The way to really catch your membership on fire is to make it one that is mentioned a lot by others, and to make it popular through a published book. Kindle makes it easy to publish books. Anyone can write a book and publish it and have it live within a few days. Plus, your book doesn’t even have to be that long to promote it and publish it via Kindle.

* Teach Something to Your Audience – If you have a membership program, then that means you also have knowledge about something that other people want to know. You can write a book; it doesn’t have to be long. 30 or 40 pages is enough. Teach them something tangible that is related to your membership.

* Write a Book of Case Studies – If you have had the membership for a while, you can create an anthology of stories from the members with their permission. People will clamor to include their success story in a book. Just be sure to get a signed statement of permission to print, and you’re golden.

* Tell Them Multiple Ways to Find Solutions – In the book, don’t just include your membership as a solution. Include a variety of them, but mention your membership too. You don’t want the book to appear overtly promotional.

* Give Clear Examples of Success – Using your members as a source, include clear examples of people who have experienced success using the methods explained in the book. Even if they used these methods outside of the group environment, the important thing is that they used the methods.

* Let Your Book Stand on Its Own – Your book should not be a 40-page sales letter; it should be able to stand on its own as an interesting and informative book. The message should be clear in the book and they should not have to join the membership to get the whole story.

* Give Away Something Free – In order to get them interested in the membership, give away a free month of membership for purchasing the book. That will help keep an influx of new members so that your membership is active. Plus, if your membership is good, they’ll stick around longer.

* Start an Affiliate Program – If you want other people to promote your group in a book, it’s important to start an affiliate program. Your members will come up with book ideas all on their own, to promote your membership.

* Encourage Others to Promote in Their Books – Give the idea to your affiliates to write a book to promote the group. Encourage this by actively promoting authors who include your affiliate link and group mention in their book to your group.

Promoting memberships with books doesn’t have to be just your own memberships. If you are part of any group that has an affiliate program, you can write a book that includes the information about the membership, as long as it’s relevant to the topic of the book.

If you want to promote your own membership or someone else’s membership that you’re an affiliate of, you can do it in a lot of ways. You can write blog posts, reviews, eBooks, and share on social media, and so forth. But, you can also promote memberships using small reports. There are a lot of different ways to create small reports that are good to use in this way.

* Use PLR – Small reports are wonderful uses for PLR. PLR means private label rights. These are articles or other content that you can rewrite and reuse as if it’s your own. You can purchase PLR from a reputable company like AllPrivateLabelContent.com. You change them a bit, add your affiliate links, and you’re done.

* Combine New and PLR – Combine several types of PLR plus something new and relevant to your audience to create a report in which you place an affiliate link to the membership you’re trying to promote.

* Write Something New – Take one problem that people who may join the membership have, and either define it or solve it with the small report. Offer up the group as additional support to help them maintain their solution or solve more problems that they may have.

* Make Brandable Reports – Create a report that is designed for your affiliates to edit, make their own and brand with their affiliate links. Affiliates like promoting products that are easy to promote, and nothing makes it simpler than providing them with the raw materials to create their own report.

* Use Pictures, Facts and Stats – A good use for pictures, facts and statistics is to compile them into a small report that has pictures, graphics, and images. The more you can spell out the benefits of a solution, the more likely someone is to want to join a group. What better way than a small report with pie charts?

* Hire a Writer – If you don’t want to write the reports yourself, you can hire a contractor to write the reports for you. A short report is usually about 4000 to 4500 words long. You can usually hire someone from 12 dollars per page and up. So budget about 120 to 200 dollars for your short reports.

* Give Them Away – Use the report to give away for free. You don’t even have to collect an email address, since the report has links for the membership. More people are likely to download the report if they don’t have to give any information.

* Exchange Them for Email Addresses – Another way to do it is to give away the report for an email address. They’ll get the marketing inside the report, plus they’ll be signed up for your email list that is targeted to the people who downloaded the report.

