Membership Sites 101 Guide

Should Newbies Open Membership Sites?

Admin — Mon, 18 May 2009 09:49:46 +0000

Many internet marketers are advocating opening your own membership site. They talk about the recurring profits that can be made and the ease with which people can now open their own membership sites. While there are more software packages and platforms that will enable you to conquer the technical aspects of creating and maintaining your own membership site, there is an important consideration for newbies to think about before they open their own membership sites.

It is more likely for your membership site to be successful if you have some experience and reputation in your field or industry before deciding to open your own membership site. Complete newbies who open membership sites will likely not fare very well unless they can get many joint ventures and reputable people in that industry to advocate joining your site, and for complete newbies, that will be very difficult to accomplish. Respected experts in your industry will not promote just anyone who asks them to - it will take a major effort, especially regarding the membership site you are wanting to provide and your ability to deliver what you say you will in order for them to even consider promoting your membership site. Certainly a newbie’s lack of experience and lack of a reputation for providing past products/services will make experts hesitate to promote your site and its value. It is much easier to recruit members to your membership site by having a track record of providing quality value in
the past and being reliable in providing that value. Providing ebooks and smaller-cost products over a period of time will enable you to convince reputable people in your industry and your potential target market that your membership site will be around for the long-term and will provide good value to them, not just be “here today and gone tomorrow.” This will only increase your chances of having a successful membership site and residual income for the long-term.

For more information on membership sites, read “Membership Sites Made Easy: How to Cash In On Your Own Membership Site.”
http://membershipsites101guide.com

Free Limited Access

Admin — Thu, 14 May 2009 12:22:31 +0000

While there are some membership sites out there that offer free access to its members after they’ve submitted their names and email addresses, a greater number of membership sites are of the paid variety where you allow access to someone only after he/she has finished paying to access your site. However, it may be advantageous for you to offer limited free access to those prospects who are unsure whether they want to purchase access to your site’s contents or not.

You could offer free access to people considering purchasing access to your site by offering a temporary name and password (such as “free” and “trial, for example). This will allow them to check out some or all of the membership site’s contents without giving them the ability to download anything and/or see any specialized information. This way, people who are undecided will get a feel for what kind of value is within your membership site and whether they want to purchase access to it or not. If you provide high-quality, specialized information inside that you can’t find readily elsewhere, chances are that that free trial will give them the impetus to purchase access to your site.

It’s likely those prospects who turn into customers will spread the word around the Web about your membership site and the fact that you give out a free trial to those who are undecided about purchasing access to it, since this is not a commonly-used option among most membership sites. By providing this rare option, you are likely to boost your profits without risking the loss of any specialized information to people who haven’t paid for membership site access.

For more information on membership sites, check out “Membership Sites Made Easy: How to Cash In On Your Own Membership Site.”

http://membershipsites101guide.com

Squeeze Pages And Previewing Your Site

Admin — Sun, 10 May 2009 15:44:16 +0000

To convince people to join your membership site, you will likely have to contact them several times over a period of days or even weeks before they are willing to purchase access to your membership site. This is where autoresponders are so valuable, as they give you the ability to follow up with your prospects until they are ready to purchase access to your site.

However, in order to be able to utilize autoresponders and follow-up marketing, you need that all-important contact information. One effective way of getting that information is via squeeze pages.

Squeeze pages are web pages that will require the visitor to submit his/her contact information before he/she can proceed further on the site. One way you could utilize squeeze pages in your marketing strategy is to offer to give free access to select areas of your membership site in return for their submitting their name and email address.

After they have submitted their contact information (which your autoresponder has record of), they can take a free tour of your membership site. Of course, they won’t be able to download anything or access the forum, etc., but they’ll be able to get an idea of the information and value contained within.

Once you have the contact information in your autoresponder, you can send some follow-up messages recapping what your membership site is all about, what they thought about the tour, and the link to the membership site’s sales page so they can purchase access to the site.

For more information on follow-up marketing and membership sites, read “Membership Sites Made Easy: How to Cash In On Your Own Membership Site.”
http://membershipsites101guide.com

Social Networks And Your Membership Site

Admin — Wed, 06 May 2009 20:13:49 +0000

Creating and maintaining a profitable membership site for the long-term requires you gaining and keeping paying customers as subscribers to your membership site. Without keeping your current members and continually adding new members to your membership site, you won’t gain the profits and credibility you are expecting from having your own membership site. Therefore, you need to send much targeted traffic to your membership site’s sales page. The question is, how do you get that targeted traffic?

