I’ve mentioned before the idea about making a portion of the Network into a membership site, to give access to the ever growing library of ebooks and videos I’m accumulating. Since most do not have give away rights, I’d need to use them as incentive for joining a membership site.
My original idea had been a $1 one-time fee to get access to the library. I’d also need to provide something as a benefit of membership, to keep within the letter of the licenses, so there would probably be a URL rotator available for members.
Then I started thinking that I wanted to continue adding to the library, which does cost some money, and bandwidth would rise as the library grows. It’d be nice to defray the ongoing costs, so a monthly fee started sounding like a better idea. $1 a month is still fairly trivial, but would help to offset the cost of adding to the library.
So I thought I’d throw it open for your opinions, since the purpose of such a site would be to get this library in your hands. What do you think is the best way to work the membership fee for the site? I’ve included a poll below to track the most common options, but feel free to leave comments with ideas, too.
[poll=2]
I seen another site that did this but I can’t remember what she charged for hers. I think that it is a great idea and will even help you to get some extra money. The way that she did it was, she had her regular blog post and then she had extra tips that she offered for members only. Her blog was still informative even without the membership but it made you wonder what she had to offer.
I’ll wait to see if any further voting happens, but right now the two voters were unanimous. I’m willing to do a membership site for just two people, if they think it’ll provide some value to them.
This makes me think of the Rush Limbaugh model. He gives his content away on his radio program and blog, but has a separate part of the site for members-only.
I think it is a model that works well, if the free content is complelling enough.
I’d be happy giving away all the content, but the license for most of them doesn’t allow that. They want to keep up the perception of value for the product, so it has to be sold or given away as an incentive for something that costs money.