Category: website

    Ten Ways to Promote Your Membership Program

    Once you have developed your membership program, the fun starts. The fun is promotion. If you want to attract enough potential members to earn a full-time living, you’ll need to figure out how many members that represents. For example, let’s assume you want to make 10,000 dollars per month from your membership program. This will cover all expenses and give you enough to live on each month.

    If you are charging $50.00 per month for members, this means you need only 200 paying members on a monthly basis. Since we know from research that most members drop out after three months, this means you’ll need to attract about 10,000 potential members to your website monthly though promotion activities, or about 334 per day.

    1. Study Your Target Audience – The more you can know about your audience, the better you can make your products and the easier it is to write and craft marketing materials that get results.

    2. Use Social Media – Use social media to promote your new membership by making a free group that you use to attract people and tease information about the membership to. You can also use PPC to promote on social media.

    3. Outstanding Landing Pages – Never skimp on your landing pages when it comes to membership websites. A great landing page can make all the difference to your audience and convert more visitors into members.

    4. Killer Sales Pages – If you plan to have affiliates, you need killer sales pages that convert visitors to members. If you aren’t sure how to make a great sales page, you can hire someone to do it for you.

    5. Content – You’ll need to produce a lot of content to promote your business, educate your audience, and inform and engage with your audience. You’ll need both content open to the public and content that requires a membership to get results.

    6. Guest Blogging – Get out of your comfort zone and blog on other people’s websites as a guest. Your authority quotient will go up, and your bio will help people find your membership website.

    7. Webinars and Teleseminars – Webinars and teleseminars offer a very high converting platform to membership site marketers. Offer one each month and get affiliates to promote it, and you’ll keep your membership site full.

    8. Send Out Press Releases – Don’t overlook the good old-fashioned press release as a great way to promote your membership. If you can frame it as a newsworthy story then you’re going to be more likely to get it published.

    9. On-Page and Off-Page SEO – This is an ongoing process that needs to be done for everything you do in terms of online marketing. On-page SEO covers content, headlines, keywords and more. Off-page SEO covers social media, guest posting and things you do off your website.

    10. Make YouTube Videos – A great off-page SEO way to get links and views for your website, YouTube videos are also a great way to give your audience deeper information about your membership.

    Building a membership site is not the only thing you need to do to be successful. You must promote the site and get members to sign up on a regular basis, month after month. One more way that you can use to promote your membership website is to form an affiliate program where you get people to promote the membership for you. This is a great way to get free marketing and move your website up on Google Search rank.

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    Types of Content You Can Send via Your Email List

    Many people get stuck trying to figure out what type of content to send their subscribers via email. But, today there really is no limit to the form in which the email can be sent, so you are less limited by the types. You can send videos, text, beautiful HTML newsletters and more. The types of emails you should be sending via your email list include all of the below but this list is not exhaustive. You should be able to get some ideas, though.

    1. Welcome Emails – You should always send a welcome email to explain to your audience what to expect from being on your email list. Tell them how often they’ll get messages from you, plus what type of messages they’ll get.

    2. Thank You Emails – Whenever someone signs up, or you have a huge response to an offer, send a thank you to the entire list. It will make those who took you up on the offer feel great and make those who didn’t more curious about the offer.

    3. ECourses – An email is a great way to send lessons about how to do something to your audience. You can make a series of emails that give tasks to them on things to do that ultimately leads them to a goal.

    4. Promotional Emails – While you do not want every email you send to be promotional in nature, you do want to promote; that’s how you’re going to earn money. Use the other emails as a way to build up to a promotional email.

    5. Announcements – If you have a new blog post, new video, new eCourse, new anything to offer your audience, or even some personal announcement to make about your life (when relevant), then you should send an announcement to your list.

    6. Newsletters – Having a regular weekly or monthly newsletter is an important component to having a profitable email list. There are many different things you can include in a newsletter, such as a reminder of other emails, blog posts, round-ups of information and so forth. All of these will work very well in a newsletter.

