How do you attract subscribers to an online membership site & then retain these customers for life?

Membership sites are a pain in the ass. Let me start there.

I've had dozens of clients start membership sites, and the only ones who've kept it alive had huge audiences to begin with.

The problem is that a membership site has two things to offer: exclusive information and community.

Exclusive information is awesome, but unless you can create the membership fee's worth of perceived value in new exclusive content each month, people will wonder why they're paying. On top of the members-only content, you're ALSO on the hook for free, public-facing content to drive membership sales. So it's like having two content-generation jobs.

Community is even harder: for every 100 members, maybe 1 will create new content. Another 10 or so might comment. So that means if you want your community to look active, you'll need at least a few thousand members right out of the gate. It's a chicken-and-egg problem.

This all depends on the industry, of course, but in my experience, I've seen far too many failures — even from sites with hundreds of thousands of monthly users — to think it's a safe or sustainable way to build a business.

However, all that same info that would go into a membership site can be packaged in other ways to create passive income, and with half the content-creation efforts you can generate a similarly high monthly revenue. Whenever my clients took my advice and tried these instead, they saw real revenue and were able to grow it more effectively.

I'd be happy to share these alternative strategies if you're interested; drop me a line and we'll chat.

Good luck!

Short answer is: You Don't.

You don't keep them "for life."

Typically the term is 3 months.

BUT

The fact that your site is about education credits is a potential game changer. I've never seen or thought about this topic before, and it's a good one.

You really may have a chance of getting very long term customers with this one. They have a big reason to keep coming back.

I've worked in the nursing & Safe Patient Handling fields and with the operator of a professional organization in the field.

Your biggest problem is how to let enough people who need CPD credit know you exist.

There's an annual deadline for these things, isn't there. I've seen letters for my in-laws not-so-gently reminding them the education credits need to be earned to keep their status in the professional organization.

So you can do something similar. Letters, postcards, even perhaps partnering with the professional association. They may have "fairness" rules against that, but it's worth trying.

Are there forums GPs hang out in? Advertise there. Not once. Consistently.

Your advertising copy is pretty easy (for me, anyway) to write:

> 24/7 access to the content, meaning they can do the work to earn the credits whenever they like

> much easier to go to a single source than find CPD credit content elsewhere

> unique content inside (think Netflix Series vs cable TV, you only get it here...if that's true)

Your advertising campaign needs to be funded by a % of revenue after the launch, and be relentlessly continued.

Getting lists of GPs should be very easy.

Also advertise to existing customers, to remind them of why they're a member.

Happy to discuss sales & marketing ideas on a call.

I might be sharing the obvious but facebook and google are incredibly powerful to drive traffic to your website. Retaining comes down to how well you solve your customers problems. Good luck!