After you read this section, close your eyes and visualize engaging in your favorite hobby or activity. Then see yourself providing others the information they need to perform the same tasks. Now let’s take this a step further.

Imagine sharing your expertise with hundreds of people who are willing to pay whatever price you set. Can you see it? Doesn’t it feel great? Starting your own paid membership site can make this vision a reality.

The dream of earning passive or residual income is an old one. It existed long before anyone ever thought of the Internet. But because of the Internet, it’s now easier than ever to earn large sums of money without a large investment or mind-numbing work.

Starting your own paid membership site allows you to earn money from something that you enjoy or are knowledgeable about. It’s a darn good alternative to working a job you hate and making barely enough to survive. And best of all, you set your own price and act as your own boss.

Even if you enjoy your office job, starting a paid membership site is still a good idea. Very few people would turn down the chance to make a bit of extra money. That is, extra money in addition to their regular income. For a few hours of your time per week, you can establish a steady flow of income totally separate from your regular check.

The extra money can send you to Hawaii, buy a new car instead of a used one, or send your children to the best school in town. Maybe none of these things appeal to you. If not, that’s fine. There are other options.

If you can’t think of a way to spend a few extra hundred dollars, then stash it away for a rainy day or invest it. How does early retirement sound? Or what about leaving a nice nest egg for your kids? It’s a winning situation no matter how you look at it.

Still not convinced that a paid membership site is a good idea? Consider this:

You get paid regularly.

Monthly subscribers pay a set fee up until they unsubscribe or your site ceases to operate. Because most payments occur automatically, you can count on receiving a certain amount of money each month. As long as you have even one subscriber, you know you’re going to get that subscription fee.

After you’ve set the price for your membership fee, figure out exactly how much you’d like to earn from the site per month. Then after you’ve set the fee, simply figure out the minimum amount of subscribers you need.

For example, let’s say you want to earn $4,000 per month from your golfing paid membership site. The golfing crowd tends to be more affluent than those in some other sports, so you’ve decided to offer a monthly membership fee of $40 and a yearly fee of $384 (which is a 20 percent discount off of the monthly subscription fee).

To earn $4,000 per month, you’d need to attract and keep at least 100 monthly subscribers. That shouldn’t be too hard with good marketing, and some darn good information within the site. These numbers translate into $48,000 per-year for providing useful information. And don’t forget you can also offer your subscribers a yearly membership option.

If your monthly subscription fee is $40, a yearly subscription fee of $384 would provide a 20 percent discount off the monthly fee. This would provide an incentive for your members to choose the yearly option, and it would also provide a nice chunk of change for your bank account.

And remember, you can charge as much for membership as you think the market will bear. You may have information that people will pay $50 to $60 per month or more to obtain. If people are perfectly willing to pay it, then there’s no reason you shouldn’t set your membership fee accordingly.

Another thing to remember is that you can have as many sites as you want. There are no laws or rules that say you can have only one paid membership site. You can have as many paid membership sites as you can handle, as long as you provide useful content for members.

Happy members bring more business – and money.

If you keep your members happy, they’ll surely spread the word about your site. And what does that mean? It means even more members and even more money in your pocket. Member endorsements are like hundreds of free advertisements. They can help make your paid membership site a great success.

Word travels fast on the Internet. How do you think Google became the top search engine in the world? Sure, they spent money on advertising, but word of mouth played a big part in their popularity. The same is true for Amazon and eBay. People used the sites, loved what they saw, and spread the word to their friends on and off the Internet. And, as the saying goes, the rest is history.

You become an expert on your topic and gain loyal followers.

Wouldn’t you like to be recognized as an expert in your field? Imagine, being known as an expert without having to spend thousands of dollars, or four years or longer, earning a college degree. It certainly is possible.

If your site proves to be a reliable source of good, solid information, it can gain popularity as “the place” to find information just on whatever your topic happens to be.

There’s no telling where your expert status will lead. You may be asked to write a book or get invited to speak at a seminar. Reporters may consider you a valuable source for their articles. Or you may end-up with your own popular Internet radio show or syndicated column. It’s amazing, but all of this really can result from talking about something you love.

It’s plain as day that the benefits of starting a paid membership site outweigh the bad. In fact, there’s not that much bad involved. The worse thing that could happen is that you lose members, fail to attract any members at all, or have some kind of website or script meltdown.

I’m not going to pretend it will be easy. There are risks involved in any business undertaking, but in this case, the rewards outweigh the risks.

Are your ready to start? Do you have a topic? Don’t worry if you don’t. We’ll discuss finding a topic in the next section.