Category: Marketing

Whether you have already created a membership site of your own, if you have it installed or you are still thinking about which membership software to use, you should consider running a fixed term membership site. This is a site where someone pays you money in installment payments, gets instant access to your content, possibly extra content over time, but only pays a fixed number of payments. This is great if you don’t have a lot of content, and if you want to make more sales at any price point.

The easiest way to get a fixed term membership site online is to first set it up, and then create the content. You should only worry about the price and number of payments once your membership site is online and ready to take orders. I recommend you create your set of videos or reports and charge a single payment, such as 97 dollars. Once you have that, you can get creative about the payment plan and number of payments. For example, I have kept it simple and only charged two payments of $49. I have also created a trial payment and charged $1 for 48 hours, and then the remainder of the balance after two days.

Here’s where the fixed term model gets very profitable for you. If you add to your product over time, or update it with version 2.0 with extra videos and tools, you might find yourself with a $500 product. How cool would it be to give people a choice between paying all 500 bucks upfront or only putting $99 down, and then paying that $99 every 30 days for 5 payments total. You can have a lot of fun with the split payments, especially if you position it as “interest free financing” or “X dollars gets you started.” Even if your split payments don’t convert very well, you can always roll back to a single payment price point.

Speaking of price points, you’re going to be surprised at how many of your buyers take the full payment amount or go with the delayed payment plan. I have experienced mixed results with charging “interest” for the payment plan (i.e. $500 or 6 payments of $99 instead of 5 payments) but either way, you are free to charge whatever price point you want. The important thing is to not use your high or low price as a crutch, but instead create a membership site that delivers real value and tools that people will actually use, and are happy to pay for. My favorite thing about fixed term membership sites is that they sell more easily than “monthly continuity” sites because people only have to pay for 5 or 6 months, and then the membership site is paid off, and they have lifetime access.

When you create a membership site, I highly recommend you make it a fixed term membership site so that you don’t have to put in a lot of work creating content, you can stand out from the crowd with your pricing, and you can try different techniques to get more people in the door.

Robert Plank wants to give you the exact membership software to get your site online and running today at: http://www.membershipcube.com

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If you want people to join your membership site, the best way to get them in is not with a fancy blog or informative website. It’s with a long form sales letter, a site that convinces them why they should join in your membership right this second. How is writing a sales letter for a membership site especially a recurring membership site different than running a sales letter for a regular product?

There are a few techniques I always like to use on a membership site that I don’t necessarily use anywhere else and I want to share them with you. Those are the payment plan drop, sling them on the instant gratification and the monthly breakdown of what’s coming each and every month.

What’s the payment plan drop? Here’s the way I view membership sites. If you’re running a fixed-term membership site which means that instead of an ongoing training, somebody pays you for say six months and then stops. You’re really offering them a payment plan. You’re really offering them a $1,000 course but you’re cutting it up into six easy monthly payments so they can pay as they go. You’re doing them a huge favor because it’s still a $1,000 course but they have a much easier time of getting in. you’re financing their journey towards success.

When I present the price, I tell them it’s not just a $1,000 cost. It’s not two payments of $500. It’s not four payments of $250. Instead it is six payments of $125. When you drop it like that, it seems a lot smaller and it seems still that they’re getting a lot of value for a small price. They’re getting the first access to a $1,000 training course but tonight they’re only going to put down about 10-12% of that.

The next thing that makes it easy to get someone in your membership site is sell them on the instant gratification. What are they going to get tonight as soon as they join? When somebody joins your membership site, they’re probably going to be the most excited the night they join because you convince them to get in. Recap exactly everything they get tonight within the next few minutes as soon as they have paid, as soon as they have logged in. That’s really helpful.

I’ve seen way too many sales letters that promise the beginnings of things too far down the line. One time I saw a copywriting membership site and they said in the sales letter, “You’ll be able to write your first sales letter at the end of month two in this course.” I was thinking to myself, “What? Why can’t you just teach me the basics as soon as I join and then the extra training is just extra?” When you’re selling your membership solution, give them something actionable, some kind of take away as soon as they join.

Finally, break down what they get every month. If you have a site that goes on for six months or a year, it can become very confusing exactly what’s in the site, exactly when do they get it and how long they have to wait to get it. To avoid that, break it down month per month what they get each and every month. That way, there’s no bait and switch confusion. That way, nobody buys for one particular bonus and then says, “Oh, you mean I’ve got to wait to a month six?” Just state upfront in the sales letter that they have to wait until month six and you can always play this to your advantage because you can say, “I want to teach you the basics upfront so that by month six when we get to these advanced strategies, you’ll be completely ready for this extra training.”

