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Step 1: A Recurring Income Membership Model

A recurring income membership model is appealing to many Internet marketers because you don’t have to create a new product from scratch every time you need to make some fast cash.

Membership sites only need to be built once, not every month or few months as new products need to be.

Once the membership site is built, you just need to maintain it and update it with quality, relevant information over time which is much simpler than creating a brand-new product from scratch.

To access the membership site and its content, customers need to pay a recurring monthly or annual fee.

If they choose to stop paying for access, they lose the valuable resources of that site, as they no longer have access to the site.

Step 2: Different Types of Products To Sell

There are many different types of products you can sell. Here are just a few:

You can sell a content-based membership site, which is a site that has content focused on a specific topic or industry.

You could have a membership site that is focused on one specific aspect of a topic, such as email marketing or social media marketing.

You can make the membership site as subject-specific as you want, but you have to make sure you don’t limit the topic too much or you may have trouble trying to keep the membership site updated with new, fresh material for your paying members to use and benefit from. Another type of membership site you can create is one focused around software products that help paying members conduct tasks more easily.

Membership Site Continuity

Another example of a membership site is one where articles and other content are presented in the form of articles and/or blog posts that paying members can use as they see fit, often referred to as private label rights (PLR) content.

The key to any successful membership site is providing continuous value over a long period of time.

You must know your target market’s wants and needs and be able to supply them with tools, resources, and/or content to fill those wants and needs. You must stay updated on your industry’s challenges and problems and be able to find ways to remedy or solve those challenges/problems in order for paying members to remain members of your site.

Step 3: Pricing Points And One-Dollar Trials

You must know the target market you are serving, how much they value the content and resources you are providing to them, and what competitors are charging for similar sites with comparable content and resources before setting a price.

You must consider whether you will only have one level of access for members or more than one.

Pricing for each membership tier will vary:

Lowest levels can be as low as free

The highest levels can be as high as $999.99/month or even more, depending on the value of the content and resources members get to use.

Many membership sites will provide several pricing options for members to choose from for some to all membership levels, including monthly, quarterly, bi-annually, annually (and even lifetime in some cases).

You must ensure that a monthly subscription costs less than an annual subscription in the short-term, but more over the course of a year so that the annual option is the better value- example is monthly subscription costings $20/mth x 12 = $240/yr vs an annual subscription costing $200/yr.

The key to remember is that you must know your target market’s needs and wants and how willing they are to pay for resources, content, and/or benefits that will help to alleviate the challenges and problems they face in their industry to know what prices are the best ones to charge for your membership site.

As a way to encourage more people to join their membership sites, many Internet marketers will provide a trial offer where people can pay a very small amount (usually $1) to access the membership site for a specified period of time (anywhere from 3 to 7 days).

The person can check out the membership site and see what it has to offer and see how much value and use it will be for the person; if it does, he/she will stay; if it doesn’t, he/she will cancel, not owe anything, but will lose access.

Step 4: Membership Site Platforms and Plugins

Membership platforms such as aMember, Wishlist Member, and DigitalAccessPass can help you to build and maintain your membership site.

The latter two also work with WordPress sites.

WordPress plugins can help you to build and maintain a membership site if you are using a WordPress site for the membership site. Here a few to start with:

MemberPress

Cart66

WP eMember

Features you should consider and look for in any platform or plugin you choose includes limiting access to members who have not paid for it, “dripping” your content over a period of time for members, enabling you to use coupons so members can get discounts, selling products, pausing and resuming memberships, and new content notifications.

Step 5: How To Simplify The End User Experience

In order for the members of your membership site to get the most value from your site, it has to be easy for them to use.

You want to focus on features that will make the site useful and valuable for your members, but also ensure that it restricts access to areas and content they should not have access to if they haven’t subscribed to the proper level for them.

You also want to ensure that your chosen membership platform or plugin restricts access to members who are not supposed to have access to specific areas and content/resources.

Be sure you test the platform or plug-in thoroughly and familiarize yourself with its features before you promote and sell access to your membership site.

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Introduction

Virtually every Internet marketer who wants to make money online is looking for a sustainable income to replace his/her 9-5 job. The challenge is that, unless you keep creating new products and/or promoting other people’s products as an affiliate, the income dries up and runs out after each launch or promotion.

