Many of you may not know, but last year I turned my 'learn' page into a membership-only thing. Much of what exists there is available for free, but after a certain point - or rather, depending on what article you want to look at - you must login to view it. Logging in requires a paid membership. My hope was that it would be another way to earn a little bit of money and pay off my hosting bills. While I've had a few members sign up - mainly because I offered already subscribed readers a freebie in order to get the thing started - it's been mainly ignored by casual visitors. I've been running this for long enough to judge whether or not it would be taken up by readers, and I'm starting to think it was the wrong move.

What I'm wondering is if I should just make all this info available without becoming a member, or to have the info available once you become a member but that membership is free. To be honest, I don't mind at all having the info available for free, I'm just trying to maximise ways to earn money. There have been a few people who've been interested in paying for the membership, but for some reason all of them have had problems trying to pay, so I've guilted myself into giving them free access to make up for it.

Also, because of the high level of info on my site, it's been getting me a lot of good word-of-mouth promotion; a call last week about a commission came because someone had recommended me to them as an 'impeccable collection' (apparently to do with actually collecting puppets, but hey, I'll take it anyway). Frankly, having all the info there is doing more for me than paying for Google ads or a spot in the Yellow Pages ever would.

The other thing is, I'd really like to focus on selling certain types of puppets, but continue to develop a resource for other types of puppets on my site. That is: move all the non-selling puppets/patterns that I have and turn them into tutorials, which could be accessed elsewhere. I don't mind giving the info away for free, since they're not my type of puppets anyway (like, I'd happily have a marionette pattern for free, since they're not my favourite to build and I'm not planning on selling any). But then also contribute a few more patterns or tutorials that will encourage people to buy the products that I'll keep, since they have a 'test' version on the site for free. ... I hope that makes sense, I'm not quite sure what I mean sometimes.

I guess what I'm asking is: should I just have a free membership, should I just remove membership all together, or should I leave things the way they are? Again, my main concern here is in terms of making money, and I'm not sure having a forced registration is going to do anything but turn people away; in fact, I've noticed that many people click on a link at the bottom of the articles ("Want more? Help build a puppet") which takes them to a page about getting a membership. 99.99% of people either continue reading the free stuff or disappear altogether. To make a comparison, this link used to go directly to the shop, but that also resulted in little purchases. The only thing I know for sure is that people do want more, but that they're unlikely to take action on it.

On the one hand, I'm tempted to put a donation button on the site, but on the other hand, I'm just as sure that that won't result in donations either. (I'm reminded of something I read ages ago, which stated that it doesn't matter whether you want 1 cent or 10 000 from online customers: it's convincing them to hand over money at all which is the hard part)

Should I instead, be charging people to put ads on my site (not Google ads or any of those networks, that doesn't earn me anything)?

Over the past few weeks I've been coming more and more to the conclusion that I'm trying to hard to get people to come to me, as it were, and if I just let my site and the info that's there speak for itself; and if people want to buy stuff or hire me or whatever, then they can contact me. Does that make any sense?

    Perhaps I overthink this stuff, but I'm just trying to find the best path to profits   

My questions to you are... What do you want to make money from? Are you a puppeteer or internet entrepreneur?

My suggestion would be to focus on your puppets and puppet products and selling them.  Give the information away for free without any membership. This well attract people and help your SE ratings so that you get business for what you actually want to do.

Look at your site as advertising and marketing area.  Unless your hosting cost are really out of line with the norm it should still be about the best deal around for you as a puppeteer when you look at it from that angle.  There is no way you could get the same return with other types of advertising.

I agree that if you have an area of resources, instructionals, etc. then they should be open to easy access to potential customers visiting your site.  However, a thought is that if you have made puppet patterns and instructionals yourself, then perhaps you could turn those into a source for income while keeping other instructionals that you obtained elsewhere available for free viewing.

If visitors to your site want more information, then I say give it to them.... especially if it keeps them on your site longer. 

My two cents 

My questions to you are... What do you want to make money from? Are you a puppeteer or internet entrepreneur?

Oh most certainly puppets. I hate sitting at a computer all day and would much prefer sitting at my building desk. The issue is can I actually make more money from building the puppets than I can from the site. At this point, it's one and the same, since my site is getting me all of my sales 

My suggestion would be to focus on your puppets and puppet products and selling them.  Give the information away for free without any membership. This well attract people and help your SE ratings so that you get business for what you actually want to do. Look at your site as advertising and marketing area.  Unless your hosting cost are really out of line with the norm it should still be about the best deal around for you as a puppeteer when you look at it from that angle.  There is no way you could get the same return with other types of advertising.  

I quite agree. I think perhaps I'll keep the membership for the time being, but change it so that it's free to join. It also means that people then get access to using the forums pages, and ensures that the forums are kept relatively spam free. It also means that I can continue to add patterns without necessarily feeling like I'm giving it away for free. SEO is so far good, and of course could be improved, but frankly good SEO so far doesn't get a lot of sales. I must be missing some magic number that one in a billion billion sites get (like Facebook).

My hosting costs aren't astronomical (actually, I can resell some of it if I need to) considering the need to make it secure for sales, etc. But of course, any way to cover costs is good, especially when there's little else money coming in otherwise. I guess I'm just trying everything I can think of hoping to hit on that magic number.

... Funnily enough, I met with a puppeteer from Sydney today who asked me why I wasn't involved in the puppetry here. I replied with an old answer (I feel like I burned some bridges, but that was in '05 and really no one really remembers anymore but me) but when I thought about it on the way home I remembered the actual reason: I just like working for myself and don't particularly want to go through ten years of being an apprentice when I can do my own thing now. It's good and I like it, but leaves me open to issues like this, where I don't perhaps have the ability to bounce ideas of someone else who's involved in the same goal. (Also, it's kind of hard to figure out what works best on a website where visitors don't exactly leave suggestions)

However, a thought is that if you have made puppet patterns and instructionals yourself, then perhaps you could turn those into a source for income while keeping other instructionals that you obtained elsewhere available for free viewing.

I had thought of this, but as mentioned above, don't really want to sell some patterns. For instance, I have a very basic finger puppet pattern for sale at the moment, and haven't sold a single copy of it. I'm going to instead move it onto the 'learn' page and have it as a free download. The current tutorial on the site that's free is pretty crap, and this one is better, so in this case it might encourage more people to buy stuff since it's of better quality.

The other reason I want to keep a certain set of products for sale and some patterns for free is because some puppets I just don't want to work with. I mentioned marionettes before: marionettes are the most often searched puppet to build. On the one hand I'm compelled to sell something for the sake of filling the niche; on the other hand I don't want to force myself to build or provide something that I don't like making. Half the problem with having such a vast resource on my site is that then customers expect me to be able to supply products for sale for the whole range, and not just the type of puppet I want to specialise in. I've found it incredibly hard to be motivated to build certain things (which is why I provide patterns of muppets or parts for them, but not the puppets themselves; but then, those things sell, whereas other patterns I have for sale haven't) and so want to keep my product line within *my* needs rather than the needs of the huge potential customer base which mainly wants to buy Folkmanis puppets.

... [/end rant]  :P