* Encourage Sharing – When you are using a report to promote something like a membership, you want the people who download it to feel free to share it with everyone they know. If you make it interesting enough, and able to stand on its own enough, they will share it.

Promoting memberships with small reports is a very effective way to get people to come to your membership. You can give them a discount based on which report they are coming from, for example, whether from an affiliate or from you directly.

One of your first jobs when having a membership website is to keep it full of exclusive, relevant content. You might want to add a blog post each day, but only add eCourses each quarter, with a new white paper or report every month. If you’re not sure what type of content your membership needs, consider some of these.

* Exclusive Interviews – You can use Skype and a plugin called Pamela to record interviews. Or do them live as an event with Google Hangouts On Air, record them, and use them in the membership later. You’re killing two birds with one stone in this manner.

* Instructional Posts / Videos – Teaching your members to do something happens to be an important part of having a membership website. You can do instructional posts and videos and a combination of both. If you do any how to blog posts, you can also make a video out of it and vice versa.

* Case Studies – A case study is an important aspect of a membership site. It enables members to see stories of those who have succeeded with the methods or issues that your membership website is about. A case study can be written in the form of a report, or as an interview.

* Member Profiles – People love seeing profiles of others who are part of the group. You can have members fill out their own public profiles in text, but you can also encourage each member to make a short video about them to include.

* User Generated Content – One of the biggest driving factors in most membership websites is a group or community of some form such as a message board, or a private Facebook group. There are pros and cons of both. If you have a message board on your website, you own the content and always control it. If not, you don’t.

* Curated Content – All the content you share doesn’t have to be original. You can also include content that has been created by other people in the form of curation. A simple blog post that provides a short description of the content, why it’s relevant, and a link to the original content is a great way to share important curated content. Hint: Some affiliate programs allow you to link to any page of the website and get credit for sales.

* Infographics – An infographic is an excellent way to share important data with members in a way that is understandable. If you have any data-centric blog posts or articles, try turning that data into an infographic and put it with the text content to help increase understanding. If you make the infographics sharable (watermark them), you can even attract new members with them.

* Motivational Memes – People often join membership groups to commiserate with, and be motivated by, like-minded people. Creating a daily meme with a quote that is relevant can make members feel connected.

* White Papers – A white paper usually explains a hard concept to grasp with a lot of research and images. The paper describes the problem, and then recommends several solutions that are popular, including your solution which is highlighted more than the others.

* Courses – ECourses, or “drip” courses, are not that difficult to add to your membership website if you have the right software. These are courses that your members can sign up for which are included in membership, or can be offered at a discount to members over what you charge the public. You can host the courses yourself if you use aMember.com, rainmakerplatform.com or another membership option. You can also put them on a system like CourseCraft.net.

Creating new content on a regular basis is crucial to maintaining a profitable membership website that provides value to the members. The value of the content is what will encourage members to stick around. You don’t have to add massive content daily, but you should add something on a regular and planned basis.

Memberships are part of our everyday life even when we don’t realize it. It’s a business model most people are comfortable with. You can join memberships for massages, chiropractor care, medical practices, gyms and more. It’s obvious the concept is lucrative. But, how do memberships really earn and why?

1. People Love Feeling As If They Belong – Being part of a community of people who enjoy the same things you do is a very special feeling. They say birds of a feather flock together, and memberships prove this point over and over again. You can have a very small niche and still attract members in enough numbers to be profitable if you price the membership right.

2. You Offer Unique High Value Products – No membership is complete without at least monthly new products or services added to the membership to keep the members interested. The products need to add value to the consumer to the point that they say, “Wow, this is awesome.”

3. You Participate in the Forum Personally – The forum is the lifeblood of any membership website. Without a forum you will have very little opportunity to keep your audience excited to pay the membership fee month after month. Mostly, you should spend time on the forum every single day.

