You can probably find third parties who would like to get their articles publish onto your site in order to reach your audience. Identify a list of potential contributors and then approach them with subject suggestions and a promise that they can have a bio and link in the article footer. Ensure you retain editorial rights on all content or articles can end up being no more than advertorial.6. Interviews
Interviews are a relatively easy way of creating content. You can either publish them as written articles or as audio or video clips. Prepare a list of questions before conducting an interview to ensure it flows, the content is relevant and it sounds professional.7. Press Releases
Sign up to one of the many press release services so you receive PR related to your subject. Instead of publishing press releases and international newswire reports, try to make an effort at rewriting articles in more depth (or with more padding in the opinion of some).8. RSS Feeds And Forums
Set up a feedly account to monitor what is being said on related blogs and websites. Create your own stories based on discussions and new trends. You might also want to start visiting forums that are relevant to your subject. Have a look at which posts attract the most discussion, read the thread of comments, then create an article based on what has been said.9. User Generated Content
Invite your readers to submit articles. This can have mixed results. You can easily offend people by not publishing what they have written. However it can also build a sense of community and belonging if you get it right. You can also encourage your readers to ask you questions and then publish the question with your answer as an article. It's quick, easy and ensures your content is relevant to your audience. 10. Use Graphs & Tables
There are a lot of free tools that produce graphs and tables of information. These can become the basis of simple articles. Try Google Insights for Search, Google Keywords Tool, Alexa, and Compete.
In short, you can promote your business or products by providing your customers with relevant content that helps fulfill a need — either to entertain or educate. Building your company’s website doesn’t need to be expensive, or complicated, but it should be well thought-out. SubHub is here to help you build or revamp a successful membership website. Go ahead, and get started with your free 14-day trial now!
Joan Magat
We believe that everyone should be able to publish digital content and make money without being dependent on ad networks or giant platforms, or wrestling with complicated publishing solutions.
Writing effective copy is challenging, but following these guidelines can help you craft engaging and impactful content that resonates with your audience.
Keep it concise
Online readers crave quick access to information. Lengthy titles or articles can overwhelm visitors, causing them to click away. Keep your copy concise and to the point. Capture attention from the first sentence with a compelling, direct opening that hooks readers and encourages them to keep reading.
Keep it simple
Avoid overly complex language. The goal is clarity, so make your message easy to understand for everyone. Simplicity doesn’t mean “dumbing down” your content—it means ensuring your message is accessible to a diverse, global audience. Steer clear of jargon or local slang that may confuse readers.
Vague to specific
Begin with a general overview to attract a broad audience, then gradually delve into more specific details as the article progresses. This way, readers can engage with the content at their own pace. Those seeking in-depth knowledge can stick around, while others can move on when they’ve gathered what they need
Tailor copy for the web
Web copy has entirely different principles to print copy. Digital content needs to cater to both readers and search engines. When adapting print materials for the web, avoid simply copying and pasting. Instead, focus on restructuring the content with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind. Read this blog post about SEO best practices.
Smart use of multimedia
AVOID:
Autoplaying videos or audio
Using irrelevant or decorative images
Replacing text with images
Overloading pages with too many images
DO:
Use relevant multimedia that enhances the message
Incorporate images or videos that explain or complement the text
Ensure every page has at least one multimedia element to increase engagement
Prioritize appearance
A clean, professional website design builds trust with your audience. People will judge a website by its appearance and won't trust websites that haven't had sufficient effort put into their appearance. Ensure that your site uses a consistent and well-structured format.
Break up large blocks of text
Large chunks of text can intimidate readers. Use the following techniques to make your copy more inviting and easier to digest:
Visuals: Add relevant images, videos, or infographics to enhance the text.
Hyperlinks: Link to both internal and external sources to add value and credibility.
Bullet points: A simple way to present key ideas.
Bold text: Emphasize important points to draw attention.
Master keyword placement
Don’t limit keywords to titles alone - integrate them naturally throughout your copy. Pay attention to keyword density in headings, subheadings and body text. This helps your content perform better on search engines while keeping it relevant to your audience’s interests.
Write for people not just search engines
While SEO is essential for driving traffic, always prioritize writing for real people. Engaging, readable content will keep visitors on your site longer and encourage them to return. Search engines may guide people to your page, but high-quality content is what keeps them there.
Proofread thoroughly
Typos and grammatical errors can undermine your credibility. Always proofread your work carefully, but don’t rely solely on yourself—ask a friend or colleague to review it too. Fresh eyes can spot mistakes you may have overlooked, ensuring your copy is polished and professional.
