Membership Sites
There’s No Need to Be Disappointed About Making Money Online: You’re Right!
I have some very important news for you today and that's:
YOU'RE RIGHT!
Let me explain. There's something I'm sure you've seen that we can call "internet marketing irony" and that's what happens when:
- You buy this thing called "private label rights" and outsell the product originator, only to have them get angry at you for outselling -- this happened all the time years ago when I got my start (jealousy)
- Other internet marketers seem to get upset when you do things like: mailing your list, following up, running pitch webinars, charging higher prices... you know, this thing called "marketing" (inner conflict)
- You see someone promoting a "product creation" course when they only have one product, a "book creation" course when you can't find their book, a "selling on Amazon" product when they aren't selling anything on Amazon (re-teaching what they barely know instead of implementing)
- Posting questions like, "I want to use this webinar service but I need something that can handle 10,000 guests..." Or, "I want to use this autoresponder service but I need something that holds 1,000,000 subscribers" (chest beating, they don't have 1 million subscribers)
Let's just call it what it is...
Entertainment... a SOAP OPERA!
If you spend too much time with the indecisive, negative, bitter, unmotivated people of the world then they will drag you down to their level... it's true...
I'm NOT saying you shouldn't help people. I post in public areas here and there and I definitely monitor what others are doing because I want to stay "in touch..."
But when "they" are getting too negative, you need to identify when criticism becomes complaining and shut that off... complaining means, the same negative message on repeat with no "real" solution.
"You are what you are and where you are
because of what has gone into your mind.
You can change what you are and where you are
by changing what goes into your mind."- Zig Ziglar
I'm not going to ask you something cheesy like, "What if the Wright Brothers, Thomas Edison, the founder of UPS, Colonel Sanders, etc... had given up when they first started?
Do you remember when you first got started online? Chances are most people told you it was a bad idea, or you even had to keep it a secret from several people...
I listened to the wrong people for a long time (the ones that told me I should stay at my day job) and I remember being ANGRY that I had to get a mortgage. My "favorite guru" at the time bragged about buying a home in cash (he now lives in a small apartment).
Problem: Vicious Cycle of
Negativity & Self-Doubt
I'll admit... I was one of those NEGATIVE people! I was a teenager, coding this and that plugin while I saw all these "rich guys" create autoresponder services, web hosting companies, heck, one guy made a plugin that added a visitor's first name to a web page, he sold tons of copies at $99 all day long. I thought... this guy has to be stopped... why won't people see? I spent all kinds of time posting about my "cause"... until one day I realized I was spending all my time tearing others DOWN instead of building something UP.
- If someone keeps dragging you down, day in and day out, they've gotta go... I'm sorry but you know deep down who they are
- If you find yourself being too negative for too long, maybe you need to unsubscribe from a few lists (not mine of course), unfriend a few people on Facebook (I have 245 people on my block list and way more I've unfriended or unfollowed) -- it's ok to check in on them on YOUR terms, but don't let THEM interrupt YOU
- Move closer towards the people you want to be like -- those people with successful businesses that make money
As an internet marketer (even if you are in some other niche and you are MARKETING on the INTERNET, you're still an "internet marketer") you should be aware of what others are doing. You should WANT to be sold to. You should PAY ATTENTION to what gets you to click and buy...
Solution: Ask Better Questions
The saddest thing is when I see an internet marketer (sometimes a subscriber but not always) say something like:
- They hate those "long ugly sales pages" (that they buy from anyway)
- They get "bombarded" with emails (that they chose to subscribe to and that they buy from anyway)
- They hate those "pitch webinars" where evil marketers try to sell them something -- in that case, I hope you also don't watch TV (commercials), go to the movies (previews), drive a car (radio and billboards), read magazines (print ads), or browse web pages or Facebook (sidebar ads)... you should look at it as an opportunity to GROW your business by getting the ideas all around you and seeing what works (and what doesn't)
Doesn't it make sense that if you ask better questions of yourself (like "what's good about this?") then you'll get better answers, which you'll be able to use to solve your current problems (like "what price do I charge?") to get better problems (like "now how do I handle all these online sales?")
You're right either way. If you "THINK" it's all a scam, and that there are too many issues to sort out with this internet marketing stuff, you're right. If you KNOW you'll do what needs to be done (and that's not necessarily more hours or "hard work") then you'll do it. You'll make that optin page, sales letter, membership site, and start sending traffic, adjusting, and making sales.