    7. Advice – If someone asks a question in person, in a coaching call, on a message board or email, sometimes you can turn it into a message to send out to your email list. Giving advice to everyone on your list about something will add a lot of value to the list members.

    8. Educational – One of the things you should do for your list members is to educate them on your niche, which is something they’re interested in. Tell them about problems and solutions that would be of interest to them.

    Sending a variety of types of emails via your email list, and in different forms, will keep your audience excited to open each email that you send to them. Pick a few of these types of emails to send to your audience. Test out how each one does in terms of getting opens, click-throughs, and results.

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    Why You Should Start a Membership Site

    As you create a successful online business, one of the ways to stop income disparity from getting in the way of your success is to start a continuity plan. A great way to get monthly continuity income is to start membership site. A membership site means that the public is blocked from the content available only to members who pay a fee to access the membership area.

    1. Develops Community and Builds Relationships – One way to earn more money online is to build a community and nurture relationships. What better way to do it than a private membership site with a forum that is not open to the entire internet?

    2. Makes Fans out of Your Customers – When you spend time in a forum with members, they will become more than customers. They will become your fans. This is an excellent opportunity for building a lucrative affiliate program.

    3. Gives You Deep Insight into Your Customers – By observing the things your customers talk about in the private forum, you can come up with new products that they’re basically asking for or showing a need for. They’ll feel as if you are reading their mind.

    4. Provides a Captive Audience for Testing – Before you put any products out to the world, you can test them on your members. They will give you feedback that will assist you with making needed changes before you put them out as individual products outside of the membership.

    5. Simple to Set Up and Easy to Maintain – Today, technology is a lot easier to use. Even a complete beginner can find the right technology to build a functional and lucrative membership site. If you can come up with just one new product a month and four blog posts, and commit to participating one hour a day in the forums, you’re set.

    6. Adds Value to All That You Do – Remember that you can sell each product you create individually too, outside of the membership. The membership will add value to every product that you create as a way for buyers to get assistance. You can charge for the membership, or you can throw it in free for large ticket product purchases.

    7. Add Life to Previous Products – If you already have several products that you’ve created in the past, you already have things to add to your membership site. This breathes new life into the old products. Update them a bit and put them into the pipeline, and you’ll be ready to go.

    8. Earn Reliable Income – Membership sites allow you to earn, once you get started, a relative consistent income. The lifetime of most memberships is about four months but if you market well, you’ll keep a consistent number so that your income is reliable.

    Membership sites are easy to set up, easy to run, and can provide a solution to producing regular and dependable income for your online business. If you have at least one product, and can produce regular content and products on a monthly basis for your niche, you can start a membership site today and have it up and running tomorrow.

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    14 Ways to Build Your Email Lists

    Building an email list is crucial to the survival and advancement of your business. It doesn’t matter if you have an online business or a bricks and mortar business; email marketing is an exceedingly effective form of marketing and should never be overlooked. It is, in fact, one of the most effective forms of marketing that has ever existed. Here are fourteen ways to build your email list.

    1. Create Value-Filled Content – While they won’t see the content until they subscribe and open the email, the content needs to be very well written, engaging, and relevant to the audience. You want them to love it so much that they keep opening and that they share your emails with their friends.

    2. Make Emails Sharable with Social Icons – It’s easy to add social icons to your email messages now, so be sure to do that. Add that to your email at the bottom, but also add a CTA asking your readers to share the email.

    3. Create Segmented Email Lists – The more focused each email list is, the more relevant the messages can be for the subscribers. By segmenting your lists when people make a purchase or click through to answer a CTA, you can make each email much more customized.

    4. Create a Lead Magnet – Some sort of incentive is very helpful for getting people to want to give up their email address. However, you should be very careful to make the incentive specific to your target market, to avoid visitors who just want the freebie and have no intention of ever buying anything.