Be authentic
Write about what you know. Your content will be more valuable and engaging if it’s rooted in your own expertise. Authenticity resonates with readers, and those who share your interests are more likely to engage with and support your work.
Write in your natural voice. Aim for a conversational tone that feels personal and relatable.
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In another blog post, we explored reasons why membership website owners should provide a good amount of free content on their sites.
We came to the conclusion that free content has many benefits, all leading to the ultimate price of a website visitor becoming a member. But what will convince them to cross that free line into paid territory?
In this post we’re going to look at the free/paid content issue from another angle:
What makes people willing to pay for content?
First, it's important to realize that they may not be willing. There are so many news sources on the internet,web userscan always find free alternatives for general news. They don’t even have to look very far as the aggregation news sites pull it together for them. And that’s just for news articles.
With the plethora of AI tools available now, anyone can have a detailed article at their fingertips on just about any topic. ChatGPT and Bard (Google’s counterpart to ChatGPT), for example, can scrape up tons of content on any subject in a matter of seconds.
This saves all kinds of research time that previously would be been spent combing Google results, typing various searches into a Google search query, going to various information sites like Quora.com, and checking out YouTube’s search engine for videos on the topic.
So now that it's fairly easy to find free content on any subject, most people probably just do that, right?
But why? We've come up with 5 compelling reasons why users will pay for online content.
Time is money
Doing that kind of research, even with the advantages of ChatGPT, Bard and others like them, still requires time.
Let’s not forget that the idea behind a membership website is to provide information, knowledge or expertise on a recurring basis. That means that as a membership website owner, your potential customer is going to have to go through all the search and research options regularly to be able to access the same or similar content that you can provide with no time or effort on their part. By providing a paid option that doesn't require the research on their part, you will be saving your clients time, and as we all know, time is money.
Farm experts GrowingForMarket.com know this very well. As a seasonal online publication, they are saving their members many hours of time and effort to find the latest growing information and tips available for each growing season.
Convenience
This might be the number 1 reason why people are willing to pay for free content. Let’s say you’re looking to take up a yoga practice. You could go online and search on Google or YouTube and find millions of search results showing you a multitude of different poses and types of yoga. Where do you start? Which kinds of yoga are for beginners? Which style should you adopt? What if you’re looking for specialized styles like yoga for seniors?
You can sift through all that, or you can sign up for an online yoga class with an expert like Cheri Schultz of inspireencourageempower.org and be guided through a series of yoga routines that fit your schedule and your strength level, simply by signing up to a low-cost recurring subscription. Which sounds better?
Exclusive content
People will pay for content that is not available elsewhere on the internet. Or content that is not available in the way that you have packaged it. If you have a “secret” or little-known approach to building wealth, you may have something completely unique to offer. Even the most determined researcher can spend hours on ChatGPT, or researching on Google and not come up with the specific ideas that you have to offer. A few dollars per month may very well seem like a small price to pay for recurring content that they can’t get anywhere else.
Community
People will also pay to be part of a community. Quite often, you’ll find website owners offering a course or membership-based subscctipion to content, with access to other members as a bonus. It’s great to have the perspective of yourself as the website owner, but let’s face it, you’re not always going to be available. And your members’s peers will 99.9% of the time be happy to help other members if they can.
So don’t be afraid to charge members for access to other members. This kind of community also offers a safe haven for people who may not want to post on a public forum, but feel comfortable asking questions among a closed group of like-minded individuals. SubHub clients like mylifestylerescue.com are doing just that by encouraging members to interact on the built-in forum on their websites.
Premium services
Finally, there is something that people will always pay for - personal one-on-one access to the expert (that’s you!). High-end business coaches can charge thousands of dollars per month for personal coaching. A membership website is ideally suited to offer premium services like individual coaching - at a premium price.
There are many ways of going about it:
Offer consulting services by the hour
Offer coaching programs on a recurring fee basis
Offer non-recurring subscriptions to a course with live coaching
Offer evergreen courses
Conclusion
It’s true that people won’t pay for content on the internet if they can easily find free alternatives. But the catchword there is “easily”. Easy means with little effort, little time, and no money. Even with all the search and AI options available, it still takes time and effort to research a topic, eliminate what isn’t useful, find a way to utilize the valuable information, and put it into practice.
If you can provide all these qualities in a neat package at a reasonable cost, you will be way ahead of the game.
Put simply, monetization describes the process of generating revenue from online content.
