Residual Income Makers Starting a membership website is one of the best profit centers you can add to your business. Contrary to popular belief starting one doesn’t have to be hard. But if you want to maximize the benefits of your site you must avoid these five common mistakes. ————————– Visit a simple Membership Model [...]
The number one success factor for your membership website is finding and attracting enough visitors to your site so you can then convert them into customers. Want More ? Click to View The 5 Keys To A Thriving Membership [VIDEO] One thing that many online marketers are guilty of is chasing every new technique or [...]
One of the biggest challenges for owners of membership websites is the creation of quality content. It’s a huge stress that actually prevents most sites from even being created in the first place. But it doesn’t have to be. In fact, it can be easy to create top quality articles, videos and anything else [...]
Starting a membership website is one of the best profit centers you can add to your business. Contrary to popular belief starting one doesn’t have to be hard. But if you want to maximize the benefits of your site you must avoid these five common mistakes.
There are really two kinds of membership sites. The traditional one where you have people signup and they access the site through a password protected area where the site content is accessible. The problem with this type of site is that you have to continuously create new content. Usually 2-5 times per week!
Instead of starting a traditional type of site you should seriously consider an “Automatic Content” site. In short, this type of membership site is run on autopilot using an email autoresponder. You develop the content once and then the autoresponder takes care of the rest. These sites are easy to create and you can get them up and running very quickly.
Not Planning Ahead
No matter what kind of membership site you have another fatal mistake is not planning far enough ahead. You really need to plan your content at least three months in advance. If something new pops up its no problem. Just add it in. But most people struggle to keep customers active because their information gets stale. Plan ahead to avoid this mistake.
Providing Information That Can be Found Anywhere
Another major mistake membership site owners have is simply regurgitating the same information that can be found for free on other sites. Be sure to create unique information. The best way to do that is provide real world examples of how you solved the problem that you’re trying to help your members solve. That way your information is always unique.
Not Giving Enough Unadvertised Bonuses
Even if you have the best membership site ever it is always a good idea to over deliver by providing unadvertised bonuses. Everyone loves a free gift. Especially when that gift is something they can use to better their current situation.
Website traffic is the key success factor to any profitable online business. However, many membership site owners put all the hard work in creating their sites and not enough in generating traffic to it. Remember there are only three ways to bring traffic to your site.
You can buy it, borrow it and build it. My two favorites are creating joint venture partners to send emails to their lists and article marketing. In fact, article marketing is my ultimate favorite because it builds long lasting, consistent traffic. You can have piece of mind that your site will always get traffic with article marketing.
If you put a little effort into avoiding these common mistakes you can be sure that your next membership website will be a success.
The number one success factor for your membership website is finding and attracting enough visitors to your site so you can then convert them into customers.
Want More ? Click to View The 5 Keys To A Thriving Membership [VIDEO]
One thing that many online marketers are guilty of is chasing every new technique or strategy instead of choosing one and using it to generate results.
What I want to outline for you now is the exact step-by-step system I use to generate website traffic to my membership sites. You can use this plan for any marketing method you want. The important point is to follow it completely and not get sidetracked when something new comes out and promises you the world.
Here’s the system:
Step 1: Choose Your Marketing Method
For this example, let’s say you want to use article marketing to generate website traffic for your membership site. That’s it. Step one is done.
Step 2: Make a Plan
Next, you need to develop a plan that makes sense to you or one that works for someone else that you’ve learned. For example, my article marketing strategy is a minimum of 30 articles per membership site. Then I post these articles on the top ten article directories. Then I turn them into short videos and post them to the top ten video directories. The end result is a total of 600 articles and videos actively marketing my membership website!
I can do all this in less than 30 days and the results are fantastic. In fact, I have not had to create more than 30 articles to reach my goals. That allows me to focus on my next membership site. Perhaps it would benefit me to create more articles but it’s not part of my plan at this point. So I don’t do it. My current plan is working for me.
Whatever plan or strategy you want to employ is fine. It really doesn’t matter. You simply need to make a decision and stick with it. This leads us to the next step.
Step 3: Follow Your Plan
Now that you’ve made a plan the most important success factor is actually following it. Do everything you outlined. Don’t deviate from it until you do it for at least 30 days. Thirty days seems to be an acceptable time for testing a method to see how it works for you. But you will never know if it does work for you unless you commit to following your plan completely.
Step 4: Evaluate the Results
After you’ve given your plan a 100% effort its now time to evaluate the results. Did you reach your goals? What worked the best? How can the plan be improved? What changes need to be made, if any?
Once you give yourself an honest evaluation make the necessary changes and move on to the next step.
Step 5: Rinse and Repeat
The final step is to implement your new plan to build even more traffic to your site or to market a new site completely. The key here is to remain consistent with your marketing efforts. Don’t stop or give up. Keep on keepin’ on.
Any plan is better than no plan. Following any strategy is better than no strategy. Taking action is better than inaction. Even if your plan doesn’t produce your ideal results at least you’ll know that. You’ll be able to move on and develop a new and better strategy. But you have to follow these five steps to give yourself a fighting chance.
