Tutoring Sites & Membership Sites can be used on their own or in combination, a Tutoring Site for the initial courses and a Membership Site for the ongoing services.
| Tutoring Sites | Membership Sites |
| Once-off fee for a specific course | Recurring fee for access to material |
| Make money | Provide a service |
| More work upfront | Less work upfront |
| Less work maintaining | More work maintaining |
| Higher buy-in – more difficult to sell | Lower buy-in – easier to sell |
| Low drop-out rate – payment upfront | High drop-out rate – loss of revenue |
| Start making money faster | Build a stable revenue over time |
| Requires constant advertising | Requires regular podcasts/webinars etc |
| Students can be tested – awarded qualifications | Source of reference as and when needed |
Membership Sites
This is used when you want clients to pay a single/recurring fee to have access to the course material. These sites require constant updates of course material, otherwise, students stop paying recurring fees. You have to continually get new students. They allow for good interaction with students, but this requires constantly putting out new material like podcasts, webinars, etc. People generally prefer once-off payments, so keeping recurring students subscribed takes a lot of work. They are better for material that students can refer to as and when the material is required. It’s a low buy-in, so it’s easier to make sales, but the drop-out rate is high. So you make less money.
Tutoring Sites
This used when you want to sell courses individually or as packages of individual courses and then test, grade, and give students a qualification when they have completed the course/s. The tutor can also receive and answer questions, put out notifications – which makes for good interaction with students. These are best for courses that generally require few/no updates. They are results-orientated, a step-by-step system. When the student achieves a result (passes a test/gets a qualification), they generally want to subscribe to more courses. You can charge more for these and you get paid upfront. These sites require little to no updating, once the course is built it can sell for years. But they do require more work upfront. You have to get the course structure and content right from the start. More difficult to sell as it requires better sales pitches to convince people to buy something that costs more, and it’s a once-off payment with a limited refund period. It requires ongoing advertising to keep people buying your courses.
Structure (for Membership & Tutoring)
I would warn against simply making the pdf documents available to download as these can then be shared which means you lose revenue.