If the usual mentors you think about (Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, Donald Trump) started over from scratch, do you think they would "play around" with graphics, domain names, and which WordPress them and plugins to use... OR... do you think they would set something up that's good enough and adjust from there?
I'm curious to know in the comments below... what mistakes do you see other marketers making, especially in the products they put out? And what can you learn from their mistakes?
7 Keys to Residual Income (free report)
Today's training is so important that I'm giving it to you in PDF report format and I want you to print it out with your printer (yes, really) and send me a picture of it printed out sitting on your desk. (SERIOUSLY!)
Click to Download and Open:
"7 Keys to Residual Income" Free Report
Check out that report to discover how to save 70% off of our upcoming membership plugin, AND while you're at it, register for our upcoming free training on Wednesday, December 4th:
Just to recap: grab the report, then register for the webinar, then check out the instructions in that report very carefully to discover how to save your 70% coming up. We'll talk again very soon!
Fixed-Term Payment-Plan Membership Sites: Why No One Wants Your $9.95/Month Interview Site (and How to Make “Retirement Money” from One Site)
It really chaps my hide. When I see someone taking forever to write a long book, instead of writing an "e-book" that doesn't help anyone and only makes you $10 per sale... instead of trading your time for money with a 1-on-1 coaching program... my answer is to create a membership site. But what chaps my hide is that the number one reason people hesitate or avoid membership sites altogether is because they think a membership site means MONTHLY CONTENT!
"Writing" or "recording" consistent monthly content, or creating a "constant stream of products" is probably the worst way to make money. You might as well be writing articles for $5 per hour, coaching on the phone all day for $10 per hour or setting up hundreds of Made-For-AdSense sites that only generate $1 per year in income.
The Problem Is: There's No Room to Grow
(But I Have the Solution For You)
When you create monthly content, you're constantly struggling and working just to MAINTAIN the same level of income. That's no good. You stop and the money stops. Wouldn't it be better for the money to keep flowing in, and you only put in extra time when you want to INCREASE that level of income?
Everyone brand new to making money online tells me their goal is $10,000 a month. $10K monthly is more money than they know what to do with. It would pay off a mortgage, debt, travel, family, and make for a very comfortable full time income anywhere in the world.
The logical conclusion is... if I want $10,000 every month, I "only" need to get 1,000 people to pay me $9.95 per month. Simple, right?
This is backwards thinking. Your only idea so far is a number (the price). Then you think... I'll choose a niche like dog training, I'll create about a year's worth of videos, articles, tips, audios, resources and drip it out. And THEN... I'll schedule thought leaders in my niche (other dog trainers) and record another interview every month. That way I won't have to do any work creating the content month after month.
- People will join and never cancel... right?
- I can hide and they'll automatically pay month after month... right?
- Anyone has 10 dollars every month to spare, so I can add whatever I want in the site... right?
Unless your site delivers a service that peoples' businesses absolutely depend on (like web hosting, webinar service, an email autoresponder, payment processor) then your interview site is a LUXURY site, and it's the first thing they'll cancel!
By the way, you don't want to provide a mass-market monthly service (like an autoresponder) for several reasons. First, it's very competitive and hard to compare/differentiate/beat multi-million dollar companies like Amazon.com, Aweber, GetResponse, InfusionSoft, and more. Second, there are just too many expenses involved and it's tough to make a profit. Third, you become a commodity! If your web host is down for 1 hour in a month, people quit. If you charge $9/month and someone else charges $8/month, and it's easy for people to switch, they quit!
A monthly service won't cut it, an interview or "tips" site won't cut it, so what will? A fixed term membership site that solves peoples' problems! More on that in a minute.
Here's why "monthly forever" (continuity) sites also don't make sense from a marketing and copywriting perspective: what about Month Five?
Tell me about your monthly dog training interview site. You have two choices. Either you can leave the details out and say... just pay me monthly for this site, it's just 30 cents a day. Or, you tell me about your upcoming training... which is great for the first month...
But what happens when you'll be able to stop your dog from pooping on the carpet by the end of the fifth month. Really? I have to wait 150 days, 20 weeks, for that?
You're either trying to solve a non-urgent problem (something where I can wait two months), or you are solving an urgent problem but you're taking too long to get to it.
You can make money from a never-ending monthly interview site, but the reason people buy (and stay) is because they're buying based either your personality (they buy everything you release anyway) or they buy for LUXURY of getting new ideas and distractions. These are only the top 1% of your subscribers, so most of them aren't buying (no matter what you do), and you're giving your best stuff away for 10 bucks!
