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Anyone here running a membership site?

by Kimia Hamidi

Hey Indie Hackers!

I'm working on a membership site (thejumpstart.co) and I'm trying to figure out how much content I should gate for value to get people to sign up but also debating how much content to make public to get SEO and rank to get organic traffic.

Does anyone have any experience with this? If you have ran or worked with someone who ran a membership site what was the strategy around this?

Would love some insights!

Kimia Hamidi's avatarKimia Hamidi
on January 19, 2020
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  1. 1

    check trends.co and carefully analyze the lead funnel and their mix of free to paid content.

    besides, are you happy with how things are going? re sub count, ctrs, conversions?

    Cass1's avatar Cass1
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    7 years ago
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    1. 1

      I have been, I actually was inspired by trends.co but think they are going too broad so I'm tightening the offer with e-comm products and going deeper with keyword research (how to get traffic to the store), US based supplier intro's, etc...

      It's still early days so not hitting the numbers I want to see but so far a ton of interest

      Kimia Hamidi's avatar Kimia Hamidi
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      7 years ago
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  2. 1

    I run https://knowyknowy.com. I struggled with the same question, and I used the following template:

    Have three layers of access to your content:

    1. Public (can read without signing up)
    2. Subscriber only (can read but only after signing up)
    3. Paid subscriber only (can read only after paying a fee)

    I create content like the following:

    1. Quick Bites (200-500 word long; public)
    2. Detailed (1000+ word long; subscriber only for the first week to get some tweets about it, then move it to paid-subscriber only)
    3. Videos (paid subscribers only)

    Also, for distribution, I repurpose the detailed articles in short 200-300 word long article and guest post them on other blogs, with a link back to the main article.

    Hope this helps.

    mohitmamoria's avatar mohitmamoria
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    7 years ago
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    1. 1

      Appreciate the answer! I dig the site by the way interesting stuff you are working on.

      Are you finding you are ranking for any of the keywords that you are explaining though? From everything I have experienced it's pretty hard to rank for keywords with 200-500 word paragraphs.

      I was looking into Skift as well and I think they do an interesting job of gating their content + blog but I don't have the bandwidth to do both.

      Kimia Hamidi's avatar Kimia Hamidi
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      7 years ago
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    2. 1

      out of curiosity. are people already subscribing for your paid service? and if yes who are they?

      Cass1's avatar Cass1
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      7 years ago
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      1. 2

        I have started only three weeks ago, and have about 100 readers/week. Of them, 4 have subscribed. I am assuming that the subscription will go up as more premium content will be added in the coming months.

        mohitmamoria's avatar mohitmamoria
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        7 years ago
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  3. 1

    I'd imagine you will have to run ads on this and not only limit yourself on SEO. Maybe trying influencers on Instagram and Youtube.

    sleeplessyogi's avatar sleeplessyogi
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    7 years ago
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