How to manage a membership site with a small staff?

codexehow · Apr 1, 2012

Hey awesome BlackHat World members!

I just have a quick question. I'm launching a membership site, selling a service, but unfortunately, the service/product is not something that I can just upload to the client or give them access to on the site itself. I'll have to do some manual work.

So, should I cap my membership in this case, or should I just hire and train people on Odesk or some such service?

I was thinking if I capped my membership, I could use this as a selling point, but tell me if this is just a dumb idea.

Thanks, and hopefully this thread will be helpful for others as well.

steelballs · Apr 1, 2012

Obviously it is essential that the deliveries of the service-product do not get behind because you have too many orders

Regarding capping membership it may well work if you dress up the spiel on the site

Initially if it was my site I would not be wanting staff on board early in the venture as you already have a product delivery issue and for me you do not need to have to spend time managing people as well so early on in with a start up service

Just my 2 cents hope it helps

mrankin · Apr 1, 2012

I have a couple of service sites, both of which need my manual input to get users setup, but I would never outsource any of it - my level of service is what sets me apart.

lanbo · Apr 1, 2012

What kind of work do you need to do? Maybe some program can automate it.

sommax · Apr 1, 2012

in real sense what sorts of membership sites are you really going to launch. if it is of commercial one then better use available membership management plugins which is easy to integrate and manage

codexehow · Apr 2, 2012

Thanks guys.

I just got ProfitTheme, and am setting that up.

This is the kind of market where the clients would like the fact that we are taking on a limited number of clients, so I'm pretty confident that I can spin it.

AlfalfaReborn · May 2, 2012

I'd sit down and write up a business plan. Take a look at revenues vs expenses and then figure out how much you can handle before you need to bring additional resources on board to help you. It shouldn't take very long to do a quick analysis.

KevinK · May 24, 2012

I'm confused...

You said you want to make money
Then you said you want to cap [your income]
Something about having to do something manually.

...it seems you don't have a system in place yet,
so test, test, test. Can you run multiple tests simultaneously?

pojokers · May 30, 2012

this stuff is always tricky. itll be best to cap your membership.

ChrisDouthit · May 31, 2012

You would have to figure out how much business you can do. Obvously if you can get lots of business hiring someone is going to be the better way to go. If business is not that large then doing it yourself might be better. I would start off doing it yourself and then if its too much work then worry about hiring someone.

How to manage a membership site with a small staff?

codexehow

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