Virtually no Internet marketer wants to work 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, just to make a decent living online. So, what’s the answer to this dilemma? The answer is membership sites. The reason why membership sites provide an answer to the aforementioned dilemma is because most membership sites run on a subscription basis. This means that customers will pay a monthly or annual membership fee to access the contents and/or resources of that site in order to be able to keep using it. So long as they remain a member of that site, they will continue to pay the monthly or annual fee, and they will continue to gain access to the contents and/or resources of that site.

This is a key reason why many Internet marketers look to create membership sites as part of their product offers. Instead of having to create products over and over again, they just need to host and update the membership site with relevant, quality information on their specific industry or topic. If they continue to do that, they will likely keep recurring paying customers to stay with them, providing them with a consistent online income. This is considerably less work than trying to create a new product from scratch time and time again.

Creating, maintaining, and promoting a membership site may sound overwhelming, but this ebook will help you to learn exactly what you need to do and what tools you will need to create and maintain your own membership site so that you can have a passive, consistent online income.

A Recurring Income Membership Model

As was described in the Introduction, a recurring income membership model is appealing to many Internet marketers because you don’t have to create a new product from scratch every time you need to get more cash. While product launches can be quite profitable, it often takes a great deal of time and effort to successfully launch a product. In addition, while successful product launches can bring in a great deal of cash in a relatively short period of time, eventually, even the highest-quality products will experience dwindling sales, and with it, dwindling profits.

This is why recurring income memberships are considered the “dream” for most Internet marketers. Membership sites only need to be built once, not every month or few months as new products need to be. Once the membership site is built, you just need to maintain it and update it with quality, relevant information over time, a task that is much simpler than creating a brand new product from scratch.

To access the membership site, customers need to pay a recurring monthly or annual fee. If they choose to stop paying for access, they lose the contents and/or resources of that site, as they no longer have access to the site. To continue having access to the content and resources within the site, they need to continue paying. This is where Internet marketers can continue getting passive, continuous income without having to create product after product or doing promotion after promotion for other people’s products.

Different Types of Products To Sell

When it comes to membership sites, there are several different types of products you can sell. You can sell a content-based membership site, which is a site that has content focused on a specific topic or industry. For instance, you could have a membership site that is focused around Internet marketing. Or, you could have a membership site that is focused on one specific aspect of a topic, such as email marketing or social media marketing. You can make the membership site as subject-specific as you want, but you have to make sure you don’t limit the topic too much or you may have trouble trying to keep the membership site updated with new, fresh material for your paying members to use and benefit from. Such a site would have useful information in it from the very beginning of the site’s creation. Over time, more useful information would be added; this is the enticement for people to remain paying members of the site. If they don’t remain paying members of the site, they will not get access to new information on the site as it is released, as they will lose access to the site.

Another type of membership site you can create is one focused around software products that help paying members conduct tasks more easily. For instance, you could have a membership site focused on Internet-marketing-related software programs that enable paying members to more easily conduct keyword research, email their lists, curate content to use in articles, blog posts, and ebooks, post to their social media accounts, etc.

Just as with content-based membership sites, there would be some software products available from the very beginning of the site’s existence. Over time, more software products would be added. In addition, updated versions of the software programs would be made available to paying members, often with additional features versus older versions. Just as with content-based membership sites, if paying members stop paying for access, they lose access to the site and access to the software programs.

Another example of a membership site is one where articles and other content are presented in the form of articles and/or blog posts that paying members can use as they see fit, often referred to as private label rights (PLR) content. Paying members can continuously access the site and use the content within the terms and conditions that the membership site lays out when the customer pays for access. As with any membership site, if the paying member stops paying for access, he/she loses access to the site and the content within. Thus, he/she can no longer use the content according to the terms of the membership.

The key to any successful membership site is providing continuous value over a long period of time. You must be able to continue providing value in order for paying members to see the value in continuously paying for membership. If the membership site’s value and usefulness drop in the eyes of the paying member, he/she will choose to stop paying for access, and, thus, you will have lost that customer, both in terms of the relationship and in terms of the present and future profits he/she would have brought you.

