Membership Sites

Pain of Disconnect: How to Get More, Make More, and Keep More (As Soon As You Understand This Very Simple Idea)

Can I let you in on a couple of quick, little secrets?

Secret #1: We are using "drip content" less and less in our business -- it's almost obsolete for us!

Secret #2: The marketplace goes through "cycles." Notice how one month articles are really hot, then next month it's all about making short reports. The month after, webinars are the "next big thing" -- then it's social media. Then it's membership sites... more on that in a minute.

Secret #3: We all have a $2,000 membership site inside of us -- as long as we can get over price reluctance...

Here's something I even have to remind myself sometimes... a membership site is just a download page on steroids. Someone pays you money (even a one time fee), or joins for free, fills in a quick signup form containing: first name, last name, email address, account username, and password...

And now they get the digital product (PDF, video, software, service) they just paid for -- plus you're building a mailing list. Plus they can get back to that page anytime they want -- recover the password if they forgot it. You can easily update or add bonuses, throw in a forum.

What You Probably Didn't Know About Drip Content...

Drip your content even if it's a single payment site.

Example: I charge $97 for my "Time Management on Crack" course. It contains a PDF report and a series of videos, people can post comments. But what's really cool is that new short videos are dripped out once per week 26 times. That means we stay in contact for six months even after they've paid me money.

I have links to other products in the sidebar of that site. Login offers when they come back to view more content. And, of course, if they refund (within the first 30 days), they no longer have access to the site.

Pain of disconnect. This makes it interesting because I could split up the payments and make it a 2-pay, 3-pay, 5-pay, 10-pay. Maybe something ridiculous like $9.95 for 10 months and then it's paid off.

Throw in a live monthly Q&A session where I setup a "recurring webinar" in GoToWebinar, schedule 12 of them, put it on my Google Calendar, schedule some email reminders so my members show up, hop on a call and talk about whatever's on my mind, and answer any questions people submit -- no big deal if there are only a couple questions or even no questions.

"The Last Thing You'd Ever Shut Off"

Quick question: What do you pay for on a recurring basis? What do you pay for on a recurring basis that's FUN? What do you pay for on a recurring basis, that would be one of the last things you'd turn off? How about...

• Web hosting (HostGator)
• Webinar service (GoToWebinar)
• Email autoresponder service (Aweber or SendGrid)
• Online storage (Amazon S3)
• Mastermind group (Double Agent Marketing)
• Paid advertising

If you had to shut off any one of these items, you'd be in serious trouble, wouldn't you? So if you want to make "real" money online, create a paid site that people simply can't live without.

Add a forum or community in your site where people can interact -- but keep it alive (that's the secret)...

Bundle your site with software that shuts off remotely upon cancellation. Adobe is going this right now with their "Creative Cloud Suite." For $49/month you get the latest Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks, their audio editor, all of that -- and you'd probably pay that same price just to buy the software outright and keep it updated every year. But, you stop paying, and now you can't use Photoshop.

"Pain of Disconnect" Explained

Were you on the internet when "audio buttons" on sales letters were popular? Armand Morin had a service called Audio Generator. You place an audio button on your website, and can call a phone number, leave a message in their voicemail, and that's your audio message...

BUT!!! If you forget to pay your monthly bill, the audio messages changes to something like -- "This customer's service has been discontinued for non-payment. Add audio buttons to your site right now at AudioGenerator.com."

Now... with that pain of disconnect, you have an easy time getting people to stay in, and they'll reactivate if they have even more than a couple of audio buttons around the internet -- no one wants to hear that message!

And that's why we have this "remote activation" built into our WP Drip, Video Player, Webinar Optin, Backup Creator, Plugin Dashboard, WP Import, WP Notepad, and WP Kunaki plugins. We can put these plugins on a payment plan (probably not a monthly charge forever). We can offer a trial period -- as we've done with 99 cent trials in the past.

I don't mind if someone joins for 99 cents, or makes 4 out of 5 payments and then cancels, because they'll be shut off if they do! The plugin will no longer function.