This is the solution:
Step #1: Choose the End Result
Know your marketplace well enough to uncover how to make ALL THEIR DREAMS come true within a VERY FOCUSED SUB-TOPIC within 21 days.
The key here is to deliver TANGIBLE results but also deliver something people want. For example, in 21 days from now, you can have an affiliate program completely setup including tools, traffic, and automatic marketing.
Step #2: Outline the Course
Break that 20 day plan into four milestones, one every 7 days, including TODAY! Each milestone is about 1-2 hours of training. Not five minutes, not all day, just 1-2 hours. That means I can show you...
- Milestone 1 (how to get the affiliate program online) the day you get it, on day 1
- Milestone 2 (connect the affiliate program to a membership site) comes on day 7
- Milestone 3 (setup on multiple affiliate marketplaces) on day 14
- Milestone 4 (re-launch your affiliate program) on day 21
I show you how to create a podcast (internet radio show). Module 1, setup and submit to iTunes. Module 2, create longer podcasts with music and graphics. Module 3, market the podcast on social media and special directories. Module 4, how to make money with that podcast.
These are almost always screen capture videos (show your screen and speak out your voice) where you ACTUALLY SHOW yourself going through the steps. Setting all these things up, not just discussing or lecturing.
Every module along the way gets you one step closer to that end goal of having an affiliate program with all the bells and whistles, a podcast that makes money, a sales letter that converts. Every module or milestone comes with a built-in DELIVERABLE. Go through this module and you'll have this result.
They are clearly separated BUT they're all important and they're not just meandering from one topic to another. Each one builds on the previous.
Step #3: Transform it into a Magic Offer
Package it all together into a magical, sexy, unbeatable, irresistible, juicy offer. Everyone else tries to compete by:
- Loading in 50+ videos (I think you mean OVERLOAD 50+ videos)
- Reducing the price down to $9.95 (how many copies will you have to sell)
- Promising bonus after bonus (now the offer is just confusing)
- Adding numbers and numbers, X number of minutes and pages (too much work as a buyer)
Sure, you can get your videos transcribed, add screenshots and package them into reports, organize that membership site with tables and pages. I guess you could add a FAQ or Q&A session or two, which makes me think your core training isn't helpful enough.
BUT what if that podcasting course included (in addition to the 4 how-to screen capture videos in a membership site with transcribed and screenshotted reports)...
- An easy to follow checklist to reference again and again anytime you want to publish a new podcast episode
- A built-in community (usually just comments within the site) to ask questions
- A built-in traffic exchange where you can submit your podcast and get a jumpstart on your number of listeners and sales
Basically, everything you need to make it almost IMPOSSIBLE to be without a podcast of your own this week or this month... without piling on bonus after bonus (which just confuses your offer). And, if copycats come along and create their own knockoff course... just ABSORB THE CHANGES!
Either that "other guy's" bonus doesn't matter, or it's something you can duplicate in your own way and make better.
Step #4: Assemble Your Sales Letter
Create one single web page (with nothing to click on other than your a buy button )so people actually know what they're buying. But when I tell you to "write a sales letter", you get scared...
Sales letters have gone through several cycles. First, people wrote big long direct response style letters where you couldn't really tell if you were buying a book, video course, software, membership site... or even what was in it. Or even what the price was!
Then people moved on to video sales letters. Same idea, just as long and boring – if not even WORSE because you had to sit through 90 minutes of PowerPoint slides.
And finally, WordPress-based graphics heavy multi-column sales letters... basically 5-10 bullet points listing a few sections, and that's it! A site that looks pretty but doesn't convert well because it's so generic.
Do you see the common problem with sales letters? Whether they're long, short, video, or WordPress-based... the problem is CONFUSION!
That's why the most important thing in your sales letter (second only to the buy button) is what I call a "1-sheet." List every all four modules of your course, plus the exact bonuses, checklists, and software. WARNING: you might actually have assign INTERESTING names to your modules and checklists to pay people to pay attention.
For bonus points, make it a stack table... meaning, assign a dollar value next to each module (what it's worth), total up all the value, and then drop it down to the actual price.
