Developing a subscription based site is a difficult task, as you must find a niche that is not occupied with free alternatives that are already thriving social networks. Subscription based sites are, however, one of the most sustainable and profitable ways to make money on your website. Subscription based sites offer something other models don’t, a guaranteed revenue stream once your site is active. As common as advertising supported sites are, unless you have a great deal of traffic, it is almost impossible to maintain a website for profit without selling something.

The cost of getting a subscription site off the ground is low, as all you need to get started is your hosting, a website design, some content management software, and software for managing members. Many of the membership site applications available have content management incorporated, allowing you to keep everything on one system. And because the software tends to have a set cost, the only recurring cost to you is your hosting fees. This means you will be receiving income and your only costs will be centered on keeping your site online, which is relatively low, especially for a site that is just starting out, and the cost of maintaining content, which you may be able to manage yourself.

In the end, while many people will opt for the free option, having an exclusive site is a great way to make money off your idea. You can even manage a site with a hybrid model, offer a free mode with limited features and advertising, and let users know if they sign up for a recurring membership, they will have full access. This is commonly used for sites that are social networks, like forums, and it is important that you make your differentiating features a big enough deal that people will be willing to pay extra every month or year for a membership.

Posted by Ian Logsdon.
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Search engine optimization is extremely important to the process of setting up a site or revisiting your website’s design. Indeed, it is true that most websites will not succeed without an appropriate plan to harness search engine optimization, short of getting lucky. This means that you need to consider SEO at all phases of development for your site. You need to focus on the most important aspects of search engine optimization: keyword usage, inbound links, unique content, etc. By building SEO into the design of your site, you can start reaping the benefits of your efforts as soon as your site is spidered.

If you’re building your site for the first time, there are a number of things you can do to benefit your search engine performance. First, decide whether you will be using one domain for your site. While it may cost more to host your site (or in this case sites) across multiple domains, you can reap substantial benefits by hosting a number of different websites, perhaps each serving a different function or selling a different product. One of the most reliable ways to receive good rankings on search engines is to have lots of inbound links. Having multiple domains where you host your sites means getting a head start on this process. As well, you can benefit greatly by using search engine optimization on your html filenames. By including your keywords in filenames, you can reap additional benefits from using them.

Choosing keywords is an important step in the process of developing your site, and this means you need to analyze the effectiveness of the keywords you have already chosen. Also, look at your competition; see what keywords they are using. Go after the weaker ones first, where you can get more rank, faster. By targeting keywords and using them heavily, you can start drawing traffic, this will allow you to build up your search engine rank gradually against larger sites.

The key to getting your site to take off is having a large amount of unique content. For this it is recommended you add a blog, resource center, or other area where you can keep a large amount of unique text. If you can provide expert commentary on a topic, any topic, you can garner inbound links that will provide you with a major boost. As well, posting your site to directories can garner you better search engine results, though it will likely require more inbound links than from sites with more content and less links.

In the end, search engine optimization allows you to improve the connectivity of your site. But without a way to monetize your site, a good product or a reliable advertising revenue scheme, your site will never be more than a hobby. Make sure you have a business plan and a good product, otherwise your work will be in vain.

Posted by Ian Logsdon.
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