During my time online the topic of membership sites comes up again and again.
It seems everyone and their dog wants one!
The reason of course is fairly obvious: Who wouldn’t want a recurring revenue stream generated by loyal customers paying you each and every month?
Recently, I was approached by someone who asked the following:
“What niches and topics of interest are suitable for a membership or recurring billing type model?”
This is a fine question and one that we could go into in an awful lot of detail.
Instead though, I would like to share with you a little trick.
The 10 Second “Trick”…
1) Go to cbengine.com
We’ve mentioned this website a lot here on the blog and also in the members area but if you are not already aware it essentially gives you a lot of detail and analysis on the Clickbank marketplace.
You don’t need to register and when I do market research I always head there instead of Clickbank itself 🙂
2) Scroll down and look for the “CUSTOM” box on the right hand side:
In the example above you can see I am looking for products that generate at least $50 in rebilling. The smaller the number you choose, the more products and niches you’ll get.
Alternatively, you could simply choose “Yes” from the “Recurring Only” option at the very bottom although personally I haven’t found this to work as well.
3) Click the “Search” button
4) Click on the “Gravity” column in the results to sort in descending order.
From there you can click into any product you like, look at the numbers (I really like the “Graph” tab here) and visit the sales page as well.
The Results
Obviously a lot of the products you’ll find are in the internet marketing niche because Clickbank has been strongly weighted to this in the past.
However, you’ll also find a lot of other niches as well: tennis, dating, woodworking, fat loss, jobs, music, forex, model trains, lottery, fitness, photography…
Points to note:
1) The products listed will either be membership sites in their own right, e.g., join us for $x/month OR they will at least have some kind of rebilling built into the sales funnel, e.g., $37 one time payment front end product, leading to a $x/month upsell.
2) All these products that have positive gravity numbers give you proof that these niches are not only profitable but also can support recurring billing structures.
3) Clickbank isn’t everything. Just because you can’t find a particular niche doesn’t mean it won’t be suitable for a membership site. For example, here’s a great little niche with a brilliant membership site that isn’t on Clickbank. Equally, if you see a zero gravity number it doesn’t mean the product isn’t selling well, just that it isn’t selling via affiliates. So this is a guide, but a reasonably good one.
The second point above is vital because the first rule of product creation is to sell into existing demand. And there’s no stronger indication of demand than proof that products or services are already selling.
This is one of the many things I love about doing business online – numbers and stats like this are much harder to find in the traditional “offline” world!
We could go on about membership sites, niche selection and product creation at this point but I think it’s best to turn this over to questions and comments.
Please LIKE/SHARE/TWEET if you enjoyed this. Drop a quick comment below – would love to hear your thoughts… 🙂
Thank Rob…..very interesting
Glad it was useful to you Leon – thank you 🙂
Cheers, Rob.
Good tip Rob thanks
Pleasure Roy – all good! Cheers, Rob.
I have used cbengine for some time and agree that it is much better than CB but was unfamiliar with this “trick” which is very helpful. Thanks for your insight!
There’s a lot you can do with it for sure John and I particular like the graph function as I mentioned.
Thanks for your comment 🙂
Cheers, Rob.
Thanks for the reminder Rob.
I’ve used cbengine before, but not for the past year or so. It can be so easy to get side tracked in this business.
I know what you mean – happens to all of us! I write everything don’t in a Word document and have a scan every so often, it’s amazing the things you forget.
Cheers, Rob.
Hi Rob
I have bought several products from you in the past and always found your over the shoulder way of teaching via video very good. Do you have any kind of training in setting up membership sites…?
Thank you Rosemary 🙂 Yes, actually there is a recent session called “EXACTLY How To Build a Membership Site In 11 Steps” (link) if you look in the Basecamp section. We’ve also covered membership sites elsewhere too but take a look at this first and hit the forum if I can help with any questions.
Cheers, Rob.
Hi Rob,
Nice little tutorial on CB Engine – it is a great tool for searching out CB products.
The whole membership model is most definitely something I would love to add to my income streams. Just shows you that it is not all about the “make money online” niche. Some interesting selections……
Will tweet this – thanks for the tip!
John
Great stuff John, glad you enjoyed this and very pleased that it’s given you some inspiration!
Thanks for your comment 🙂
Cheers, Rob.
Morning Rob.
Great little tip once again and as ever so clever!
This has given me a great idea to link up to another mechanism for promoting affiliate links. The two ideas plugged together should help me make some DOSHHH !! Thanks again.
Steve.
Great stuff Steve, that’s great and thanks for your comment 🙂
Cheers, Rob.
Good stuff! I totally agree that selecting high gravity products with recurring bills is the way to go. But it would be great if we can choose up trending product from cbengine.com too.
Thanks Shaun – Yes, the graph function is very good for this!
Great to see you here on the blog 🙂
Cheers, Rob.
Hi Rob,
As always a really useful tip and resource. many thanks
Hi Leighton,
Glad you found it useful and thanks for your comments 🙂
Cheers,
Rob
Thanks mate. FYI … love the upgrade to SpyBar. It has to be used one of my most used plugins. If I see a good site, I automatically use Spybar to determine if it is a word press site and then look at what theme they are using. The only problem is that it is so damn addictive, I might have to turn myself in for addiction treatment. 🙂
Hi Russ,
Thank you for your comment and that’s great to hear on SpyBar, your kind words are much appreciated 🙂
Cheers, Rob.