    5. Create a Sign-Up on Facebook – Facebook is a great place to add an email sign-up form. You can create a CTA on Facebook easily, and people who will follow you on Facebook will likely want the information you have in your emails.

    6. Host a Contest – Contests can be a great way to get more people to sign up for your email list, especially if you run an affiliate contest on a product or service that you’re offering. In addition, you can give people a chance to win one of your books or products if they sign up, share, follow, and like.

    7. Create YouTube Videos – YouTube videos are a great way to attract more visitors. They have a lot of built-in viewers who search for things, so create short videos directed toward your audience.

    8. Use Creative Twitter Welcomes – You can get software to send automatic welcome messages to people who follow you on Twitter, like SocialOomph. While people complain about them, they’re still effective. Although if you are able to send personal welcome messages by hiring a virtual assistant, please do.

    Link to Social Oomph – https://www.socialoomph.com/

    9. Conduct Interviews – Find people who need to interview experts in your niche and pitch yourself as a guest. Most of the time when you are a guest you’re expected to bring with you an offer to their audience. This offer can require an email address to receive it.

    10. Host a Webinar – Webinars are on fire right now, and a great way to build an email list fast. Everyone who wants to attend the webinar has to sign up for your email list. People see personal webinars as valuable and are more willing to give up their email address for them.

    11. Find Joint Venture Partners – Partner up with others to do a multi-person webinar, or host another type of event such as an in-person event. When each of you promote to your own lists, it helps build all your lists.

    12. Publish a Book – A physical book or an eBook published via Kindle is a great way to get your name out there as an expert. The book can mention your email list and website too. You can even provide a special landing page for book buyers.

    13. Speak Offline – Host or become a speaker at offline events. This works especially well if you do have a physical book to show to people. If you have a good talk, you can get people clamoring to sign up for your list.

    14. Paid Promotions – Try using paid promotions on Facebook to collect email addresses, by giving away something free or requiring an email to watch all of a video.

    Using these methods will build your email list. You should do all of these methods (although not all at one time) over the course of your business to help build your email list. Keep building the list – never stop. Because the larger your email list, and the more targeted it is, the more successful you’ll be.

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    Ten Ways to Make Use of Online Communities

    Building an online community, and participating in online communities, is an important way to market your business online that is going to really take off  and beyond. The technology has become simpler, and anyone can start a community today. The trick is building it into a productive and valuable extension of your business.

    1. Start Your Own Community – If you have your own community focused on a certain niche, you will be able to control what happens and market yourself easier without having to follow anyone else’s rules.

    2. Release Limited Programs – If you release limited programs only to the group, they’ll feel as if they are special and unique and be more likely to give you a good testimonial and referral when the product goes live to the rest of the public.

    3. Ask Questions – Keep the discussion going by asking at least one question of the community every single day. Not only will it keep the community active for others who are just visiting for the first time, it will help people get to know you by seeing your name and face every day.

    4. Conduct Polls – Some online communities have a way to conduct a poll. This is where you ask a question but have set answers that they can choose from. It’s a great way to ask about your future products, such as, “Should I Name my Product X or Y?” By making them part of the creation they’ll be more likely to purchase.

    5. Have Weekly Twitter Parties – Choose a topic or goal for the week and ask the members of the community to participate in a Twitter party with prizes, special hashtags, and fun during the Twitter party.

    6. Plan a Monthly Webinar – Your community is the best place to tell about the monthly webinars and they are the ones you should invite to it. Plan it around a particular topic that is applicable to your niche.

    7. Promote Yourself Via Your Signature Line – It’s important to have a really well filled out profile as well as a good signature line that sends the members of the community to a special sales page just for them.

    8. Invite Others into the Community – Seek to selectively grow the group by inviting others who are interested in the same niche to the community. Keeping new members coming in on a regular basis is a way to keep the community fresh and active.

