When creating your forced optin pages or e-commerce sales letters, or even blog posts... how do you know if it's fully optimized?  How do you know whether or not you are throwing away e-mail subscribers, sales, blog commenters, and fans without even realizing?  I want to tell you what kind of conversion rate you should expect when testing out your pages using Google Website Optimizer or Google Analytics.

A forced e-mail optin page, or squeeze page, is a web page where the only thing a person can do is subscribe to your e-mail list or leave.  I like to put these in front of my sales letters, so people need to commit to a small action (subscribing to my list for more information)... that way I can follow up with them even if they don't buy.

But Most People Overcomplicate This Process!

Your forced optin page should only contain one headline, three bullet points, and instructions about what to do next.  (Opt-in to your list.)  If you do this correctly, you should expect 50 percent, or half, of your targeted visitors, to subscribe... all while your competition overthinks the process and only gets a 10 to 20 percent conversion rate.

After they have opted in, even if you are mailing them a free gift in exchange for signing up, send them to an offer page (or sales letter) where they can buy something from you.  Similar to the forced optin page, this should be a site where all they can do is either buy or leave.  There are no other links in this long, one-page web site.  Even if you don't think you are any good at convincing someone to buy from you... tell them a quick story, your argument for why your solution is best... and a set of bullet points telling them why they should get it now, and what benefits they will receive once they get their hands on it.

If I experience a 1 to 5 percent conversion rate, I'm happy. Even if you experience a little bit less than this, you can split test your web site and even get it critiqued by a professional copywriter at a fraction of the cost that it would take to get it done from scratch.  The copy will actually come out better because you know your product better than anyone else.

That covers forced optin pages and sales letters, but what about other kinds of web sites such as blogs?  What kind of conversion rate can you expect from alternate sources of traffic such as Twitter or article sites?  The answer is that you shouldn't care.  Your time is better spent optimizing your squeeze page or sales letter than worrying about your free traffic sources.  They are tough to measure, and after all, it's all "extra" traffic.

Those are the results you should expect from your well-optimized web pages: 50 percent conversion on your squeeze page and 1 percent conversion on your sales letter. As for your traffic sources, worry about your own sites.

What's your conversion rate? Do you even know (it's ok if you don't) ... just post your answer in a comment below.

I hope you are noticing this: The more successful solutions out there reduce the number of choices.

I first noticed this a couple of years ago when I bought a special box that attaches to my TV called a NetFlix Roku. What this box does is it connects to my Netflix service over Wi-Fi and streams movies and TV shows to my TV.

Sounds complicated, right? But it's not! The funny thing about this remote is that it has only got nine buttons: It has got a Home button, an Enter button, four arrows (like left, right, up, down), a Play and Pause button, Rewind and Fast-Forward. That's it!

There is no Channel Changing button, there is no Volume button, no Mute button. Not even an On/Off button.

That's Right!

The Roku device remains On for as long as it is plugged in! It is one of my favorite devices to use because I can literally use it within seconds of taking it out of the box.

Here is something else to think about: Video cameras. For a long time I resisted buying video cameras. It is so difficult to decide which one to get. I didn't want to get a video camera that used tape, even digital tape, and I wasn't sure if I should get a camera made by Sony, Kodak or some other manufacturer.

But I did buy the Flip camera years ago. The great thing about the flip is that it really only has one Big Red Button. Much like the Roku remote, it has a couple of extra buttons, such as Pause and Play (that's one button), the Trash button, and buttons to navigate between videos and zoom in and out. But the button usually almost always used is that Big Red Record Button.

You want to record new video? Take it out, hit the Big Red Button - it records. You want to stop? Hit the Big Red Button again.

That is compared to other cameras which are better in quality and have better features, but the problem is they have too many features. For example, with the Kodak Zi8, I almost bought it because it has an external microphone. But everyone I have seen record with it has to navigate through different menus to choose what quality they want to record with, and other settings, before they can record it.

I don't care about that! I want to just hit one button and it records.

Think about the iPhone: again, almost no buttons. It has got a Lock button, volume controls, a Silent button and a Home button. That's it. No buttons for dialing or going through different menus. That is all handled in the touch screen.

If you don't have a touch screen phone, I would recommend you borrow someone's iPhone and try to do a conference call. It is amazing how it can generate new menus and give you new buttons to push when there were none there previously.