Thus, you must know your target market’s wants and needs and be able to supply them with tools, resources, and/or content to fill those wants and needs. You must stay updated on your industry’s challenges and problems and be able to find ways to remedy or solve those challenges/problems in order for paying members to remain members of your site.

Pricing Points And One-Dollar Trials

A common issue for many Internet marketers looking to create membership sites is, “what price should I charge for access?” There is no one right answer for this; you must know the target market you are serving, how much they value the content and/or resources you are providing to them, and what competitors are charging for similar sites with comparable content and/or resources.

Additionally, you must consider whether you will only have one level of access for members or more than one. This will determine whether you will charge one or more monthly or annual prices. Of course, the lowest monthly and/or annual price will get the least amount of access to the site and the content and/or resources within, while higher-priced monthly and/or annual prices will get greater amounts of access to the site’s content and/or resources.

For example, there are membership sites that provide some Internet marketing products and/or content to members paying the lowest monthly and/or annual price. In some cases, that price could even be free. Oftentimes, this membership level is called “basic” and only allows access to a specific number of products and/or content within the site. In addition, benefits to “basic” members are very limited.

Higher-priced levels are often referred to as “silver,” “gold,” and “platinum,” with each higher level of membership giving the paying customer access to more products and/or content and providing him/her with more benefits (such as getting a higher affiliate commission when promoting membership to the site, etc.).

Pricing for each membership tier will vary, but as mentioned before, the basic membership of a website can be as low as free. In other cases, basic membership is usually no higher than $9.99/month, since paying members only get limited products, content, and/or benefits to use.

Silver memberships provide members with more products, content, and/or benefits to use; thus, these memberships will often cost between $19.95- $29.99/month. Gold memberships provide members with even more products, content, and/or benefits to use; thus, these memberships will often cost between $29.95-$49.99/month. Platinum memberships usually provide members with all of the products, content, and/or benefits a membership site has to offer; thus, these memberships will often cost between $49.95-$199.99/month. Depending on the value of the products, content, and/or benefits, platinum memberships of some membership sites can even cost more than that stated range, even up to $495.00-$999.99/month.

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Step 1: Set Up Your JV Page And Get Partners Lined Up To Promote

You need JV partners to expand your reach and your sales potential; you will have the chance for far more sales if other people are also promoting your product.

Set up a joint venture page that outlines exactly the schedule of your pre-launch period (i.e. the weeks and even months before your product is released to the public) and then the day of the product launch itself.

• Recruit joint venture partners to join you in promoting your product.

• Be sure your product is a quality product.

• Provide early access to potential JV partners, incorporate any suggestions and feedback they have to make your product better.

Ask Internet marketing friends and those you know and respect if they’d be willing to promote your product- let them know about the benefits their subscribers and customers would receive from your product.
Recruit JV partners at least two to three months before the product launch date.

Step 2: Offer JV Prizes To Encourage More Sales

Offering JV prizes to the top JV partners who refer the most sales during a product launch will help to ensure they continue to promote your product throughout the entire launch period.

JV prizes you can consider using are cash, vacation packages, electronic items (iOS and Android mobile devices, laptops, digital assistants, TVs, Blu-Ray players, etc.), gift certificates to restaurants, retailers, and online retailers, etc.

You should at least award the top 3 JV partners at a minimum, though you could award the top 5, 10, or even 20 partners with the most sales of your product.

The most valuable prizes should be awarded to those JV partners with the most sales.

Step 2: Set A Launch Date And Stick To It

Once you set the launch date, you need to stick to it unless there is a death or serious illness in the family or there is some issue with the product launch that can’t be rectified before the date.

• If you change the launch date, you will confuse and annoy both subscribers/customers and JV partners.

• If you change the launch date, you will lose credibility with subscribers/customers and your Internet marketing peers.

Make sure your chosen launch date gives you enough time to have both a significant pre-launch period for your product and ensures you can compensate for any issues that arise before the product goes live.

If you are unsure whether you can make a specific product launch date due to possible complications, it’s better to make the launch date later and give yourself more time to get everything ready.

Step 4: Launch Your Product With JVs At The Ready

The appropriate emails indicating the product is now live need to be sent out to those who joined the pre-launch marketing list.