That’s how you write membership copy. Drop the payment plan because your fixed-term membership really is a financing offer. Sell them on what they get tonight on the instant gratification and break down what they get each and every month. That way, there’s no confusion when they join.

Find out how to market your membership site, how to build a membership site in a day, how to create an entire years worth of content in one week and how to keep members happy and paying month after month and joining your next free membership sites without hesitation. Go to www.MembershipCube.com right now to find out more.

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You probably have a confidence problem. Most marketers I know do. They’re so afraid that what they’ve put out into the world is not going be good enough so they delay releasing their product or their membership site to the public. They’re so afraid that no one is going to want to buy their solution for any price so they cut the price until it’s almost not worth it.

If you’re afraid to charge more for your membership site, I have a few things to tell you. Those things are that the phrase, “If you build it they will come,” is wrong, that there are new beginners coming online every single day and you can’t please everyone.

Let’s cover the first one. Have you heard of the phrase, “If you build it they will come?” Usually, if you build it they won’t come because people need to know why they should come. They didn’t know you exist. They didn’t know that you provide what you say you can. They didn’t know that you can solve their problem and that you are worth listening to. It might be a nice thought to think that once your book is done or once your membership site is set up, you’re finished. But that’s only the beginning.

You need traffic. You need conversion. You need to go and find new people to get into your membership site and you need to give them a very good reason about why you should. Building is not enough, you need to market it as well. And when you market it, be proud of what you have. There are all kinds of beginners and whatever thing you’re teaching and whatever niche you have, there are many beginners.

There are many people who are more than willing to have to shortcut the two or three years it might have taken you to get to where you are now. A lot of people want what you have and if you kind of keep that in your mind that people want what you have then you will have an easier time asking the price that you’re worth.

Speaking of the price, you need this thing called price resistance. You definitely cannot please everyone. I know of a copywriter who’s not happy unless his site is at a 6% refund rate because you just simply can’t please everyone. And if you try to please everyone by charging the bargain base on price, you’re going to get yourself a lot of friends but not a lot of money.

It is perfectly okay to separate out people who should buy from you and people who shouldn’t. It’s okay to have an ideal customer and a kind of person you do not want to be your customer.

Here’s a funny fact. A while ago, I made a sales letter and let people name their own price. Do you want to know the result? Fifty percent of people typed in $0.01. The other 40% typed in $1 and this is for a product that was worth $100. So your average person doesn’t know what they want to pay for something. They don’t know that what you have is worth a certain value so it’s up to you to explain this and convince them for that.

If you’re afraid to charge more for your membership site, just know that you need to be a marketer and whatever your niche is, your membership site needs someone to market it, to promote it, to advertise it, to sell it and to talk it up

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In case you don’t know, an affiliate program is a system where somebody can refer new buyers to you. The reason they would do this is because you give them a percentage, a commission of the total sale. So if you are selling a $20 e-book and you give 50% commission then when somebody refers a new customer to you, you keep $10 and give the remaining $10 to that affiliate who referred the new customer. That sounds great but should your monthly membership site offer a commission and should it offer commission one time or throughout the life of that subscriber?

We need to have affiliate program for many reasons and the big one is that it’s tough to get extra members after your initial launch. You’re probably working very hard diligently adding new content, rearranging the membership site, reminding people to come back and participate

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Before you do anything, before you can think of a name or before you can start making content or before you can even start marketing your membership site or building a list, you need to know what niche you’re in. How do you decide how to choose that one thing that makes you so special that no one else can duplicate that you’ll have raving fans about?

There are three things you can think about. First of all, what are others doing? What do you like to teach and do? And most importantly, what problem can you solve for people? What are other people doing? What are your competitions doing? What are the people you admire most doing? What are they teaching? How are they teaching it? What about it attracted you to them in the first place? If you buy from them what about them makes you buy?

I know you think you’re really special but most people who try to blaze their own trail and try to invent something totally new just fall on their face. Still be unique but take a note of what everyone else is doing and try not to reinvent the wheel too much. Try to repeat what works.

Now that you’ve seen what others do, what do you do? What have you taught? I know you’ve taught something in the past

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I’ve seen many membership site marketers make the same mistakes over and over and I want to make sure that you learn from their mistakes before you make them and avoid them completely. That way, you can save yourself time and shortcut your way to success instead of fumbling around in the dark like most of your competition is. What important mistakes can you avoid today? You could avoid split calls to action, cheesiness and unclear navigation.