Current popular avenues for monetizing content include advertising on google ads, youtube or facebook/instagram. Retargeting via Facebook and Google offer even greater potential for income by generating leads from visitors who have been on your site but haven't clicked that call to action button.
Other income streams are through selling products or digital content as store items (you can do this on a SubHub membership site as well), or joining an affiliate program. (You can start your own affiliate program with a membership site also - even more profitable than joining someone else's!)
Many content owners focus on one of these revenue streams and run with it. However, the most successful online publishers drive multiple revenue streams from their content.
How creating a membership website can work?
A membership site can generate multiple streams of income by offering several different avenues of monetization.You can sell physical or digital products, generate recurring income, offer an affiliate program, and benefit from online advertising and retargeting.
Creating a membership website is one of the most cost-effective and rewarding ways of monetizing content. It lets you profit from your expertise through just about any format of material - videos, podcasts, articles, text, images, downloadable content, and more.
A membership model lets your website be your business hub - where all the action is. That's where potential and current customers can go to do anything they want to do - view content, sign up, upgrade, get to know you and provide you with feedback. So you are monetizing and building community at the same time.
Business owners who are administrating Facebook groups and YouTube followings are in an especially good position to profit from a membership website. - payments from members are recurring on a regular basis so you're guaranteed a certain income.
You're also building relationships with customers on a potentially much larger scale and leveraging the heavy lifting power of automation to make it easy.
At this point, you may be asking
How do I get visitors to come to my site and signup for memberships?
One of the keys is to create valuable content. The most successful online entrepreneurs know how important is it to understand and deliver content that's targeted to their audience in a unique way. Social media is of course one of the most effective ways to a following. But at some point, the question becomes "How do I monetize this?"
Ready to transform your knowledge into an online business with a membership website but don’t have the time or skill to build it yourself? Our design service could be the solution.
Getting your first 100 paying customers for a membership website is always the hardest part. But once you reach that number, it becomes much easier to attract new members.
We've put together a 90-day plan for you to get your first 100 paying customers.
Starting an online magazine has never been easier. Whether you are an individual with a passion for a specific niche or a business seeking to expand its online presence, the wealth of affordable and user-friendly tools makes publishing an online magazine achievable for even a solopreneur.
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Color is a visitor's first point of engagement with a website. This makes choosing the correct color scheme essential. Not only do color choices, create brand awareness, they actually trigger specific emotions and influence conversion rates.
If you run a coaching business in 2025, taking it online through a membership website is a smart way to expand your reach globally and scale your business quickly.
Setting the subscription prices for your membership website is a critical step to ensuring its profitability and long-term sustainability. When deciding the price, it's important to consider various factors, including the value you offer, your target audience and the costs involved.
The best place to start is with your content. Once your message and structure are clear, design becomes a tool to present that message effectively. A well-designed site should look visually appealing, guide visitors intuitively, and inspire them to take action.
If you’ve ever wondered how toplan an event online, now is the time to learn. With 2020 being the year of Zoom, it’s no surprise that holding virtual events has skyrocketed as traditional live events are on hold. But you might be wondering, "Is that good thing?"
The importance of an intelligently crafted pricing page cannot be overstated. When trying to convince visitors to become subscribers of a membership website, the pricing page is a pivotal element in the conversion journey. It's the gateway where potential customers make the crucial decision to commit to your membership.
If you're an expert in a niche subject and want to start a business to earn an income from your knowledge, then starting a membership website is the answer.
A membership website allows you to protect your exclusive content behind a paywall so access is only granted to subscribers.
This article will list the steps you need to take to start building your membership website.
1. Identify your target audience
Growing an audience of paying users requires creating content tailored to their needs.
It may seem counter-intuitive but by focusing on a specific niche subject you'll be able to more effectively create content that appeals to your target audience.
Knowing the customer persona of your target audience, enables you to identify and create impactful content specific to their needs along with effective marketing strategies to reach and engage them.
A narrow audience allows you to craft targeted marketing messages that will resonate with potential members resulting in successful marketing campaigns.
2. Determine your membership model
Once you identify your audience, you need to decide the content that you plan to offer, how it will be delivered and the sales model. Employing multiple revenue streams will maximise your ability to monetise your content. For example, by providing a visitor, who doesn't intend to sign-up to a membership, the opportunity to purchase a course, digital download or pay-per-view product means you still capture revenue. The SubHub platform gives you the ability to create multiple revenue streams.
