Tag: membership

    Choosing Member Benefits

    When you create a membership website, you’ll need to determine what you’ll choose for membership benefits. The benefits you choose will vary depending upon your niche, your audience, and the cost of the membership. After all, if the price is higher and the number of members is limited, the member will expect much more than if the price is lower and more people are able to join.

    Some examples of member benefits might be:

    More Access to You

    You are probably the most important part of the membership website. People want to feel as if they can get direct help and advice from you. If you can promote more access to you as a benefit, then the members will appreciate that enormously – especially if you offer more expensive coaching to clients.

    Private Message Boards

    Feeling part of a close-knit community is a wonderful thing and a wonderful way to keep members wanting to pay their monthly membership fee. If you can keep the message boards busy, you can keep your members a lot happier. Promote a busy message board as a huge benefit.

    Learning

    People love consuming information products that teach them about a small aspect of their business, and you can provide continuous monthly products that help your members become more successful or happier (depending upon your niche). Information products can provide this benefit.

    Accountability

    You can offer your members the benefit of accountability by setting up goal-setting groups and forums. This is such a great aspect of membership websites that even the members themselves jump in to offer this to each other.

    Special Offers

    You don’t have to stop selling to your members just because they’re members; you can use the membership as a way to offer the members first chances at special offers, new programs, and more. They’ll appreciate being an insider, and you’ll get to test out new products on them first.

    Connections

    One of the many benefits of membership is the ability to find great connections that can become joint venture partners. Your members will benefit from being introduced to wonderful people with whom they can form partnerships and take their goal setting to the next level.

    And More

    There are so many benefits that you can promote that should be based on the niche, your audience and their needs. Always put the needs of your audience first. And remember, you can start with a few benefits and then add to them as you go. Nothing has to be perfect from the get-go.

    Membership websites are full of benefits for their members. Which benefits you choose to put into place is completely dependent on your knowledge of the niche, as well as what the audience needs and feels are important.

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    How to Build an Online Community

    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.

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

    Content for Your Membership Program

    One of the most important things you need to make your membership program successful is an enormous amount of content. The content cannot just be any old content either; it must be relevant, focused, and high quality to meet the standards of a membership website. However, there are simple ways to find all this content and make it work.

    * PLR – Private label rights content is a great way to find plenty of content to use in your membership website. You can find all kinds of PLR, from eCourses to full-fledged packages that cover all aspects of a particular niche. The key with using PLR is to rewrite it and change it up to make it your own. A great place to get PLR is All Private Label Content.

    Link – http://allprivatelabelcontent.com/

    * Videos – Making videos doesn’t have to be that hard; you don’t even have to appear in the video if you don’t want to. Record your desktop doing something that you want to teach your members to do. Record an interview, or post videos members made. You can also hire people on Fiverr.com to make explainer videos for you, or use a service like YumYumVideos.com.

    * Reports – A report is really a small eBook that talks about one specific problem or issue and how to solve it, or it can be an overview of many problems with links to solutions for each problem. It’s up to you how you might want to do reports. But you’ll need to have them for your membership website.

    * Infographics – An infographic is a pictorial depiction of data that is hard to explain with words. Usually infographics are quite in depth and long. You can use a service like Piktochart.com to help you create awesome infographics. All you need is the data.

    * Podcasts – A podcast is an audio recording for the net. It is a lot like a radio show that is just not live. You can record interviews using software like Audacity or Pamela for Skype to create your podcast. You can hire someone in Fiverr to make a wonderful promo opening for your podcast and sell advertising spots too.

    Links:
    Audacity – http://web.audacityteam.org/
    Pamela for Skype – http://www.pamela.biz/en/

    * Webinars – You might not think of webinars as content right off the bat, but it is. Plus it’s an easy way to get more content for your use on your membership website. Spend an hour a month having a Google Hangout that you record. Transcribe it, repurpose it, and use it multiple times.

    * Teleseminars – A really great way to produce more content is a teleseminar. You can do teleseminars simply with software like Instantteleseminars.com and what’s more is that they can play again as “live” anytime you want.

    * Event Information – Whenever you have a podcast, webinar, teleseminar or other event, you can promote information about the event to your membership. This event is a great way to use the words that get attention from your audience, as well as to get new members. When you say members go to the event free and non-members have to pay, you’ll get attention.

