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.”

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.”

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.”

To gain the residual income and reputation you are expecting from operating your own membership site, you need to continue adding members to your site.  It’s often not that easy to convince people to set up recurring subscription payments for access to your site, even if your site will provide them with many benefits.  One way you could help alleviate their apprehension is to offer them a limited-time trial for a lower amount than your regular membership subscription fee.

This way, they’ll get to see exactly what your site has to offer for a much lower cost than paying out a larger amount when they are unsure whether the membership site will provide value for them or not.

For instance, if you normally charge $19.95/month, you could charge $7/month for 15-days access.  This way, they’ll be able to spend less than the full amount while evaluating whether this site will be really beneficial to them or not.  To make sure that people do not abuse the limited-time offer, make sure to limit them to one limited-time trial only; after that, they need to purchase full membership access or forget about accessing the site.

It probably would be a good idea to set a limit on how much they can download from the site; for instance, limited-trial members can only download 5 items at most and none of the most valuable products, leaving that privilege only for people with full membership.

For more information on pricing and membership sites, read “Membership Sites Made Easy: How to Cash In On Your Own Membership Site.”

When creating your membership site offer, you need to take into consideration the value your membership provides and how much in demand it will be by your target market.  On the one hand, you don’t want to sell it too cheaply because you don’t want to undervalue your work and you don’t want to make people think that this membership site is worthless because of the low price.  On the other hand, you don’t want to charge so much that people in your target market can’t afford it and/or are turned off by the cost of joining.  Therefore, how do you determine a fair price to charge for access to your membership site?

You should consider the amount of hours you spent on working on the site.  This includes creating the site, purchasing the domain name, purchasing the bandwidth, the cost of the software platform that maintains the membership site and the recurring payments, the time and money it took to provide the resources and information you have inside the site, etc.

You should also look at competitors’ websites, especially membership sites that cater to the same or a similar market as yours.  See what they offer if possible; you may have to be a member of their site to see exactly what strengths and weaknesses they have, which you can do if you choose to do so.  Looking at the site’s sales letter may provide you with enough of an insight to determine what strengths and weaknesses the site has.  Check to see what price they are charging for access to their site, then compare your site and the benefits it will provide its members and price it accordingly.

You can also send out a survey to members of your target market to see how much they would be willing to pay for access to a site that provides specific benefits to them.  Use that information as well to determine a fair price point for access to your membership site.

For more information on pricing and membership sites, check out “Membership Sites Made Easy: How to Cash In On Your Own Membership Site.”

In order to earn residual income from your own membership site, you need to gain members who will stay with you through the long-term.  This requires convincing people that your membership site is worth purchasing access to.  To do this, you need to have a convincing sales letter that will lay out the benefits they will receive once they join the site.

Unlike offline selling, where people can see each other face-to-face and ask direct questions, online selling involves a sales letter that will lay out the benefits of the offer being presented.  You will likely never see the faces of your potential customers, so your sales letter needs to be convincing enough that they will be willing to purchase access and set up a recurring fee.

Writing sales copy is not always easy for people who are skilled at it, as they will often take many hours to come up with certain parts of it, especially the headline and captions.  You will likely need to practice your copywriting skills repeatedly using well-established techniques you can find in ebooks and other online sources before you can become proficient at it.  However, this may be preferable to paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars for a veteran copywriter to write your sales page.

One important point to consider when writing sales letters:  You should be able to summarize the main points of your sales letter using the headline and captions that are present throughout your sales letter.  The reason why is because many people will not read websites word-for-word; they either are too busy or don’t have the attention span to focus all the way through a lengthy sales letter.  But if you are able to summarize the main points throughout the headlines, subheadlines, captions, and P.S.’s of the sales letter, they’ll be able to scan through the sales letter and still grasp the offer you are making and the value you are presenting to them, which can lead to them ordering access to your membership site.

For more information on sales letters and membership sites, check out “Membership Sites Made Easy: How to Cash In On Your Own Membership Site.”

To convince people to join your membership site, you will likely have to contact them several times over a period of days or even weeks before they are willing to purchase access to your membership site.  This is where autoresponders are so valuable, as they give you the ability to follow up with your prospects until they are ready to purchase access to your site.

However, in order to be able to utilize autoresponders and follow-up marketing, you need that all-important contact information.  One effective way of getting that information is via squeeze pages.

Squeeze pages are web pages that will require the visitor to submit his/her contact information before he/she can proceed further on the site.  One way you could utilize squeeze pages in your marketing strategy is to offer to give free access to select areas of your membership site in return for their submitting their name and email address.

After they have submitted their contact information (which your autoresponder has record of), they can take a free tour of your membership site.  Of course, they won’t be able to download anything or access the forum, etc., but they’ll be able to get an idea of the information and value contained within.

Once you have the contact information in your autoresponder, you can send some follow-up messages recapping what your membership site is all about, what they thought about the tour, and the link to the membership site’s sales page so they can purchase access to the site.

For more information on follow-up marketing and membership sites, read “Membership Sites Made Easy: How to Cash In On Your Own Membership Site.”

When convincing people to join your membership site, many of them will be hesitant to join when they are visiting your sales page for the very first time.  Recent studies have shown that you need to contact a person an average of 12 times before he/she will be willing to purchase an offer from you.

This is why autoresponders are so important to the success of an online business.  Autoresponders enable you to follow up with that person until he/she is ready to purchase access to your membership site.  Utilizing follow-up marketing can greatly increase the amount of residual income you can make.

One good way of making sure you gain the person’s contact information when he/she arrives at your sales page is to have a web page appear upon arrival that will require him/her to give his/her contact information before he/she can proceed to the membership site’s sales page.  This way, you can be sure that you have that all-important contact information.

