Tips For Starting Your Own Membership Site

For an Internet marketer, the biggest reason for setting up a paid membership site can be summed up very easily - recurring income. A small amount paid monthly by every member can quickly add up to either valuable extra income or even a full-time income if you have several membership sites and if you have a higher priced membership fee, you can quickly earn a very substantial annual income.

People will buy information that they could probably find on the Internet themselves if they had time and knew where to look, but often there is a higher perceived value when they have paid for it.

The challenge then is to find customers and then provide them with such good value that they will retain their membership month after month and hopefully also recommend your site to others because you pay them a generous affiliate fee.

There are four main criteria you need to consider to achieve this and they are:

1. Your site must be in an established membership type market.

2. You must provide excellent value content or service

3. You need to use software that will password-protect your site so that non-paying members cannot get the content for free.

4. A marketing system to attract new subscribers and retain them once they sign up.

Criteria 1 - Your Membership-Site Market

In assessing your potential membership-site market, consider both online and off-line habits. Ask yourself whether people with an interest in this subject would buy monthly magazines, belong to a club or organization about it and perhaps whether there are books on the subject on Amazon's best popular seller lists. Online, check if there are eBooks that sell well, blogs, forums or other on-line communities about this subject.

The topic must be popular enough to have many potential subscribers or you will be wasting your time. It is worth offering some free material, perhaps an ebook on your subject to see how many people have an interest it it. Another strategy to test your market is to set up a simple survey, asking what issues people have. You can offer free membership to your new site as an incentive for people to reply; the answers you receive will guide you as to what kind of concerns people have on this subject.

The information most in demand on-line is that which solves someone's immediate problem, so it is worth considering whether your content or service solves just a one-time problem or whether there could be an ongoing or related issues that you can address.

An example of a one-off problem would perhaps be a remedy for snoring and for an ongoing problem, think of new parents, who have many worries and sleepless nights when their baby cries, perhaps in the middle of the night and there is no-one they can ask for advice. A membership site that contains suggested solutions for the numerous problems new parents face would be a valuable resource for them.

Criteria 2 - Quality Content

The four main types of content are: written, audio, video and web-based software solutions. Naturally, the media type you use will depend on your site topic as some will be more relevant that others. Most sites will include a significant percentage of written material as this is still the primary method of sharing information on the Internet, but audio recordings are increasing popular because people can download them and listen when they are walking, driving, exercising or away from their computer for any other reason.

Video content is preferred when the information you are providing is instructional; "how-to" in pictures or a video can make a process very easy to understand compared with following a written list of instructions.

Another situation where pictures are helpful is showing symptoms of something. For example, for the new parent site mentioned above, there could be photos of the types of spots or rashes a small child might have on their body if they have caught any of the various common childhood complaints such as measles, chickenpox or have been bitten by an insect.

There are many sources of good content apart from writing your own if you are qualified to do so. Your own material is obviously the cheapest, but will take the longest to prepare and you need to know enough about your topic to keep providing fresh material on a regular basis.

Use other people's material by utilizing royalty free articles from article directories such as ezinearticles.com and free content sites, free to use videos from YouTube, metacafe.com or ehow.com or good quality PLR (private label rights).

Outsourcing is another option that will be less time-consuming although you will have costs for the ghost-writer or freelancer you contract to produce your work. Apart from the well-known elance.com & rentacoder.com, there are hundreds of other sources as a simple web search on "outsourcing" will reveal. If you plan to outsource on a regular basis, it is worth the time and effort to find a freelancer and develop a relationship with them, rather than going through a ghost-writing service provider.

Interviews with experts are something you can do yourself with basic equipment. Prepare a list of open-ended questions before the interview and send a copy to the person you will be interviewing two or three days beforehand. Any sooner and they might forget about it and any later doesn't give them time to prepare.

The following are some suggestions for interview questions that will give an expert the opportunity to give you excellent material for your membership site:
1. What is so good about .........?
2. How did you get involved in .........?
3. What do you consider the top 3 things someone should know about ......?
4. What would you suggest would be the best way to get started?
5. How long would it take to be proficient at ..........?

An hour is a good length for a value interview but you may want to go longer and edit the script later. This is easily done even with a free audio editor such as audacity.

