Developing a Membership Site (Part 4 of 5)

This is the fourth in a five-part series for resume writers on how to develop a career membership site.

When you first thought about starting a membership site, you probably spent at least a little time crunching the numbers.

You did calculations like this: If you have 100 members each paying you $10 a month, that’s $1,000 per month. Or if you open multiple membership sites, charge $27, and get 200 members, that’s $5,400 per month. Or maybe your goal was 500 members across one or more sites, each paying $19 per month, which puts $9,500 in your pocket.

Think those numbers are unrealistic? Most resume writers work on three resumes a week; that's 150 prospective customers for your new membership site. And the great thing about membership sites is that they're not just for your existing customers! They can be purchased by any job seeker -- so you might have another 150 people who visited your website but didn't purchase resume services, but who enroll in your "30 Days To Your New Job" fixed-term membership program!

Chances are, however, you stopped your financial calculations when you figured out that front-end figure. But here’s the thing: That “final” figure only tells half the story. If you’re only taking into consideration your front-end profits, you’re leaving a lot of money on the table.

You see, some of the easiest money you’ll ever make is by selling more products (even more expensive products!) to your existing customers on the back-end.

Consider this: If you put up a good sales letter for your membership site, you may convert anywhere from 2% to 5% of your visitors. So if 100 people walk through your virtual door, two to five of them will become members.

Now let’s say you have 100 members paying you $10 per month (that’s $1000 per month). These 100 members are going to be open to your other offers, meaning you’ll likely convert in the double digits. So perhaps you offer these 100 members a $27 ebook – you may find 20% (20 members) taking advantage of the offer, which puts an extra $540 in your pocket.

With just one offer you boosted your income by 50%, simply by selling a product to your existing customers! Now imagine if you did this with 500 customers… 1000 customers… or more. You can see the possibilities!

Now, in order to tap into these back-end profits, you need to offer something that complements -- but does not compete with -- your membership site. One of the best ways to do this is to recommend related products from within each lesson. That is, you tell your members where to get more information on a topic that you’re not covering in depth.

Examples:

• Let’s suppose your membership site teaches people how to secure more job interviews. And let's suppose you get to the topic of researching the interviewer ahead of time. You may go into depth on the topic of conducting online research of the company and the interviewer, but you could also refer your members to a special report on "Getting Started Using LinkedIn In Your Job Search." (If you're a bronze member of the BeAResumeWriter.com membership site, you already have this report written! It's November's your Pass-Along Materials content.)
• If your membership site ("30 Days To Your New Job") mentions working with recruiters, you could also refer your subscribers to your ebook on "Working With Recruiters in a Job Search.
• You might suggest your "CFO Success Strategy" members also enroll in your "30 Days to Your New Job" membership site for daily motivation in reaching their career goals.

Another way to make money on the back-end is by recommending that your members buy a specific tool in order to complete a task. These can be affiliate links (be sure to disclose this!).

Examples:

• During the lesson on planning your job search, you may recommend that your readers purchase a subscription to JibberJobber.
• You’re teaching people how to secure a job interview. You recommend they purchase an interview-preparation product ("Job Interview Answers") to ensure they're ready for the interview.
• Your membership site targets those looking for pharmaceutical sales jobs. You might mention a rental mailing list targeting pharmaceutical sales executives to help target unadvertised opportunities.

There’s a fortune that lays hidden in the back-end of your membership site.

You can tap into this fortune by regularly making related, complementary offers to your existing members!

In tomorrow's blog post (#5 of 5!), we'll ask the question, "What else do your customers want" and use that information to create additional membership sites.

Developing a Membership Site (Part 3 of 5)

This is the third in a five-part series on starting a membership site for your careers industry business. Read part 1 of the series here, and part 2 here.

Quick, what is it about a running a membership site that makes you NOT want to run one? If you’re like most resume writers, the idea of having to come up with new content -- week after week, with no end in sight -- is a major downside.

The majority of resume writers live on billable hours. You get paid for the resumes you write. If you're not writing, you're not earning. I talk to a lot of resume writers who want the dream: Passive income and recurring revenue. A membership site fulfills both goals.