What is split call to action? First of all, a call to action is where you tell your website visitors what to do. If you’re on an opt-in page the call to action says, “Go ahead and enter your name and email address in the form below.” On a sales letter the call to action is, “Go ahead and click the button, make your payment and get access to the membership site.”

Inside the membership site, a call to action would be, “Watch the video below, leave a comment below.” It seems kind of silly to have a video on a page and it has to say, “Watch the video below.” But you will be surprised at how many people simply will only take certain steps when you tell them to.

That’s what a call to action is but a lot of people split it up and that’s a big mistake. They will have a sales letter that has a payment button and an email opt-in form. Which am I supposed to do, sign-up for the newsletter or purchase? Or even when there is a purchase button they put two buttons that says, “Click this button to buy it outright or click this button to get on the payment plan.” Don’t offer me when on the other just give me the best one. If you want to offer the payment plan only then great.

Another easy membership site mistake to avoid is the cheesy factor. We’ve all seen cheesy sales letters. They have pictures of palm trees, Ferraris. They have tables about, “Oh, if only you had 1,000 members in your membership site you’d have this amount of money. If only you referred three or four people then it would multiply out to this giant number.” The problem with that is that it’s been so overused, it’s become such a clich

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I hope you don’t get confused when you hear marketers talk about ideas such as upsells, front end offers, back end offers because the truth is a lot of those terms are just terms meant to sound fancy and don’t mean anything really special. I’m going to clear that out for you right now.

When somebody says a front end offer, this means that when someone comes to your website for the first time, this is the offer they see. When they have not yet bought from you this is what they see. You’re asking them to buy maybe some kind of e-book or video course

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Most people who run membership sites price their access way too low and that is a big mistake. You need to price your membership site at a point where there is resistance, where you have to do actually work a little bit to get that sale. And the reason for that is because even when you double your membership price, you usually don’t have to work twice as hard to get that sale.

Imagine if you had a thousand members in a membership site paying $20 a month and you suddenly realized that they would have paid $50 a month. You didn’t have to do any extra work, you just had to change one number and yet you didn’t. So you should be pricing your membership site at the highest price the market will bear. That based the question, “What should you charge for your membership site?”

You should charge at least $197 for live training, at least $97 per month for weekly video training and at least $27 per month for monthly video training. Do you offer live training? If so, do yourself a favor and price at $197 or above. I come across too many people who work so hard and run a live webinars, teleseminars, call-in days, personal critiques and then they’re only charging $47 a month or $97 a month and it’s just terrible.

If you’re doing this kind of a live training course, if it’s monthly, charge $200 a month or higher

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If you’re about to launch a membership site or if you’re even fishing for excuses about why you shouldn’t write or why you shouldn’t make a product, you’d probably go to the old reliable thinking that everybody else has already thought of the things you have to say. That is just the wrong thing to be thinking because all the information anyone would need to know is already out there in the world and on the Internet but it’s up to you to provide the right information and to provide the easiest information.

You’re not in a contest of how much stuff you can pile into your site. You’re trying to pile in the most useful stuff and that’s it. Think about this, all the information that you need is all on Google, it’s all on forms, it’s all on public libraries and yet training courses still exist and yet universities still exist because a lot of the information in libraries is out of date or it’s hard to find or it’s just the wrong information.

You can always pull you own unique spin on some kind of training and make it totally unique. And because it’s your information, because it’s your training, you don’t have any of that bad information. You don’t have any of that old information. You have the step-by-step when everyone else is trying to be the big thick giant encyclopedia.

If you still don’t believe me, think about the last time that you’re willing to pay money to figure something out. Maybe you couldn’t figure out how to get your VCR to work. You couldn’t figure out how to make an AdWords campaign profitable. Think about that.

If you could figure out how to make AdWords make you $100 a month, wouldn’t it be worth paying $50 or $100 to get to that information? And yet many cheapskates go and try to find the answers on Google and spend days if not weeks and never get what they’re looking for. What you’re really providing is the step-by-step shortcut to solve their problem. If you think of your training in that way that you’re solving someone’s specific problem then suddenly you’re on a whole different level than the Google results and the public libraries and the forms.

You are an expert in something. There’s some kind of skill you have that’s somebody else doesn’t have. I’m not saying you need to train somebody to become an expert in AdWords but even if somebody just doesn’t know what stuff to click on to set up an AdWords account, you can make a video showing them that. Just get them started, just push them in the right direction and teach people something that you would’ve paid money to find out if you didn’t know it. That way, you can trade the access to your membership for dollars and not your time for dollars.

Let’s get your membership site set up right here, right now at www.MembershipCube.com

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