Money-Back Guarantee
Money-Back Guarantee
Convincing prospects to sign up for a subscription to your membership site is often not easy, as this is a recurring fee they’ll need to keep paying to stay a member to your site. Additionally, they’ll likely not be sure whether this membership site is really for them or not until they gain access, look around, and see what information and value is provided there. Free or lower-cost limited-time trials can help to alleviate this apprehension of whether they should purchase access to your membership site or not. Another way to alleviate that apprehension is to provide a money-back guarantee for the first month.
By offering a money-back guarantee for the first month, you are essentially assuring your prospect that the risk is all on you and that you fully back the value of your membership site. If they don’t feel the value and benefits the site provides matches up with what they are looking for, they can ask for their money back.
One caveat to that money-back guarantee is that it has to be for the first month only. This means that a person can only ask for a money-back guarantee within 30 days after they have activated their subscription. This should give them enough time to determine whether the site is what they are looking for in terms of benefits and value. After 30 days, there are no refunds of any kind. This is to protect you because, if you don’t specify this in your money-back guarantee, people who want refunds will want the money back from all the months they’ve been members to your site. Therefore, if they’ve been a member for a year and are paying $19.95/month, they’ll ask for and expect $239.40 back. If you specify when they sign up for access that they can only get the first month’s subscription fee back and only within the first 30 days of membership, this will protect you from such refund claims, which will both save you the hassle of dealing with people who would ask for such refunds, as well as save you from losing a sizable amount of profits you’ve made over a longer period of time.
For more information on pricing policies and membership sites, check out “Membership Sites Made Easy: How to Cash In On Your Own Membership Site.”
Long Copy Or Short Copy?
Long Copy Or Short Copy?
When writing up the sales letter for your membership site’s sales page, you’ll probably ask yourself, “Should I make the sales letter long or short?”
This is an age-old debate on how long the sales copy should be. There are various answers given by many Internet marketers. Some suggest that the copy should be longer because it will give out more information and benefits about your offer. Other Internet marketers suggest keeping it as short as possible so that the visitor is not bored or overwhelmed by the information you present about your offer.
Many Internet marketers seem to agree that the length of the sales copy should be determined by the price you are charging for your offer. For instance, if you are charging a small amount, a shorter sales letter would likely be more effective than a longer sales letter. Conversely, a higher-priced item would likely sell more if a longer sales letter was used, since it would provide more information and benefits that would be needed to convince the prospect that it’s worth spending a large amount of money to purchase that offer.
In the case of membership sites, most membership sites, though not all, don’t charge a tremendous amount for access – usually $19-$39/month. The tricky part is that it is a recurring fee, which isn’t often the case for most products like ebooks, software products, and scripts. That can change the complexion of the overall cost, since the cost continues to accumulate over time.
Being that your membership site will likely offer a lot of value and benefits to those prospective members, it’s likely better if you write a longer sales letter to clarify exactly what benefits and value the person will receive when he/she signs up for access to the site. The letter doesn’t have to be extremely long, but at the same time, you should be willing to give a fairly detailed description of how the features of the site are going to benefit the person when he/she joins the site. This includes learning information that will raise his/her business’ bottom line, providing new products that can be used to add additional income streams to his/her business, gaining valuable knowledge from other people in the industry that will give him/her an edge in his/her industry or niche, etc. Chances are, you won’t be able to really clarify those benefits if you write a short sales letter, so a longer sales letter would probably be in order to effectively sell access to your membership site.
For more information on writing convincing sales copy and membership sites, check out “Membership Sites Made Easy: How to Cash In On Your Own Membership Site.”
Benefits, Not Features
Benefits, Not Features
When presenting your membership site offer to visitors of your site’s sales page, you want to make sure that the value of what they will be receiving when they purchase access to the site is evident to them. You can make sure of this by emphasizing the benefits and not the features the site can provide them in your sales copy.
Benefits are the positive qualities people will receive when they have access to your membership site. This includes such qualities as boosting the profits of the person’s business and providing him/her with extra income streams for his/her business.
Features are those aspects of the site that provide the benefits. For instance, the benefits mentioned above are provided by the information and ebooks contained within the membership site and the products (ebooks, software programs, scripts, etc.) contained inside the membership site’s download area, respectively.
Visitors to your sales page do not really care about the features of the site, but rather, what benefits those features will provide them. In other words, “How will I benefit from the features of that website?” They want to know what’s in it for them. That is what will convince them whether they should purchase access to your membership site or not.
For more information on copywriting and membership sites, check out “Membership Sites Made Easy: How to Cash In On Your Own Membership Site.”