    * Memes – A great type of content to use on social media are images with quotes or data that you find interesting and that your audience will find useful. Add a compelling graphic with the quote and you have a winning meme that might go viral. Be sure to watermark it. You can create memes easily using Canva.com.

    * Research Data – To develop enough content for your membership website, you’ll need to continuously research data about your niche. You can report on that data in a straightforward way, and then you can use bits and pieces of the data to create even more content.

    * Presentations – Using PowerPoint and SlideShare.net you can create slide shows about any topic with research to back it up. Don’t forget that you can repurpose a slide show or presentation into a podcast or a report.

    All of this is content that will improve your membership website. Having a mixture of content types is going to make your membership website a lot more interesting to members, and make members more likely to stay connected and renew their membership each month.

    Categories: Membership Tags: Tags:

    How to Charge for Your Membership

    Once you’ve decided to create a membership, one of the things you’ll need to determine is the price. How you price your membership is very important. You can turn away or bring in the right market based on the price. Price in and of itself doesn’t always indicate value, though; that’s for the members to determine. What you need to do is figure out what you want to charge based on the type of value and the number of members you want to attract.

    Limited Memberships Mean Higher Fees

    If you have a limited membership where you only let a certain number of people in the group at any given time, then your fee structure will be based on that. Figure out the time and effort the membership will take from you, how much you want to earn each month, and then use that information to determine the monthly fee.

    For example, let’s say you’ve created a membership that you’re only going to allow ten people to join. In this membership you allow open office hours, a one-hour personal call each week, unlimited email interaction, a weekly teleseminar, and a monthly webinar on a topic of interest to the group. Plus, you have a private Facebook group for members current and past only.

    You can go by the time it takes you to conduct all this work, or you can instead just determine how much you need and want to make. Let’s say you’ve decided you want to earn $100K a year with the membership. With only ten paying members allowed at any given time, you’ll need to charge about 833 dollars a month to each paying member to earn $100K a year.

    Here’s the math: Desired earnings 100K a year / 10 Members = 10,000K /12 Months = $833 per month, per member.

    Unlimited Members Means Lower Fees

    With unlimited members allowed, you won’t have time for the one-on-one work, so it’ll be hands off other than interaction in a private forum. So, let’s say your membership offers a learning center, with a new course added each month that relates to the niche, plus a group coaching forum. Through the membership you’ll offer other opportunities, but they’ll all be group format and no one-on-one activity. For example, you may offer a teleseminar monthly on a topic, as well as early intro to new products and services.

    In this case, you need to find out how many potential customers you can attract to meet your goal of $100K a year. If the market has one million people in it, how many of those can you convert to paying subscribers? At $27.97 a month you’ll need about 298 members to meet the $100K a year goal.

    You’ll need to study whether it’s a possibility or not. If not, you may have to raise or lower the price to ensure that you attract the right amount of regular members to the membership. Here are some examples of how it might break down.

    Goal $100K a year:

    * 418 Members @ $19.97 a Month
    * 298 Members @ $27.97 a Month
    * 174 Members @ $47.97 a Month

    You’ll need to also keep in mind the payout to affiliates, marketing, advertising and so forth, but this gives you a general idea of what to consider when pricing your membership for best results. It always starts with your goal, big or small group, and your audience. How many of them are there, and how many can you attract and keep happy?

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    Awesome Software for Memberships

    One of the things you’ll need to figure out when you decide to start a membership site is how you’ll run the technology. Thankfully, today there are many options available at your fingertips for running your membership website.

    Before you even look at membership software, though, write down the features you want it to have and the budget you’ve set for the software. In addition, consider your technological background and how much it will cost you to get professional assistance if you need it for any of the software mentioned.

    * JigsawBox.com – This software is mostly directed towards coaches, offering a lot of features that will benefit coaches like drip content, eCourses, integration with autoresponders and so forth. This is a cloud-based service so you don’t have to worry about the technology; you just have to set it up and start collecting revenue.

    * aMember.com – This is a plugin for WordPress that works very well and is very popular with online marketing experts who have membership websites. The software turns your WordPress site into a membership site and an affiliate program. You would need to purchase separate forum software if you wanted a forum.

    * Wishlist Member Plugins (http://wishlistmemberplugins.net) – Another plugin for WordPress, this turns your site into a membership website and it integrates with PayPal, JVZoo, ClickBank and other payment processors. It also integrates with ONTRAPORT and Maropost and other autoresponders. With this membership software you can do everything that you need to run a great membership site.

