Build Your Membership Site

Membership sites have become hot Internet properties recently - because one of the key components to success is building a community - but most people who start them don't succeed with them. By learning the right way to build your membership site, you can add new income streams, reach new markets, and create greater profits in your business.

What's In It for You?

In general, a membership site can give you six key benefits:

Recurring Income: If you're charging a monthly or annual subscription fee for your membership site, of course one of the biggest benefits is that it gives you a source of recurring income.
Market once: When you convince somebody to sign up for your membership site, you can then charge their credit card every month or every year over and over again without having to convince them to re-sign each time.
A vehicle for value: If you're an expert in your area, you're always finding new material - reading books and e-books, finding blog posts, finding articles, listening to podcasts, and so on. The membership site gives you a place where you can share that material with your members.
Build loyalty: Your membership site builds loyalty because the members remain as your clients and customers. They look forward to hearing from you regularly.
Reward loyalty: Members get access to things that non-members don't - free downloads of products, member-only events, discounts on other products and services.
Maintain relationships: You can give selected people free membership, just so you can maintain that relationship with them.

Here's one more thing that I think is the most important ...

In addition to all this, there's one other major benefit for speakers, trainers and other infopreneurs and thought leaders: Your membership site is a key component of your e-learning offering.

What I mean is that your membership site won't be a stand-alone thing you use only to attract strangers. Oh, you'll get some of those people as well, but the main purpose of your membership site will be to add value to your other programs.

For example, when you sell a training program to a corporate client, include membership for all the participants. This means you're not only getting paid for the one-off training program, you're also getting paid over and over again from the membership fees.

The same applies if you're running public, rather than in-house, programs. For example, participants in my two-day "Build Your Web Site In Two Days" workshop get three months access to my membership site, the eGurus Community.

You see, the thing is that it's so much easier to convince people who already know, like and trust you to make the small extra step to buy membership from you. It's much more difficult to sell this to strangers.

How do you choose the right software?

There's plenty of membership site software available on the Internet, and the prices vary from fee to expensive.

In fact, the problem isn't the lack of options; it's that you have too many options. Each software package offers a different range of features, and it's not always obvious which features are the best for your particular situation.

For example:

Do you want a system that handles your members' credit card payments? The obvious answer is Yes, but if you're mainly getting paid by corporate clients who sign up their people as members, this probably isn't necessary.
Do you want an in-built affiliate program (so people can refer members to you, and get a commission)? Again, this seems like a good thing to have, but the fact is most affiliates won't bring you a cent, so it's silly to reject a system just because it doesn't have an affiliate program.
Do you want a system that allows you to upload videos and slide shows? Again, you might say Yes, but there are other video-hosting systems on the Internet that might do a better job.
Do you want members to be able to post their own profiles, chat with each other, and even create their own discussion groups within the membership site - like a private version of Facebook? Sounds good, right? But for some markets, the members won't value this feature; and for other markets, this is undesirable (for privacy and confidentiality reasons).
Do you want sophisticated marketing tools, like auto-responders, click tracking, and the like? Again, this might sound good, but unless you get really serious about becoming an Internet marketer, some of these tools will be wasted on you. You might have paid extra to have them available, but you simply won't use them.

As you can see, it's not simply a matter of choosing the first software package you stumble over, or even using whatever a colleague or friend is using for their membership site.

Each business is different, and has different needs. There's no one "best" solution for everybody. In fact, I host my own membership site on Ning, but it's not necessarily what we recommend to our clients (Depending on their requirements, we might recommend - say - Ning, Squarespace, Wiggio, iGroops or Trick.ly).

That's where our Membership Site service comes in ...

I created this service to help you plan and build your membership site.

Both parts are important: The planning and the building. In fact, the planning is more important, because if you get your strategy wrong, you'll be building something that doesn't work!

The main benefit for you is that we work together get your membership site up and running. After planning the strategy, we can also help with the "heavy lifting" to set up the software, connect all the bits and pieces, load up some sample content, and prepare you for launching your membership site to your network.

You're the content expert, so your job is to provide high-quality content for the membership site. That's your area of expertise, and we won't interfere (but we'll definitely offer guidance on what to create and how to do it).

What do you get?

These are the things we'll do for you to help you create your membership site ...

Strategic consulting session

We start with a strategic consulting session (conducted by telephone or Skype with me, Gihan Perera) to plan your membership site for on-going success. We'll plan the structure, design, layout and roll-out of the site.

Mentoring

You also get my assistance as a mentor for the first 90 days of your membership site, to ensure you get the most out of the process.

This is an important part of the overall process, not just an optional extra. The only time I'll omit this component is if you're already engaged in my mentoring program over the duration of building your membership site. In that case, of course I don't need you to pay twice for the same thing.

Software development and integration

We'll set up the membership site for you, using the software platform we agree to during the strategic consulting session. To be honest, you can do this yourself, but it's the sort of thing you'll probably only do once in your life! So if you don't have those skills already, it's better to outsource that task than to gain those skills.

As part of this process we'll also connect the membership site to other services, such as:

A payment system, for taking membership fees
Teleseminar or webinar services
Video hosting, audio hosting, slide show hosting and other multimedia services
... and more

Graphic design

As part of the integration, we'll add your logo to the membership site and choose a colour scheme that matches your branding.

If you'd like to go further with the graphic design:

If you have a graphic designer already, they can customise your membership site to match your existing branding.
Alternatively, if you'd like us to do that for you, we can do so, using our in-house designer.

Training

We give you two hours telephone training to show you how to manage the membership site - how to add and remove members, how to create private groups, how to encourage members to participate in forums, how to upload audio and video clips, and more.

We'll also recommend places on the Internet for you to find high-quality content that you can legally distribute to your members. This will give you handy sources of material you can keep delivering to your members to ensure they keep getting value from their membership.

What don't you get?

Of course, everything that's not mentioned above is not included. But to be fair, let me spell out a few of the things here, just so we're both clear about what's in the package:

It doesn't include updating your Web site (or anywhere else) to advertise or promote your membership site.
It doesn't include creating or uploading the material you'll be including in the site.
It doesn't include search engine marketing or other Internet marketing techniques to get traffic to the site.

How much does this cost?

Your investment in this service includes the following components:

Strategic consulting session: $1,500 + GST
Three months mentoring: $4,500 + GST
Software set-up, integration, training : $3,500 + GST
Graphic design (optional): $1,500 + GST

Note that if you already have a smart, competent assistant, office manager or somebody similar who already knows how to set up the software, we can skip step (3). However, in that case, we leave all the technical details in their hands, and don't offer any technical support beyond clarifying anything in our agreed plan.

Third-party licence fees

We'll ask you to sign up to a number of third-party services. It's difficult to say at this stage exactly what you'll need, because this will depend on your own requirements. Here's a rough idea of some options:

Membership site software platform: Varies from US$14-99 per month, depending on your needs
Google Analytics (for visitor statistics): Free
Video hosting: US$25 per month
Audio hosting: US$5 per month
Taking credit card payments (PayPal): 2-3% per transaction

Whatever the fees, we find typically our clients cover their costs by selling just a few memberships.

How do you get started?

To get started with this package, phone me on (02) 8005 5746 or e-mail .