There are many effective ways to do this, but one of the most popular methods in recent years is by utilizing the social networking websites, such as MySpace and Facebook. These social networking sites involve people creating profile pages that identify who they are, what they like to do in their spare time, what occupation they are in, and other information that identifies who they are.

These sites will allow you to invite other people as “friends” and accept other people’s invitations to become their “friends.” You can often find many people who are in the same industry as you and who you had never heard of before. This can open up the possibilities of joint ventures and affiliate marketing opportunities with these people, since they are in the same or similar industries and are out to make their businesses more profitable as well.

Additionally, you’ll likely meet people on these sites who make up the target market you are looking for. By utilizing the features of the social networking sites, such as the blogs they allow you to post on and even the profile pages themselves, you can put up links to your membership site’s sales page so that people who read your profile page and/or your blog can check out your membership site offer and join up. An additional benefit in regards to the links you place on your profile page and/or blog is that they will be one-way links, which are more highly regarded by the search engine rankings when it comes to ranking your membership site in their listings.

For more information on social networking and membership sites, read “Membership Sites Made Easy: How to Cash In On Your Own Membership Site.”
http://membershipsites101guide.com

The Allure Of Residual Income

Admin — Sun, 03 May 2009 12:29:18 +0000

Many internet marketers have adopted the membership site model and incorporated it into their businesses. Some Internet marketers operate more than one membership site. Obviously, it is a very popular model, but why is this the case?

The answer mostly centers around the idea of residual income. Residual income is where your customers will pay you on a continuous basis for work that you mainly do once. In the case of a membership site, you do have to update the website with new fresh content, so it’s not exactly “work just once and get paid repeatedly,” but you don’t have to create another membership site from scratch or sell another product such as an ebook or software product in order to gain more income from the members of your site.

In the offline world, residual income often comes from being the owner of a property you rent out to tenants or if you have stock in a company, but whereas you have to pay money to repair any damage done to the property or risk losing profits if your stock goes down, with membership sites, you just have to maintain and increase the value your customers are receiving in order for them to remain members of your site and for them to keep paying you residual income. You continue to provide value and you’ll continue to get paid continuously. That is mainly why many Internet marketers are incorporating the membership site model into their businesses.

For more information on residual income and membership sites, check out “Membership Sites Made Easy: How to Cash In On Your Own Membership Site.”
http://membershipsites101guide.com

Keep The Interest

Admin — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 03:21:22 +0000

To gain the profits and credibility that can come from a successful membership site, you need to be able to maintain that membership site for many years. Without people who are willing to continuously pay for access, those profits and credibility won’t happen. To keep people from cancelling their subscriptions, you need to keep their interest in what you are offering.

There are many good ways to keep people’s interest in your membership site. Providing quality products for free as surprise bonuses is one good way of helping to keep people’s interest in your site. They’ll be afraid to cancel their subscriptions because they won’t want to miss any other surprises you may have in store for them.

Another good way of keeping people’s interest is to have contests among the members of your site. You could provide a contest based on how many new members they refer to your site or based on asking the most interesting or thought-provoking question in the forum, etc. You could provide cash, access to a special product, or provide free membership to your site for a month to the winner (i.e. send the person a refund via paypal or check to the winner of this contest).

It’s important to keep people’s interest in your site - surprises and contests are two great ways to convince people that your site is dynamic, not static.

For more information on membership sites, check out “Membership Sites Made Easy: How to Cash In On Your Own Membership Site.”
http://membershipsites101guide.com

Disadvantages Of A Membership Site

Admin — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 21:27:18 +0000

Many internet marketers are owners of membership sites. Many of those membership sites are profitable and have been for a lengthy period of time. Many Internet marketers are also advocating why you should open your own membership site. However, before you follow their advice, you should be aware of the disadvantages of having your own membership site.

Like virtually all business models, there are some disadvantages to membership sites that you should be made aware of before you decide opening your own membership site is right for you and your business. One disadvantage is that you need to constantly update the site with new information that pertains to your industry or niche. If you are unable to update the information inside your site on a regular basis, you will begin losing members, and consequently, recurring profits, which will make the membership site model much less attractive to you.

Therefore, if you (or a hired person in charge of running your membership site) are not able to devote enough time to finding new information and updating your membership site, you are likely better off not opening your own membership site because it will likely fail over the long-term.

A second disadvantage is that you will have to pay for sizable to significant resources to maintain the membership site and accommodate its growing membership. This means purchasing large amounts of web space and investing in reliable software platforms that can maintain and manage the membership site. This can be a bit pricey, especially for those who are relatively inexperienced at Internet marketing. You have to make sure you’re taking in enough profit to offset the cost and provide you with enough profit to make the membership model worthwhile for you and your business.

For more information on membership sites, check out “Membership Sites Made Easy: How to Cash In On Your Own Membership Site.”
http://membershipsites101guide.com

Why Are Membership Sites Profitable?

Admin — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 03:16:39 +0000

membership sites are becoming more common across the Internet on every imaginable topic or niche you can think of, from Internet marketing to dog grooming. Owners of these membership sites see the value and profitability of these sites, so much so that many of those owners have more than one membership site, each one of which enables the owner to gain residual income from the members of those sites.

This is the main reason why membership sites are profitable - they provide residual income to you, especially if your membership site is a “pay-to-access” site (i.e. members of that site have to pay a recurring fee to continuously access the site), though free membership sites can also provide recurring income if they join your opt-in list and you are able to sell to them over and over again.

Most experienced internet marketers know that the key to significant online profits is to get paid over and over again for work you do just once. Membership sites fit this criteria for the most part; while you do have to keep updating the website with new information about your topic or niche, the membership site can continue to endure for years as long as the software you use to create the membership site and take the recurring payments is solid and reliable. You don’t have to continuously create membership sites in order to make a recurring income from those members who wish to continue being members of that membership site.

For more information on membership sites, read “Membership Sites Made Easy: How to Cash In On Your Own Membership Site.”
http://membershipsites101guide.com

Sufficient Demand Is Needed

Admin — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 11:33:15 +0000

Creating and maintaining a profitable membership site can lead to great profits and increased reputation in your industry or niche. Of course, this is only if the membership site operates for a lengthy period of time and provides good value to its customers. As a result, you need to make sure your membership site does endure for the long-term if you want to receive those profits and increased reputation.

One surefire way of making sure your membership site is around for the long-term is to ensure you have enough demand for your membership site when it first opens. Many people who are inexperienced at Internet marketing will come up with what they themselves think is a great idea, create the membership site around that idea, then promote it to the world. They’re dismayed when they find that not many people sign up for their membership sites, often leading to them failing and the people operating them getting a bad reputation for not sustaining their membership sites.

Just like creating an ebook or software program that will be in demand, you need to make sure that your membership site is centered around a topic that people are interested in and will be interested in for the foreseeable future. This likely means that there will be continued developments and news about this idea for the foreseeable future. Internet marketing, computers, a national economy, politics, etc. - all these topics have the likelihood of enduring and being good topics to consider building membership sites around. Topics like typewriters and word processors are not as likely to be good topics to build membership sites around because those items only have limited standing in our societies today and will likely have less standing in our societies in the future.

For more information on membership sites, read “Membership Sites Made Easy: How to Cash In On Your Own Membership Site.”

Tags: marketing computers,

http://membershipsites101guide.com

Keeping Members’ Interest

Admin — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 01:37:15 +0000

When creating a profitable membership site, it’s important to consider what your members will find informative and useful, as this it what will keep them as happy, paying members of your site. Obviously, this is important to the continued success of your site, as well as continued profits and a growing positive reputation for you.

Therefore, you need to consider what your members will find informative in regards to what information they will expect to see at the membership site. You should update it consistently with news and information pertinent to that industry, information that will help them be more aware of trends in that industry and information that will help them make money in that industry.

It’s important to consider how that information will be presented to them, whether it should be in ebook format, article format, autoresponder format, etc. Perhaps it should be useful software products that they can utilize or even resell. You need to determine what will best fill the needs of your members. You may be asking, “How do I find out what my members need and want?” The simplest answer to that question is to “ask them what they want.” Have a contact email address or a fill-in form on the site that they can use to contact you with their suggestions and advice on what you can do to make your membership site more useful and valuable to them. After all, they are the ones who need to benefit from belonging to your site, so obviously, you should give them means to contact you and let you know what they want to see inside your membership site.

For more information on membership sites, read “Membership Sites Made Easy: How to Cash In On Your Own Membership Site.”

Tags: software products,

http://membershipsites101guide.com