    * iGrOOps.com – Another cloud-based solution that has an enormous amount of features, from message boards, to drip content, to meetings and more. It’s exhaustive but can also be confusing and look oddly old-fashioned compared to a WordPress-driven membership site.

    * Rainmaker Platform (http://rainmakerplatform.com/) – Built by the people at Copyblogger, this is an expensive option. However, it does a lot and comes with Copyblogger Authority membership. Run from a WordPress platform, they handle hosting, all the technology and more for you.

    * SocialGO.com – A cloud-based solution that seeks to help you build a social based website, this can work as a membership site if you pick the classic version. However, it might not be responsive and has some limitations over some of the others. It also has some pluses which is that it’s simple to use and implement and get started.

    * EasyMemberPro.com – Affiliate program, forums and more are all yours with this software. It really is as easy as they say to set it up. Plus you can integrate it with WordPress and more. If you’re more advanced technologically, you can get a lot out of using this software.

    * MemberPress.com – Integrates with WordPress as a plugin to build WordPress-based membership websites. You’ll gain control over who sees your content. It enables sales of digital products securely and accepts payments right on your website.

    * MemberGate.com – This full-featured software is amazing and has so many features – from an affiliate program, to a shopping cart, to podcasting, to forums and more. There really isn’t anything this software cannot do and the support is incredible. Once again the website templates look a little outdated, but they all work well.

    Memberships are lucrative, but you need to choose the right software for your needs. Consider your budget, how many members you want to attract, how much you plan to charge members, what you want to include in the membership website and more, as you pick and choose which software is right for your membership.

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    How to Choose the Right Membership to Join

    One way to move your business to the next level is to join inner circles, mastermind groups, and other types of memberships. These groups help you make contact with people who may want to use your services or buy your products. Or they might simply offer a “water cooler” type environment to help you socially and educationally.

    It can be difficult to know which memberships you should join. Here are a few tips to point you in the right direction.

    * Know Why You Are Joining the Membership – There are a variety of reasons why you may want to join a membership. Sometimes that reason is to find new clients, and sometimes that reason is to expand your network of colleagues. This is something often done by people who work from home and also who work at jobs such as an association of bookkeepers or a networking group that comprises only one member from each industry. Which kind you want to join is something you need to be clear about.

    * Ensure That the Group’s Mission Aligns with Your Values – Check out the membership materials to ensure that the group’s mission fits in with your own ideas and values. There are many mastermind groups and memberships that will not, but there are some that will be right on the mark. Being in a group that’s on the mark is going to be more beneficial to you because you’re going to be proud to be part of the group.

    * Make Certain That They Are Active Memberships – If you can get a trial membership, that’s a good way to check it out before joining. You want to make sure that the members are active and that they are really doing things. There are many memberships where people just join to get on a list, but that’s not going to serve you very well. Make sure you’re involved with a membership that is active.

    * Determine What the Member Perks Are – Every group and membership has some sort of benefits and perks for joining. For some it’s educational opportunities, for others it’s a social type benefit such as weekly luncheons. There are even some that offer less expensive liability insurance or health insurance, depending on the state you’re in and the rules. Check out the benefits and perks as you narrow down your choices.

    * Make Sure It’s in Your Budget – When it comes to your business, joining a membership is tax deductable as a business expense. However, you want to make sure that you get a return on your investment. Think about the cost of the membership, what benefits you should get out of it, and whether or not that helps your business and bottom line.

    * Talk to Current Members – Interviewing members is a great idea because you can find out what they think about the membership. Ask them the right questions, such as what they have got out of the membership this year in terms of return on investment. Ask them how involved they are.

    * Talk to Past Members – If you can talk to people who used to be members and aren’t any longer, then that’s really great. Ask them why they left; it might be due to being too busy to be involved or some other reason, and the membership may still be wonderful.

    * Consider Whether You Will Truly Participate – There is no real point in joining a membership if you’re not going to participate, because only in participation will you get the benefit of the membership. Joining in and volunteering is how you’ll prove your trustworthiness and abilities.

    A membership is a wonderful way to gain knowledge, make connections, and boost your business. But, you have to choose the right type of membership for your goal, plus remember that you must dive in and participate to get the results that you want to get.