Eugene Schwartz: Marketplace Cycles

Getting back on track. Marketplace cycles. A really smart copywriter named Eugene Schwartz had a couple of ideas about finding a demand and filling it. First of all... unless you're Coca-Cola and spend millions and millions on "branding" ... you can't "create" demand. It's much cheaper to find out what people are buying right now and sell that.

But... the marketplace has its ups and downs. (Articles are popular, then not, then webinars, etc.) It goes in four stages...

•  "Novelty" stage: brand new course teaches a "simple" technique to lose 10 pounds (i.e. diet & exercise)
• "Enlargement" stage: competitors flood the market showing how to lose 50 pounds
• "Sophistication" stage: even more competitors show how to lose 100 pounds, from just 5 minutes a day, in your sleep, without changing your diet or any exercise whatsoever
• "Abandonment" stage: the marketplace is so fed up with complex solutions, and not knowing what to buy, that they lose interest

That is why you see these trends coming in style, getting too crowded, going out of style, then becoming popular again. That's why we sell multiple software products and have webinar training on different topics.

That's why if you're in the weight loss niche, you have one product based on Exercise. One product based on Diet. One weight loss product based on Mindset/Hypnosis/Goal Setting. One weight loss product based on Supplements. And now they can all sell year-round, although you'll cycle through what the marketplace is asking for right now.

Membership Sites!

Here's how I see marketplace cycles when it comes to recurring membership sites...

"Novelty" iteration: Drip content. Most marketers in your industry aren't using the "membership" aspect of their products so you create a site that drips out content over time, like 1 new video or interview per week with some assignments and tools in between.

Problem: you have to keep creating new "content" every month, and your customers have to wait to get it...

"Enlargement" iteration: Big box of crap. Now everyone is dripping out courses. You set things up so that when someone buys from you, they get that drip content, but are able to download a bunch of stuff when they first sign up. 10 hours of videos the first day. Keep putting out one new $97 product each month and say, you can either pay $97 for this one product, or get on this $97/month membership to get ALL my products at once.

Problem: when someone buys into your membership site, they're overwhelmed and have no way of consuming all that content before it's time to pay again... until they get frustrated and give up...

"Sophistication" iteration: Multi-tiered membership. Now you're saying, I want this site to be accessible to my low-ticket buyers, but I also want to make enough money to justify keeping the site open. I'll offer a "Silver" level for $17/month that contains all my products. The "Gold" level is $47/month and also contains a monthly live group Q&A webinar. Then the "Platinum" level might be $97/month and offer 1-on-1 coaching.

Problem: Can people easily tell the difference between each level? Is there an easy way to upgrade to a higher level? (Good news for you PayPal users: you can now edit the price your recurring members pay you every month... pretty cool!)

"Abandonment" iteration: Pain of disconnect model. We set our membership site at a fair price and bundle it with some software that'll shut off (WP Drip), or build a really useful tool right into the membership site (Make a Product or Newbie Crusher). Now it doesn't matter what we price the site at. How many payments we split this into. If we have a trial period or not. If they pay, they can use it, if not, they don't.

What's my point? Well, I see far too many people asking the wrong questions. What should I price my membership site at? Should I bill for a set number of payments or continue billing forever? Offer a trial period? How do I reduce refunds? How do I keep them paying?

This is backwards logic. Create a site, look at your competitors, and go with a price that "feels" right. There are some recurring sites like LinkedIn (job finder), eHarmony (dating service), or Angie's List (consumer reviews) where I don't "get" that monthly pricing model. I'm not going to pay a monthly fee just to find a local plumber in my area, I'll search Google. Someone might pay for LinkedIn for a month, then get a job, and cancel.

Lynda, GoToWebinar & Hulu

Can I tell you what I think is one of the coolest, most ridiculous recurring offers out there? Lynda.com. For $25/month, you get access to 1,427 different training courses on everything from Microsoft Word, to PHP programming, Apple software creation, video editing, audio editing, photo editing, any tutorial you'd need.