Ensure that everything is running smoothly in terms of the website, the ordering process, the download area, etc.

Be sure to monitor your email, Skype, Facebook Live, and social media to ensure that there are no problems.

If there are any issues, do everything possible to resolve them immediately.

As time permits, check to see which JV partners are providing you with the most sales; this will give you an indication of who is effectively marketing your product and who isn’t; this will give you a better insight into who you should especially recruit for future product launches.

Step 5: Create A Daily Sales Frenzy With JV Leaderboard Updates

To continue gaining sales momentum throughout the launch period, be sure to update your JV partners with daily JV Leaderboard updates.

It’s often best to put the JV leaderboard information directly on the Web page where you provided the sales copy; this will motivate JV partners to work harder to promote your product and make it easy for them to do so.

Virtually everyone loves to win; no one likes to lose or miss out on something; this is why having quality prizes and updating the leaderboard daily will encourage your JV partners to work harder in promoting your product throughout the launch period.

Your JV partners also want to show that they are an effective marketer by doing better in your JV contest than their peers, which will not only lead to greater joint venture opportunities for them in the future (and more profits), but also boost their reputation in the field so they have more joint venture opportunities and earn more profits.

Step 6: Keep The Momentum Going With Follow-Ups

Your product launch period could be anywhere from 3-4 days to 1-2 weeks; things will settle down over time and even slow to a crawl if you don’t continue to provide momentum to keep the product promotion strong throughout the period.

Providing daily updates of the JV leaderboard is one way of keeping the momentum during a product launch period so that sales continue to flow in.

Another way to keep up the momentum is to continuously stay in contact with your JV partners to ensure they have everything they need to promote your product effectively and successfully, including updated emails in the JV promotional area, responding to JV partners’ feedback and suggestions, etc.

Do everything you can to make it easy for your JV partners to promote your product throughout the launch period; this will make it more likely for them to continue promoting your product throughout the launch period.

You also need to ensure that everything is going smoothly in regards to your website, download area and links, etc.; anything that is not working properly needs to be fixed immediately.

As the launch period begins to wind down (the last two days or so), encourage your JV partners to ramp up their marketing efforts for the “final lap” by quoting the JV leaderboard and the top three or five standings, along with the prizes they will win if they are/stay in those positions.

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Step 1: Take Control Of The Buying Process

The most profits from Internet marketing come to those who own their own digital products and control the sales funnel.

A common sales funnel:

• Starts with a squeeze page to get a prospect’s name and email address.

• Then the main product offer.

• Then one or more upsells and downsells (often referred to as one-time offers or OTOs).

Theres two basic rules regarding sales funnels and corresponding upsells and downsells…

First - the one-time offers (i.e. upsells and downsells) relate to the main product offer in some way so that you add more value to the overall product offer.

Second - the one-time offers are optional purchases and NOT necessary to enable the main product offer to fulfill the value it is supposed to as described in the product’s sales letter.

The more people you can get to buy your main offer, the greater the chance that they will buy one or more of your one-time offers, since they have already purchased from you.

Step 2: It All Starts At The Squeeze Page

A squeeze page is just a Web page that offers the visitor something of value, such as a report on a specific topic of interest, in return for the person’s contact information (usually the person’s name and email address).

The information you provide in this free report should be useful to the person, but it should NOT include everything about the topic in question.

If you include all of the information in that free report, they’ll have no reason to buy any of your related offers, which is exactly the ultimate goal you have in mind for them.

The idea behind the squeeze page is to entice the visitor to willingly give up their name and email address so that you can follow up with them later with other relevant and useful information.

By doing this you can build a relationship with them and show that you are an expert in this industry or niche.

Once the prospect is comfortable enough with you, they will likely make a purchase, thereby entering your sales funnel.

Step 3: Offer A Directly Related PAID Product

Research has shown that it takes at least seven contacts with a prospect before they are willing to buy something from you.

Thus, you must contact the prospect by email to give them the link to download the free report offered on your squeeze page and to build up the relationship.

Good email marketing practices and building the relationship are key to making those sales.