Same deal with the iPad, Droid, Kindle and other touch screen devices with almost no buttons. It is super simple and super intuitive to use - and requires almost no documentation.

Think about WordPress: I think what makes WordPress special is that it simplifies everything. You can literally set it up in a few seconds and write your first blog post in a few minutes. The interface for writing new posts and activating plugins is far simpler than any other blogging platform I have ever seen.

And the blogs that are the most accessible are the ones that remove features. They might remove things like the dates, or the ability to leave comments on posts, just to make it easier to get to the information.

Now that I have told you how much I like the Roku, the flip, the iPhone and WordPress, it's your turn!

What Are You Doing To Remove The Buttons?

Do you offer two Order buttons on your sales letter: maybe a way to fully buy your product and another offer as a payment plan?

What would happen if you split tested, only showing one of those buttons? Would it make it easier for people to join your program?

When someone logs into your membership site, is it clear what they should look at first? In other words, are your posts listed in chronological order? And do you have some kind of welcome message or welcome video when someone first joins?

When I read your report, am I going to find clear, step-by-step instructions about what to read first and where to go from there?

And, most importantly, what should I do when I'm done? So tell me, how are you removing multiple choices and multiple calls to action that don't matter?

What are YOU doing to remove the buttons? Comment below.

Are you split testing yet? Split testing is the internet marketing equivalent of flossing -- but it doesn't have to be anymore!

Marketers usually lie and tell people they split test, but if we are lucky, they do it once a month, and not on a daily basis.  Like both things, the irony is that it only takes a few seconds and it saves a lot of frustration later.

Do you ever wonder if you might have a better headline than the one you are using now?  Do you ever wake up at night wondering if you should charge less or more than what you are charging now?  What if that extra bonus on your sales letter is reducing your sales? Should you use long or short copy or even a video sales letter instead of a written one?

You can all these questions for your particular niche, your audience, and your offer by split testing.  Once you split test, nobody can argue with you.  Because Google Website Optimizer, like most of Google's services, run on their server and not yours, it is pretty easy to set up.  You just have to copy and paste a few lines of code onto your web page.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yTjj9MnzRY

I am going to give you the basic steps of setting up your own split tests right here.

Step 1: Create Two Versions Of The Same Page

You first need to decide what you are going to split test.  I start with the headline.  Here is something interesting, I once increased conversions by 19.6% just by adding quotes around my headline.  What does this mean? It means for every $100 dollars that I made from that site.  By having quotes around the headline, I would instead make $119 dollars.  For every $1,000 dollars I made on that site.  Instead by having quotes around the headline, I would make $1,196 dollars.  You can see how that adds up over time.

The most aggravating thing about split testing is you don't always know exactly why a certain change makes a difference. Maybe having quotes around my headline makes it look more official and gets them to read longer.  I'm not sure.  I do know from testing that it works.

If you don't know what to split test, enter quotes around the headline, remove a couple of words from the headline, or remove or add a sub-headline. Just make a quick change, don't over think it.  Spend about 10 seconds making a slightly different version of your sales letter.

Now you should save that new sales letter as index2.php.  It means that your normal sales letter is named index.php.  You alternate sales letter is called index2.php.  Once you get Google optimizer set up, it is going to send half your traffic to index.php, the other half to index2.php to figure out which one gets you more sales.

Step 2: Create Campaign

The next step is to create your Google Website Optimizer Campaign.  If you have an AdWords account, you can simply log in, go to the reporting tab and click on website optimizer.  If you don't use AdWords, just go to Google and search for Google Website Optimizer and you will find a page to sign up.  It's free and it's easy.

Once you are logged in, you should see a link that says Create Experiment. You are going to click that link and create an A/B Experiment.  GWO allows you to either run AB test, which is what we are doing where you compare two versions of a page versus multivariate, which requires a lot more traffic which we are not going to use.

Click on A/B Experiment, go to the next step and then create an experiment name.  Most people skip this step, name is something stupid like split test 1.  Name it the name of your site, plus whether it is a sales letter or squeeze page.  For example, Action Pop Up Sales Letter would be the name of my Google Website Optimizer experiment.

The next step is to identify the pages you want to test.  You are only comparing two versions of a page, so you are going to put in the URL to your original page.  For example, www.actionpopup.com/index.php and then you are going to name and give the URL for your alternate page, for your variation page.  For example, "Subheadline" that way you know what the difference is between your original and alternate sales letter.  You are going to add the page variation URL, for example www.actionpopup.com/index2.php.