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    Starting a Mastermind Group

    A mastermind group is a small group of people who share information, education, and support. As an expert in your niche, starting a mastermind group is a lucrative and promising venture. If you have a good following already, starting a mastermind group is almost a sure thing. But, if you are not quite established you can still start one; it will just take more work to get members.

    * Understand the Purpose – If the purpose of your group is to earn revenue while helping others, establish that from the start. Otherwise you can easily start small mastermind groups on Facebook for free. Setting everything up from the start with a vision for what you want your mastermind group to be like is essential.

    * Set Goals for the Group – What do you want to accomplish with the group and what do you hope individual group members will accomplish? These goals will directly determine the type of content you’ll need for your mastermind group, plus even dictate the potential platform you may need to use.

    * Narrow Down the Target Audience – Try not to reach too far with the audience in terms of the mastermind group. Casting a wide blanket will just cause confusion. A mastermind group by definition is a small group of like-minded people sharing resources and information.

    * Establish Rules and Procedures – When you set up the group, you want to establish strict rules and procedures to ensure that the group works together to reach the common goals. If no one in the group understands the expectations and standards, then you may not have much participation.

    * Set Limits – Don’t open your group up to an unlimited membership. If it grows too large, it will be difficult to have a real mastermind situation. The number of members you can handle will depend on your platform and what you plan to do personally for the group. Remember not to bite off more than you can chew.

    * Decide Your Platform – Depending on your goals you can pick different platforms of delivery, such as NewRainMaker.com or aMember.com. Or if you want to offer the group free, you could use Facebook’s private groups feature.

    * Get the Ball Rolling – Once you set it up, get the ball rolling by planning some promotions like a blog tour, pay-per-click ads, and free giveaways, up until the day of launch. Blog about it, talk about it, and bring it up when you can. Give a sneak peak to super affiliates.

    * Promote Your Group – Once it’s established, even when your group is full you should actively promote it. In this way, you will always have a list of people who want to be in the group at your fingertips so that it will never be empty.

    Mastermind groups are wonderful for getting support and giving support. But as the leader of the group, the resident expert, you will be relied upon to provide direction for the mastermind group. Take it seriously, and remember to cover the areas that will interest your members most, depending on your audience.

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    How to Determine the Cost of Your Membership Site

    One of the most important aspects of starting a membership site is to determine how much the membership will cost members. Like with any product, there are many factors that go into pricing – issues such as the cost of the technology, cost of the products, time spent on the membership each month, the number of members you believe you can keep, and the profit you need to earn. Let’s look more deeply into these issues.

    * Cost of Technology – First, figure out what technology you plan to use for the membership. Include the cost of upgrading and maintenance, and everything that may need to be paid for to keep the membership going in terms of the technology.

    * Cost of Products – How much will it cost you to maintain your commitment to fill the membership with content? For example, if you’ve promised a full information product monthly to do with this niche, how much will it cost to produce?

    * Time Factor – How much time do you plan to commit to the membership each week and what is your time worth? For example, if it’s going to take a couple of hours a day, you need to count that in the cost.

    * Membership Equilibrium – How many members do you think you can get? Your audience may consist of thousands of people, but thousands aren’t going to join or stay members. More than likely 2 to 5 percent of your audience will join if the price is right. Most will only stay paying members for four months.

    * Profit Desired – After expenses, how much do you need to earn? Will this be your main source of income? If you know that it will be, and you know that after expenses you’d like to make $2500 a month from the membership, this will get you closer to the right pricing point.

    * Audience’s Ability to Pay – Your niche audience has an income and you need to know that information, including how much income they can spare to spend on something like your membership.

    * The Value You’re Offering – Even when people think they cannot afford something, if it offers a lot of value, they’ll come up with the money.

    * Your Niche’s Popularity – If your niche is super popular, and there are many other people doing the same thing, you may need to consider how you can differentiate yourself. But, if it’s really popular, that means more people to join your membership too.

    * The Competition – Is anyone offering the same thing you’re offering? If so, how much are they charging and how busy are they? If you can spare the money, join a few of your competitors’ membership programs to find out how it’s working for them and how you can do it better.

    Pricing the membership program you’re offering has many factors involved, but you’ll be really glad you gave it thought before just slapping any price on it. Consider all factors, including your competition, and you’ll get started off on the right foot. Remember, you can always raise or cut prices based on what happens after your grand opening.

