Offering Limited-Time Trials
Offering Limited-Time Trials
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.”
Pricing Access To Your Site
Pricing Access To Your 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.”
Sales Letter – Summarization Is Key
Sales Letter – Summarization Is Key
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.”