Some Internet marketers may be fearful that this will just drive people away, but most argue that those people who are not willing to give up their contact information to access the sales page will be very unlikely to give you more personal information such as their credit card number or logging into their PayPal accounts, so essentially, you’re weeding out those people who have virtually no chance of becoming members to your site, so the squeeze page strategy is considered to be an effective strategy for gaining the all-important contact information you need for follow-up marketing.

For more information on following-up with your subscribers and membership sites, check out “Membership Sites Made Easy: How to Cash In On Your Own Membership Site.”

To create and maintain a profitable membership site, you need much targeted traffic to reach your membership site’s sales page so that they will sign up as members.  This, in turn, will increase the numbers of members who are paying you each month or year to be able to access the contents of the membership site.  If the number of members goes down, so do your profits, so it is vital to get more people to become members to your membership site.

However, there will be many people who will not purchase membership on their first visit to your sales page.  Recent studies have shown that it takes at least 12 contacts before you can expect a person to purchase an offer.

Therefore, you’ll need to contact a person an average of 12 times before he/she will be willing to purchase membership to your membership site.  The problem is, if your visitor leaves on the first visit, how do you expect to contact him/her again after he/she leaves?

This is where autoresponders are quite useful to your business.  On your sales page, you should make sure you contact the person’s name and email address so that you can follow up with him or her in the future until he/she is ready to purchase access to your membership site.  If you don’t collect the person’s contact information, you’ll have no way of following up with him/her, and essentially, lose any realistic chance of having that person sign up for membership to your membership site.

For more information on autoresponder marketing and membership sites, check out “Membership Sites Made Easy: How to Cash In On Your Own Membership Site.”

Creating and maintaining a profitable membership site for the long-term requires you gaining and keeping paying customers as subscribers to your membership site.  Without keeping your current members and continually adding new members to your membership site, you won’t gain the profits and credibility you are expecting from having your own membership site.  Therefore, you need to send much targeted traffic to your membership site’s sales page.  The question is, how do you get that targeted traffic?

There are many effective ways to do this, but one of the most popular methods in recent years is by utilizing the social networking websites, such as MySpace and Facebook.  These social networking sites involve people creating profile pages that identify who they are, what they like to do in their spare time, what occupation they are in, and other information that identifies who they are.

These sites will allow you to invite other people as “friends” and accept other people’s invitations to become their “friends.”  You can often find many people who are in the same industry as you and who you had never heard of before.  This can open up the possibilities of joint ventures and affiliate marketing opportunities with these people, since they are in the same or similar industries and are out to make their businesses more profitable as well.

Additionally, you’ll likely meet people on these sites who make up the target market you are looking for.  By utilizing the features of the social networking sites, such as the blogs they allow you to post on and even the profile pages themselves, you can put up links to your membership site’s sales page so that people who read your profile page and/or your blog can check out your membership site offer and join up.  An additional benefit in regards to the links you place on your profile page and/or blog is that they will be one-way links, which are more highly regarded by the search engine rankings when it comes to ranking your membership site in their listings.

For more information on social networking and membership sites, read “Membership Sites Made Easy: How to Cash In On Your Own Membership Site.”

Many Internet marketers have adopted the membership site model and incorporated it into their businesses.  Some Internet marketers operate more than one membership site.  Obviously, it is a very popular model, but why is this the case?

The answer mostly centers around the idea of residual income.  Residual income is where your customers will pay you on a continuous basis for work that you mainly do once.  In the case of a membership site, you do have to update the website with new fresh content, so it’s not exactly “work just once and get paid repeatedly,” but you don’t have to create another membership site from scratch or sell another product such as an ebook or software product in order to gain more income from the members of your site.

In the offline world, residual income often comes from being the owner of a property you rent out to tenants or if you have stock in a company, but whereas you have to pay money to repair any damage done to the property or risk losing profits if your stock goes down, with membership sites, you just have to maintain and increase the value your customers are receiving in order for them to remain members of your site and for them to keep paying you residual income.  You continue to provide value and you’ll continue to get paid continuously.  That is mainly why many Internet marketers are incorporating the membership site model into their businesses.

For more information on residual income and membership sites, check out “Membership Sites Made Easy: How to Cash In On Your Own Membership Site.”

When creating a profitable membership site that will last for the long-term, it’s important to be able to provide continuous updates to your site.  That includes updating with the latest news, information, and products.  After all, if you don’t update your membership site, your members will grow tired of the outdated resources you have inside and will cancel their subscriptions, which will lead to the end of your residual profits.

However, it’s not always easy to come up with new fresh content, especially if you’re not overly familiar with the topic or niche your site is centered around.  While it’s likely a good idea to always have some knowledge of your topic or niche before building a membership site around it, there are also other ways to add new fresh content to your site.  One way is by outsourcing the job of creating new content for your membership site.

You can post on sites such as eLance.com your assignment of coming up with new fresh content on the topic or niche your membership site is built around.  Of course, you’ll have to pay to have this done, and the amount of money you pay will depend on how much work you are outsourcing and how much the freelancer asks for.  While it’s not always the case, more money spent will often lead to better work produced.

Utilizing a quality freelancer can be a great way to provide quality content on a topic or niche that you are not that experienced in and are unable to write quality content on.  While you can build a long-term relationship with the freelancer to regularly provide you with quality content for your site, you can also take advantage of this by learning more about the topic or niche your site is centered around so that you can write up quality content on that topic or niche in the future as well.  Then you could provide twice the amount of quality content each update period, which will likely go a long way toward pleasing and retaining your members.

For more information on membership sites, check out “Membership Sites Made Easy: How to Cash In On Your Own Membership Site.”