    9. Don’t Allow Anonymity – If you own the group, ensure that people are themselves and aren’t allowed to be anonymous. The reason is that if people are required to use their real name, they’ll be much less likely to be scammers and you need to keep your community safe.

    10. Become the Go-To Resource – Within the boundaries of your niche and subject matter, seek to be the go-to resource by always answering questions when they come up. In addition, start discussions and share content that relates to your niche.

    Using online communities to build relationships with other people is an important way to grow your business. This is because businesses that have longevity have always known that putting the customer at the center of everything is what works.

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    Nine Ways to Market Online via Email

    Email marketing is one of the most important and effective forms of marketing to ever be invented. The conversion rate for appropriate email approaches four to seven percent over time. That’s because a new client needs to see a brand seven to eight times before they trust it enough to buy something. Email is the perfect way to do that.

    1. Use the Right Software – There are many different types of email marketing software available but you need to read the fine print to be sure that you can do what you want to do with it. It’s safer to use a cloud-based service than one you use that is self-hosted, although those exist too. Both provide code for your subscription form.

    2. Autoresponder Series – No matter what else you do when it comes to online marketing, when someone gets on your list be sure to send them something no less often than weekly. Less than that and they’re going to forget about you, and they might even think you’re spamming them because they forgot. Set up triggered emails in the service to go out on a regular basis.

    3. ECourses – A great way to fill up your email marketing autoresponder is with an eCourse that delivers daily or weekly with information and assignments for your audience. This is not only a good way to teach them something but also a good way to suggest other products.

    4. Easy Recurring Content – Autoresponders offer the ability to set up easy recurring content that goes out on a triggered basis, either by actually setting a date or by setting an interval.

    5. ENewsletter – Some marketers use newsletters to send information to their audience. Newsletters are often larger and also available on the site in HTML so a subscriber can view them via email or on the site. A newsletter can go out monthly or more often. Be sure to tell your audience how often they’ll get the newsletter so they know what to expect.

    6. Craft Effective Headlines – It’s very important that headlines and subject lines be specific, keyword rich, and something the audience will want to open and see. Don’t be tricky or too cheeky as people don’t click through unless they know what’s inside.

    7. Personalize Email – Autoresponder technology allows you to personalize an email based on the information you’ve gathered from your audience. You can collect first name and email, and then you can send your email to, “Dear Sally,” instead of no one.

    8. Use Double Opt-In – It’s really important to use a double opt-in procedure. This means that the person subscribes at your website, then they agree that they subscribed via their email. Using this method offers proof if it ever comes up that you are not sending SPAM.

    9. Don’t Forget the CTA – When you send emails to anyone for any reason, you should include a call to action. It might be to share the newsletter with others, to like you on social media, to try out software you recommend or something else entirely.

    You simply cannot have a good online marketing plan if you don’t involve yourself with email marketing. In fact, everything else you do marketing wise should all lead back to building your email list. A targeted email list will enable you to give yourself a raise whenever you want one.

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    The Importance of Getting Involved

    When you join memberships, the most important thing you can do is to get involved. Getting involved means that you work to build relationships with the members of your group through the actions at meetings – as well as before, during and after. The importance cannot be overrated, because it’s an essential component that works well if you’re using memberships to advance your business.

    * You’re Not Selling – When you get involved in groups, it’s really not as much pressure as you might think. For one, you’re not supposed to sell anyone anything. You are simply getting to know different people, spreading your wings and letting people get to know you.

    * Building Relationships Is Vital – One of the best things you can do for your business is to get to know others, build relationships with them, and them with you. It’s great to get to know a lot of people so that you can be in their mind and they can be in yours when the need arises.

    * You’re Supposed to Network – When you go to network meetings and get involved, the thing is that you’re supposed to network; no one is turned off by your networking attempts. It’s not like going to a normal party where people are sticking around with their family or clique. Networking is designed for you to step up and do something.