They don't worry about dripping content. It kind of is a "big box of crap" site, but even if you only took one course from them every month, you'd stay in.

GoToWebinar. You can run an unlimited number of webinar sessions in a given month, run free ones, charge for others, use them for meetings and coaching calls, run them for others -- if it costs you $99 per month, all you need to do is get $99.01 of value from it every month...

Hulu Plus. 7 dollars and 99 cents per month and I can watch many TV shows on demand, even several TV shows that were on-air yesterday.

I'll be honest with you. The first time I charged $200 for a product (I was 19 years old) I was terrified. The first time I charged $300 for a simple web page design (I was 17 years old) it was scary. But since then we've sold $297, $497 membership sites. $997 live webinar courses. $2,497 per person physical seminars -- and though it took a lot of marketing, follow-up, and course correction... even though it was "scary" to charge higher than $10, higher than $100, higher than $1000... we got over it...

How to Get People to Buy (Easily)...

Not because of "X number of videos" or "X number of hours" or "X number of pages" -- but because if they didn't pay the $2497, they'd lose $2497 in future profits by missing out on that training. Because if they refunded $2497 or didn't make all the payments, they'd lose $2497 in opportunity and lost profits.

Pleasure vs. pain. People buy access to your membership site because it's more painful not to have access and more pleasurable to get results from your training. The value has outweighed the cost of your course! Then, there's more pleasure (value) that comes from making those recurring payments than there is pain (cost) so they keep paying, and they stay out of the refund zone.

Create a tool and bundle it with training course that people will get much more than $2,000 of value from. Price it at $100 or higher. Cut it up into payments. Offer a trial period on it. Market the crap out of it (joint ventures, affiliates, pitch webinars) and create about 4 hot sellers so you'll be diversified enough to ride out the marketplace cycles in your niche.

Easy question: what "could" you add to your membership site (whether you have one or not) to give people the pain of disconnect if they refund or cancel? What are your favorite recurring membership sites and what pain of disconnect exists there to keep you in? Please let me know in a comment below, if comments are still open.

Membership Sites Explained

Do you have a membership site setup yet? (it's okay if you don't)

When you sell products and services online, you can't avoid the steps that people need to take in order to buy from you:

1. View your offer on your sales letter
2. Pay you money using your payment processor
3. Collect that offer on your download page

And you can literally take any payments without software of any kind. I did that for the better part of the 2000's. It was simple:

1. Add HTML page called index.html to your website (presenting your offer)
2. Add HTML page called download123xyz.html to your website (presenting your download)
3. Login to PayPal, create a Buy Now button that charges $17.00 (and sends people to download123xyz.html after checkout)
4. Right click and copy button from PayPal (and paste on the bottom of index.html)

Sounds like a great way to get started but why wouldn't you want to set things up this way?

• Your buyers aren't added to an email list for updates (unless they signup themselves on your download page)
• You can't easily provide lots of bonuses or drip content (refund reducers)
• There's no community (customers can't talk to each other)
• The download page can easily get passed around (you have to rename the page every week)
• It's almost impossible to charge a monthly fee and keep track of who still gets access
• You have to manually setup a new download page for EACH product you want to sell

Instead, you should use a membership site to handle your product downloads, here's all you have to do:

1. Add HTML page at www.example.com/index.html (presenting your offer)
2. Install WordPress and Wishlist Member at www.example.com/members (presenting your download)
3. Create a membership level called "Full" so when someone buys, they get access to everything for now (you can add more levels later)
4. Add your blog posts or pages (click "Add Post", type a title and type out the content or paste in the video)
5. Login to PayPal, create a Buy Now button that charges $17.00 (and sends people to a special link provided by your membership software)

That's a "slightly" more involved, but you basically go through the same steps, and now:

• Your buyers specify their own unique username and password that they can't share and can always recover (using "lost password" tool)
• Your buyers can get added to your email list for updates (when you specify it in the membership settings)
• You can add more levels and sell an unlimited number of products or packages from the same website
• Any WordPress plugin (including popup software, drip plugins, forum add-ons, and tracking software) can run inside your membership site
• You can easily drip or manually add bonuses for your buyers to reduce refunds
• You can easily switch the payment button to charge in installments, or a monthly fee, for access
• If someone refunds (takes the money back) or cancels (stops paying a recurring payment) they lose access

Do you have a membership site? If so, what's so special about it? If you don't have a membership site, what's stopping you and what are you planning?

