If you want to start a membership site but are unsure what to offer, don’t worry. We’ve compiled a list of the best membership site ideas. Review the ideas below and keep reading for more on how to launch your membership site quickly.
1. Cooking and Meal Prep
Do you love to cook? Are you the type of person who excels at planning their meals? Meal delivery services are popular because they take the hassle out of menu planning. People who want the convenience of having someone else prepare their meals without overpaying for groceries will gladly pay a membership fee to download weekly meal plans and recipes.
2. Fitness and Weight Loss
Remember the importance of a value proposition. Successful membership sites deliver a value that encourages subscribers to renew their membership. Helping members achieve their goals — especially related to fitness and weight loss — is an attractive value proposition.
Fitness and weight loss membership site ideas include:
- Diet-specific recipes and meal plans
- Workout plans
- Workout instructions
3. Sports and Outdoors
If you’re a golfer, you're familiar with the never-ending quest to improve your swing. Providing educational content and an online community geared toward specific sports is the perfect niche for a membership site. The same type of content also performs well for outdoor activities, such as fishing.
4. Financial Coaching
Most people don’t receive financial literacy training. Financial content provides an excellent basis for a membership site because it has a broad appeal. Everyone has to figure out how to manage their money best.
Financial membership site ideas include:
- Budgeting advice and templates
- Investing
- Cryptocurrency
5. Life Skills
People need help with more than just money management. Adulting is hard. If you create content to help people learn essential life skills, you have the foundation for a solid membership site.
Life skills membership site ideas include:
- Home buying
- Yard maintenance
- Homeownership
- Car maintenance
- Home organization
- Cleaning and housekeeping
- Time management and organization
6. Travel
Most people love to travel. However, not everyone enjoys planning their travel. If you can provide content that will save people time or money on vacation, they’ll gladly pay for a membership. For example, TouringPlans.com provides advice and trip planning tools to members to help them save money and spend less time waiting in line on trips to Walt Disney World.
7. Crafting
If you’re a crafty person, you might assume selling your work on Etsy is the only way to monetize your hobby. But, online crafting communities and membership sites are increasing in popularity. For example, you could create educational courses or videos for members or offer your patterns as downloads.
8. Podcasts
If you produce a podcast, a membership site creates another revenue stream besides advertising. Podcast membership sites could include additional gated content, an ad-free podcast version, or community space for discussion.
9. Templates
Templates make good content for a membership site because you can monetize them as a recurring subscription or one-time access. If you have an extensive template library that you update regularly, you could sell a recurring subscription. If you only have a handful of templates, you could sell lifetime access to each template.
Template membership site ideas include:
- Graphic design templates
- Presentation templates
- Contract and business document templates
- Stock photos and illustrations
- Stock video
- Website templates
- WordPress themes or plugins
- Calendars, to-do lists, grocery lists, and other organizational templates
- Meal plan and exercise templates
Turning Your Membership Site Idea into Reality
If one of these membership site ideas inspired you, check out our step-by-step guide to starting a membership site. When you’re ready to start building your website, consider hosting with Nexcess.
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