Membership Site Basics Volume 1

Copyright Š 2015 – Amin Motin membershipsitesolutions.com Usage Rights

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Disclaimer

All the material contained in this book is provided for educational and informational purposes only. No responsibility can be taken for any results or outcomes resulting from the use of this material. While every attempt has been made to provide information that is both accurate and effective, the author does not assume any responsibility for the accuracy or use/misuse of this information.

Table of Contents START HERE

3

WHAT KIND OF SITE SHOULD YOU BUILD?

6

WORDPRESS: A SIMPLE, POWERFUL PLATFORM

8

THE PRICE IS RIGHT

10

YOU'LL MAKE THESE MISTAKES

13

FINALLY

15

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Start Here If you've been on any mailing lists for any length of time, you already know how much buzz there is about membership sites. There's a ton of hype, some misconceptions and a lot of uncertainty.

Believing everything you ever read about them could have your head spinning.

Everyone seems to have conflicting advice about what they are and how to create and run them.

You may already have a nice site. You may even be selling some products from your site. But you've heard about "passive income" and "recurring income" and you want to know more.

And you don't want to miss out.

Let me cover the basics of membership sites in this short report. I'll tell you why membership sites can be very exciting, when done right. I'll tell you the downsides of membership sites. And I'll give you some strategies for getting started.

It may seem a strange question, but do you know what a membership site really is? The reason I ask is that there are several different types each with a different revenue model.

But before we get into that, let's just cover some basics.

If you provide some kind of ongoing service or content and you charge for it regularly, that's a membership. If you do it for free, that's still a membership. If you have people on your subscriber list, that's a membership – it's just most people don't realize it.

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But the bit we really want is to get paid for the service or content. And we want to keep getting paid, if possible. That's a huge benefit from a business perspective.

And make no mistake, to do this right you have to think of it as a business.

Recurring income means you know in advance how much you're likely to earn next month. Get 100 members paying you $27 each per month, boom, you have a pretty stable income of $2,700 each month. You have to keep the members happy, but we'll get to that bit later.

What's the biggest benefit of recurring income? Let me surprise you. It's not so you can go out and quit your job, buy a new car, get that latest shiny camera. No. It's so you can build your business and your overall revenue. Reinvesting your early profits back into your business allows you to scale and grow.

That revenue is essential so you can add extra content and services, which in turn helps you to attract even more members. Remember, it's not a hobby – you're building a real business; one you could even sell at some point in the future.

The figures I mentioned were just examples, but let's play make-believe. Suppose you get 100 members and you increase your price to $47 a month. That's a $4,700 monthly income. Annually that's $56,400. That's a solid base to build a business on. You have to provide a lot of value, but don't be afraid to charge what your content is worth (more on that later).

Don't stop there though. After you get your first 100 members (or even 10, or 5 members!) keep promoting your site. Over time, if you add more members than you get canceling, you'll hit big numbers. If it's worth doing, it's worth sowing and growing, right? In other words, one year from now if you had 250 members paying you $47 a month, your annual revenue would be how much?

$141,000 PAGE 4 COPYRIGHT AMIN MOTIN | MEMBERSHIPSITESOLUTIONS.COM

But you'd only have to find about 20 members each time. If you promote your site every month, you can build up to 250 members within 12 months. Don't let small numbers fool you.

Small numbers add up!

What that means is that you don't promote once and expect to get 1,000 members on your first attempt. You keep promoting and building your site over time. Very, very few people will get 1,000 members from a single promotion.

If your subscribers like what you offer, they will probably also like being part of your "inner circle" too. Imagine how much more they'd feel that way if you keep back your premium, exclusive content only for members.

Here are important things you should know before you consider starting a membership site: • • • • •

Deciding what type of site to offer.

Why you should Use WordPress as your platform.

Which membership site "plugin" to use with WordPress.

How to price your membership site.

Common mistakes.

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What Kind of Site Should You Build?

