This is a sample of Dis-Membered: Membership Site PLR By: The Best Quality PLR Team ** This document is for Personal Use Only. No part of this document may be redistributed in any form. You must purchase a PLR License if you wish to use this in your marketing campaigns. **
Table of Contents Introduction... 4 The Three Major Types Of Membership Sites... 6 Pluses and minuses to all three types... 6 The joy of passive income... 7 Choose a Topic... 8 Donʼt get slimed... 8 Seven Membership Site Models... 9 Membership Site Software... 11 Create a forum... 11 Your Content... 15 Marketing Your Membership Site... 17 Keywords... 17 Free traffic... 18 Search engine optimization... 19 Off-page optimization... 19 Find affiliates... 20 Post to forums... 20 Swap banners... 21 Paid traffic... 21 Monetizing Your Website... 22 Conclusion... 23
Introduction Do you belong to a membership site that is a site that requires you to pay monthly in order to access it? If not, have you ever belonged to one in the past? If you answered yes to either of these questions, take a second and think about how much you paid to access that site or sites. I currently subscribe to a site that costs me $19.95 per month. That isn't much money and I get a lot of value from my membership. In fact, I doubt that I will ever unsubscribe. I believe this site has more than 2000 members. While I know that some of them pay more than the $19.95 a month that I pay, let's keep it at that for the sake of example. This means that with 2000 members, this site generates nearly $40,000 a month month in and month out. Wouldn t you like to see a steady steam of income like this? I can t promise that reading this report will guarantee you can make this much money with a membership site. But it will teach you about the various types of membership sites you could create, how to sell a membership program and the software you will need for your sites. When you finish reading this report, you will know how to use membership sites to bring in revenue above and beyond what you get from monthly subscriptions.
Building a membership site takes time and money. You will also need patience because very few membership sites start earning big money over night. You might have to invest three, four or even six months worth of work before you see really serious revenue. However, hundreds of other people have created moneymaking membership sites and there s no reason why you shouldn t do this as well. So, let s get started
The Three Major Types Of Membership Sites The three major types of membership sites are open membership, fixed term and auto responder. An open membership site is just that it goes on forever or until such time as the webmaster decides to close it down. In comparison, fixed term sites provide members with a fixed amount of information for a fixed amount of time. As an example of this, a site might offer 12 instructional videos delivered over a 12-week period and that s it. Auto responder sites are where information is delivered by email via an auto responder. They can be either open membership or fixed term. Pluses and minuses to all three types An open membership site usually generates more money because its members have to keep paying you month after month (called recurring income) for so long as they remain members. The downside of an open membership site is that if you want to keep your subscribers happy and coming back for more (and continuing to pay you), you have to create fresh, new content every month. If not, you could lose a lot of your subscribers.
Fixed term sites usually don t generate as much revenue as open membership sites because you are paid for just the number of weeks or months you provide content to your subscribers and then it s over. The joy of passive income A great upside to fixed term sites is called passive income. Once you create the site and its content, you re finished. You do have to keep marketing it to attract new members but beyond this, you just can sit back and watch the revenue pour in. It s like being a college professor where you create a semester s worth of lessons and then just keep using them year after year. An auto responder site might just be the best of both worlds. It is capable of generating almost as much revenue as an open membership site (because you can keep it open for as long as you wish) and it will generate passive income. In other words, you create a certain number of e-mails and then just sit back. The auto responder then delivers them at whatever intervals and for as much time as you choose.
Choose a Topic What do you want your membership site to be about? Is there something you re passionate about or that really interests you? You need to choose a topic you care about for some reason because you re going to be spending a heck of a lot of your time focused on it building it, marketing it and creating its content. If you choose to build an open membership site, you will also be moderating it, answering questions from your members, creating and moderating sub-forums (or user groups) and so forth. Don t get slimed Your site should also be about a topic you know something about. You might be really excited about the idea of starting a membership site devoted to robotics but if you know little or nothing about it, fogetabout it. People who know something about robotics and pay to subscribe to your membership site will see in a hurry that you don t really know much about the subject and off they go. In fact, they might even go to a forum devoted to robotics and slime your site (leave really bad reviews).
Seven Membership Site Models In addition to the three types of membership sites there are 7 different models. They are. Private label rights these are sites offering a number of PLR articles focused around one specific concept or keyword. Many webmasters and bloggers subscribe to PLR sites to get content for their own sites or to create e-books they can sell online. Note: Private label rights (PLR) articles are those you buy and can use as your own and in any way you wish. Social sites this type of site has become hugely popular in recent years. Examples of social sites include dating sites and friendship sites. Social sites can also be focused around specific subjects such as dog lovers or people who are enthusiastic about quilting or scrapbooking. Content sites in this kind of site members pay a fee monthly to obtain information from a single resource that is not readily available without a lot of research. Coaching/mentoring sites this type of site provides members with support, help and guidance regarding a particular theme or topic. For example, you might find a site offering coaching in business, occupational categories or life issues.