Finally, you are going to give them the URL for your conversion page, for example www.actionpopup.com/thankyou.php. This way the service knows what your two test pages are and what is your download page, click continue.

Copy and paste the tracking code from this service.  Website Optimizer is going to give you four pieces of code. It will tell you exactly which pages to place it on.  For the original page, that index.php file.  It's going to give you a control code to place at the top of the page.

What this is going to do is decide if your visitors should be viewing index.php or index2.php.  It will make sure that an equal amount of traffic will be sent to both pages.

Next it is going to give you two pieces of tracking code, one code to place at the bottom of index.php and one to place at the bottom of index2.php.  Even though this code looks scary, it is just a hit counter.  It is going to figure out how many people viewed your index.php file and how many viewed you index2.php file.

Finally it is going to give you conversion code which you place on your download page.  This is another hit counter that will only count if someone gets to your download page.

Step 3: Let It Run

Can you see how all the pieces are working together now? When somebody comes to your site, first it is going to decide to send them to index.php or index2.php.  Let's pretend they got sent to index2.php, it's then going to load the tracking code and say "ah ha" they viewed index2.php.  Then the person might leave or they might buy.  If they do buy, they will end up on your download page and then website optimizer will make a note of that, and notice that index2.php happens to make this particular sale.

Let it run until the end. This service will keep track of which page is winning and will run a statistical formula to decide when it is time to stop split testing.

If one of your pages, either index.php or index2.php got a lot more sales than the other, it will decide the clear winner.  For example, your index2.php page with the quotes on the headline might be the winner, and now you know you have improved your conversion rate and have more money.

Delete index.php and replace index.php with index2.php since it is now the clear winner.  You are not done.  Now it is time to start the process all over again and split test the next thing you want to test.  Maybe another change to the headline, a logo, bigger buy button, whatever you want, stop guessing and start split testing with Google Website Optimizer today.

Are you split testing yet? If not, what's your deadline for your next split test to go live?  Comment below please...

The biggest benefit you can give to yourself as a business owner is to remove yourself from the equation. That means automate as much of yourself as possible ahead of time so your daily tasks do not become chores.

You might be surprised at all the ways you can pre-schedule your content and your marketing ahead of time and I'm going to explain six ways to do that right now.

1. Blog Drip

When someone says the phrase "drip content" to me, the first thing that comes to mind and the first thing that should come to mind to you is dripping out content on your WordPress blog.

WordPress is the #1 blogging platform and my favorite feature about it has always been that you can schedule content ahead of time with no additional plugins needed. When you're writing a blog post, you can choose to submit it right now or you can change the date on it so it appears as if it was written a long time ago, but you can also change the date to a date in the future – for example, date it to be next week or next month.

That post will remain in a scheduled state until the next week or next month and it will automatically be published for you on a timer. You can set not just the date but the time of day so you know exactly when that next post is coming out.

I highly recommend that instead of sitting and writing out your blog's next week's worth of content, write 4 or 5 short posts and schedule them one month apart. That way, you have the next several months of blog posts already scheduled. And guess what else, if you're using WordPress to run your membership site, you're dripping out content inside your paid membership site as well.

2. Autoresponder Drip

The next easy way to drip content is with your email autoresponder.

You might not have notice it yet but your autoresponder gives you the ability to pre-schedule posts in the same way as your blog. You can write an email that will be sent to your list and set it to tomorrow's date or next week's date, which means that you can write your next month or your next week's worth of autoresponder emails and not have to do anything for that amount of time. You could go on vacation for the next week, schedule your next week's worth of emails and now your business will run even though you are not present.

When you are launching a product, one email simply won't cut it. You need to give people multiple reasons to go check out your offer. You need to give people multiple email reminders getting them to look at your webpage. When you're running a webinar, you should send several emails leading up to the webinar to make sure everyone is on the call.

When you make a blog post, you should send traffic to that blog post and even send reminder emails, which means you can schedule your blog post and schedule your autoresponder emails for that blog post.

3. Sales Letter Drip

If you know a programmer for about $5, you can get content on your sales letter dripped out. There's a little thing called "if else" statements.