4. The Content Is Regularly Updated and of Exceptional Quality – Aside from products or services, the content that your members consume is important too. You need to update content daily with a blog post, plus contribute more content each month such as white papers, checklists and so forth.

5. You Know How to Over Deliver – It’s easy to get carried away with marketing words and make your audience feel as if they’re going to get more than they are. This is a huge mistake. Membership sites that make money deliver far more value than the person joining believes they’ll get.

6. Startup Costs Are Low – All you need to start a site is a way to make sales pages, landing pages, membership site software like aMember.com, and social media pages for the membership site, plus an email autoresponder and forum software like phpBB.com. You can install it all yourself or hire someone, and be up and running for $500 to $1500 dollars with monthly ongoing expenses between $100 and $500 dollars.

7. You Can Charge More People Less for Superior Value – The other attraction people have to memberships is that it is a way to spread the cost of resources over many different people. Something that might cost thousands a month for one-on-one work will now cost just a fraction of that when you spread that cost over many members.

8. You Offer Unannounced Extras – The real trick to memberships is keeping the consumer interested, and you can do that with unannounced extras that make your customer want to see what comes each month. Make these really special and super hyper-focused on the audience, and you’ll have a winning combination.

Earning money from membership sites is easier than other methods of earning money online, but you do have to continuously wow your audience to keep them interested, plus devote a fair amount of time to marketing the membership.

Creating a membership site is an exciting process, but it can be hard to think of what to include in your membership. Most memberships have similar offerings, and you should at least stick to the basics. But, don’t stop there. The more you can pack into your membership, the more in demand your membership will become.

1. Glossary – This could be a list of terms, as well as a list of resources for the members to better understand the terms used in the content, information products, videos, and forum. Let them know up front everything that you can.

2. Message Board – The most popular membership websites have a forum or message board for members to speak to each other as well as to the leaders and coaches who are running the membership site. It builds community, and some people will stay long past using the other resources just for the message board if it’s active.

3. Permanent and Temporary Content – You want both permanent and temporary content to continuously flow through the membership site. Some content should be around all the time and some should drip in based on where the person is in the membership. This will keep people at your membership and wondering what’s coming up next.

4. Videos – Including video is always a good thing in a membership site. Whether it’s a “how to” do something, interviews, courses, or something else, video always livens up a membership site. You can use PowerPoint and your own voice to product videos easily.

5. ECourses – Learning how to do something is a good reason to join a membership site and if you have a few courses that your members can get a certificate for finishing, all the better. It will make them want to stick around.

6. Information Products – At least once a month, include a full-fledged new information product for the membership to use and implement. Information products can include eBooks, video, eCourses, and more but can also be sold individually on their own outside of the membership.

7. Checklists – People love having checklists that they can follow along with to get things done. You can include checklists about how to use the membership as well as checklists about how to do something your niche wants to do. There are so many options for you to fill your membership with useful things for your audience.

8. You – The most important resource to include in your membership site is you. You must be directly involved with the forum, with making videos, with writing content and as a cheerleader for your members. That’s why they are joining, after all.

Filling your membership with useful and unique resources will become your goal and passion as your membership grows. You’ll get ideas directly from the members, so don’t worry. The important thing is to get started with a minimum and build as you go to make your membership more valuable with each passing month.

One of the ways to increase sales, spread brand awareness, and develop new ideas for products and services is to offer your audience an online community to become part of. By making yourself available to a community online, you can find out in advance what types of things your audience needs to solve their problems. Online communities will literally put you on the cutting edge with your community.

1. Facebook Groups – This is a great entry level, free way to start an online community. Start your community here and then invite them to more excusive paid memberships for an upgraded next level of community.

Link – http://www.facebookgroups.com/

2. AMember – This software enables you to set up members only communities, subscriptions, secure shopping carts, and more for your niche community. People like feeling protected from others and this is a safe way to start a private community.

Link – http://www.amember.com/

3. AWeber – It might seem odd for this to be included in community building but if you think about it, it makes complete sense. You need a way to communicate with a lot of people at once and AWeber is one of the best autoresponder services available for the money. You can send newsletters, email blasts and other information to members who sign up to get information.