One of the biggest challenges for owners of membership websites is the creation of quality content. It’s a huge stress that actually prevents most sites from even being created in the first place.
But it doesn’t have to be. In fact, it can be easy to create top quality articles, videos and anything else you need by using what’s called “Content Helpers”.
Content helpers are words, sentences, questions, short phrases or anything else you use to get your mind working towards developing content.
Content helpers will help you overcome writers block. Any time you need to develop content for your membership site all you do is look at your list of content helpers and there will always be at least one idea that will pop in your head that you can use immediately to bring value to your members.
My favorite content helpers are fill-in-the-blank statements.
Simply use the below templates to generate ideas for your own membership website. Say the statements out loud, customize them for your market, and then answer them. You can turn them into articles, videos or audios for your members to use and benefit from. Try it and you’ll see how easy it is to create content very quickly.
Let’s look at some quick examples to get you started
1) The number one reason (insert target market) fail in (target market goal) is because (insert reason why they fail).
2) Three proven ways to (target market goal) are (insert solution).
3) The most important thing I always do to (target market goal) is (insert solution).
4) The biggest mistake for most (insert target market) is (insert mistake).
5) Three keys to choosing the right (target market goal) are (insert solution).
To begin building your own list of content helpers start a new swipe file and every time something pops in your head or you see something that can work for you, place it in your swipe file and over a short period of time you’ll have a tremendous asset for your online business.
You’ll never again have to worry about creating top quality content for your membership site. And that’s a good thing.
Next Step:
If I can show you how you can easily and quickly setup your own membership website in less than two days and set it up so you have actual paying customers giving you a nice residual income every single month would it be worth 10 minutes of your time?
If so, please go to www.YouCanStartAMembershipSite.com for a free video showing you the exact formula I personally use to create highly profitable membership sites very quickly.
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The one thing I always get asked about creating membership websites is how can I do it fast? In this article I’m going to show you the easiest, fastest and best way that I know and use every month to create profitable membership sites.
It really boils down to two areas or kinds of membership sites. One is much slower than the other. Hint: you’ll want to focus on the second one.
The first is called a traditional membership site. This is one where you have to regularly add and update content. Typically, the member’s area is secured through software that the member has to log into. Most of the time the software you need is expensive.
To keep your site fresh, updated and of high quality you have to go through the pain of continuously creating content for your site. For most sites you need to add content at least 2-3 times per week! As you can imagine, this can become very overwhelming.
This is not the model I recommend. Especially for newbie’s. The biggest reason why is because you need to have at least six-months worth of content already loaded into your site for new members to benefit. Imagine if someone joined your new site and there were only a few articles. The quality of your site would be perceived as very low.
The second and much easier way to run a membership website is by using an autoresponder to automatically generate the content for you.
This works by loading all of the content, usually in the form of lessons, into an autoresponder that sends an email each week containing the download link for the lesson. By using this membership model you eliminate the nightmare of having to consistently add content to your site.
One of the great things about this model is you can create a membership site for as long as you want. For example, if you have a product idea that will make for a great 12-week course then do that. If it can last for 52-weeks that’s even better!
Once the content is developed you never have to do it again. And once the lessons are loaded into the autoresponder you never have to mess with them. You literally have a business that runs on autopilot!
It gets even better. You can create this type of site in less than two days. Once you determine what your site will be based on all you need is one single lesson loaded into your autoresponder to be able to start marketing your site. Now that’s what I call fast!
You can certainly make a great online income using either membership site business models. But doesn’t it make sense to only have to create the content once and still get paid month after month?
A critical success factor for any online business is finding paying customers. This is especially true for paid membership sites because once you find a customer they are going to pay you month after month.
There is only one way to find customers for your online business. Generating website traffic.
Easy enough right? Not so fast. If it was easy to generate a ton of traffic to your membership site everyone would be doing it and making a ton of money. But it’s not easy.
However, it doesn’t have to be rocket science either. There are only three ways to drive traffic to your site. You can:
When you buy traffic most people think of pay-per-click advertising. For example, running ads on Google or Yahoo. This is probably the easiest and most effective way to buy traffic. The learning curve is pretty short and you can literally get ads up and running in a matter of hours.
This is one of the best ways to generate a lot of traffic quickly. You can partner with another website owner in your market or a non-competing market to send an email to their list promoting your membership website. Even if their list is not the biggest on the Internet it will still generate traffic quickly. Now imagine if their list is five or ten thousand!
Most people think of building traffic through Search Engine Optimization methods, SEO. This is of course one way you can do it. And you should do it. However, you must understand that it takes time and know-how to build traffic through SEO.
A quicker, and frankly the best way to build traffic to your paid membership site is by Article Marketing. By writing short, useful articles that help people solve a problem and then posting your articles on the Top Ten article directories, over time you can create an unbelievable amount of traffic to your site. And by doing article marketing on a consistent basis you will create an avalanche of traffic for months and years to come.
Currently I have three very success paid membership sites making me a full time income. The only methods I use to generate traffic is through Article Marketing and using a proprietary method to generate a minimum of twenty-five joint venture partners every time I launch a new site. Believe me, if I can do this you can to!