Criteria 3 - membership site software to protect your subscriber's investment and save you time

If you can, invest in a specialized memberships-site software package or script. There are quite a number of good choices of varying prices, for example Membergate, Memberspeed, & Wordpress plugins like Wordpress Wishlist, Digital Access Pass (DAP), YourMember & aMember. The advantages of using one of these is that so many of the member functions are done automatically, for example:

1. Membership levels
2. Membership types
3. RSS Feed encryption so that non-paying members cannot access your content through the RSS feed
4. Sequential delivery so that someone cannot sign up and download all the material & then unsubscribe - the longer a person is a member, the more content they have access to
5. Payment gateways - preferably more than just Paypal
6. Training and Support
7. A good strong guarantee

Criteria 4 - Strategies for Recruiting & retaining members

1. Instead of focusing on trying to sell memberships, focus on how how one particular article of your content can solve a specific problem a person might have so that you are providing a solution to that problem and also giving one month's membership to the site for free.

2. Use free advertising by writing & submitting articles & reports, posting on blogs & forums, make squidoo lenses, hubs & other web pages.

3. Buy Pay per Click advertising and banner ads etc

4. List your membership site on Clickbank, Paydotcom etc

5. Email your list & if you don't have one, form a joint venture partnership with someone who does & pay them a generous affiliate commission.

There are many other marketing tactics that have been written about at great length and can be found in a web search.

In summary, if you can address the four main criteria of using an established membership type market, providing premium value content, using appropriate membership software and attracting subscribers, a paid membership site can become a very profitable business model.

How To Create Your Own EBook For Free

Have you ever stopped to think about all the eBooks you see offered for sale on the Internet? Obviously people are buying them or there would not be so many. Their subject matter ranges from "How To Make a Baby Stop Crying", "How to Train Your Poodle", and "How to Catch Catfish", to serious Internet Marketing subjects.

Perhaps you have realized that eBooks can mean big bucks for those who produce and market them successfully, and maybe you have even toyed with the idea of creating one yourself. But, then you began to realize that there could be a few drawbacks. How do you begin? Buy software? Hire someone to put your articles into a PDF file for a price? And, what about the eBook cover? That has to be expensive as well...

Once you find the right subject, you may be able to afford to have an eBook cover created for you by someone who has the software already, and they will charge for it. But, the monetary rewards are well worth it if you can just create a PDF document yourself in a subject that will sell well. You probably think it is an expensive endeavor and you will have a hard time learning to use some strange new software.

What if you were told that you could create an eBook PDF for...

FREE!

Yes, Free! And the ability to do so has been around for quite some time. Most of the Gurus will never mention it because they want to sell you the software that will do the same thing!

The resource being referred to here is called Open Office (a free multi-platform office suite that, in many peoples' opinion, is better than MS Office) and it is available - FREE - at www.openoffice.org/ The reason this is free is because it is "Open Source". That means that anyone can try to add, improve, or otherwise make the end product work better (if you have the proper skills, of course) and no one actually owns the copyright or license on it.

This looks, feels and functions much like any word processing program you have used, only it has more...much more. You have the ability to save the text in many different platforms. You can even save the document as an MS Word document and open it in that program. What is important here, though, is the fact that you can save the document as a PDF. That's right! It has a built-in PDF Converter! If you were to search on the Internet right now for a PDF Converter program, you would find that it can cost much more than you want to pay, especially since you can get it for Free with Open Office.

Now that you have Open Office downloaded and see how easy it is to enter text, add pictures, and add hyper-links to the document, as well as save it in PDF form, you need to actually begin creating your eBook. It takes several steps to create an eBook, and finding the right method to create it is only the first part of the process. Now you actually have to decide what kind of eBook you want to create.


Step #1. Decide Your Subject Matter

First, you must choose a subject for your eBook. The best place to start is to choose a subject that you know a great deal about. Realize that your subject also has to pass the test of popularity, or you will have no one willing to buy it. Very few people will buy an eBook about how to make a chicken go into a trance!

Go to ClickBank's Marketplace and put a keyword into the search box that is the most relevant to your subject, and see which are the most popular eBooks on that subject. If you come up with less than five or six results, that kind of eBook probably will not sell very well. Keep using this method until you find a subject with at least a dozen results that are sold more than 50% of the time through affiliate referrals. Those are the subjects that sell the best and can be successfully promoted.