Link – http://www.aweber.com/

4. vBulletin – This is forum software that offers either a self-hosted version or a cloud version, so that you can have a powerful and easy to run message board or forum for your audience to congregate and discuss issues in a members only setting.

Link – http://www.vbulletin.com/

5. WordPress – You can build a membership website using WordPress and some plugins like Paid Memberships Pro, or bulletin boards like bbPress, among others. While these are relatively simple, you may need some professional assistance ensuring security and the right server capacity.

Links:
WordPress – http://www.wordpress.org/
Paid Memberships Pro – https://wordpress.org/plugins/paid-memberships-pro/
bbPress – https://wordpress.org/plugins/bbpress/

6. Hoop.la – This is an all-in-one online solution for your online community. One really good thing about this is that it’s a hosted system that you own. However, it can be pricy for this full-featured online community software solution.

Link – http://www.hoop.la/

7. NationBuilder – This is an online community builder that is fully featured; you can charge a membership fee, email members, and more through one dashboard. This can act as your entire website without the need to integrate a lot of other software.

Link – http://nationbuilder.com/

8. SocialGO – This cloud-based community building software has the ability to create a forum and even charge for the membership to the group. It is full featured and reasonably priced.

Link – http://www.socialgo.com/

Building an online community is a great way to build relationships that will translate into referrals, true supporters and fans that will help you expand your business and keep your business running through the test of time.

Getting people to join your membership is only half the battle. Getting them to stay is the other half. The best way to do that is to offer exceptional value to them once they join. Some of the value you explained to them on your sales page where you mentioned the benefits, but some should be left as a surprise for after they’ve joined. Remember, the key to member retention is to under promise and over deliver.

1. Offer a Knowledge Base – A searchable knowledge base is an excellent way to provide value to your members. You can add to it over time, as questions are asked via email and on forums and in group message boards. Being able to have answers at their fingertips will keep them coming back.

2. Host Free Educational Videos – Within the knowledge base it will help if some of the more complex information is provided in video form. When you show people how to do something in this manner, they will want to come back and will therefore keep their memberships active. This is especially true if your videos are produced in as close to a professional manner as practical.

3. Host a Members Only Directory – People like doing business with other members, so if you can provide a members only directory that lists people’s websites, specialties, and offers, they will enjoy that benefit immensely.

4. Have Members Only Offers – When you have a membership, pushing out a new product to them first, with a huge discount, is another great members only offer that you can do on a regular basis. Not only that – it’s a great way to test out your new products.

5. Monthly Group Calls – It’s not hard to use a system like Free Conference Call to conduct a live call once a month or even more if you want. It’s amazing how something as simple as spending an hour on a phone call once a month will help with member retention.

Link to Free Conference Call – https://www.freeconferencecall.com/

6. Offer Specialty Groups – If you have a larger membership, breaking it down into specialty groups will help people stick around longer too, because they will feel catered to. You want each member of your group to feel special. A good idea is to have small, five-people “mastermind” groups, complete with weekly call and a special forum.

7. Host Members Only Events – Another great way to provide value to your members is to have members only events such as in-person events, meet-ups, and webinars. You can also use these to allow each member to invite one new person to help expand membership.

8. Offer Member JV Opportunities – People love working together with like-minded people. Provide them new ways to join together to make new offers, do new things, work together in ways they may not have thought about.

You can be assured that your members will be happy with their membership if you give them just a bit more than what they thought they would get. Fortunately, you’ll be able to actually interact with and ask your members via the message boards or other groups you form. So, it’ll be easy to give them more than they thought they were getting.

When you start a membership program you want to have a steady flow of new members entering the program at any given time. The average time someone stays in a membership program is usually 12 weeks or 3 months. Therefore, you need a constant stream of people coming into the membership to keep it full and active.