That means if you want to slowly increase the price of your product – say increase it by $10 once a week for 5 weeks, you can at a special bit of PHP code that will replace your order button with a new one at a higher price every few days. You can run seasonal specials. For example, every month you could rotate in a different bonus for your offer to give different people a reason to get in.

4. Squeeze Page Drip

You can apply the same "if else" technology that you use on your sales letter to your squeeze page as well and you can use it to do the same things – rotate a monthly or weekly offer, and this can be a different headline, a different bonus or even an entire page swapped out for another.

You can switch out one of your opt-in forms after 2 months for a different one and have the first opt-in form send people to a page where they are supposed to re-tweet one of your free audios, but after 2 months, now direct them to a page where it sends them to your blog, which is now filled up with content.

More often than not, if I have a hard deadline for something, if I know I'm going to increase the price, change the headline, change a redirect, I will set it on this timer instead of doing it manually because otherwise I know I might forget.

5. Social Media

Now that you've dripped out your blog post, install a WordPress plugin such as Twitter Tools to leave a Twitter post or a tweet everytime you make a new blog post.

Also, if I know I'm going to be tweeting about something for the next week or two, I will use a scheduling service such as SocialOomph (formerly TweetLater) to write tweets but set a publication date on them, which means I can write 10 or 20 tweets a time which will be posted once a day or once a week.

If you don't know what kind of scheduled tweets you should put out there, just use 30-day reminders. If you're posting about a blog post today, schedule another tweet in 30 days, reminding people about that old blog post.

6. Traffic Drip

Even third-party services allow you to drip out your content, even if your content appears on other people's sites.

The Traffic Geyser service allows you to upload up to 90 videos at once and determine when they will be scheduled. (I wish Tube Mogul did too.)  When I was using this service for videos, I would record 90 videos at once, upload 90 videos and set the publication date for each and everyone - meaning that I could leave it alone for 3 months and it would send out a new video to the video sites once per day.

EzineArticles even has a premium option which means you can schedule all your articles and determine what date they will be published. Meaning, you can use the same strategy, write or outsource 90 articles, upload and schedule them all and the next 3 months' worth of traffic building are now automatic.

I hope that one of those 6 ways to drip content automatically opened your eyes and made you realized that doing things on a consistent basis doesn't always involve you and doesn't always have to be a chore.

So, which one do you like the best? The blog drip, autoresponder, sales letter, squeeze page, social media, or traffic drip? Post below, letting me know. Thank you.

Writing anything is pretty tough, whether it is writing articles, putting together a report, writing a blog post - but especially creating sales copy.  Let's figure out what your options are...

Hiring A Copywriter

Finding someone to write your sales letter for you sounds good, right? You just pay somebody some money, and out pops a brand-spanking-new sales letter.

But it's not great, because the copywriter doesn't necessarily know you. He doesn't know your voice. He hasn't seen your product. He doesn't understand what your customers' problems are.

And the worst part is you paid money to get something that is worse than if you had made it yourself!

Writing It Yourself

There is a free option: that is that you try to write the sales letter yourself. However, unless you have been trained in writing sales copy, it is not going to be that great. It is also going to take you for ever, and you might not even finish it. If you are not a writer, let alone a copywriter, your skills might be better put to use creating videos or marketing your solution.

Also, many people who have not written on a regular basis don't write the way they sound - which means your sales letter is going to seem completely different than the way you come off in person or in audios.

What is the solution then?

Put together a list of problems your customers have, and a list of benefits that you have that will solve the problem, and...

Dictate Your Sales Copy!

You are going to use the same exact elements as a sales letter: like a headline, sub-headline, body copy, your story, a problem, and so on. So you might need to consult for one hour with a copywriter, especially to help you flesh out the headline and organize the copy.

But if you know your niche and you know your product, and you are passionate about it, you can dictate out an audio file, get someone else to type it up for you. And now you have a complete sales letter that sounds exactly like it came from you - because it did!

Also keep in mind that once you have the sales letter dictated, transcribed and properly formatted, you can send it to the same copywriter again to get it critiqued.

This will probably take only about an hour, and critiques where the copywriter gets on a phone call with you - or preferably a webinar - work the best because you are not waiting around for him to finish.

The next time you need a sales letter done, dictate it! Meet with the copywriter for one hour to flesh out the plan of the copy. Dictate it, transcribe it, format it. Then meet back with the copywriter again, to make it shine.