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    Software to Help Deliver Your Course

    When it comes to eCourses there are many ways to deliver the course. You can do it yourself on your own website using a password protected page, through email autoresponder like AWeber, or through other methods. Let’s go over a few of those methods to familiarize you with the multitude of ways that you can deliver your course.

    * Udemy – You can build a course, and then earn a percentage of sales, through using a third party system like Udemy. Your course has to be approved, and they have high standards of what is included and how you do it. For example, using the method requires a certain percentage of your course to be in video format.

    Link – https://www.udemy.com/

    * AWeber – You can deliver your course through email using an autoresponder like AWeber. Simply use a password to protect each page that has the download on it, and use a payment gateway like PayPal first.

    Link – http://www.aweber.com/

    * aMember – This is a great way to deliver your course. You can have them pay using the system, then sign up for a list. You use the list to remind them about the pages to allow them to download your course.

    Link – https://www.amember.com/

    * InstaMember – This membership site software helps you build a page that is members only so that they can get courses delivered to them. This is a WordPress plugin; the biggest drawback is you cannot drip the content.

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

    * MindFlash – This is an LMS system that allows you to accept payments, teach courses via mobile, social media, and more. You don’t need a website or a system to use this. It’s an all-in-one course delivery service.

    Link – https://www.mindflash.com/

    * LearnDash – This is an LMS plugin for WordPress that you can use to host your own learning management system easily to drip feed your courses to your audience. This is one of the easier options if you have a WordPress website.

    Link – http://www.learndash.com/

    * CouseCraft.net – This is a hosted system that will allow you to create and deliver your course without having to set up a system yourself. It’s simple to use, the price is fair, and it’s free to get started. Try it out.

    Link – https://coursecraft.net/

    * Academy of Mine – This is a cloud-based system that allows you to upload your course. You can even start an entire school and conduct live streaming courses if desired. This software has features you may not need that are very advanced, including affiliate program, multiple teachers and more.

    Link – https://www.academyofmine.com/

    However you decide to set up your course, it’s important to ensure that you have the right payment gateways that your audience wants to use. In most cases, most people who buy courses on line like to pay via credit card or PayPal. So, you’ll need a professional account in order to accept payment.

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    How to Get Volunteers to Help

    A really exciting aspect of memberships is that you can actually get free help. This is super important when first starting out, because you don’t want your membership website to seem barren and void of conversation and connection – especially in the discussion group.

    * Look to Your Audience – If you already have an audience that you’re creating the membership for, why not put out a call to them asking if anyone wants to volunteer. List the types of things you need done and make it like a job application. In this way you can be assured that they’re right for the membership but also have the right talents that can benefit the membership.

    * A Particularly Prolific Paid Member – Once you’ve started your membership website, you’ll notice some especially prolific members who always jump in to help, make suggestions, and have a lot of knowledge. You can ask them to keep doing what they’re doing in exchange for either free membership or something else of value.

    * Offer Volunteer Incentives – You can immediately incentivize all your members to volunteer to start discussions, contribute content and even recruit new members by giving incentives such as a higher affiliate payout or points to get free stuff.

    * Open the Blog for Guests – If you have a blog on your membership site, you can ask for volunteers to put content in it. You can set it up so that it’s mostly automatic with the exception of someone needing to approve the blog post for publication. You can choose to make the blog private for members only, or public to help encourage new members to join.

    * Implement a Point System – The point system has been mentioned, and it works well for encouraging activity on the forum, attendance at calls and so forth. Encouraging people to participate is volunteering in the respect that the more people who participate, the more people who will want to participate.

    * Reward Volunteers Publiclly – When someone has done something extraordinary, it’s important to recognize them. Member of the month and other freebies given to the most active members will automatically encourage more members to volunteer their time to keeping things moving.

    * Ask People – It doesn’t hurt to simply ask a member to volunteer a certain number of hours in a more formal arrangement in exchange for free membership (or ask those who aren’t members but whom you feel will benefit from a free membership). The number of volunteers you can get will coincide with the value of your membership.

    * Get Interns – Another way to get volunteers, if you have a popular and active membership already, is to get inters. There are laws and regulations you must follow when it comes to internships, but the main thing is that the intern needs to get more out of it than you do. So, it’s important to offer the interns some form of education.

    You’ll be surprised at how many people will want to volunteer if you put out a call for a popular and valuable membership website. You have a lot to offer so giving people free membership, or points and coupons for your products and services based on what they offer, is a great way to encourage more interaction on the membership.

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