You have authority in a niche. You have some kind of expertise. You have a message to deliver. You have a lot of stuff to say, now you just have to get it out to people. So now, the question is, should you create a digital membership site or host a physical seminar in the real world in a hotel room? The answer may surprise you. There are pros and cons both to physical seminars and to online membership sites and we’re going to go over both of those today and figure out which one is right for you.
[audio:A0-PhysicalSeminarOrOnlineMembership.mp3]A physical seminar is good for the ego. It gives you a lot of authority. It gives you instant credibility because you have a real-life event and a real-life world, you’ve put down money for some kind of a conference room, you’ve got people in seats, but those are also the same problems – is that seminars are expensive. You have to have the conference room, you have to have a camera, you have to pay a photographer to film you, you have to usually pay for things like the wireless microphone and you have to fly down there yourself, book your own hotel room, and then get people into the seminar. So, it takes a lot of buildup, it might cost you advertising, and then if no one shows up, you might have to cancel the event or you might look like someone who has no authority and now you have your first social proof.
Having a physical seminar is expensive because you have all these costs, including travel, it’s risky because people might not show up, and it’s scary because you have to show up and who knows who might not attend, who knows if there’s some other event in the same hotel room, and who knows if people don’t like what you have to say and leave. It’s also tiring because unless you have other speakers, you have to get up there and present all day for maybe one, two, or even three days. So, a seminar is expensive, risky, scary, and tiring.
Now, what about an online membership site? Well, an online membership site is much cheaper because you don’t have all those costs of the conference room, the travel. You still have to pay things like web hosting and software but this is a lot, lot more expensive than a physical seminar. But the disadvantages for membership sites – is that it’s slower to set up. I mean you could have an idea for an event, for a physical seminar three weeks or a month away and get it scheduled and promote it and have people there in a month, but with a membership site, you might have your membership site out this week but it might take a while to get the same number of subscribers in your membership as you would have attendees at your physical seminar.
It might be slower to start off if you’re brand new at membership sites. It also is not necessarily more work but work stretched out over a longer period of time because with a one-time event, you simply promote it and it’s done. With the membership site, even if the single hint of product, you have to always get new blood into that membership site and get new people buying. So, it’s work stretched out over more time but your big advantage is that you can automate it. You can set up an automatic follow-up sequence, you can set up a Pay-Per-Click account and have the traffic and the marketing all automated. You could have a sales setter that’s online 24 hours a day and have the money trickle in over time.
With the physical seminar or only membership site, which is best for you? The answer is both. You should plan on doing a digital membership now and a physical seminar some time later if that’s the kind of thing you like to do. But do the easy one first. Set up a membership site first because it’s cheaper and you can automate it, and then build up enough of the following to host physical seminars.
Avoid all the mistakes that I did and get your very own membership site set up by 5 o’clock tonight at www.membershipcube.com.