IMMania.com

OK, I’ll apologize at the outset for the title of this post. It probably got you to click thru just to see what the deal is, but there actually is some useful info in here if you’ll stick with me.

I’d like to discuss a trend in the IM industry that has been extremely hot and shows little sign of letting up. This would be the membership model.

The membership model is more clinically or more sinisterly referred to as the “forced continuity” model.

Basically, you get someone to subscribe to your membership site or newsletter and in turn for providing them with the information and/or products you promised them in your sales pitch, you get the permission to bill them like clockwork each and every month for the stated membership fee. This fee can range from as little as a penny to well, the sky’s the limit. Some higher-profile IM membership sites charge several hundred dollars as the monthly fee, which many members gladly fork over.

Now before you think I’m bashing the membership model, please let me make the distinction between two different viewpoints — that of the customer and that of the business owner.

As a customer, I tend to avoid the “forced continuity” model whenever I can. Sure, there are some things, like my ISP and Web hosting services where there’s no other payment option and it really is much more convenient to have my credit card billed monthly or annually. It would be a real pain to have to write a check every month for these vital services.

My gym membership is also the same deal — they bill my credit card every month for my dues. Again, not a problem.

Where it started to become a problem is for non-vital services that might be useful for a while, but then quickly lose that usefulness. If you let enough of these kinds of memberships pile up, and either don’t take advantage of them, like not going to the gym anymore, or the information or service is no longer of value to you, such as weak PLR material, then you’re just throwing away money each and every month.

And if you don’t think it adds up over time, then you need to work the numbers.

If I had $5 for every member of “Wealthy Affiliate” who no longer logs into the members area to read forum posts or take advantage of the materials then I would indeed be a very Wealthy Affiliate indeed.

My jaw drops every time I hear in a forum about how many paid memberships some IMers belong to. And many of these memberships are not cheap. It’s probably not too much of a stretch to estimate that more than a few people spend $100 or more a month on paid memberships.

The only paid membership I currently belong to is “Earn1kaDay.com“. I get tremendous value from my membership there and that’s because of the involvement of Dennis Becker and all of the great members there, but none of that would be worth diddly if I didn’t participate every day myself.

Running a membership site as a business owner is another story completely. I don’t currently do it, but it’s now on my radar.

So it might be worth a few minutes of your time to take stock of all the paid memberships you have and make an honest assessment of how much value you’re getting from each one in terms of both the material provided, and your use of that material.

You might be surprised how much you can save yourself each month. Even if it’s only $50, that’s $50 more each month that you can put back into your business in the form of PPC spend or towards covering vital expenses such as your ISP and Web hosting fees.

Of course, you could also use it to buy the eBook du jour that’s going reveal the ultimate IM secret.