Thursday, January 28, 2010

Micro Site and Membership Site Strategies

Hope all is well on your side of the screen. Like most of the
country, we're about to get clobbered with more bad weather,
starting first with ice and then snow. They predict up to an inch
of ice followed by 8-12 inches of snow. Funny thing is it was 62
degrees and sunny yesterday. I decided I best write this
newsletter before the power goes out. The power always seems to
go out the second the ice hits the trees and power lines, and I
am not looking forward to it. Last time we had weather like this
was in December 2007 and my wife was vacationing in Kauii while
my kids, my Mom and her dog camped out in my office with the
doors closed and fireplace roaring. For three days!

So the New Year has started off very busy for me. I was actually
very surprised. Leads came in from all over the world, not just
in Tulsa. I've begun working with some local start-up companies
who competed in the 2009 local SpiritBank Entrepreneurial Spirit
Awards. I was asked to be a coach during the final round of
reviews before the winner was announced, and I got a chance to
meet several cool new start-ups. I'll let you know about them in
the weeks ahead, but I am very hopeful that I will be able to
help them grow. It's exciting to work with fresh, new ideas and
many talented people.

Those of you who were subscribers last year know I spent several
months in 2009 talking about the top ten mistakes businesses make
with their web sites. Well, I just published an extended article
on this subject in MAGIC Magazine which is a full color print
magazine that goes out to about 10,000+ magicians around the
world. Yes, magicians need marketing advice, too! I added a
resource page that lists many tools that you can implement to
improve your site. I thought you mind find these resources
helpful, too, so here's the link to it:

http://www.schneiderman.net/resources.htm

I am receiving lots of emails from authors of niche ebooks who
want to know how they should promote their ebook. I use a rather
formulaic approach. First you get a domain that uses keywords
from the ebook title or topic. Then you build a micro site
focused on the topic and make sure it has a compelling sales
letter touting the features, advantages and benefits of your
ebook, and it should have attention-getting graphics including
the ebook cover.

Add an exit pop up to get non-buyers to subscribe to your
related newsletter and then start dripping them an email series,
one per week, that continues to tout your expertise, and provides
compelling reasons for them to return to your web site to make
the purchase. Support this effort with article publishing with
backlinks to your site, and publish a well written press release
that tells a good story and is not blatantly self-promotional in
nature.

Using this combined approach will typically enable you to recoup
your investment and begin to make a steady profit. Don't forget
to use FaceBook advertising to zero in on your audience. How much
for a turnkey solution for something like this? Probably around
$2,500.00.

There's another way to make money with your knowledge besides
trying to sell an ebook. Repurpose your content using video and
drip the content monthly through a subscriber-based membership
site. In this fashion, you can essentially sell the ebook,
chapter by chapter, month by month for multiples of the ebook's
selling price.

Look, most low end info products sell for $27.00 and upwards.
Which would you rather do: sell 100 copies of your niche ebook
during the course of a year or have 100 members paying you a $27.00
monthly fee to access the same information? Do the math. That's
$2,700.00 for every 100 ebooks you might sell, or that's
$2,700.00 every month for as long as your members subscribe to
your site.

So how do you build a membership site? There are many membership
software packages out there. I suggest Easy Member Pro:

http://www.cooltoolawards.com/software/business/easymemberpro.htm

It is available in two low-cost versions: a hosted version for
$27.00/month or $127.00 for an unlimited site license. I own an
unlimited site license version. My development and design
partner, Adeel Arshad, and I are working on launching our first
membership site and we're very excited.

Adeel and I met about 6 years ago and we worked together to
create many very cool software tools that can help make your site
more successful. Well, after talking about it for two years,
we've finally broken ground on our first membership site. We're
going to start selling all of the products we have developed with
reseller rights and private license rights. There will be two
levels of membership and PLR members will also receive discounts
on all of our services. We're very excited and hope to launch by
March. If you are interested in participating as a joint venture
partner and want to promote our site to your list and visitors,
please drop me a line at info@schneiderman.net. There will be a
generous affiliate program enabling you to earn recurring monthly
revenue. Let's make money together!

If you are interested in developing your own membership site, I
recommend starting with the Easy Member Pro package. It is
amazingly complete and very powerful. It does almost everything
the higher priced packages do and it is well documented and
supported, too.

If you need help customizing your membership site with custom
graphics or functionality, product shots, sales copy, anything at
all, contact me. We're currently working with multiple clients on
the creation and support of their membership sites.

And don't forget, there's no reason to re-invent the wheel when
it comes to graphics. There are a ton of ready-made,
professionally designed graphics collections available. Here's
the newest one that I like and use:

http://www.cooltoolawards.com/software/multimedia/imwebgraphicspack.htm

Wondering how you're going to survive this year? First, remember
you are not in control. Relinquish that concern to God. He will
provide a roof over your head and food in your belly. Things will
get better. Then calmly and honestly review your strengths and
weaknesses. What do you do best? What do you understand better
than the next guy? how can you combine your knowledge and
experience to create an info product or membership site to
generate monthly recurring revenue? I'm telling you -- there are
thousands of people out there doing it -- and you can do. Talk to
me. I've got your back.

Until next time,


Steven

P.S.: Have a friend you'd like to share this newsletter with?
Click the link to do so now:

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