Although there are many benefits to having a membership site as an online business model, there are also some risks associated with it as is common with all types of business models. Here are a few of them and how to deal with them effectively:
1. Failure to Launch
One of the risks of launching a membership site is not enrolling enough people into the site to make it a viable and profitable proposition. There are various ways to reduce the risk of low enrollment and they mainly deal with tweaking your marketing strategy:
• Always do a pre-launch first-This will help you, your affiliates and your joint venture partners to spread the word around and gauge how much interest there is for your product. You can use pre-launch videos and free reports to explain what your site is about to potential prospects and get them to opt-in to your email list for early bird specials. These prelaunch activities will help you measure how much demand there will be for your membership site. If you notice there is low demand, then you can change your strategy to make it more effective.
• Enroll others to help you- the best way to avoid low enrollment is to open up your marketing activities to affiliates. By offering generous commission payouts and equipping them with the right promotional tools such as well-written and high converting sales pages, email letters, banners and videos, your affiliate army can rack up a large number of members on your behalf.
2. Members Opting Out
Another risk associated with membership sites is members cancelling their subscription to the site. Generally an opt-out rate of about 10% is accepted as the industry average, so don’t worry if a few of your members drop out as this is natural. However if you are having opt-out rates higher than 10%, you may want to consider improving the value of your content by paying attention to member feedback in the comments section of your blog, reading reviews about your membership site in other forums and sites, and asking your members what content they would like to see on the site. Another way to stem the tide of member fall out is to offer your members rewards, special deals and coupons. For example, if your site is about how to profit from social media, you can offer a free copy of an acclaimed social media course to the winner of a contest on your site.
There are many aspects to launching a membership site and it can often be a confusing task to get every little aspect just the way you would like it. Here is a checklist to keep handy so that you can keep on track as you develop your membership site.
1. Marketing Checklist
• Managing your Prelaunch Activities
• Managing your Affiliate program – affiliate management, tracking, payment of commissions, promotional tools etc
• Funneling sales prospects- landing page, free reports, opt-in forms
• Copywriting your sales landing page and email sales letters
• Managing your paid advertising methods such as Google Adwords, Facebook Ads and other media buying methods
• Email Marketing
2. Financial Checklist
• Calculating your membership fee pricing (cost vs. revenue analysis, break even point etc)
One of the business models available to internet marketers is the membership site business model. A membership site is a website that only allows paid members to access the information on the site. Members usually pay a monthly fee and use a membership password to get access to various types of content like articles, videos, trainings, software, books, music etc.
Here are some of the benefits of having your own membership site:
1. Financial Benefits
One of the greatest benefits of a membership site is having a continual income stream that you can depend on. While there will be always members who opt-out of your membership site, you can still have a predictable passive income from your site. Passive Income is the type of income that comes in on a regular basis without too much effort on your part, such as rental income from a property and membership sites are one way to earn passive income from an online business.
2. Professional Benefits
Membership sites are a great way to get paid for your specialized and advanced knowledge about a profession or personal hobby. People are willing to pay for content that is above and beyond the regular, rehashed internet content they usually receive and especially so if that content is from a renowned expert. Therefore membership sites provide a decent way for professionals to earn money online, compared to other methods that may not be the right fit for them.
3. Community Benefits
If you are mainly interested with working closely with a select group of people who have the same interests, values and dreams as yourself, membership sites help you create a forum with like-minded people. It gives you an opportunity to really concentrate on giving quality content and developing relationships with your members, without always trying to sell to them.
If you’ve been trying to make it as an Internet marketer for any length of time you clearly know that building your own membership site is one of the best revenue generating activities you can do for your business.
You work so hard finding customers to buy your ebook or other product one time. Why not put that hard work in finding those same customers to pay you every single month, month after month by providing them a paid membership site?
A huge myth out there is that building and maintaining a membership site is hard work. Its difficult to keep your site fresh with new, valuable content. You have to continuously come up with new information that will actually benefit your members and this causes a lot of stress and takes a lot of the fun out of owning your own profitable site.
This is a myth because that is only one way to start your own membership website. However, the second way is way easier, more fun to do and is proven to keep members far longer than traditional sites.
So what is this easier way? Building what’s called an “Automatic Content” membership site.
The reason it is called automatic is because you deliver your content at fixed intervals through an autoresponder. For example, you deliver your lessons every week for as long as you want via an autoresponder.
When customers sign up for your site they also signup to receive their weekly lessons delivered via email. You then simply input each lesson into the autoresponder and then it works automatically on autopilot.
When you create a membership site like this you eliminate the pain and pressure of continuously coming up with new content. You develop the content once and you’re done. After the content is created you never have to worry about it again. After the autoresponder series is created you never have to worry about it again. Talk about simple profits!
Some of the critics say that this method is not as strong as a traditional membership site. Frankly, I laugh in their face because this method is proven to work over and over again. And you can create as many of these paid sites as you want.
Create them once and then market them forever without having to touch them again. Now I don’t know about you but that’s how I like to make a living on the Internet.