When I ask people that, they often freeze with fear. There are so many possible ways to go, they don't know which way to turn. Let's talk about a few different types and see if we can demystify them.

• Community – member sites based around hobbies, interests, and passions.

For example, fan clubs for music groups and sports clubs to gardening, golfing and more.

• Product or Content Delivery – you can use a membership site just to deliver your ebooks, videos, software and other products to your customers. A membership site can be used effectively as a protected download site.

• Training – I like this kind of site and I have several membership sites for various training. If you have some kind of skill or knowledge that you can teach, you can offer a membership site with your own online courses. Yes, you do have some kind of skill – you just have to work out what it is!

Mix and match? Sure, if you want to. You can have a membership site that will mash up a couple of different types. You might have a training site, but add on extra membership level. That level could be for access to extra tools and services that help customers use the training you give.

There are memberships all over the place, including for physical products.  Netflix DVD by post? Membership.  BBC Music Magazine subscription? Membership  Lynda.com online training? Membership  TrainingVideosWebinars.com? Membership with public and restricted content (that's one of my member sites)  MembershipSiteSolutions.com? Complete training on membership sites with software tools to build them (another of my member sites)

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If there is no good reason for your site to exist, it will wither and die. So solve some kind of problem for people and your site is more likely to survive. But you can't just solve any problem.

You have to solve problems, offer information, products and content that you care enough to produce.

Why? I can tell you that it's very hard work trying to do something you just don't enjoy.

After your first initial enthusiasm, boy it gets tiring.

So if you can, work with your personal interests. If you love your topic or niche your interest and enthusiasm will be obvious to your members. Who wants to be a member when the membership "leader" can't be bothered???

You'll find if you enjoy what you're doing that it won't feel like work. When you can get paid for doing something you would do anyway, managing and growing your membership site will not feel like a chore.

It will feel like playing ď Š

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WordPress: A Simple, Powerful Platform There are dozens of ways to run membership sites. And testing and learning all the different ways would cost you tens of thousands of dollars and countless hours. But why reinvent the wheel?

Use a self-hosted WordPress blog on your own domain.

If you're a Fortune 500 company, sure, buy one of the more expensive solutions.

If you're like me and just a regular person, stick with what works, what's easy and what's effective. You need a domain name (I register mine with Namecheap) and some web hosting (I use LiquidWeb and ASmallOrange).

There are other benefits to using a popular platform like WordPress. There are extensions (called "plugins") that can make it do almost anything you can think of.

If you need a feature, there is usually a way to add it. Plugins are so useful that I actually develop my own range at www.easywpplugins.com From running a membership site, to digital shopping carts, notification systems, mailing lists, opt-in forms, video players and beyond, WordPress can grow as big as you need it to. You'll need to find a suitable membership plugin, but be wary.

Some of them can be difficult to use, or at least take a lot of learning time.

For example, WishlistMember is a popular plugin that runs membership sites. It's powerful, but it's expensive and it's extremely complex. There are many different plugins for membership sites, but most are complex to set up. Always look for a simple to use plugin.

Membership site plugins are sometimes very sophisticated. And some of them are very expensive. It pays to find one that does what you need as simply as possible.

Power that a corporation may require for their site may well be too much for your site. Especially in the beginning, you should look to make things easy for yourself.

If it's easy for you to do, you'll do it. If you have to take a degree in using the software before you can use it, you'll never do it.

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"Done and working" beats sophisticated and unused every time. Remember that saying when you're looking to extend the power of your blogs. Even the best software in the world is of no use to you if you can't use it.

Of course you do need some basic features. You want to be able to offer different levels of membership with different prices and content, for example. Just don't buy a Swiss army knife style membership plugin – you'll never use 99% of the features!

Try to find plugins that have a simple workflow. The last thing you want to do is have to fight your software. All the mundane tasks you may have to do sometimes should be easy and quick. Remember that you have to live with your system for a long time if your site does well. It pays to find a system that doesn't make you work harder.