And yet if you run certain types of membership sites, it can feel like a job. You can’t see yourself running off to play on some exotic beach when you need to develop and upload new content at least once a week or more.

One possible solution is to outsource this task. That is, you hire someone else to upload the content every week when you’re not available. But outsourcing comes with its own problems -– namely, you need to 100% trust your service provider to upload the content on time.

So if you haven’t yet developed a relationship with a freelancer (or virtual assistant), you probably won’t feel comfortable leaving your business (and your customers’ satisfaction) in a stranger’s hands.

Now before you toss aside the idea of ever having a vacation while running a membership site, let me give you two game-changing words: Autoresponder delivery. 

You see, with a traditional membership site, all members get the exact same content. So the person who just joined today is going to get the same content this month as the person who’s been a member for a year. Next month, everyone gets the same content again. (This is how my BeAResumeWriter.com membership site works -- but your membership site doesn't have to be like this.)

Obviously, this doesn’t make sense if you’re running a training site. That is, you want everyone to start with lesson #1 and get the lessons in order. So the person who joins today gets lesson #1. Meanwhile, the longtime member may be getting lesson #50.

The solution? A true “set-it-and-forget-it” model, which you can achieve by delivering all the content using an autoresponder.

Here’s how it works…

1. You create content for your entire course. So if you have a yearlong course with weekly lessons, you’d create 52 lessons. If you have a three-month course with weekly lessons, you’d create 12 lessons. 
2. Next, you need to get an autoresponder through a service like Aweber.com or GetResponse.com. Simply load up your messages into your autoresponder. Set the first lesson to go out immediately after the customer joins the course. Set each subsequent message to go out on a weekly basis. 
3. Now you create your sales letter and insert your order button (from a payment processor that accepts recurring billing, such as PayPal).
4. Drive traffic to your site. Here you can use all the usual methods of driving traffic, such as affiliate and joint venture partners, content marketing, pay-per-click marketing, social media marketing, and similar.
5. Play golf (or whatever). Now the members roll in and your autoresponder takes care of the rest, leaving you free to do what you want! 

Just imagine: You could set up multiple autoresponder-based, fixed-term membership sites. Just set one up, drive traffic to it, and move on to setting up the next one. Rinse and repeat and you'll have both passive income and recurring revenue.

In tomorrow's blog post: Once you've got people subscribed to your fixed-term membership site, don't stop there! You can sell them other membership sites (a graduate-level course, perhaps!), special reports, and training programs. Your membership site can also bring you new resume customers!

Developing a Membership Site (Part 2 of 5)

In Part 1 this blog series on developing a membership site, you’ll notice that I gave an example of an eight-week course. That was no accident.

You see, most people who think of “membership sites” think of content that’s delivered weekly or monthly… indefinitely. Members pay month after month and the owners deliver month after month.

This works fairly well for some types of sites -- and if you have hours and hours each week to devote to creating new content. But if you’re running a training site, your members are going to drift away if you just give them tips and tricks indefinitely. And they might even bail out a couple months after joining, simply because there’s no end in sight.

So here’s what you do instead…
Create a fixed-term membership site. This is a site that runs for a specific period of time, such as 30 days, eight weeks, three months, six months, 12 months… or any length of your choosing.

Tip: For best results, create a step-by-step series as described in Part 1 of this article. 

Here’s why this works…
Imagine if your site went on indefinitely. Someone might join and, after a couple months, quit. That’s pretty normal. But if the course only stretches out for six months, psychologically the customers will feel better if they just remain a member for the entire six months. They want to see it through to the end.

This is actually a Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) trick. Simply put, people don’t like unfinished business. That’s why they’ll even read books they don’t like or watch boring movies – once they’ve invested some time into the activity, they want to see it through to the end.

While just creating a fixed-term site created this psychological commitment to your course, you can make the commitment even stronger by building anticipation for the upcoming lessons. That is, from the very first lesson you work on “selling” the other lessons.