    * It’s Good for You – Believe it or not, being involved with something outside of your own business directly is a very good thing to do. Being connected to a community is good for your health, both mentally and physically. Plus, you just can’t know enough people.

    * It Will Boost Your Business – It might not happen overnight, but the more people you know, and who know you as someone that gets involved and gets things done, the more business that will come your way.

    * It Builds Momentum – Sometimes you may think networking isn’t working, but what you do today will build on what you did yesterday and so forth. You will be happy in a year that you did the networking you did and that you got involved, because your life will be completely different and your business will feel as if it’s on autopilot.

    * Puts Experts at Your Fingertips – Not only will people refer you to work, you will be also able to refer others. Being a resource to others is an important role to play, because when you do good deeds for others then they will return the favor.

    * Puts You in the Mind of Your Audience – Just like you have experts at your fingertips due to your involvement in memberships, you are also going to be at the top of their mind if you get involved with the groups you join. They’ll see your example and they will like you and trust you to do what you say you’ll do.

    The importance of getting involved in any membership is vastly underrated. It doesn’t matter if you have an online or offline business, just step out of your four walls and communicate with others – both online and in person. Getting involved with memberships and your community will pay off exponentially.

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    What to Include in Your Email Newsletter?

    Knowing what to put in your email newsletter is as important as creating one. They say that the money is in your list, but if you don’t send out regular messages you’ll miss out on the additional income that an email newsletter can generate. It’s important not to over think each newsletter that you send out. Keep them simple, not too long, and always point the reader to something else such as something to buy, share or do.

    1. Tips and Tricks – It’s great to include a list of tips and tricks for your readers in your email newsletter. If you send out a daily newsletter, you could make once a week a list of ten tips or tricks to use that involves putting your services or products to their best use.

    2. Special Offers – You don’t have to send out a special offer every newsletter but if once a month or so you offer your newsletter subscribers an offer that no one else is getting just for being a subscriber, you’ll make them feel special. People love the feeling of membership and exclusivity.

    3. Engagement Opportunities – Give your newsletter subscribers an inside way to meet up with you, either through live meet-ups or online webinars. Having one webinar a quarter or more often is a great way to engage your newsletter subscribers. Google Hangouts is a great way to accomplish this. You can even offer Q&A’s.

    4. Early Bird Notices – Tell your list subscribers about new products before you announce them to the world. Giving them a few days to purchase at a discounted “early bird” rate is a great thing to include in your email newsletters.

    5. Feedback Questions – Using your email newsletter as a way to get feedback on potential new products or services is a great way to encourage engagement. You can do it via questionnaire or poll.

    6. Testimonials – Including a section for customer testimonials is a great way to recognize your clients as well as to provide social proof to newsletter subscribers who have not purchased from you yet.

    7. Share Buttons – Inviting your newsletter subscribers to share certain newsletters that don’t have exclusive material is a great way to improve your subscription rate, and will also make your current members feel included in your community.

    8. Legal Notifications – Every newsletter needs to include all legal notifications relevant to anti-spam laws. If you go with the most stringent laws, you’ll be sure to cover all your bases.

    9. Opt-Out Information – While this could be covered under legal notifications, it’s important that you include opt-out information that is easy to find in every single newsletter that you send out. Don’t be worried about subscribers unsubbing. It’s better to have a clean list of people who want to be there than a list full of people who resent getting your information.

    Ensure that you include a variety of different things in your email newsletter that are designed to get a response and you won’t be disappointed in the results. In addition to the nine items above, never forget to include a call to action (CTA) in each newsletter that you send out. Without a CTA there is no point to the newsletter. So, be clear about that before you start.

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    What to Look For in an Online Community

    If you want to join an online community rather than build your own, it’s important to look at several communities to ensure that you spend your money and/or time wisely before getting too involved. It’s pretty easy to tell quickly if a community is one you want to stay involved in if you know what to look for.