Step #2. Gather Information and Make An Outline

Begin to search on the Internet for more information on your chosen subject to supplement your own knowledge (you will be surprised at how much you do not know sometimes).

Now make an outline of how you want to present your information. Start with the logical 'what, why, and how' categories of your subject, and then break it into sub-categories.

One very important caution here: Do not assume that everyone else has the same level of knowledge on your subject as you do. Never try to sell an eBook that basically "starts in the middle." If the author/creator decides to leave out the most basic information from an eBook, which the new reader may not know, it makes the eBook unusable to that buyer. This kind of mistake leads to an unhappy buyer who will demand a refund. Just one more paragraph or page of explanation could cure that problem. It is better to let someone who knows the basics of the subject already to feel that you added the 'extra' information as a 'filler' than have someone request a refund.


Step #3. Now Decide on A Heading

What? Shouldn't that be the first thing to do? No, and here is the reason why... Until you gather all of your information and start putting the outline together, the actual heading my need to change if you decide to emphasize a different point than originally planned. Also, creating a heading first forces the author to try to fit the article to the heading. This has a limiting effect on the article which could have evolved more naturally had it waited until the outline was finished.


Step #4. Add Graphics and Pictures to Enhance the eBook

Yes, you do need some colorful graphics and/or pictures to add interest to the eBook and break the monotony of the text. Do not, however, use large graphics and pictures as 'fillers.' The graphics should be appropriate and not take up half of the page. If you have too large, or too many pictures and not enough information of real value, you may find yourself handing out refunds as a result.


Step #5. Create the Actual eBook in Open Office

Type up your text, add pictures and graphics, and then proof-read your document over and over. Be sure to check spelling and grammar. Nothing is worse than reading an eBook with incomplete sentences, poor spelling, and improper grammar that your third grade child could point out.

Once you have done all of the above and are satisfied with your work, you should save it as a PDF Document.

Now all you need to do is figure out if you want to pay someone to create an eBook cover, or if you want to buy the software to do it yourself. This will be your only expense using this method of eBook creation.

If you have followed all the advice and all the steps above, then, Congratulations! You just created an eBook on a budget!

What You Must Know Before Joining A Business

Work from home based business opportunities are being researched
by many people due to the nature of the economy. Many would be
entrepreneurs are looking to find the right business on the
internet as there are literally hundreds to choose from.

However, to avoid failure, especially if an opportunity seeker is
looking to make money from a network marketing opportunity, it is
important to ask what kind of training/system is in place so reps
can become successful sooner rather than later. If distributors
are not able to earn money within a couple of months from the
income opportunity, they will become frustrated and quit.

Therefore, before one signs up on a company's agreement dotted
line, here are some crucial questions to ask:

-Is there a complete resource available that includes skills
training, mlm books, videos, and audios that explains the system?
While part of sponsoring is providing assistance to team members,
baby-sitting will never do. The system should be designed to
teach the system.

-Is the system open? Can one go to not only their upline, but
also someone crossline or sideline for help, assistance, etc.,
without worries about bruising egos? Is there on-going support
anytime you need it?

-Is the home business system providing personal development?
After all, relationship building is important not only for a home
business, but also many other areas in life.

-Does the online system provide training for a full skill set?
This should include the following:

*client interface
*advertising/internet know how
*behavioral knowledge
*mentoring methods
*industry history
*have free skills training
*have an affordable, easy to navigate back office that includes a
complete lead management system, email and ad copy templates,
capture pages combined with an autoresponder, integrated ad
tracking and performance comparisons, a help section, etc.

-Does the work from home business opportunity help keep you free
to build your business?

-Does the training system keep a distributor away from
administrative tasks like building websites?

-Does the system allow you to do your own targeted advertising?
Are you able to brand yourself?

Yes, there are many work from home based opportunities online.
However, to avoid years of failure and frustration and possibly
quitting, these are important questions home based business
opportunity seekers should ask before joining a home business.
So, please take the time and do careful research before joining
any opportunity. Learn to look through all the hype, smoke and
mirrors, to discover what the real deal is!