304: Don’t Be Forgotten or Passed Over Online, Create a Membership Site Instead

Robert Plank 0:00 Robert Plank Show Episode 304, don't be forgotten or passed over online. Create a membership site instead. Hey, it's Robert Plank from membershipcube.com and do you fear being forgotten online now? What if you put in all this time, money and energy, and none of that leads to making money. What if, 1.5 years from now, you look back and you realize that all the work you've done, building an internet presence, putting in the work, day in and day out, pursuing your dream, all of that, all amounted to nothing. That sounds pretty scary, and I'll be completely honest, you should be afraid of time running out. You should be afraid of going out of business, but probably not for the reason that you think so. So let me tell you a little bit about online competition. YouTube users watch over 1 billion hours of video content per day, and according to the Wall Street Journal, that's set to overtake TV viewership this year. Now, over 6000 books are published every single day, According to UNESCO, and that's 1200 new books in China and 800 books in the US loan every single Dang day. Now, as of late 2016, 60 million businesses are actively marketing on Facebook, and 4 million of those users are using paid ads, so you have 4 million competitors on Facebook. And are you worried about giving up, burning out, or quitting? Well, according to the US Small Business Administration, there are 28 million small businesses in the US, and only 1/3 survived 10 years. 82% of businesses fail because of cash flow problems, which means either they're not cash flow positive or they mismanaged their money. And the US Census Bureau reports that 400,000 new businesses appear every year, but in that same year, 470,000 close up shop. So the good news is that being a lean startup or a one person business is easier than ever. According to a study performed just a few years ago, 8.6 of the US workforce consists of solopreneurs, and it's expected to grow to 24 million people by 2018 now you compare that so if you were to start a McDonald's franchise that costs three quarters of a million dollars in liquid assets to start up 750 grand plus, it costs about another million dollars to start up everything in startup costs, and on top of all that, you have to pay up to 12% in gross sales back to the corporate office. Sounds like a lot of money for around right? As opposed to this internet thing you need, hardly need anyone to get started. And I'm sure that you've experienced those moments of doubt, uncertainty and panic about what the heck you're even doing with this internet stuff. So are you worried that your internet business will eventually fail and maybe it's going to leave you with nothing to show but a lot of wasted effort. Well, how about this number one? I'm sure that you have way more ideas in your head than you have time to implement in just 24 hours in a day. Or more realistically, you sleep for eight hours. You take eight hours off. There's not that much time left to do your things right. And chances are you started more projects, more websites, more membership sites, than you finished. And number three, I imagine that, like me, you've seen one or two sites out there, and you've actually been jealous that they beat you to the market. You had a great idea, and they somehow scanned your mind, and they probably set up something even better than you had imagined. And number four, it's my hope that you've skipped right past the lowball or stuff like affiliate marketing, CPA ads, solo ads, banner ads, and instead looked to the low hanging fruit of making money online, which is membership sites. Now have you thought about this? Because what if, without a guide, you sort of fudge it and you just crank away some membership content right, without anyone to guide you. What if you made a sales letter and added some language and a button to get people to buy now? What if you guessed about what to price it? You guessed about traffic, you guessed about drip content. You weren't sure about membership software, just kind of rolled the dice there. What about web hosting? Just go with whoever says, you know on Facebook about the design. Just kind of like, grab your random design. It seems like only one way to go right and about 200 different ways to go wrong. I mean, if you were gonna go on a cross country road trip and you were gonna use GPS and you knew right where to go, compared to if you had no map and no direction. Well, how likely is it, with random trial and error, that you'll actually get to your destination? Not very likely. So can I make it simple for you first decide who you are and what you do? What solutions do you have? Draw for how can you help me get what I want? And that can be with stock, trading, real estate, Wordpress, what do you have that you can where you can help me and get me to where I want to go? Don't skip this. What will I as your buyer have at the end of your course and your training? So for example, let's say that you were really good at selling on eBay, and if you teach me how to sell on eBay, I shouldn't end your course with some ideas on how to sell on eBay, right? If I graduate from your course, don't give me just ideas. I should end with actual sold items on eBay. This isn't school. This is an important distinction. I take your course. I've taken some action before I'm done. Now, you set up WordPress, and I want to show you how to do that in our course membershipcube.com and install a simple membership plugin, and I'll give you that one for free to WishList Member. It's normally $297 free for you in membershipcube.com I'll show you how to take payments using PayPal, right? And you might have heard about different things like Infusionsoft and Stripe, and those are great for later, but for now, let's overkill for now, just use PayPal. Why? Because it's free, and they take just a very small percentage as their sort of processing fee to so, you know, take money now. What if you created something called a sales letter that convinces people to join, and it had a button where they could join and pay you money. After they pay that money, they end up creating an account in a membership site of yours, and this can be if they pay you recurring, but even better is it to pay you just one time. It's a way easier sale. It's way easier to convince someone just pay you one time and nothing are occurring. They click the button, make their account, and they get access to some downloads. Now this part is really important. Don't try to drip content or pad stuff like some people say, Well, I'm gonna give them a cliffhanger, right? They'll join my site. On day one, I'll give them half of a video. Day two, they'll get the second half. And day three, they got another half. That just seems like a really easy way to shrink someone along, right? Just deliver a simple solution to a simple problem that people have. So membership sites, including creating content, making a sales letter, getting sales preventing refunds, getting this thing called Evergreen income. I think this is within your grasp, as long as you give yourself permission to finish what you start. And I realize that these days you have a ton of things distracting you. But here is what you should not do if you fear having a failing online business. Do not ignore everyone around you jumping on the membership side online course, Wordpress, passive income bandwagon. You will not wait it out. Membership sites and online courses are not fads any more than the internet itself was a fad, or that Facebook was a fad, PayPal was a fad. I mean, these things are here to stay. They've been on the membership sites now, have been on the internet for decades, just under different sort of names and looks. Do not run into panic mode and don't give your content away for free. Don't run a bunch of low ticket offers. Don't delete your list and try to sell to a handful of $5,000 clients, unless, I mean, if you do have a ton of name recognition, a ton of traffic, a huge list, a bunch of affiliates, a bunch of JV partners and a bunch of other products, go ahead, but unless you have all those cool, big, crazy things, then that simply won't work. Also, do not continue on the path you're going now, just hoping that things will stay the same. Imagine if in 2017 you marketed with only a 2007 knowledge. I mean, what? What marketing was there to listen seven MySpace. Imagine in 2019 if you only marketed with a 2009 mindset. Now, what if you marketed with a 1997 year mindset? That's way out of date. You must keep up to date, and membership sites are the answer. Here's what you must do now. And by the way, I mean membership sites. If you were to make a membership site a couple decades ago, you would have been way too early, right? It would have been an even harder sale. The software would have been way more complicated. Now's the best time. So here's what you must do now. One decide that you will create a membership site, and, more specifically, a course, because that's the low hanging fruit for you. Make a course, instead of playing around with blogging, because that takes years to pick up speed. Don't play around with coaching, because the best way to get a coaching client is hand holding based on your course, and definitely don't just think about it without taking any action. Number two, solidify what solution you could deliver to your people in four simple milestones of 60 to 90 minutes of video per milestone. These are just two. Of the actions you should take if you care about your future, your financial well being, your legacy and your family. It's time now for you to stop fearing success, stop fearing the technical aspects of membership sites, and create passive income leverage for yourself, starting right now. Hop on this path to get started. Go to www.membershipq.com that's M, E, M, B, E, R, S, H, I, p, c, U, B, e.com, and I'll see you on the other side. I'm Robert Plank, membership q.com, and thank you.