A sales letter only needs to do four things but it NEEDS to do these four things, and in this order:
- Attention: Identify their problem and WHY they ended up on your site
- Interest: Agitate the problem and explain WHAT they've tried that didn't work
- Desire: Clearly and dramatically introduce your solution including each HOW-TO step of it
- Action: Tell them to buy right now instead of later, get them excited about the WHAT-IF they buy
That's as simple as I can make it. Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. Why, What, How-To, What-If. If your sales letter is story-heavy, offer-heavy, price-heavy or guarantee-heavy... it needs re-adjusting. If you are missing pieces or they are in the wrong order, tweak it.
If you wanted to be really lazy, title your headline as, "Who Else Wants to (blank), (blank) and (blank)" and list each bullet point as: "How to (blank)," "How to (blank)" and, "How to (blank)."
(To really crush it, model the sales letter into about 20 PowerPoint slides and present it on a live 1-hour webinar telling people to buy at the end.)
Step #5: Create the Content of Your Fixed-Term Membership Site as Live Webinar Sessions
Schedule each module as a 90-minute live training session.
Create a FEW PowerPoint slides just to announce and then later recap your how-to training. Explain EVERY click and actually do it. Present with GoToWebinar and record with Camtasia. After just four 90-minute sessions spread out over three weeks (day 1, day, 7, day 14, day 21) you're done.
Setup WordPress and place the videos inside a Wishlist Member site and then sell the recordings – but call it "training" and not "replays" or "recordings."
"But What About My $10,000 per Month Recurring Income?"
I don't know what your personal situation is, but I'm convinced that most people want a $9.95/month membership site because they want a site that's an easy sell (who wouldn't want it?) BUT they also want to stop building a list once they hit 1,000 subscribers.
You heard right. The $9.95/month wanna-be's want a $9.95 per month site, with 100% a retention rate (exising members staying in) and a 100% conversion rate (new members joining) and 1,000 email subscribers. (In reality you would need 100,000 targeted subscribers.)
I don't want 5,000 subscribers because what if I make a typo in my email, and lots of people see? Or if 1% report my emails as spam, that's 500 spam complaints. My autoresponder will cost me $30/month instead of $10/month, I'm not sure if I can afford that even at $10,000 per month profit.
Not you, of course!
Here's the reality. Not only do I believe it's tougher to sell $9.95 per month forever than $99 one time, you'll get massive cancellations month after month.
You might have heard people like Jimmy D. Brown claim that the "average membership site retains members for three months" and I've seen many, many, many people worry about retaining members (even they don't have a membership site) along with what price to charge (even if they don't have a membership site).
Look...
- Make your membership site a how-to course (instead of tips and interviews) and you'll increase retention
- Make your membership site single-payment or fixed-term (with an end date) and you'll keep the average person in for longer than they'd stay in a "monthly forever" site
- Add assignments (challenges) to your membership site so people can clearly measure their results and you'll increase retention
- Add a tool or software inside your membership site that they'll lose if they cancel and you'll increase retention
Honestly, as soon as I shifted my thinking from: dripping, dishing out content in little bitty pieces, adding filler content, worrying about "how much content per week" is enough... and into: getting people from point A to point B, I created sites faster and made more money with them.
I have plenty of membership sites where the content is all delivered upfront, and people continue to make payments for months to come. Our "Make a Product" system allows anyone to dictate out articles and a book. It's $197 when paid upfront or $39.95 spaced 31 days apart for five total payments.
No Drip Content with Zero Percent Financing
If they stop payments they lose access to our tools that make article and book dictation possible.
We make more sales because of the payment plan. About half of people take the payment plan. Way more than half of the people completed all five payments. It's as simple as can be!
We do this with Newbie Crusher which is $97 (or two payments of $49.95 spaced 31 days apart), Speed Copy ($497 or five payments of $99.95 spaced 31 days apart). Note: Speed Copy drips out a little bit (one module every 30 days with bonus reports and videos in-between) but the content finishes before the payments do and people don't cancel... because they COME BACK AND RE-USE the tools and the training even after they've completed the course.
If you're THAT worried that people will join and then cancel, JUST TRY THE PAYMENT PLAN OPTION! You can always remove that button later, and if people cancel partway through, they lose access. It doesn't cost you any extra money or take any extra time and it'll make you more money.
I can't estimate your own numbers, but you can expect HALF of your buyers to pay full price, HALF of them to take the payment plan. HALF of those will complete all payments, and the other HALF of payment plan buyers about HALFWAY through. It's spooky how dead-on the numbers are for me.
Now all you have left is to...
