Choosing a topic for your paid membership site is an important decision. It’s probably the most important decision you’ll make regarding the site. The success or failure of your site depends heavily on the topic you choose.

When you’re looking for a site topic, or theme, choose something that you care about. You’ll be spending lots of time keeping your site updated, and researching information to share with your members. It’s much easier to maintain enthusiasm about something that genuinely interests you.  

Narrowing your focus can also help you attract more members. For example, if you start a membership site about dolls, that’s way too general. But narrowing your theme down to antique doll collecting will target a specific audience. So keep this in mind when thinking of a topic for your site.

As mentioned earlier, it’s relatively easy to find a paid membership site for just about any industry, hobby, or activity. Notice I said “just about any”, and not “every”.

Some topics don’t garner enough interest to justify building a membership site. How many people do you think would pay to learn about lint collecting? You’d be lucky to attract even one person to that site.

Any successful paid membership site must offer something of value. There are membership sites that teach members how to play instruments via streaming video. Private label rights (PLR) membership sites provide original articles, ebooks, and reports. The best way to decide on a topic for your site is to pick a subject you care about.

Sit down and make a list of your hobbies, interests, life experiences, training, and so on. Examine your list carefully. When you’re done, pick the items you want to learn more about or already know enough about to educate someone else.

Narrow your list down to one item, and build your membership site around that topic. If you’re passionate about the topic, chances are there are many more people who share your passion. Well, that is unless your passion is something totally weird like lint collecting.

You can always start another site to explore other, less marketable, items on your list. However, it’s not a good idea to take on too much at once. So for now focus on one site at a time.

After you’ve decided on a topic, go online and do a bit of research. Answer the following questions:

1. How many paid membership sites already exist for the topic?
2. How many free sites or forums are dedicated to the topic?
3. Are there any online magazines that focus on the topic?
4. Is the information you plan to offer already freely and easily available?

The reason for this research is to get an idea of the marketability of your topic. A little competition isn’t bad, but you need to know what you’ll be up against. The Internet could already be oversaturated with paid membership sites dedicated to your subject. Some topics have been done to death.

Any new paid membership site dealing with sex will have an extreme amount of competition. It’s possible to find a paid membership site for just about any type of sexual situation known to humankind.

Keep in mind, having a lot of competition doesn’t mean your site wouldn’t succeed. It just means you’d have a more difficult time attracting subscribers, and setting yourself apart from the crowd. Sure, it’ll be difficult, but it’s far from impossible.

But, and this is a major but, just because something has been done before doesn’t mean you can’t do it again – and do it much better. What if the creators of Google had said, “This is a waste of time, we’ll never be able to compete with other search engines”? They would’ve missed out on one of the biggest money making ventures of their lives. Take a cue from Google.

If you think your paid membership site has something to offer, no matter how many others exist on your topic, don’t hesitate to put yours out there.
It would be a shame to deprive yourself of a lucrative business opportunity. And it would also be a shame to cheat the public of information that could help them build better businesses, live better lives, or make more money.

You will need to:

Have faith in yourself
Be ready to compete against “the big dogs”
Dare to put your own twist on an old idea
Create goals and a business plan to help you remain focused

Another reason to research your topic is to get a feel for the market. If there are less than a handful of forums, free websites, or online magazines dedicated to your subject, you may not have a strong enough market to support a paid membership site.

Billions of people use the Internet on a daily basis. But there are still some topics that don’t raise an eyebrow. Well, at least not enough to justify starting a paid membership site.

Consider the following:

A Google search for “lint collecting” returns fewer than 400,000 results. And of those results, the first two pages consist of technical talk about dryers, lint traps, and obscure research. An Overture keyword search reveals that “lint collecting” was used to search the web only 47 times last month (May). There’s clearly very little interest in the topic.

The point of this is to realize that some topics provide an abundance of competition, while others are practically useless. This is a situation in which you have to use your own judgment. If you feel good about your ability to attract a sizeable audience, feel free to tackle the topic of your choice.

Once you’ve decided on your topic, the next step is to decide how to create and maintain the site. Your goal in this step is to make things easy on yourself, but to also maximize your profits and keep your members satisfied. Sounds like a lot doesn’t it? Well, it is. But it’s not impossible. We’ll discuss this important step in the next section.