• Build anticipation for the whole course in lesson #1. Your first lesson should include an overview of all the lessons. But don’t just write it out like a table of contents. Instead, write it like bullet points to a sales letter. 

Example: “In Lesson #3, you’ll discover a simple trick that will triple your job interviews!” In other words, arouse curiosity whenever possible.

• Build anticipation for the next lesson at the end of each lesson. At the end of each lesson you’ll want to include something like, “Stay tuned for next week’s lesson, where you’ll find out the three things you must do to prepare for your job interview!”

• Build anticipation for future lessons and bonuses periodically. Finally, from time to time, you should remind members of upcoming lessons. For example, in lesson #5 you might remind members of a particularly valuable lesson or bonus that you’re offering in lesson #9. Again, write it like a sales letter bullet, where you arouse curiosity and put forth a benefit. 

The biggest challenge in running a membership site is retaining members.

With a typical membership site, your members may only stick around for two or three months. But you can quickly and easily ensure that more of your members stay around for six months, 12 months, or even longer by creating a fixed-term membership site!

In tomorrow's blog post, we'll talk about how to create a "set-it-and-forget-it" membership system. Develop it once and have it earn passive income for you, month after month, year after year.

Developing a Membership Site (Part 1 of 5)

So you want to start a membership site.

The first thing you need to think about is your niche and your topic.

Now think about this for a moment…

Your goal is to get members to happily pay you month after month for content. Obviously, that means you need to:

• Over-deliver with quality content. You want your members to feel like they’re getting a steal for the price. 
• Give your members what they want. If you’re just starting your site, then look at what products job seekers are already paying for -- and think of how you can turn that into a membership site.

But here’s something else…

In order to get your members paying month after month, you need to be able to make them look forward to each upcoming lesson. And the best way to do that is by creating a membership site around a step-by-step process. That is, your lessons teach your members how to achieve a specific result. 

You see, if you just provide tips and tricks for your members, there’s no sense of continuity. Your members don’t develop as strong of a psychological commitment to staying a member, because they won’t have a need to see the course through until the end.

Now imagine having numbered steps and lessons instead. When someone is receiving lesson 10 of a step-by-step process, they’ve made an investment of time and money into learning the process – so they are less likely to “bail” before they’ve received all the steps.

Let me give you a few examples of sites that teach a specific achievement or result using a step-by-step process:
· 30-Day Plan to Get Your Dream Job
· How to get interviews for almost any job you apply for
· Creating and optimizing your LinkedIn profile
· Using social media (Twitter, Facebook) in your job search

Now let me give you an example of what a 8-week job search course might look like:

Step 1: Articulate your dream job.

Step 2: Identify likely employers.

Step 3: Begin building your network.

Step 4: Update your job search materials (resume, cover letter, networking letter, etc.)

Step 5: Make contacts/target hiring managers.

Step 6: Prepare for the interview.

Step 7: Post-interview followup methods.

Step 8: Success! Negotiate your terms, thank your network, and plan for your first 90 days in the new position.

Notice how each step builds on the previous step.

It starts with setting a job search goal… and ends with negotiating the new job offer.

In other words, if the member completes the steps as the course progresses, he or she should be able to enjoy a specific achievement or result by the end of the course.

Note: The above example is an 8-week course. Naturally, you could easily stretch this out to three months, six months, or even a year or more by creating more steps and more in-depth steps. You could go on indefinitely as long as you kept providing more advanced info as the course progressed.

One final tip…To keep your customers happy, make sure that they are progressing and enjoying results right from the beginning.

Example: If you create a yearlong course, don’t stretch out the process for a year. Instead, give the step-by-step instructions your customers need to experience some type of results immediately (within a few weeks or month after joining) and then provide more in-depth instructions as the course progresses.

In short: Satisfy your customers’ needs for instant gratification while still providing the continuity that will keep them as a member. You’ll learn more about that in Part 2 of this series. 

- And stay tuned for the launch of the Career Membership Sites Made Easy program -- a step-by-step guide to help you set up and launch your own fixed-term membership site in 48 hours or less.