What is the best way to continually promote your membership website?

[Matt D.]

Hey,

Those of you who have your own membership websites, could you tell us what kind of promotion you are using for your membership website?

Some people leave your website, what do you do to make at least the same number of people come to your membership?

Also, is there any information on how long a person stays on a membership on average in IM niche?

Maybe somebody knows this for some other niches as well.

I am being promoted that a membership website is so awesome blah blah blah all the reoccuring income and easy set up ...

I want to know first hand what kind of success you are having.

Thanks a lot

[Emma Lindsay]

The best and only profitable way to promote your membership site is with affiliates...

[Allen Graves]

All I use is word of mouth and an opt-in list on my home (sales) page. But then, I am not looking for 50,000 members. Right now I am happy with less than 1,000.

Also, lower the price for a WSO and you can see consistent new members if you bump it every once in a while.

Allen

[Steven Carl Kelly]

Only one way:

Provide OUTSTANDING content and RIDICULOUS value for money. Overdeliver times 5 or times 10. You won't have a problem keeping members and growing your membership base.

[Frosy]

Originally Posted by Steven Carl Kelly

Only one way:

Provide OUTSTANDING content and RIDICULOUS value for money. Overdeliver times 5 or times 10. You won't have a problem keeping members and growing your membership base.

I 2nd that!

David

[Istvan Horvath]

According to most of the membership site experts people stay approx. 3-4 months in a membership site with monthly fee.

It is not my experience but that's what most of the manuals, courses say about this topic.

Some people say, based on the numbers above, that you could take your monthly fee (for example $17) and multiply it by 4 (=$68) - and offer a "lifetime" membership for $69 or $77). This way you get approx. the same amount from one member as with the average 4 months fee... and they don't cancel, so they are on your membership list: you can email them with new offers etc.

[Steven Carl Kelly]

Originally Posted by Istvan Horvath

According to most of the membership site experts people stay approx. 3-4 months in a membership site with monthly fee.

It is not my experience but that's what most of the manuals, courses say about this topic.

Mine either. I suspect that the manual writers are selling another myth, or that they aren't adept enough at keeping their members that they really experience that kind of appalling dropout rate.

[adenclark]

Update your members area with new stuff every week, get your members involved in the development of your members area, give your members a sense of partnership instead of a client feeling. Ask members for input or ideas, modules you can add to enhance their experience. Ask them what they want to see extra.

If you buy marketing software or new ebooks, get an extra licence and offer this in a comp within your members area. Offer an affiliate competition and provide bonuses to the best performers. Offer a forum within your members area so your members can connect with you and others. It has to become a valuable resource or you wont have members for long.

[Colin Theriot]

Affiliates and JVs can be a continuous source of incoming members that will only require you to handle the initial setup and maybe a recruitment drive to get some folks on board at first.

Also, if you can manage to incentivize existing members with the same affiliate program or perhaps simply a discount mechanism. For example, if you refer two members, your own membership is free for as long as the referrals stay in. And you can make that just as easy as a "Tell-a-friend" script that you pop in when they log-in (kind of like PayPal's interstitial ads).

Once you get both of those things in place (and assuming your site is good), you should be able to focus primarily on creating content for the membership site, and then only occasionally doing small "launches" as membership drives that you can coordinate just by managing your affiliates.

Hope that helps!

Originally Posted by Istvan Horvath

Some people say, based on the numbers above, that you could take your monthly fee (for example $17) and multiply it by 4 (=$68) - and offer a "lifetime" membership for $69 or $77). This way you get approx. the same amount from one member as with the average 4 months fee... and they don't cancel, so they are on your membership list: you can email them with new offers etc.

Also, THIS is really good advice, but take heed to what Steven Carl Kelley said above - you should really know your dropoff rate FOR REAL before you set the lifetime membership price. And actually, in the above scenario, I would even throw in some kind of decoy price. For example:

1 month for $17 ongoing.
6 months for $79 ongoing (2 months free).
lifetime membership $89 (one time payment).