Website Backup: Keep Your Site Safe, Instantly Clone Your Blog, and Get Things Done Anywhere

1. Setup a backup of your ENTIRE account or your ENTIRE server in cPanel/WHM. Do this long before anything goes wrong... preferably one that automatically runs once per week and backs up via FTP to an offsite server... email your web host if you need help setting this up.

Seriously, don't even bother with any automatic WordPress backup plugins, just backup your ENTIRE account... this makes sure all your files, databases, email accounts, and everything is kept safe... not just your WordPress blog.

2. Backup your desktop files on a G-Safe redundant external drive and using offsite backup service Carbonite. Don't store everything on a memory stick or your computer's hard drive... it WILL fail eventually.

3. Install Roboform Everywhere on your computer. This software stores all your passwords in the cloud so it can sync with all your computers including your laptop and smartphone. You also don't have to spend 30 seconds logging into every website. If you only logged into 10 websites per day (think Facebook, email, your membership site, forum, someone else's membership site, YouTube, Twitter, a news site, another forum, and your hosting account) that's 5 minutes per day, which is 30 hours per year you're saving.

An added bonus is that it will auto-generate every password for every site for you... so you use a "master password" to let Roboform do its thing, but it fills out an extremely hard to guess password... and it uses a different password for every single site.

4. Bookmark each of your login pages and membership sites in your browser, organize them in folders, and use Firefox Sync to back it all up. I save my most visited sites in my "bookmarks toolbar" that appears at the top of my browser window. On this toolbar, I have:

• one bookmarks folder for News Headlines
• one bookmarks folder for Forums
• one bookmarks folder for Classes (recurring membership sites)
• one bookmarks folder for Products (standalone membership sites)
• one bookmarks folder for Dashboard sites (for travel, Google Website Optimizer, EzineArticles, and other training I'm taking
• one bookmarks folder for cPanel (site backends I login to)

5. Install the Maintenance Mode plugin on your blogs and WordPress membership sites in case you need to take them offline quickly. This is a free plugin you can install from your WordPress dashboard where you can take your entire site offline to outside visitors in one click... useful if you are tweaking your theme or if a plugin fails.

When does all of this come in handy? Last night I needed to take about 20 sites down in a hurry while a problem was fixed overnight... so you know what I did?

• I went to the "Classes" folder on my Firefox bookmarks toolbar, right clicked, and chose "Open in All Tabs" ... this opened each of my membership sites in a different tab
• I logged into each of these sites with 1-click using Roboform
• Enabled the Maintenance Mode plugin on each of these sites

And there you go, in a couple minutes, temporarily took my sites down so I could fix them.

What's your best tip to keep your business running smoothly?

12 Can’t Miss Rules of Highly Effective Membership Sites

I don't care what niche your membership site is in, what software is running the membership site or even how big the membership is, you should be following all of these 12 rules of membership sites.

Rule #1: Autoresponder Reminders

Whether your membership site is filled with audio clips, videos, articles, or even PDFs or software, you simply cannot expect your members to always remember to log into your site everyday or every week. Set up some kind of autoresponder reminder system so that if someone has been in your membership site for 7 days, then on the 7th day of your autoresponder, it reminds them and tells them to come back to the membership site.

Rule #2: Drip Content

Don't give everything in your membership site away at once. You should be giving your members something new every week if they are charged on a recurring basis, but even if they are charged one single time, it can't hurt to record a couple of extra bonus videos that are dripped out throughout the refund period.

This will reduce your refunds and complaints and also keep people from cancelling and rejoining your membership site at a later date.