Offering membership tiers which unlock more content and perks depending on the level is another upsell option to employ. But remember, too many choices can have a negative impact. According toHick’s Law, the more choices you present to a user can prolong their decision making process. So limit the membership levels to no more than four.
Membership fees can be set up as a one-time payments or on a recurring basis. Recurring fees have the advantage of providing a steady and reliable income flow. For members that might need a nudge, including free trial days can entice them to sign up.
3. Choosing the best membership platform for your needs
These days there are a wealth of membership models to choose from. They include WordPress, where you can build your site's functionality with plugins, to all-in-one SaaS solutions. Which you select will depend on your budget, tech skills, membership objectives and the content you want to sell.
WordPress offers the most flexibility when it comes to the design and functionality you can achieve with your website. However, those benefits also come with costs and disadvantages. Unless you have technical skills or the budget to hire a developer, a WordPress site can be out of your price range.
The other major downside with WordPress is plug-in maintenance. When you build a website based on the interaction of multiple plugins, you must insure they are all compatible. One incompatible plugin, can break your whole site. This often happens when a plugin needs to be updated. And when it does, you'll need to hire a developer to fix it.
Alternatively, a SaaS solution (Software as a Service) is a complete service that provides you not only with the website but hosting, maintenance and customer support. Popular SaaS examples are Wix, Shopify, Teachable and SubHub. A SaaS solution reduces the stress of running an online knowledge business. If something breaks, you just need to submit a support ticket. And SaaS companies are always working to improve their product offerings.
You'll want to select a platform you can grow with. The design, functionality, and scalabilityshould be flexible enough to modify to meet your target audience’s changing needs.
Many SaaS solutions specialise in the delivery of specific types of content. If you plan to only sell online courses, you might select an eLearning platform like Teachable. If your focus is website membership, but also want the additional revenue stream of selling courses then the SubHub platform is the answer.
Lastly, choose a platform that provides dedicated customer support. When you run a membership website, there will be issues. Read client reviews support by people who really understand both technology andonline publishingis vital.
4. Building your website
If you've selected a SaaS solution, you can start right away creating your site with that solution's website builder. Most SaaS solutions are intended to be intuitive enough for a non-techie to easily use.
Your homepage will be the most important page on your site as it will influence whether or not a visitor becomes a member. Be sure to carefully craft the copy of your banner and body text so that it informs and engages with your potential members. Clearly define, the benefits of your membership proposition.
Your homepage must also be SEO optimised with keywords so that your site is found in search results.
Include a testimonial section as client reviews can have a persuasive impact by showing visitors that others value your product, it’s a vote of confidence in your product.
Pay attention to page speed as a slow loading page will cause visitors to bounce.
These are just a few tips to create a converting homepage.
5. Upload initial content
Before launching, you'll need to have uploaded enough content to satisfy your first members. This could be in the form of blog posts, courses, downloads, videos etc. Then you'll need to stay committed to a regular schedule of adding new content.
Make sure your content is meaningful and is of value to your audience.
6. Follow SEO best practices
Just launching a website isn't enough to get found. From the start, be sure to follow SEO best practices when creating your site and adding content. This will improve your chance of getting found in search results. Using keywords, the proper heading format, internal links and requesting backlinks are all necessary to insure that when Google and other search engines index your site that they understand what your site is about, how content relates to each other.
The same focus keyword needs to be present in your meta title, article headline, first sentence and a few times in the article body.
Once you create an article, submit it to Google search so that it is indexed within 24 hours.
Use the proper heading (H1, H2, H3...) format on your pages. H1 must only be used ONCE on any page. Proper headings inform search engines about the structure of your site and the hierarchy of your content.
Internal links are created when you include links of similarly-themed content to each other. Again, this help search engines understand the content on your site and how it relates to each other.
When a site links to your site, this is a backlink. It proves to search engines that your content is relevant and trustworthy.
7. Grow a community on social media
Drive traffic to your website using your social media channels. It's best to select a single social media platform and then dedicate all your efforts to building an audience. Choose the platform where your prospective members will be hanging out.
Conclusion
Membership is one of the most exciting business opportunities on the internet today. It is established enough that you will not have to reinvent the wheel. Everything you need to be successful is available and accessible to novices and experts alike.
Having a well-designed church website is essential for keeping your congregation connected, attracting new visitors, and sharing your ministry’s mission. A great website serves as a hub for online sermons, event updates, and community engagement.
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Bekah's vision led her to become an online fitness coach over eight years ago.She recognised that, for many of her in-person gym clients, finding the time to workout was a balancing act between their job and family responsibilities.