And then I would make it so that everyone who chooses only one month, right before their second billing, offer them the other two options again, but at a price that's $17 cheaper for each. Basically, now that you've tried it, we'll give you one last opportunity to use this first months' fee towards the discounted long-term plans.

After that offer, the only way to upgrade will be at full price.

Once you get all that set up, I'd consider doing a very short free trial that will auto-upgrade to the monthly plan, and then just let them get the upgrade offer at the end of that.

[euhlir]

If you do a big launch at the beginning you can get a TON of aweber subscribers. THen help other product launches and they'll do a reciprocal mailing for you. That's just one way, but tough.

[Ken Leatherman]

Originally Posted by Steven Carl Kelly

Only one way:

Provide OUTSTANDING content and RIDICULOUS value for money. Overdeliver times 5 or times 10. You won't have a problem keeping members and growing your membership base.

Hey Matt,

Steven is giving you one of the best words of advise you could ask for, when running a membership. Without doing that your retention rate will be terrible.

As far as promotion goes someone else mentioned word of mouth and it's valuable, but I think there is something a little more valuable than that. That is building trust between you and your members. When that trust is cemented your members will stick around, tell there customers about you, and when you send a new valuable offer; jump all over it.

Since I have several memberships another effective promo tool is cross promotion to each membership. Often times I have members that are signed up in each membership. In addition I offer a discount in every single e-Mail that goes out to my members.

I also use article marketing to drive new members and the use of backlinks to gain higher page ranking and get some organic traffic.

Personally, I think those that give the blah-blah it's easy as falling off a log to run a membership; paint a picture that is somewhat over glorified. Yes, it does get easier after you have it set up and running. But you still have to work and grow it every day, just like you do with any other successful business.

I will say this your success is going to be different than mine and anyone else. You are the one who will make it be a booming success, mildly successful or an utter failure. Because my friend the buck stops with you regardless of what the rest of us tell you.

Ken Leatherman
The Old Geezer

[d0rhk]

a lot of good information in this thread, thanks for sharing the info.

I will try to focus on "overdelivering"

[mattlaclear]

I give away a free Apprentice course in which I train folks how to drive traffic to their websites for social networks. About four or five lessons into it I do a couple soft sells for my membership site and get surprisingly great conversions that way. I only charge $15 a month for my site and my customers usually stay on in excess of 6 months. Hope that helps!

[Kirk Ward]

Originally Posted by Steven Carl Kelly

Only one way:

Provide OUTSTANDING content and RIDICULOUS value for money. Overdeliver times 5 or times 10. You won't have a problem keeping members and growing your membership base.

I concur ...

Don't give anything away for free. The freebie seekers are leeches and not only waste your time, but more importantly, they distract you from acquiring quality subscribers.

I have a niche specific membership site and charge about half of what some major IM experts have told me it was worth. I have a two year average life. Not six months, two years. And I've only been signing up subscribers for three and a half years.

My backend products are niche specific, and targeted. I am getting to the point where I think I will be able to average at least one backend sale every six months out of each member at prices that will more than double my annual income from the subscriptions.

Best part, my members seem to like my stuff, to the point where I get emails thanking me for developing the product, plus I get phone calls asking for additional niche specific products.

So, keep the price reasonable and overdeliver. The combination will build relationships first, and then income as a reward.

Kirk

[techseol]

First offer GREAT content 4 FREE

then make 10x GREAT content and offer it 4 Premium Members!

isn't that fine ?

[Matt D.]

Awesome, I love that you are all so willing to share your info. This will probably save me a lot of headaches

If I build trust, overdeliver and just ask members to promote it for me for a discount of their membership this might actually work.

Thanks

[TheAngelGuy]

Originally Posted by Steven Carl Kelly

Mine either. I suspect that the manual writers are selling another myth, or that they aren't adept enough at keeping their members that they really experience that kind of appalling dropout rate.

What kind of numbers are you guys seeing, then?

I'm about to start a membership site and I've seen those things, too, in books and part of me is trying to tailor some sort of strategy to that.

If it's not true, then I don't want to even go that route...

Thanks a bunch for any suggestions as far as this goes...

- Paul