Thus, you must provide more valuable information on the topic or subject in your follow-up emails to convince the prospect you are trustworthy and are respected in your field, eventually leading to him/her buying from you.

Don’t “hard-sell” in most of your follow-up emails; only “soft-sell” by providing valuable information about the topic, then adding a link to your main product page at the end of your emails.

Step 4: Now Is The Time To Slip In An Upsell or Downsell

After the prospect has turned into a customer by buying your main product offer, offer one or more offers designed to enhance the value of the main product offer, known as upsells and downsells.

Upsells are shown immediately after the main or previous product was purchased and are only available for that price at that moment; if the person leaves the page, the upsell deal is gone.

Downsells are shown immediately after an upsell offer is rejected; downsell offers are either the same upsell offer for a lower price or a slightly-reduced offer (one or more elements of the upsell offer is missing) at a lower price.

Upsells and downsells are not required to be purchased to get the value and benefits to the main offer; they are only optional purchases to enhance the value and features/benefits of the main offer.

Having a combination of upsells and downsells in your sales funnels will increase the chances for conversions and additional profits.

Most Internet marketers make the bulk of their profits on the back-end of the funnel (i.e. upsells and downsells), not from the front-end of the funnel (i.e. main product offer).

Step 5: Set Up Your Autoresponder Follow-Up Sequence

A series of around seven email messages will be sent out over about a two-week period after the prospect has requested the free report from your squeeze page.

The most convenient and easiest way to do this is to set up the email messages in your autoresponder; they’ll be sent out at pre-determined intervals automatically to the prospect.

• First message should include a link to download the free report and ensure the prospect has downloaded.

• Subsequent messages should look to build the relationship, show the prospect you’re trustworthy and knowledgeable in your field to build trust with him/her and convince him/her that he/she should buy your main product offer.

Out of seven email messages, no more than two should hard-sell your product; the others should only provide additional valuable information and include a link to your main product offer’s sales page at the end of your message.

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Step 1: Solve a problem

Pick a problem that you can solve that is wanted by your target market not what YOU think will work.

An in-demand product is one that will solve a specific problem or need.

Step 2: Do your research

Use your favorite search engine to find forums related to your industry and see what people in that industry identify as a problem or issue.

Look at few related things in the industry such as:

• Forums

• Newsletters

• Publications

Always be on the lookout for other sources to learn what problems you can potentially solve.

If you have experience dealing with the issue or problem in question, you can use that experience in your book as well to make your more product more unique and valuable.

Be sure to find and use relevant research and statistics from noted industry publications and experts in your book.

Use keywords or main ideas related to the problem or issue in the search engine to see what results come up you can also include in your book.

Modify the types of results you get in the search engines (images, videos, .pdf documents, etc.) to find more data and research.

Step 3: Pick a title that will sell

Your title must be interesting and must draw attention to it in order for it to sell well.

Make sure your title notes the problem or issue it will solve to alert people to what the information inside will do.

Ensure the title isn’t so long that it sounds boring and turns people off from buying it.

• Many good titles have subtitles.

• Look at comparable books on the same or similar topics that sell well, see if you can model (NOT copy) your title after theirs.

• Check Amazon, Barnes & Noble, other online bookstore sites with titles that sell well, model (NOT copy) your title after theirs.

Step 4: Choose a format

Decide on whether you are creating an eBook, software program, membership site, email series, audio product, video product, etc.

If you’re creating an eBook, decide on such formats as:

• .txt (text format)

• .doc or .docx (Microsoft Word format)

• .rtf (Rich Text Format, which allows for more styling elements than .txt)

• .odt (OpenOffice/LibreOffice’s format, similar to .doc and .docx formats)

• .pdf (Portable Document Format, capable of being opened by Adobe Reader and other similar PDF reader programs)

• .exe (executable file on Microsoft Windows machines).

Pdf eBooks are the most popular now because they can be read on virtually any operating system and even on mobile devices.

If you’re creating a software product, creating it on a cloud-based platform will allow users to access and use the software from anywhere, even on a mobile device.

If you’re creating a membership site, be sure to use a large-enough server so that it can hold all present and future data, be sure it’s mobile-friendly, and be sure to use a platform or plugin that ensures the right people get access to the site and denies all others who should haven’t access.