Have you dictated sales copy yourself? What kinds of things are you dictating? Are they articles / reports / sales letters? Or something I hadn't even thought of?

Leave me a blog comment below with your response.

Why is it that people pay you money for your services, products and memberships?

It really helps to figure out not just how people found you, but what is their reason for joining your community? That way, when you send emails and write sales letters, you can appeal to all the groups.

I can't speak for anyone else, but here are the reasons I buy your stuff...

The Entire Step-By-Step Training

Four years ago, I joined a Membership site from Jim Edwards that taught everything I needed to know. It taught how to create videos, how to make reports, gave me tips on sales letters... And a lot of the things I learned were not taught directly to me. They were things I observed from his marketing and his videos.

I joined that site as a relative newbie because I wanted to learn and apply one hundred percent of what he showed me.

That training helped me get over a lot of obstacles. For example, I had not ever created video. I had some idea in my head that I needed to have green screen, that I needed to have different camera angles and different screens. But most of his videos were simple PowerPoints. At the time, PowerPoint videos were not very common. And that was the biggest benefit I got from learning and taking all his training, was making PowerPoint videos.

Eventually I outgrew that training and quit. But I short-cut a lot of things that I might have taken a long time to figure out, or maybe would not have figured out at all.

The Quick Fix

I have joined other membership sites, just to get one piece of the training. It is very important that when you join some kind of site, you know what your goal is.

Jeanette Cates delivered a three-month training program about product creation. And although most of the things she taught I already knew, I joined because I wanted to get motivated enough to record more audios. That was my one goal from joining: to record more audios.

I joined the site, picked up some extra tips about how to make my audios better, recorded them and then showed them to her for accountability. I also used those audios to build my list, and I reported back to her about how many opt-ins they gave me and how many sales those led to.

More often than not, I will join someone's site just for one particular thing. This is why, in addition to explaining the step-by-step of what they are getting in your sales letter, go into the details. Tell them EXACTLY what result they will get from your training - because you never know what outcome people are looking for.

Community

I have joined a number of monthly membership sites, just to get my name out there. It is one thing to leave blog comments, or post on a free forum. But the audience there has not been proven to buy anything.

On the other hand, if you join somebody's "$100 per month training" and are allowed to leave comments or make forum posts, you know that every single person reading your messages has at least $100 per month to spend on some form of training.

Also, because it costs money to get into this community, it is more exclusive, which means it is a smaller crowd, which means you have less competition as far as getting your information read.

Some of my best connections came from the inside of these communities.

Brownie Points

When a friend of mine, Stu McLaren, offered training about his WordPress Membership Software, I joined - even though I had previously taught similar membership training.

I joined this site basically to become the "Star Student." I listened to all the training calls, read all the blog posts, and when he had call-in days, I made sure to have some kind of question, to make sure I understood all of the content. And I contributed a couple of things just to make sure all the bases were covered with his training.

Although you should definitely position your sales letter and marketing materials to "Why newbies can best benefit form your course," keep in mind that some experts may join, to keep their own training up-to-date, or even show support for you.

And those are the four reasons why I buy eBooks, reports, services and memberships. Did I leave any reasons out? What is the top reason YOU join someone else's community or pay them money for something?

Let me know down below, in the form of a very brief comment.

A split test of mine recently finished and the conversion rate increased from 2.21% to 3.92% by changing JUST the headline -- but not even the words on the headline... the COLORS!

Imagine that, an additional 14 signups to a "$47 every 2 weeks" membership site -- an extra $1400 monthly passive income -- from such a small change.

Why does this happen?  Why does split testing even work?

I'll tell you why... it's because:

Most People Are Confused About Which Way to Go!

It's the same reason why parking lots have signs that say "lock your doors."  Why airports have signs everywhere you look.  Why you have to put the silly red arrow on squeeze pages and literally TELL them to enter their name and e-mail address.

People are easily distracted, and it's up to you to explain what you want from them.

Think about how many times you see this on the internet in a single day.  When you go to YouTube, it recommends about a billion videos all around you... and you end up clicking on video after video without even realizing.  You end up with a bunch of open tabs... and you end up watching some other YouTuber's video.

Split Call-to-Action!

The days of "putting AdSense ads next to the order button" are gone (good grief), but now "multiple order buttons with payment plans" are all the rage.  Or even worse, "the P.S. with a different URL at the end of the e-mail."