- Step #1: Choose the End Result
- Step #2: Outline the Course
- Step #3: Transform it into a Magic Offer
- Step #4: Assemble Your Sales Letter
- Step #5: Create the Content of Your Fixed-Term Membership Site as Live Webinar Sessions
So go ahead right now and stop worrying about pricing, retention, or content -- launch your membership site that solves peoples' problems.
006: Setup a Membership Site Today for Recurring Passive Income
Topics covered...
- How to turn the specialized knowledge that you take for granted into a special "system" that others will pay big money for, over and over again, on autopilot
- How to avoid the common mistake of creating a "tips, tricks, and articles" membership site and instead create a 4-part course that gets people from "point A" to "point B"
- The REAL breakthrough when it comes to membership sites (big hint: you probably shouldn't charge your customers forever)
- And more!
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"How to Setup a Membership Site Today" FREE Report
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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:
- View your offer on your sales letter
- Pay you money using your payment processor
- 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:
- Add HTML page called index.html to your website (presenting your offer)
- Add HTML page called download123xyz.html to your website (presenting your download)
- Login to PayPal, create a Buy Now button that charges $17.00 (and sends people to download123xyz.html after checkout)
- 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:
- Add HTML page at www.example.com/index.html (presenting your offer)
- Install WordPress and Wishlist Member at www.example.com/members (presenting your download)
- Create a membership level called "Full" so when someone buys, they get access to everything for now (you can add more levels later)
- Add your blog posts or pages (click "Add Post", type a title and type out the content or paste in the video)
- 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?
Offer a Payment Plan Or Not?
Any time somebody teaches membership sites, you always see the question come up, "Should I offer a payment plan or should I offer some kind of a trial?"
And while it seems like a lot of fun, and while it seems like you might get a lot more subscribers and customers into your funnel by offering a payment plan or a trial period, I recommend you stay away from them, for these three reasons:
You are always training your subscribers (whether you realize it or not); you are training your buyers as well; and trials just plain suck and attract the wrong kind of customer that you do NOT want to be a part of your business.
How Do You Train Your Subscribers?
Even if somebody doesn't see everything that happens behind closed doors within your membership site; even if they have not bought a lot of things from you, they still see the way you market your stuff.
If you are always offering a payment plan, or if the reason for you offering a payment plan is because no-one is buying, you look desperate! If you are not emailing to your subscribers enough, then they get the feeling like you are not much of a marketer.
If you keep dropping the price or keep piling in more bonuses without actually marketing your product, you look like somebody who will simply pile on more "stuff" in order to get a sale; and not really marketing and not convincing people and giving real good REASONS for them to join.
And let's say somebody does join. You are training those buyers as well. If someone is used to only paying you $1 or $5, and they have been doing it for years, it might be a little bit of a struggle to get them to the $100 or higher mark.
It might take a little bit of time - but if you can get your buyers to pay you more money to get more stuff, instead of paying you less money to get less stuff, they will be used to dedicating a larger portion of their monthly budget to getting your solutions. And that includes payment plans and membership sites.
I am totally for having a membership site where with every payment they get some new kind of concern. But too many times I see launches happen where someone is offering a product for $100, and people split it up over five payments: they pay five times but they only get one thing at the very beginning! How much sense does THAT make?
And the reason why many marketers offer payment plans like this is to claim a high number of sales. They get a lot of people to pay them $20 and then they claim that every sale was a $100 sale, when really it was only a $20 sale, and many people canceled along the way - because after all, why should somebody continue making payments if they already got the product they paid for?
Payment Plans Are Good If There Is Ongoing Content...
But they are not good if there is just a single-time delivery and you are doing it to inflate your sales numbers.
And finally, payment plans, and trials, and low barriers of entry just suck! I have tried membership sites with and without a trial - and with the trial there were lots more dropouts. There were a lot more people not logging in and not using the material because they didn't really have any motivation to; the price was low enough that it didn't really hurt their pocketbook, and they didn't have a good reason to make their money back - because there was so little to make back.
Trials really do suck. The new credit card laws are moving everyone slowly away from trials. And I would definitely recommend you TRY marketing your site without a trial. If you are having difficulty, it might be because you haven't trained your subscribers or your buyers enough. Tell them why you are not offering a trial, and turn it into a good selling point.
For example, there is no trial because you want to reduce the number of people who get access to this information; there is no trial because you want them to take action on what you show right away; maybe certain bonuses are worth a certain amount of money and a trial would cheapen that.