Here's a list of some of the membership plugins I've used. The first two are very, very powerful but you have to work hard to learn them. reMemberMe is my own plugin. I had it specially created to be simple to use, but powerful.

• • • •

Digital Access Pass WishList Member Fast Member reMemberMe

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The Price Is Right Nervous about charging a fair price for your membership? Most people are. It's easy to feel shy about asking someone for money. Most of us are not born salespeople. We have to learn to overcome the shyness. But I can tell you from personal experience that if you offer good content, people will thank you for letting them buy from you.

Offer lousy content and it's a different story. But let's assume you've taken the time to create (or bought) great content. You are doing your subscribers a disservice by not offering it to them. Most people care about the value they get more than the price they pay. If I offer you a great membership for $297 and it's genuinely worth $997.00, will you complain? I don't think so. It's worth $997.00 So even though prices can range from free up to tens of thousands of dollars, how much should you charge? Well, how about working it backwards? Calculate the actual value of your material by comparing it to other sites offering similar stuff. If you set your price lower than the real value, you have a winning proposition. If you can double the value of the actual price, your members get a good deal.

Charge $47 a month and deliver $97 in value – why wouldn't they keep coming back for more?

Sometimes you can increase the value of your content by giving more of it. But sometimes the value can also be enhanced by offering content they can't get elsewhere. Time saving content is especially welcome. If I can train you in 30 minutes to save 5 hours every week on your internet marketing tasks, how valuable is that? How much is your time worth to you? Would you rather have an extra 5 hours every week for the rest of your life, or the $47 you paid me?

Time is something you have a fixed amount of. If I can save you time, it's like giving you time. Time to enjoy with friends and family. A few dollars in return is a fair exchange.

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You have to get used to offering value and not being shy about it. I can practically guarantee that you can charge more than you think. Your customers will recognize value, even if you are shy about it. Deliver the value and your customers will be happy to pay the right price. One way to get a sense of the right price is to check out your competition, as I said earlier. Then set your pricing maybe just a little bit higher than them.

You'll want to do some testing, to see if different price points impact sales, but don't be afraid to ask for the right price! You can try different prices for a trial, or offer annual, even lifetime memberships! It's surprising how many people would prefer to pay a higher, one-time fee for lifetime membership. But, as I advise all the time with any activity, make it simple first. Get it working, then make it pretty, then start getting clever.

All you should do when you first start is offer one membership level at one price.

You'll have enough to think about and handle with your first membership site. No point trying to run before you can walk, right? So…  Keep it simple.  Keep it easy.  Keep it doable.

One unbelievably exciting moment is when people actually join. The very first time you see an email notification, telling you that someone signed up and paid you – wow, there's no feeling like it. And then you build from there. It almost feels like magic the first time!

Later on you could think about adding sophisticated multiple options like various tiers of membership levels. You can get creative with the naming, too. Most membership site owners seem to end up with Basic, Elite, Premium and Platinum, or Bronze, Silver and Gold levels.

But there is nothing that stops you from having more unique level names. For the higher levels, you add higher value. Simple, right? And at the highest level you sell something that is a finite resource – your time. Charging for direct one-to-one access to you does and should command a premium price. So eventually you may PAGE 11 COPYRIGHT AMIN MOTIN | MEMBERSHIPSITESOLUTIONS.COM

be charging a very serious fee for a membership level. But it all starts at the very beginning, with a single, simple level.

Of course you might want to offer a free trial. If people don't know you that can be a good way for them to sample your content. Or you can go with the lower trial price, followed by ongoing regular pricing. The reason that works so well is that it gets people to make a decision. If they feel there is low risk, they are more likely to say yes. Once they've said yes a very high percentage will stay with you, because they already made the commitment in their mind.

Best to be really clear about what you're offering, just so people know what they're paying. Making the pricing difficult to understand is frustrating for your members – and it makes them feel like you have something to hide. Offer good value and make it clear what the price of admission is.

