Membership Sites - The Route to Residual Income

Membership sites are not a new thing. Way back in 1996, Bill Gates said that he estimated membership sites to be a $20-$30 million dollar per year industry.

Mr Gates has got more things right than wrong in his career, but that wasn't one of them. Just 14 years later and the figure is more like $2 Billion Dollars annually. Membership sites are big business and despite the worldwide recession, continue to grow in importance.

A membership site is, by and large, one that charges subscribers a monthly fee to access its website. But charging a monthly fee isn't the only game in town - another perfectly viable business model is to allow members to join for free, but to monetize the site through special subscriber offers made each time the member logs in.

Whichever membership model you choose, you will need a few things in place:

* A domain and hosting

* An autoresponder

* Membership site software

* Content to regularly post to the site

Domains and hosting, and autoresponders, are beyond the scope of this article. We will consider the membership site software you can use and the content you need to post.

Membership Site Software

There are dozens of options - from the plugins that you can add to a WordPress blog, through newbie-friendly programs like Easy Member Pro, right up to powerful scripts such as Login Frequency Marketing. 

There is software available to suit every pocket - even one or two free options.

Why are membership sites so popular?

The Internet has become synonymous with 'free'. People expect information to be available for free and sites like Wikipedia are happy to provide that service. However, people have also come to realize that with free information there is relatively little quality control. If they want good, premium content then they know that they will sometimes have to pay for it.

In addition, people like the idea of belonging to an exclusive club, and online membership sites can offer that kind of exclusivity that they crave.

Of course, no membership site can survive for long if it doesn't provide those things: great, fresh content and a sense of belonging.

The Advantages to Building Membership Websites

One of the problems with Internet marketing as it is generally practiced is that you constantly need to find new customers and make new sales. You can have a great month and sell a lot of the latest big launch product, but what do you do next month? Or the month after? The wheel has to be reinvented over and over again.

With a membership site, you remove most of that ongoing stress. You do your job of selling the memberships and then they pay you month in, month out, automatically. You don't have to ask for the money - your payment processor just takes it - and you never need to remind anyone to pay up.

Although three will be a number of people who will unsubscribe and cancel their subscriptions each month, on the whole most will stay.

The industry average is reckoned to be that members stay for about 4 months, but many of the quality membership sites expect their members to stick around a lot longer than that!

The result is that you work once to set up the site to begin with and then again to attract members in, but after that the financials of your business will be based on residual earnings - in other words, once they've started paying, they'll keep on.

Residual income is the sweetest money of all and can quite literally last for years with no extra effort on your part.

Of course, with a membership site you do have to add new content, or provide some kind of service to keep your members interested.

If you have a site based on the use of a piece of software you've written or had created for you, your ongoing input may be negligible after the initial set up, but if you are providing information, you will need to develop a routine for creating new stuff for your members on a regular basis.

Many people ignore the power of membership sites to build themselves a very useful income, but to do so is a folly. After all, 100 members paying just $9.99 per month amounts to $1000 a month and may only require you to write a new article each week.

Some membership sites are even set up so that the members themselves create the ongoing content. Recipe sites, for example, encourage members to post new recipes for all to see, and to participate in discussion forums that only members can access. The site owners can charge a nice monthly fee, but in actuality don't have to create any content at all!

Whatever your current online marketing business model, consider adding a membership site or two to your stable of Internet properties. Your residual income will skyrocket and your workload may well be lower than you ever imagined possible.

Your Internet lifestyle could be just a membership site away!

Here's an added resource that can help you along the way towards your membership site:

Membership Gold Rush To Your Evergreen Success RD

Email Marketing - The Most Satisfying Way to Make Money Online

In a very short space of time, email has completely changed the face of direct marketing. Over the last 100 years or so many millionaires have been created by direct marketing - sending ads out to thousands of people by mail. But a lot of people have lost their shirts because although the potential rewards are great, the potential losses can be huge too. Mail shots cost a lot of money and if they don't pull in the orders, you can be looking at a huge expense. Email marketing has changed the ground rules. Now, almost anyone can get involved and the cost of entry is virtually nil.

With email there are no printing costs, no envelopes to buy, no staff to employ to stuff the envelopes and no postage costs.

Of course, there is a thin line between legitimate email marketing and spam. The very first known case of spam (unsolicited commercial email) was sent to 393 recipients by Gary Theurk, then an employee of DEC computers. It was sent out over the old ArpaNet system - the precursor to today's Internet - in May 1978.

Nobody liked it then, and nobody likes it now. It is estimated that over 85% of all email sent is spam of one kind or another.

Legitimate email marketing can be very profitable, but the most successful, and ethical email marketers go to great lengths to ensure that they are only sending emails to willing recipients and that their emails comply with local regulations such as the American Can-Spam act.

To be successful in legitimate email marketing it is important to build a relationship with the people to whom you are sending your messages. That usually means establishing your own reputation and making sure you provide people with interesting, readable content. Of course you will want to include promotional messages to sell things, but if that's all you send out, your readers will soon get tired and unsubscribe from your list.

As an email marketer your mailing list is the most valuable commodity you own. In general, most email list marketers say that the average return should be $1 per subscriber per month. So a list of 5000 people should, on average, make its owner $5000 per month.

Averages deceive though. A marketer who sends out ad after ad, sales pitch after sales pitch, with no attempt to communicate, entertain or inform will usually see a much lower rate of return. On the other hand, someone who sends out a well written newsletter filled with interesting and useful information - that also happens to include a personally written sales message - can enjoy a rate of return many times the industry average.

It takes more work to write an interesting newsletter or ezine, but the long term rewards can make the effort very worthwhile.

There is an old adage that 'The money's in the list', and it is true provided you have the right list and have established a trusting relationship with the people on it.

Too many email marketers think of their 'list' as a commodity and forget that it is made up of individuals. The most successful ones never forget that they are writing to people, not lists.

There are many ways to become an Internet marketer and email marketing is just one of them. It may not be the easiest to succeed at - you will need to develop your writing and communication skills and learn how to build your list in the first place - but for those of us who make our living writing email newsletters it is by far one of the most satisfying.

To learn more about what all this is about, I've got 2 products from Clickbank I'd like to recommend. The fist is Tim Bekker's Autoresponder Code, and the second is the Complete List Building Package.  Both are credible products that could help you with your email projects.

Tim Bekker's Autoresponder Code:

http://shagmiser.theacode.hop.clickbank.net

Complete List Building Package

http://shagmiser.soniia21.hop.clickbank.net

As ever, your non-guru poster,

RD

PS - both of the above links are affiliate links, as if you didn't know.

Education and the 2 Year Option

Watch this video for some great education ideas!

A 2-year degree is a great way to get a degree or certification quickly and effectively, and at a much lower cost. Online students can attend classes from their home, from their job, or while in another city, using only a computer and Internet connection. Students save huge amounts of time and money. There is no campus to drive to, so no travel expenses, no time invested in commuting to class, no out-of-state fees, and no room and board fees.

Campus students, on the other hand, can attend evening and weekend classes if they work during the day. They offer personal interaction with other students and are great for courses that require hands-on activities, labs, and training.

OVERVIEW.COM college and career website was one of the first databases of colleges and career information on the Internet.

Till Next Time,

RD

PS - If you want to learn how to save even more money on a college education, then check out 

Debt Free College Degree - Half Price College!

Ebook with over 150+ pages of rock solid content shows students and parents how to pay less than half of normal costs to attend college, and get it done in less time.