Launching a new membership site. Suggestions?
Hi Everyone,
I'm a new warrior and I've spent the last several hours wandering the forums absorbing the information - I'm a bit on overload - but I didn't find anything directly relating to my situation so I thought I'd post.
I am in the process of developing my first membership site. I have plenty of websites so I know basic marketing stuff, but this kind of "product" launch is outside of my area of experience so I'm hoping I can be directed to some resources.
I have about a dozen ebooks that I'll be reading over the next couple weeks/months but I was hoping someone might be able to direct me to someone who did a membership site launch and blogged the process so I can read their experiences.
Currently what I have on my to-do list for promotion is:
1 - start building both my email and my twitter list so when it gets closer to launch I'll have a group to promote to.
2 - about 6-8 weeks pre-launch invite 20-30 Warriors into the test site so they can bounce around and test (break) the functionality.
3 - hopefully the people in #2 will be so impressed that they'll want to partner with me for the launch and will help promote the site.
With regards to JV partners to promote to their lists at the launch I've been thinking of what kind of incentive package I should offer. I have an idea in my head that sounds good to me but I may be well off the mark so would appreciate feedback.
I was thinking something like this:
for people who take the free membership, $.10/sign-up.
for people who take the paid membership, the following payment scale:
1-20 = 100% of 1st month fees ($20/person)
21-40 = 50% of 1st month fees ($10/person)
41-60 = 25% of 1st month fees ($5/person)
61+ = $1 per person
So, if someone referred 60 paid members they'd get $700 plus $1 for each additional person over 60. On top of that, they'd receive a recurring payment of $5/person. So in total someone who referred 60 paying members to this event would get a total of $4,300 in 12 months if no one they referred canceled their membership.
I would also offer cash and product incentives to the people who referred the most new members (both paid and free).
Now to me this seems generous but I don't have any experience with this so maybe I'm being a tightwad?
Also, how quickly after these events do people typically get paid? I'm wondering because I plan to offer every new member the first 2 weeks at the paid status even though they're free. Then, if they choose to upgrade I'd have to wait for a month to make sure they didn't cancel. So, the earliest I'd be able to pay out to the promoters would be 6 weeks (but only for the launch, after than it would be monthly).
Thanks for reading what turned out to be a pretty darn long post. I appreciate any feedback you can give or links you think I should read.
Cheers!
PS: A bit about the site - it's a membership site for online marketers. I'm using Dolphin 7 so there will be some networking functionality but that's not the focus of the site. It's mainly a content site (I have 100,000k PLR articles that will be posted and available for use as well as about 8000 info and reseller products on tons of topics that will range from free to $2 as well as audio and video training, etc.) but the real draw is functionality that no other site offers and which every online marketer can use. I can't really be specific about it until the launch because I don't want it to show up elsewhere but the people who do know about it thought it was amazing and wondered why it hadn't been done before.
I'm a new warrior and I've spent the last several hours wandering the forums absorbing the information - I'm a bit on overload - but I didn't find anything directly relating to my situation so I thought I'd post.
I am in the process of developing my first membership site. I have plenty of websites so I know basic marketing stuff, but this kind of "product" launch is outside of my area of experience so I'm hoping I can be directed to some resources.
I have about a dozen ebooks that I'll be reading over the next couple weeks/months but I was hoping someone might be able to direct me to someone who did a membership site launch and blogged the process so I can read their experiences.
Currently what I have on my to-do list for promotion is:
1 - start building both my email and my twitter list so when it gets closer to launch I'll have a group to promote to.
2 - about 6-8 weeks pre-launch invite 20-30 Warriors into the test site so they can bounce around and test (break) the functionality.
3 - hopefully the people in #2 will be so impressed that they'll want to partner with me for the launch and will help promote the site.
With regards to JV partners to promote to their lists at the launch I've been thinking of what kind of incentive package I should offer. I have an idea in my head that sounds good to me but I may be well off the mark so would appreciate feedback.
I was thinking something like this:
for people who take the free membership, $.10/sign-up.
for people who take the paid membership, the following payment scale:
1-20 = 100% of 1st month fees ($20/person)
21-40 = 50% of 1st month fees ($10/person)
41-60 = 25% of 1st month fees ($5/person)
61+ = $1 per person
So, if someone referred 60 paid members they'd get $700 plus $1 for each additional person over 60. On top of that, they'd receive a recurring payment of $5/person. So in total someone who referred 60 paying members to this event would get a total of $4,300 in 12 months if no one they referred canceled their membership.
I would also offer cash and product incentives to the people who referred the most new members (both paid and free).
Now to me this seems generous but I don't have any experience with this so maybe I'm being a tightwad?
Also, how quickly after these events do people typically get paid? I'm wondering because I plan to offer every new member the first 2 weeks at the paid status even though they're free. Then, if they choose to upgrade I'd have to wait for a month to make sure they didn't cancel. So, the earliest I'd be able to pay out to the promoters would be 6 weeks (but only for the launch, after than it would be monthly).
Thanks for reading what turned out to be a pretty darn long post. I appreciate any feedback you can give or links you think I should read.
Cheers!
PS: A bit about the site - it's a membership site for online marketers. I'm using Dolphin 7 so there will be some networking functionality but that's not the focus of the site. It's mainly a content site (I have 100,000k PLR articles that will be posted and available for use as well as about 8000 info and reseller products on tons of topics that will range from free to $2 as well as audio and video training, etc.) but the real draw is functionality that no other site offers and which every online marketer can use. I can't really be specific about it until the launch because I don't want it to show up elsewhere but the people who do know about it thought it was amazing and wondered why it hadn't been done before.