Expected conversion rate for membership sign-ups?

How many sign-ups should you expect for your membership program?

Memberships are all the rage lately. It used to be a complicated ordeal to create one but now there’s a hundred plugins/services out there catering to this latest money-making trend.

The problem is that many people are spending thousands of dollars to create their membership program only to get sad when they don’t get as many sign-ups as they thought they would have. Is it really failure? Or just unrealistic expectations of membership sign-up rates?

Here’s a realistic sign-up conversion rate for memberships:

• Targeted lists: anywhere from 1-10 out of 100.
• Untargeted lists: anywhere from 1 out of 1k-10k.

I would say that has reigned true in most of the membership sites I’ve worked with. It is really REALLY hard to get above 10% conversion rate and for most people, impossible to get even 1% conversion rate.

But should you really worry yourself with this?

In my opinion, no. Don’t worry about it. If you love what you do…keep chugging along and creating solutions, not business ideas and you’ll get those sign-ups in no time. But if all you care about is the dollar signs, then yeah, your “business” will fall apart just like all the others out there.

Oh btw, it does help to have really professional-grade web-design!