Come on guys, don't give me a choice between four payment buttons.  Don't let me choose between paying it all up front or doing a payment plan -- most of the complaints and refunds come from the payment plan crowd anyway.

But with most people, the craziness doesn't stop after I buy from you.  Even after I paid you money... you're confusing me with the WORST two-letter word ever invented:

"OR!"

You could do this... OR you could do this... more choices.  Don't give me so many choices!

• You've setup your squeeze page, so you can promote it using AdWords... OR you can post on forums... OR you can get joint ventures
• You want a membership site, so you can use aMember for it... OR you can use Wishlist
• Choose one of these three methods of writing a sales letter
• Learn Windows and open up your favorite programs in one of six ways

Are you kidding me?  I have to choose?  Just give me the best way possible!

Even if you HAVE to tell people multiple ways to do something, like with a multi-part course, just give me the easy solution first.  Then tell me what's the "slightly tougher" solution to complete after I've finished the first one.

Do me a favor and stay away from giving me the "top 21 ways" in your training calls.  Instead, reduce it down to 4 or 5 things... you probably struggled coming up with all 21 anyway.

And then position those 4 ways as step 1, step 2, step 3, and step 4... remove the choice.

Today's Question: Are you guilty of the "top 21" syndrome?  How are you going to fix it?  Comment below and tell me... I'm not going to give you a choice, just comment.

Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple) who is worth over 5 billion dollars and is a fantastic speaker, has a unique close that if you try to emulate it, will kill every single webinar pitch and every single sales letter you have.

I'm not a huge Apple fan, but Steve runs an event once a year called MacWorld Expo... you've probably heard of it.  A bunch of geeks go to this event and he shows off all the latest stuff their company has put out.

At the end of the presentation, he stops and says, "Oh yeah, one more thing..." And then reveals something big, like iTunes or the iPod Touch.

That Works Great If All You're After
is Brand Awareness, But...

If you're pitching something in a sales letter, on stage or in a webinar... the only "one more thing" had better be "here's this one extra bonus to get you to buy now."

I've been on far too many webinars where I talk for about an hour straight, give away a bunch of information, then transition into the close and offer the best deal possible... and then the other person presenting asks me, "Is there anything else you want to add?"

No, of course I don't! But sometimes I forget and have "just one more" little tip I want to share with people.  And guess what... people are left with that one little tip in their head, instead of "go here and buy this now."

That "One More Thing" Ruined Your Whole Close!

The point of doing webinars for other people isn't to make friends.  It isn't to fill up someone else's membership site with content created by you.  It's to make money.

If you're doing a webinar for someone else (teaching their list), the best favor you can do for that list owner is to promote your product with THEIR affiliate link.

Otherwise, what's the point? I give away tons of free information on my blog just like you do... and no matter how chicken you are of pitching on a webinar...

If you teach them a little bit of something, and you don't give them a place they can go and buy more of that information, then you're a terrible teacher and you should be ashamed.

So How Do You Avoid the "One More Thing" Problem?

Here's how...

1. If you're interviewing someone, and they've started their pitch (it might be difficult to tell because any decent speaker will very smoothly transition from content to the pitch) then don't talk at all while they're closing.

2. If you happen to share "one more thing" then close one more time. It's okay to close more than once.

3. Have just one call to action at the end of your sales letter or webinar.  Not "also find me on Twitter" or "also call me here" or "also go to my blog" or "also e-mail me here" ... go here now to buy.

You Need to Know When to Stop Talking!

Keep it simple. Have your people do just one thing at the end of your presentation.

Now it's your turn to do just ONE thing.  Do you make this mistakes on your sales letters, in your interviews, or on your webinars?  Or have you at least seen other people do it?  Tell me about it... and tell me how you'll correct it next time.  Comment below and tell me...

A couple days ago I asked my list if they had a membership site yet... I got 300 responses to that question and I want to share the results with you right now:

• 165 people, or 54.8% own membership software
• Out of that half that owned membership software, 89 people or 53.9% have at least one paying member
  
• Total, those 89 people who had a profitable membership only accounted for 29.6% of the responders

So Strange!

Some of these people paid $197, $297, even 4000 bucks for a membership script but only half of them are doing anything with it.

So let me share with you a couple of reasons that stopped me from creating membership sites (I've created 19 of them in the past 12 months... and only ONE before that time period!)