    * Uses Real Names – You don’t really want to waste time in a community where everyone is anonymous. You want to make real connections with real people with whom you can conduct business. When you are dealing with a lot of anonymous people that isn’t going to happen; instead you could end up scammed.

    * Has Active Discussions – The owner of the group should be working hard to ensure that discussions stay active and productive. If no one has started a new discussion in the last week other than to spam the group, it’s probably not a very good community.

    * Offers Plenty of Content – You want to be part of a community that offers informative content to the audience that is helpful to their business. If the content and information that is available is old and outdated, it might not be a community that you want to waste time on.

    * Has a Podcast – A really good addition to any online community is a podcast where the host interviews members and also experts in the niche. This keeps everything new and fresh for the members and keeps them coming back.

    * Community of Customers – The best community you can join is a community full of potential clients for you. For example if you’re an author’s VA you might want to join a community of authors.

    * Community of Colleagues – Alternatively, you might want to learn more about your niche by joining a community full of your actual competition. It can be very enlightening to learn from others who are doing what you are doing.

    * Notice Who Is Commenting – When a discussion starts, who is starting it and who is commenting on it? You may notice that the same people are always involved in the discussions. That is okay as long as the comments are well formed, intelligent, and there aren’t a lot of disagreements without someone checking the discussion.

    * How Many Blatant Ads Appear? – Some measure of promotion is okay because it’s their community that they started likely to promote themselves, but you want the promotions to be well thought out and not the only thing the community is about.

    * Do They Offer Live Events? – Webinars, teleseminars, Twitter parties, and even in-person live events speak to a well-organized and established online community that will continue to grow and thrive.

    Choosing an online community to become a regular part of is an important thing to consider, because it takes a lot of time and effort to create value from the experience. You don’t want to spend your time in the wrong place.

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    What Types of Free Gifts Can You Offer to Subscribers?

    The freebie is a popular way to entice a new subscriber to offer up their information so that you can put them on your email list. It’s still a great way to get someone to sign up. The important thing about a freebie is that it should be useful, valuable and of the same quality as the things you sell to your audience.

    If it’s a lesser value, they may not realize it and they will think this is an example of the type of work that you do and not buy your products or services. If you are serious about getting more clients, your freebie needs to be the example of what your audience expects. However, never make your free gift something that you have to produce separately for each person; that would be too difficult and take too long. You want it to ideally only cost you something to produce one time.

    EBooks – This is a great gift to give away, especially if you use one you normally sell so that it has a perceived value to the visitor. If it’s something you normally sell on your website or elsewhere, then the visitor feels a lot of incentive to get the free item.

    Software – If you create any type of downloadable tools, software, plugins, or apps or have permission through private label rights to use them as freebie giveaways and it’s something very useful for your audience, this is another really great free gift to give your subscribers. This works best if the freebie is something your audience can use in conjunction with your products or services.

    Reports – A report is just a short eBook that is more focused on solving one problem, instead of an overall “how to” like a book would be. If you had a website about vegetarianism, you could for instance offer a free pantry check sheet, conversion or substitution chart for your readers to use.

    Coupons – People do like getting discount coupons, so if you can offer your visitors a coupon code for signing up for your email list that is a great freebie to offer. Don’t discount your work too much, though, because that devalues what you do.

    Videos – Offering a video lesson or videos of a live event as a freebie is a great way to repurpose videos that you’ve made. Just load them up to deliver to the people who sign up for your list.

    Checklists – An awesome freebie to give your audience are checklists to use that you’ve tried and put together especially for them.

    Charts – There are all sorts of charts you can provide your audience depending on your niche.

    Bundles – You can put together a compilation of all of the above if you want to offer a really outstanding freebie to your list subscribers. This is a great way to give them an overall sampling of what you do well.

    Getting people to opt in and subscribe to your list is an important part of making your online business or the online marketing of your offline business successful. The money is still in the email list, no matter what other channels exist for marketing your business. Get your audience on your list and you can give yourself a raise whenever you want to.

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