Paid newsletter this type of membership site or service has been around for a long time. This is where the website owner brings together content related to a particular theme. Those who belong benefit by having up-to-date information sent to them, eliminating the need to sort through a lot of other information to find what they need. Message boards or forums this is probably the oldest type of membership site and are typically available free of charge. Message boards usually serve as a sort of community center on a website. People who are enthusiastic about some particular hobby or interest use them to post relevant messages to other enthusiasts. Content delivered by video or audio this type of membership site is becoming increasingly popular. They typically offer audio or video files to their membership usually on a monthly basis.
Membership Site Software Once you decide which type and style of membership site you want to build, you will need to choose the software required to operate it. The simplest way to deliver content to your subscribers is via e- mail. Some of the Internet's most successful webmasters have made an amazing amount of money using just emails. They can be used to drip content or to deliver a newsletter. You could even do coaching or mentoring via emails or use them to deliver audio or video. If you decide that email makes the most sense for your site, you need to open an account with Aweber (www.aweber.com), Infusionsoft (www.infusionsoft.com) or another such auto responder company. The reason for this is because an auto responder will not only send out your e-mails at whatever interval you choose, it will start a new series for every new subscriber. In other words, while some of your subscribers may be receiving e- mails #14 or #15, each new subscriber will receive e-mail #1 then #2 and so on. You cannot imagine the headache you would experience if you had to do this yourself. Create a forum If you decide that you would like to build an open membership site, the simplest solution is to create a forum. Earn 1K a Day (http://www.earn1kaday.net/) is a great example of what one of
these looks like. It has a great many user groups (or sub-forums) that focus on specific interests such as copywriting, video marketing and mini-money sites. It also has a section of free downloads that is updated periodically. Plus, the webmaster sends out an email every week offering new free downloads, along with his choices as to the week s top posts. If you want to build a forum with free software, phbb is free and offers some very nice features (Earn1KaDay is powered by phbb). Simple Machines Forum software is also free and is considered by many to be the best free forum software available. It is open source software and offers a number of helpful features. If you don t mind paying for your forum software, vbulletin is probably the most powerful and versatile available but costs $195. There is also Vanilla, which costs $49 a month for small groups and $149 (or more) a month for small business. If your membership site will be on a WordPress blog, you can get a plugin to host your forum. These are usually free. Some of the most popular of these are bbpress Bulletin Forums (which was created by the same team that created WordPress), Tal-ki Forums, Mingle Forum, Simple Press and WP-Forum. As a general rule, it is more difficult to drive traffic to a plugin forum as you have to first get visitors to your website and then on to your forum.
There are a number of other choices available to power your membership site. EasyMemberPro offers many features, including affiliate management (more about affiliates later), which can be very helpful. It offers multiple membership levels, the ability to offer free trials and one time payments or recurring payments. Yet, it costs just $97 (a one time payment). Wishlist Member and amember are also popular software platforms for hosting a membership site. Here is a chart showing which types of software you might use, depending on the type (model) of site you d like to build. Model Type of Site Site Building Software Private label Rights Open Membership bbpress, EasyMemberPro (or similar) Content Fixed Term Open membership Fixed Term Social Open membership Coaching/Mentoring Open membership Email, Auto responder, Email, Auto responder, EasyMemberPro (or similar) Email, Auto responder, EasyMemberPro (or similar), bbpress (or comparable) Ning, SocialEngine, Dolphin 7 Email, Auto responder, bbpress (or comparable), EasyMemberPro (or comparable)
Paid Newsletter Audio or Video Fixed Term Open Membership Fixed term Open Membership Fixed Term Email, Auto responder, bbpress (or comparable), EasyMemberPro (or comparable) Email, Auto responder Email, Auto responder Email, Auto responder, bbpress (or comparable), EasyMemberPro (or comparable) Email, Auto responder,
Your Content The heart and soul of any membership site is content. Whether you create a fixed term or an open membership site, you need to provide your members with a steady stream of good, interesting, informative content or they will unsubscribe. If you're able easily good copywriter, you can write the content yourself. If not, there are websites where you can get content written for you. For example, iwriter.com offers articles that you can use as content for as little as $5 or even $3 apiece. However the articles that I have seen from the iwriters are poorly written and researched. You can also have articles written for $5 on the site fiverr.com. I can't attest to the quality of the articles you would get from its writers so if it interests you, you will need to experiment with it. You will almost always get good quality articles from the sites RentACoder.com, Elance.com and Constant Content. The way RentACoder.com and Elance.com work is that you post information about the content (articles or posts) you want. Writers then bid on the job. Constant Comment works a bit differently. You post your job, select a price range ($20 to $30, $30 to $40 and so on) and a writer can claim the job. Constant Comment also sells PLR on a variety of topics.