Excuse #1: It Becomes a Huge Chore You Have to Maintain. That membership site might be fun and exciting when you first get the idea, but what about a week from now?  A month or even a year from now?

That site is going to become a massive time-suck, and you're stuck with it even though you could be working on new projects instead.

Excuse #2: It's Tough to Retain Members. How many magazine subscriptions have you canceled in your lifetime?  Most of them, right?

The same thing happens to subscribers of your membership site.  Maybe you don't provide enough content, or it's not exciting enough for people, or they just quit and it has nothing to do with you.

You can try to fight it by scheduling daily e-mails in your membership and overloading new subscribers with content, so there's no way they can get through all the information and they forget to cancel... but that's kind of mean.

Excuse #3: The Conversion Rates Suck Because It's Monthly. You get a lot of extra objections when trying to sell monthly access.  How easy or hard will it be to cancel?

Will I forget I'm subscribed to your monthly membership?  Is the content going to be just as good 9 months from now as it is today?

Excuse #4: You Have to Create a Lot of Content. Let's face it, you take a big risk when creating a monthly membership site.

It's a big project, it's fun to start but tough to finish.  You might spend 6 months creating the content and another 6 months promoting it, only for it to flop... and guess what, there's a year of your life, gone forever.

Now that I've ruined your day let me drop a bomb that's super-obvious to half of you and super-surprising to the other half...

Membership Sites Don't Have to Be Recurring!

Think about it.  If someone pays you money one time, and your system gives them a username and password to login and get their download, that COUNTS as a membership site!

Between the two of us, Lance and I have been a part of 20 membership sites.  One of those (NicheSeeker), I created in 2006.  The other 19 were made in the past year.

Only 8 of the 20 are actually recurring membership sites.  The rest are things like e-classes, where they pay once and get access to a private blog.

So now that you know a membership site doesn't have to be recurring, what the heck can you do with it?

Solution #1: Bonus Drip. You can offer your regular e-book but then write some extra reports, or create a bonus webinar, even buy up resale rights to related products... drip it out over the course of a week, a month, or a year to keep people coming back.

Help them through the step-by-step parts of your book, or give them reminders... or just keep delivering value a little bit at a time to cut down on refunds.

Solution #2: Collect Testimonials. Because your membership site is setup on a blog, people have the ability to leave comments.

You could ask people for their feedback which you can use to create your next product, or your next bonus, or even work it into an actual testimonial.

Solution #3: Offer a Trial Period. What if you offered the bonuses to your product first... whether those are checklists or extra videos?

People can join your membership for $1 or $4.95 for 7 days to get a little bit of content, then once they rebill for the full amount, they get the downloads including the main product.

If They Cancel, They Are Kicked Out of the Membership...

Lance and I are using a trial period for our "List Copywriting" membership and I'm going to be applying this to some of my one-time payment products.  What's cool about the trial period is you can present a special offer to a specific person's list or a forum, without discounting the price or bonuses at all.

Solution #4: Offer a Payment Plan. This is similar to the trial period, but you let people pay in two or three parts... again, every time they pay, they get access to a little bit more content.

We used to do this all the time with our high-ticket, single payment membership sites for group coaching.  The final price might be $197, so they pay $127 now and $127 later.  Gotta add a little bit of interest so they're more motivated to pay in full right now.

Solution #5: Easy Upsell. Most membership software like Wishlist makes it super easy to add multiple membership levels.

So you could easily package a bunch of your bonuses in one membership level, or make people pay a little bit more per month to be able to download the content (as opposed to streaming it right off the blog).

Just Check a Couple Extra Boxes...

Solution #6: Cut Off Access If They Refund. If you're a product creator then you like doing this.  A couple of our membership sites run for a 6-month period.

If people get through all six months, they have access for life and can come back anytime.  But a minority of people cancel after 3 or 4 months thinking they've got "just about everything" ... but when they cancel, they're cut off.  So lifetime access after they've paid all their payments is a big reason to stick around till the end.

Solution #7: Easy Download and Password Retrieval. I deal with about one request per day from someone saying, "I lost my download link" or "It says my download has expired, can you give me a new link?"

What's cool about having a membership site in WordPress is that WordPress has a built in "lost password" feature.  If one of your customers needs their download, they'll go to your sales letter, see the link to the member's area, and use the lost password to get their login sent to them... they login and grab their download.