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You'll Make These Mistakes When we first do something, most of us make rookie mistakes. It's natural. That's why there are trainee and mentoring programs in companies and organizations all over the world. Let's not reinvent the wheel. Let's try to avoid these obvious (in hindsight) little traps.

• Bad quality plugins. Use cheap and badly coded plugins and your site could blow up. Is that worth saving a few dollars? Not for me it's not.

• Sticking with the defaults. WordPress is easy to install, but the default settings are not the most beneficial. At least change the most important settings immediately after installation.

• Out of date milk. That would be sour, right? And out of date software and plugins on your site will make you sour – it breaks things. Keep everything fresh and up to date.

• Keep it to yourself. Some of the content you provide can and should be shared widely. Your members will want to do that. Make it easy for them.

I'm not talking about the protected stuff that has to be paid for, but every membership site should have some kind of great teaser content. Make it easy to share and it will get shared – and new members will be attracted to your site.

• Don't bother making a backup. It takes time and a little effort to backup regularly. Go ahead and save the time if you like. When your site blows up you saved yourself the 5 minutes for backup, but just flushed months of your work away. There are various solutions for backing up, depending on your web hosting and the software you can afford to use.

• Take chances. Adding even simple security plugins and software is very helpful. Keeping out the bad guys (malware, viruses, hackers) is just like locking your door at night. It's a shame we have to do it, but we have to do it. That's the world we live in.

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• Don't know your numbers. At the very least, look at your Cpanel statistics to see what's going on in your site. How many visitors? What time of day is most popular? How long do people stay on the site? You can use Google analytics if you like, or pay for tracking software. The information is invaluable, if you record it and then use it.

• Make them hunt you down. Why not make it easy to allow your members to contact you? Add a contact form, or a support desk.

• Slow and steady is still just slow. If your site is reaaaaaallly slow, it can be a pain. If you're running this as a business, invest in decent hosting, or move to it as soon as you can afford it.

• What do they want? How can you make sure you deliver what your members want? Ask them. Do your keyword research. Take the time to find out.

• Forgetting the list. Just because someone has paid you does not mean they are automatically on your subscriber list. You've heard the phrase and it's true. The money is in the list. Add your members to your list and tag them so you can contact them separately. But wait, don't just add your members. Add people who are interested in your membership site as well.

Put an opt-in form on your membership site and offer something in return for the sign up. They may join your membership later, when they're ready.

Of course there's a huge amount more to learn. This has just been the very basics.

In the training course I offer at membershipsitesolutions.com I go into these topics in depth. If you're interested, check out what you get at http://membershipsitesolutions.com/jl/ Even if you only get a grip on the things I've covered for you in this report, you're likely to be well ahead of 90% of your possible competition. Most people will take NO action on the things they learn in this report.

Most people are not your true competition.

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Finally Let's be really honest. Building and setting up membership sites can be a fair amount of work at the very beginning. If you're a complete newbie, it can seem almost impossible to get everything together. It does get easier though – like most things. You might even get hooked on building member sites once you get a taste for them. It's so exciting to see a new name appear on your member list.

And it's very exciting to see the money coming in.

We've gone over the essentials here. I encourage you to do the work and to jump right in – the water's lovely! Yes, you're going to make mistakes. Don't let that be an excuse never to start. No, instead be prepared to make your mistakes and then learn from them, fix them and never repeat them again.

Do this right and you can set up a revenue stream – or multiple streams - of income that give you more choice in life. You may not become a multi-millionaire, but really you don't need to do that to be happy. Make a decent income, on a recurring basis and trust me, the choices that gives you will add to your happiness.

Now it's up to you. Will you put this report away and take no action? Most people will do just that.

Will you be different? I dare you to take the first step towards your own future.

Imagine where you could be in just 1 year from now.

Amin Motin MembershipSiteSolutions.com TrainingVideosWebinars.com Easywpplugins.com

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