Time Constraints

First up, lets look at the time it’s going to take you to create each product type. We’ll get into talking about resources and actually gathering those resources later in the report, so if I mention anything that you’re not sure about right now, don’t worry, because it’s fully explored in later sections, resource by resource.

First, look at single sale. Often, single sale is actually far quicker to create than a membership site for obvious reasons. Excluding the product itself, the general methods single sale are the customer pays, the customer downloads.

It’s a simple as that in most cases. All that’s left to do with a single sale product is create your resource gathering methods for each resource, your list, your affiliates, your customers, your long term customers and your joint ventures, and obviously follow up and your sales process, a sales letter, a download area following payment and there you have it. Your single sale product.

Now when it comes to membership sites, things are a little different. You still have your sales process, you still have your sales letter, you still have you resource gathering tools and your members’ area. The problem comes with maintenance.

Like we mentioned earlier, it very much depends on your product, but the general rule is single sale is harder to create, and membership sites are harder to maintain.

It may not seem like that now, especially if you’ve never created a membership site before, but the more complex a project and the more aspects it involves, the more things can go wrong.

Setting up wise, a single sale and membership site aren’t all that different, aside from the obvious change of reoccurring incomes from a membership site, which often isn’t much more hassle than setting up your affiliate program and payment processor to handle these things, but to get the full picture we need to think ahead a little.

Going back to the previous example I gave you about my first venture that was packed with scripts and software and bundled as a monthly membership, there is a lot more to it than just the set up. Remember, with single sale, it’s sell, download, bit of customer service if needed, and that’s it.

With membership sites and their recurring incomes, packed full of members that expect high standards from month to month, expect to have to carry out regular updates, especially if the content isn’t pre-written, or you’re selling monthly access to software.

Things go wrong, new software is released; think about what you’re actually doing here. Especially if your membership site comprises of software, it’s not just your information and marketing tools and notes, and feedback that you’re looking after. If something goes wrong with any customers’ service, you’ll need to fix it.

When updates are regularly being released, and customers are paying a recurring income, it’s not unusual especially with software again, that you may have to bring in programmers to fix problems, you may have to update scripts regularly, even the look, or the layout, and even keep updating the content to keep ahead of your competition and keep your members interested.

Even if you’re not selling software, this can also be the case for affiliate systems for example. If your recurring affiliate system makes an incorrect calculation somewhere along the line, unless you’re a programmer yourself, or know one, it’s likely going to require outside work.

Meanwhile, while all of this is going in within the membership site, what’s happening with your single sale products? Well, people are reading the sales letter, buying, downloading, and possibly requesting customer service.

There is minimal maintenance. Even if something goes wrong with your affiliate script to tie in with the previous example, because people are only earning one time commissions, it’s super quick and easy to fix compared to a bunch of scripts being updated, and having to search through data that is still live and fix any problems affecting the system whilst everything is still going on.

Now I know this might seem basic, this might seem obvious, but it gets me how many people start up membership sites thinking it’ll be a breeze, and admittedly, from the outside, it does look like a breeze.

Many aspects of a membership site nowadays can be automated, which is great for the owner of the site and the members, but there is still far more maintenance work to do with membership sites that there is to do with single sale sites for the reasons given above, and some of the problems that arise are often harder to deal with in a live recurring membership environment than in a single sale environment.

Let me give you two examples now coming from the experience that I’ve had to demonstrate just this. The differences look small, until you look at them closely and realize just how much more work a membership site can be.

Next

Single Sale vs. Membership: The Risks