And that is why you should only offer a payment plan for ongoing content, not for a single-time product: because it trains your subscribers, it trains your buyers - and trials draw in the worst kinds of customers.
Do you offer a payment plan or not on your website? And what is the reason? Please comment below telling me.
Four Ways to Get More Out of Your Followers by Challenging Them to Take Action
If you've seen any of the comments on this blog, you know that my posts get a lot of response.
If you've been inside any of my paid webinar classes, you know that I have a lot of successful case studies and success stories from people who did exactly what I told them to.
How do you clone exactly what I did? You use one of these 4 methods to get your followers to take action.
"Know" Phase #1: The Blog Comments
Something you can do right now without launching a new product, even without making a new blog post, is look at the most recent post you've made on your blog and cap the number of comments at 10.
Put a note that says "as soon as that blog post gets 10 comments, you're going to disable comments." You would not believe how many people have told me at live events that they had no interest in leaving a comment on my blog until they heard that they might miss out on it. That's how most of your viewers are as well. They are just barely on the fence about whether or not to comment.
It's up to you to give them that one extra reason. If having 10 blog comments seems like a lot, here's a secret. You should be replying to your blog comments. This means that if 5 people leave comments on your blog and you reply to each individual comment with a comment of your own, that equals 10 responses total. When I say you should cap your blog post at 10 comments, you really only need 5 people to leave comments and then for you to respond to each one.
At first, you might have to pay people $1 per comment or have some of your friends leave comments, but after a few posts, when the social proof is there, people will leave comments as long as you are sending traffic there from your forum and from your list.
"Like" Phase #2: The Retweet Campaign
When I launch a blog post, after it has filled up the 100 or so comments I like to have, I will close out comments and then mail my list a second time, telling them to re-tweet that blog post.
In the past, I tried to tell people to comment and re-tweet but this works a lot better if you devote one day and one email just to commenting, and after you've gotten what you wanted, devote one day just to re-tweeting one of your posts. On my blog, I use the TweetMeme plugin and just by having that button there, I do get 10 to 20 re-tweets or one click mentions on Twitter.
But when I specifically ask people to re-tweet, it jumps to 50 to 200 re-tweets. That means that 200 different people have mentioned that specific blog post on Twitter which gives me more traffic and more social proof, and I like that at this point, the comments are turned off because that means anyone who comes to my site now has to sign up to my mailing list to be notified when they can comment again.
You can also have fun with this re-tweet campaign by re-tweeting your blog post once per day to drive the count-up and add some kind of prize. For example, if you can get 20 re-tweets of your latest blog post, you will make another blog post this week.
"Trust" Phase #3: Free Live Webinar
Most people have no strategy when they're leaving a blog post. I always do.
When I make a blog post, it's usually to pre-launch my next class or my next email offer. You should be doing the same.
Use the responses you got from that last blog post to create your presentation or to improve the next class you will be offering.
Even if you only have 10 comments, you can pick out about four things that people are having trouble with.
For example, I once made a post on my blog called Forfeit the Race to Free, telling people not to gravitate towards trials but instead be moving their price higher, and although a lot of people agreed with me, some people told me things like they were at first afraid to launch their product and now this advice got them to do it. Some other people argued that more people bought at a low price, which in my experience was false. More people bought at a higher price.
My favorite response to that post was that some – one of my commenters told me that somebody didn't buy from them because the price was too low and the average person thought that because it was so cheap, something must be wrong with it.
All those responses can make a great presentation or augment a presentation that's already ready because it speaks directly to people's fears and frustrations and the best part is you can use the same language, the same phrases people say to you and use that to make a killer headline based on your pressing issue.
"Close" Phase #4: Pitch And Close
You've already taught people something from your emails leading up to your blog post, from your blog post itself, and during your free live webinar. At the end of that free live webinar, all of that info should be coming in together - the emails, the blog posts, the comments, and this live training into a relevant and special offer.
You gave people a lot of tips on overcoming roadblocks but now it's time for them to pay you to get access to the step-by-step how-to system to get them from point A to point B.
Make it a special offer just for people on the call that will be increasing in price soon, have a real deadline so that there is real scarcity, and send them to at least a short sales letter explaining your offer exactly in black and white terms. That way, when people join your class or purchase your report or get your video series, they know exactly what they are getting.
Is your business model anything close to this, the KNOW, LIKE, TRUST, and CLOSE step-by-step system? If not, why not and how soon are you going to implement this? Comment!
