Tag: membership

    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.

    Categories: Membership Tags: Tags:

    Membership Software That Works

    When you are deciding on technology for your membership site, it’s important to consider not only technology that works, but also technology that works for you in the way that you want it to work. What features do you want the membership software to have? What is your skill level with troubleshooting technology? Who will you hire if you don’t have the skills? There is a lot to think about when choosing membership software.

    1. NewRainmaker – This software is software as service (SAS), meaning it’s running from the cloud. You don’t do anything but set it up, kind of like you would WordPress. All the plugins and functionality that works best with membership sites are included, such as affiliate management, drip technology, and forums. This software includes a monthly fee for hosting, tech support and use of the software.

    Link – http://newrainmaker.com/

    2. aMember – This is an add-on to your current website. If you use WordPress it works very well with it. It also works with other types of website builders. It includes affiliate management, drip technology and more. You will need to purchase separate software to have a forum. They will install it for you for a fee and provide great support. It’s a one-time fee and upgrade fees yearly. You’ll have to pay extra for tech support if things go wrong.

    Link – http://www.amember.com/

    3. iGrOOps – This is another hosted solution where you pay a monthly fee for using the system. They provide all the upgrades, updates, and hosting. You simply use their template system to create your membership site. It has all the bells and whistles but it cannot be made to look like your current site.

    Link – http://www.igroops.com/

    4. EasyMemberPRO – They promise anyone can set up a membership site, and connect it with your current software quickly and easily. It also has a lot of what you need with a profitable membership site, including affiliate management. There’s a one-time fee with one year of free upgrades.

    Link – http://www.easymemberpro.com/

    5. WishList Member – This is a plugin that works with self-hosted WordPress websites, turning your current site into a membership site with all the bells and whistles except that if you want a forum you have to purchase software for the forum.

    Link – http://member.wishlistproducts.com/

    6. MemberGate – Another hosted solution with a monthly fee but one that offers every bell and whistle you can imagine from forums, to video hosting, to drip technology and more. The look is slightly dated for the choices of templates, but you can use your own coder working with them to change that if you want to spend the time and money.

    Link – http://www.membergate.com/

    7. ONTRAPORT – This is a very high-end solution (with a high-end price). But, if you plan to run a six-figure business, this is a great solution that offers managed membership without having to ever worry about technology. It will also work with your current WordPress website.

    Link – https://ontraport.com/features/

    8. SiteManPro – This is a great solution if you want to sell digital items and run a membership solution. You can use this to automate the entire thing. It can work with your current WordPress site. You will need to get separate forum software if you feel you need one. It integrates easily and works as it states.

    Link – http://www.sitemanpro.com/

    Remember to write down the features you want your membership site to offer, as well as to take into consideration your level of technological skill as you pick a membership software solution. It might cost a few dollars, but you can’t make any money if you don’t make a choice and get started.

    Categories: Grow a Home Business, membership Tags: Tags:

    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.

    Categories: Membership Tags: Tags:

    Planning Your Email Marketing

    Your best chance of success with email marketing is to create a plan based on the products that you want to promote. It all starts with your product funnel, which leads to your content marketing plan, which leads to your email marketing calendar. All email marketing should be focused toward promoting your products and/or services and that requires planning. The following steps will help you increase the results of your email marketing.

    Craft a Working Product Funnel – You probably already have various products and services, but you may not have designed a product funnel yet that helps you understand how everything is interconnected and works together. Understanding this can help you keep your different lists and promotions in order.

    Design Sales Pages for Each Product – Each page should tell your audience the benefits of purchasing the product. Remember a sales pages focus is on the audience, not on you. Benefits over features, always – pretend you are the client and answer all the questions and concerns they might have right on the sales page.

    Start Appropriate Email Lists for Each Product– Using your autoresponder, create the lists for each product or service that you will promote. At the minimum you will want a general email list for people who visit the front page of your blog and then two lists for each product you sell. Create one list for people who purchased the product and one list for people who just want more info about the particular product. Name them appropriately so that you know where to put the messages based from where the audience joins your list.

    Develop a New Product Launch Calendar – Knowing when each product is being launched for new upcoming products and or services will help you identify which lists you can include the announcements and information on. Plus, it will remind you to create new sales pages, lists, blog posts and email marketing messages for each new product.

    Create a Blog Post Publication Calendar – Based on the product launch calendar, write blog posts and set deadlines for them to be scheduled. Ensure that some blog posts promote the various sales pages, and other blog posts are designed for those who purchased already. For each message, consider who will see it and where they come from.

    Create a Social Media Content Publication Calendar – Develop social media messages in a series based on your blog posts that will attract your readers to click through to your sales pages and purchase or sign up for your email lists.

    Create an Email Publication Calendar – Based on how everything works together above, create a series of emails that you can edit appropriately for each separate list that you may want to promote the new product to. Load them into the right auto responders, ensuring they link to the right sales pages depending on the audience they are sent out to.

    Craft Follow-Up Messages – Don’t forget to craft all your follow-up messages too for each product that you sell. Once sold, you will want to keep in contact with the customer who bought it so that you can market future products and services to them.

    By creating a plan of action to follow, you can make sure every single time you launch a new product that you can cross-promote other products and services without bombarding your list too much with messages they don’t need, thus increasing your conversion rates exponentially. If all the content you create goes together like a puzzle to promote all of your products and services in a seamless way, it’ll be that much easier each time to set up for each new product.

    Categories: Email Subscribers, Grow a Home Business Tags: Tags:

    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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    Promote Memberships with Kindle Books

    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.

    Categories: Grow a Home Business, membership Tags: Tags:

    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.

    Categories: Membership Tags: Tags:

    Promoting Memberships with Small Reports

    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.

    Categories: Grow a Home Business, membership Tags: Tags:

    Developing Exclusive Content for Memberships

    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.

    Categories: Grow a Home Business, membership Tags: Tags:

    Eight Reasons Memberships Earn

    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.

    Categories: Grow a Home Business, membership Tags: Tags: