What is a membership site? All scams?

What is a “membership site”? From my searches on this topic, it seems like “membership sites” are all a bunch of scams or semi scams. They seem to follow the exact same pattern:
1) start off with an introduction, then
2) an explanation about how YOU can make money, and finally,
3) a reminder to become a member and pay them $100 (or something)

In return, they may give you something, but whatever they give you is probably worth no more than 2 US dollars.
What is the deal with these “membership sites”? Is that basically an accurate summary of what they are? Why are there so many people blogging about it and making videos about it on youtube as if they know some kind of special secret, while in fact they seem to have absolutely NOTHING to offer.
On the other hand, it seems as if some of them are quite successful at getting lots of cash. Are they just good at fooling people into buying their “stuff”?

I used Yahoo Search with the words

membership site

and got a lot of links, just like you described. This link:

http://www.membershipsiteadvisor.com/

has this to say up front:

Are you passionate about a topic? Here’s how to turn it into your own paid membership website…

Want to sell online content with your own membership site? And earn ongoing recurring income from subscribers?

and so on and so on

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Sounds like a variation on blogging, where instead of trying to derive all income from advertising, they try also to get people to pay directly for more special information available only via membership.

It won’t work for long. That’s like trying to get people to pay to read a diary, or a social Web site like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc. Most people just aren’t that interesting to strangers.

Magazines and newspapers can’t make much money from online subscriptions, and they actually have content that people want to read, and the content changes every day!

It could also be considered a kind of MLM – Multi Level Marketing – where you have to recruit people who buy your stuff, who then recruit people to buy your stuff and their stuff. Eventually you run out of people to recruit.

Take a look at the Federal Trade Commission’s website, this link

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/tech/tec09.shtm

and scroll down to these two:

Multilevel Marketing Plans/ Pyramids

Business Opportunities
.

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