Rule #3: Offer Extended or Bonus Trickle Training

One of the best ways to get your customer to love you is with surprised bonuses. That means if you are offering extra training, either in a recurring or one-time membership site, don't announce every single thing you're offering them. Make at least a couple of the extra items be a pleasant surprise.

Rule #4: Stick to One Niche

I can't tell you how many membership sites I have joined that either ran out of ideas, go off-topic or just don't have anything interesting to say in their membership. Have a clear point to your membership site. Is your membership site about weight loss, real estate, copywriting? Whatever it is, make it totally clear what your members are buying into.

Rule #5: Cut Off Access For Non-Payment

If you joined a gym membership and didn't pay, you would no longer be allowed to access that gym's facilities, right? If you stopped paying your cable bill, you would no longer be able to watch TV. The same is true with your membership site. People are paying for access to your training and your content and if they are no longer paying, they should no longer have access.

Rule #6: Deliver Your Training Step By Step

You really do need to not only keep your training simple but offer a clear outcome. The easiest way to do this while also appearing as the best authority on your subject is to set up your training in a step-by-step fashion.

For example, if you are teaching a course about blogging, the first set of training should be about how to set up that blog and then should gradually go into how to create the content. That way, if someone is already somewhat experienced with blogging, they will get caught up, but the new members will not be left in the cold.

Rule #7: Remove The Word "Or" From Your Training

When your members are learning something new from you, no matter what the subject is, it's tough enough to figure it out just by following your step-by-step progress. Don't make it any more complicated than it has to be by sticking the word "or" in there. If you're teaching blogging, teach WordPress blogging, not WordPress or movable-type or pMachine. Whatever the subject is, remove as many choices as possible and teach people to do things the way you do them.

Rule #8: Create Multiple Levels of Your Membership Site

The great thing about membership site software is that you don't have to have a lot of different memberships set up. If you want to offer multiple products in the same site, you offer different membership levels.

People buy the beginner's blogger WordPress level and then later on, buy the advanced blogger WordPress level and be in the same membership site but get access to a new set of content. If you come out with advanced bloggers version 2.0, you can add those posts in layer and use the same membership site to host it all.

In addition, if you want to run a special promotion or give a certain group of people a bonus that only they can get, all you have to do is make a new membership level. You don't have to make a brand new membership site.

Rule #9: Set It Up Quickly

Way too many people spend 6 months or longer working on their content to try to make their membership the best it can possibly be, but the problem with this is that you are not spending your time on things that might make you money and your membership itself might not even be something people want. You need to set up your membership site as quickly as possible and then course-correct once people join.

That leads me to...

Rule #10: Only Be Ahead Of Your Last Subscriber

Like I said, you might be creating a bunch of content for nothing. It's also more important to have a lot of paying members in your site than to have a lot of content. You might have 6 months of content that nobody wants, but if you have one month of content that a lot of people want, you can justify the extra time you're spending and create more of that same content.

Rule #11: Avoid Lifetime Buyouts

You created your membership site, especially if it's a recurring one to get yourself a lot of easy automatic monthly income, right? Then why would you throw it all away by offering a lifetime buyout option?

This is where members can, instead of paying a monthly fee, pay you one single fee and get the entire membership content at once, even if it's 6 months, a year or longer.

Not only does this kill your monthly income, it trains your subscribers not to pay you on a monthly basis, plus it is going to overwhelm them getting all the information at once.

And the final rule of setting up highly effective membership sites is..

Rule #12: Set An End Date

Unless you have tons of content, you won't necessarily be excited about your membership site in 6 months or a year from now. For that reason, why would you want to keep your membership site going forever and ever? Unless you are 100% sure you are still going to be excited about maintaining this membership site in 1, 2, or even 3 years, set at end-date for your membership sites.

I prefer 6 months (sometimes 8) because that gives me long enough time to say everything I want to say even at the advanced level but it doesn't give me too much to handle.

And I know that if I have even more to say, I can see how this first six-month membership site works out and then create a second membership site.

And those were the 12 can't miss rules of highly effective membership sites.

Which one did you like the best and how soon are you going to apply it to your existing or current membership site? Leave a comment below explaining yourself.