Members Only Referrals

One of the easiest ways to not only encourage people to stick around longer than 12 weeks but also to get new members, is to allow members to refer your group. Require people to stay a member to be able to refer the group and receive commissions. Offer a nice 50 to 60 percent recurring referral percentage to the members who refer others. This will keep them around longer, as well as get more members.

Affiliate Marketers

If you don’t want to allow only members to promote your group, you can let affiliate marketers promote it. But, you do want to choose the marketers carefully to ensure that they will use honest methods to promote your group. Provide graphics, blog posts, and other information to help them market your membership.

Make YouTube Videos

A good YouTube video can go viral. If you create a regular channel on YouTube that people like to watch, it is another means of promotion for your membership program. You don’t even have to mention the membership program other than at the end of the videos, and in the description bar. Ask people to share – this is a great way to get other people to promote your membership program.

Create Infographics

People love sharing infographics that give data that the audience needs to know. They also are more likely to share visual material than the same data in print or a blog post. The best way to start is to put the graphic on your social media networks. Ask your family and friends to share, and you’ll create momentum.

Provide Excellent Graphics

Other people are more likely to want to promote your membership group if you offer good material and graphics to help them promote it well. Memes, infographics, videos and more all offer everyone a good way to promote your membership program.

Personalized Webinars

A really good way to promote your membership group is to ask movers and shakers within the industry to host a webinar where you’ll be the guest. You will answer questions and then promote your membership at the end of the webinar.

Ask for Testimonials

The testimonials of others will help you promote your membership program, but it will also help other people promote your group. The more good things you can show people about your membership program, the better. The more good people see, the more they’ll want to help promote your membership.

Memberships are a lucrative way to create a new stream of income based on the niche you’re already involved in. You can provide your products and/or services in an entirely new way that guarantees regular and timely income.

Building an online community is an important way to build your business online. Online communities usually consist of an information area, members’ area with a message board, perhaps a chat room, and then some members only resources like a membership directory, checklists, white papers, eBooks and more.

* Determine What Technology You Will Use – One of the most important aspects of starting an online community is choosing which technology you will use to build it. There are many options to choose from. Base your choice on your technical knowledge, your budget, and what features you want the community to offer.

* Choose the Niche You’ll Focus On – It’s best if the online community you build is based on one target audience and not too widespread. Just like you focus on a niche with your business, focus on the same niche with the community.

* Create Content Specifically for the Community – Once you have a community it’s important that you create content specifically for that community on a regular basis. Consistency is the key to ensuring that you attract new members and keep the old members satisfied and interested.

* Invite New People on a Regular Basis – You want to have regular new members showing up because it keeps the group fresh and brings in new questions, thoughts, and conversation.

* Connect Your Community to Social Media – Social media is the best way to market your online community. You can even start with an online community first on Facebook with Facebook Groups.

* Be Engaging and Caring to Your Members – Your personality will show through if you participate on a regular basis in discussions with the community. Let them see how caring you are.

* Make It Easy for Others to Promote the Community – Start a referral club or an affiliate program that enables your community members to promote the group to others. Reward them for bringing in new members.

* Interview Members on a Regular Basis – A great way to add content to the community is to choose a special member each month to highlight and interview. You can do these interviews in podcast form and put them on iTunes as well, for another way to promote your community.

* Interview Experts in Your Niche – A great benefit for your community is to be able to learn from movers, shakers and other experts within your niche.

* Promote Members of the Community – Once in a while allow the members of the group to promote their offers by having a something like a yearly fire sale that enables them to benefit from the entire community sharing.

* Keep the Conversation Going – Don’t let the community die down. Keep the conversation going; ask for volunteers to monitor the group and to contribute to the content and discussion.

Building an online community can help you create an entire community of raving fans that are not only ready to purchase your current products but who will also stand in line to purchase your new products. They’ll also promote you to their friends, family and associates. It’s a wonderful way to get to know your audience better and to improve product development.