Solution #8: Easy to Notify of Changes. Did you improve your book or change that script?  Just upload the file, edit the post... and guess what, most membership software like Wishlist allows you to e-mail the entire user base right from within WordPress.

The thing is...

Even If Your Membership Takes Only One Payment,
It's a Membership!

So when I asked you guys on my e-mail list if you have a membership with at least one paying member... were you telling the truth or were you a liar?

If you're a liar, don't bother commenting below.

If you aren't a liar, tell me the URL to your membership site so I can check it out.

Leave me a comment below please... I'm only letting 100 of you reply.

Let me tell you about the first product online that got me to pay higher than $100 for the very first time (this was years ago).

He called it a "Because I Can" sale.  Basically the guy put together a huge package with a bunch of his own products, including resale rights.

• This was long before that kind of thing was common!
• JV giveaways didn't exist yet...
• Pitch webinars didn't REALLY exist yet...

He set the start price at $37 and the end price at something like $297, and the sale only ran for about 3 days.  Every few seconds the price would jump up a fraction of a penny.  I waited until it was above $100 before I bought.

Back then I think my highest priced product was $197, and if I sold two copies of it in a week I would be jumping for joy. I might not have had a $1000 launch yet.  I was still full-time in college, rent was only $625 a month (a lot for me at the time).  I didn't have a full time job or any other source of income.

But... I Still Bought!

What got me to buy?  Scarcity!

If you've read copywriting books (I've only read one and a half) they all try to corner you into this idea of "reason why." Why are you selling your product at this price?  Why are you limiting it to this number of copies?

Back in the day when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and the only infoproducts people could sell were cassette tapes, floppy disks, printed manuals, of COURSE you needed a reason-why.

Years ago before there were services like Amazon S3, Kunaki or even GoToWebinar I saw a couple marketers run "scratch and dent" sales. "A couple of my DVD sets fell off the shelf in the closet... the packaging is messed up, but I just checked and the DVDs still play fine.  But I want to get rid of these and that's why they're half price."

The Problem Is...

Once you have digital products all those scratch-and-dent sales, firesales, going out of business sales, overstock sales, blah blah blah... no longer work.  In fact they look cheesy.

Really, you're only limiting it to 100 copies?  Do you have a shortage of electrons on your web site?

In my past launches I have tried all kind of reason-whys.  I've tried, "I don't want to let these secrets out to too many people."  Yeah right.

I tried, "My server can only handle so much bandwidth at a time."  Yeah right.

I even tried, "I'm testing the market at a low introductory price and gathering testimonials."  Which is halfway decent except this has been used so often it's now a cliche.

So what's the real reason to limit the number of buyers, increase the price or set a deadline on the offer... the reason nobody can possibly argue with?

"Because I Can!"

Having no reason, being ballsy and saying I'm limiting the offer "Because I Can" shows you have a lot of confidence in what you're selling and you're sure it will sell out in a short about of time.

If you only let 20 people in and a few weeks later your sales letter still says 17 slots left, it hurts your social proof, doesn't it?  So you'd better sell out.  And even if you fake selling out (which you should never do) then guess what, you can't brag about your big victory without feeling bad about lying.

"Because I Can" selling pisses people off -- but ONLY that group of people who joined your list and bought from you to be your friend.  Not the ones who joined to apply what they learned from you and get more than their investment back.

But everyone else will love you and respect you more for it.

When you stick to your word about closing the offer, they'll know they can't mess around and WAIT next time.

They Have to Buy in Now!

I bought that guy's offer because I'd seen him use similar scarcity offers in the past, and he never let "just a few extra people in."  Ever.

So I started doing that with my low-ticket products.  I started with time based sales (deadline) and was the first person to offer what people eventually called dimesales -- increasing the price after each sale.  Scarcity and social proof combined into one!

The next time you're worried about justifying your price, or justifying any kind of scarcity, just remember -- you're an information marketer and you can.  As long as you're confident about it.

Speaking of scarcity, guess what... I'm limiting the number of comments on this post to 100 comments.  Why?  Because I Can!

So quickly leave a comment below and add your two cents before I close comments on this post forever.  (I did it last time!)

Has "Because I Can" selling made you buy?  Have you offered it before?  Do you think I'm right or wrong about this blog post?  Comment below right now!