No More VisualCV after December 31, 2011

Thanks to Kathy Hansen of Quintessential Careers for sharing this message, which announces the end of VisualCV.

Dear VisualCV Member:

We regret to inform you that the VisualCV.com website will be ceasing operations, effective December 30, 2011.

Since our launch almost four years ago we've been gratified by the response to VisualCV, and how it has enabled thousands of professionals to better represent themselves online. Even more importantly we have been delighted to see VisualCV help people secure significant new career positions. However, we have been unable to turn the site into a viable, self-supporting business and therefore we reluctantly made this decision.

We recognize that many of you need time to recover your resume data from VisualCV -- which is why we are providing you with thirty days' notice. We recommend saving a PDF copy of your current VisualCV. You can easily do this by clicking on the button on the bottom of the page you see when viewing or editing your VisualCV. We also recommend you separately save any images, videos or documents in your portfolio that you do not currently have stored somewhere else.


To ensure we meet all our members' privacy concerns, we will destroy all user data once website operations have ceased. This includes any and all backups we have. As a result, once the deadline has passed it will not be possible for us to recover any member data. You can be assured that we will not be providing any user data to third parties of any kind.

We will be contacting the small number of paying customers that still have active subscriptions to arrange a prorated refund for the months remaining on their annual subscription.

Thank you for all your support over the past four years. We wish you well in your future career endeavors.

Developing a Membership Site (Part 5 of 5)

This is the fifth in a five-part series on developing a membership site for your careers industry business.

In yesterday's post, I pointed how that there’s a truckload of profits waiting for you on the back-end of your site. That is, you can make extra money by offering more products and even more expensive complimentary products to your members. Today's blog post is about creating a family of membership sites.

As mentioned yesterday, one option for additional revenue is to be an affiliate for related products and services. The better option is to create these products yourself. That way, you keep 100% of your profits.

I mentioned one of these ideas already:

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.

While you’re planning your first membership site, you should also simultaneously plan what complimentary products you’ll sell on the back-end. And one way to make money on the back-end is by creating a family of related membership sites and linking them together.

Tip: The advantage of creating a family of sites goes beyond merely having something to sell on the back-end. A family of sites also helps you develop your brand and grow your brand recognition. And that means more sales, more customers, and more profits. 

Now let me give you a few examples of how you can create a family of membership sites around your resume business.

• You can create a membership site around a specific service offering -- for example, an eight-week program on "Getting Started Using LinkedIn In Your Job Search."
• A general job seeker support membership program is a "30 Days to Your Next Job" program, offering daily motivation and specific ideas.
• A 12-week program outlining 12 specific tools for the job search -- identifying websites and online tools that are useful for jobseekers.
• A yearlong membership program, "One Year To Your New Career."

When you’re building your first career membership site, ask yourself: What ELSE do my customers want?

Do your market research to find out what other products they’re currently buying. Then create a family of sites around related topics. It’s the quick and easy way to tap into the back-end profits… on autopilot!

If you've found this series of articles interesting, check out Career Membership Sites Made Easy, a new system that shows you how to create and launch your own fixed-term membership site in under 48 hours.

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!