Before you choose a writer to generate your content, be sure to check his or her samples. As a general rule, you'll find that you will have to pay more for articles purchased from either of these sites but they will be of a much higher quality. While I do not recommend this, you can buy PLR (private label rights) content. If you buy from the right site or sites, you can get good quality content. However, the articles, reports or posts that you buy may be in use by dozens of other webmasters. In short, it s not original content and may not be seen as valuable by your subscribers.
Marketing Your Membership Site I have to be honest and tell you that this is not only the most important part of creating a moneymaking site, it may be the hardest. To begin with, it s a two-step process. First you have to get visitors (traffic) to your site and then second, convert them into paying customers. Keywords Getting traffic begins with ferreting out which keywords your visitors would search on and that would get them to your site. Two tools you can use to learn your keywords are the Google External Keyword Tool (GEKT)and Market Samurai. GEKT is free. You can use Market Samurai free for a few days and will then have to buy it if you want to continue using all of its features. However, you can use its keyword tool free forever. For an example, let s use GEKT and say you want to build your membership site around organic gardening. If you go to the site (https://adwords.google.com/select/keywordtoolexternal) and type in the term organic gardening, here s a partial list of the keywords you d see (on next page).
Free traffic There are two ways to get traffic to a site. They are free and paid. Free traffic begins with on-page SEO (search engine optimization), a kind of techie term that means you have to let
the search engines (especially Google) know what your site is about. Search engine optimization As you can see from the organic gardening example, the term organic vegetable gardening gets 5400 searches each month. If you wanted to develop a membership site devoted to organic gardening, you could do a lot worse than building it around this term. For SEO, you would want the term in the site s meta title, meta description and in the first and last paragraphs of its home page. You should also include the term several times within the page. In addition, you would want to make sure you have pages devoted to organic gardening supplies, organic gardening tips, organic gardening pest control and so on again with the appropriate keywords in each page s title and in its first and last paragraphs and within the article s body. Off-page optimization The second free way to get traffic to a site is with off-page optimization. There are a variety of ways to do this but the most popular by far are through article marketing and backlinks. Article marketing is writing and placing articles on subjects related to your site in article directories such as ezinearticles.com and goarticles.com with links back to your sites. The search engines love what are called backlinks or links to your site from
other sources. There are a variety of ways to get backlinks to your sites. One of the most popular of these is to buy from a backlinking source such as those you would find on fiverr.com and other sites. Find affiliates A third way to get free traffic is by marketing your site to webmasters who have sites that are related to yours but not competitive. Using organic vegetable gardening again as an example, you might find websites devoted to standard gardening, container gardening, gardening tools, etc., and contact their webmasters. You could offer to pay them for each of their subscribers who come to and join your membership site. Post to forums Another good way to attract traffic your membership site is to find forms devoted to your topic and post comments. Most of the people who own these forms will allow you to add something in your signature that would help get traffic to your site. If you do post to forums, make sure you offer helpful information. People who leave comments such as great site, loved it, or really great information, will be seen as scammers and their comments won t be published.
Swap banners If you can find websites that compliment yours but are not competitive, contact the webmasters an offer to put a banner on your site promoting their site if they will return the favor. Paid traffic Free traffic is great because, well, it's free. However, it's hard to count on it. In comparison, you can buy traffic so that is guaranteed to get people to your site. Google sells advertising called Adwords, which are those little four-line ads you see on the right-hand side of all of Google s result pages. You can learn all about Google Adwords at the site, www.google.com/adwords. The cool thing about these little advertisements is that you don't pay until someone clicks on your ad and actually goes your site. Another popular way to buy traffic is through Facebook advertising. Information on this form of advertising can be found at www.facebook.com/ads. It is different from Adwords because instead of paying per click (when someone clicks on your ad) you pay by exposures, that is you pay for the number of people who have been exposed to the ad. However, there is no guarantee that they will do anything because they were exposed to it.
Monetizing Your Website Of course, the most money you will make with your membership website will come from your subscriptions. As you saw in the example I gave earlier in this report, an open membership site with several thousand members is just a gold mine. But there are other ways you can monetize your membership site to earn additional revenue. And you can do this whether you have a fixed term, open membership or auto responder site. Your members will come to like you and your content because if they didn't, they would soon unsubscribe. Since you ve developed a good relationship with them and they trust you, they re very likely to take your recommendations regarding other products and services. You could become an affiliate of, say, Amazon.com and promote some of its products from time to time (don t overdo it or you ll soon lose that trust). For example, in the case of the organic gardening site, you could add a recommendation about organic gardening tools, books or even a garden shed where you would earn commissions whenever your members buy through you.
Conclusion As you have learned in this report, a membership site can be a beautiful thing. You have learned about the three types of membership sites open member, fixed term and auto responder. You now know about membership site models such as content and PLR. This report has taught you about membership site software, about keyword research and how to get traffic to your site. You ve also learned about marketing your site, including ways to get free traffic and the traffic you will have to pay for. In short, you now know the fundamentals of creating a successful, moneymaking membership site. To your success!