But it’s not that simple…

Membership sites only work well if members that join stay for several months.  If members drop out after 1 or 2 months (3 months is average), you’ll spend all of your time trying to replace lost members while your income keeps shrinking.

With membership sites like that the recurring passive monthly income is an illusion.  It’s really no different than selling a one-time product.

Here’s how to run a membership site the right way:

1. Have a compelling reason to stay
For members to keep paying you, they need to keep getting more value.  If members can ccess everything of value in the 1st month, there is no point for them to keep the membership and most won’t.

2. Get feedback and improve your site
Setup a way for members to communicate what they like, don’t like, and want.  Then make adjustments and give them what they want.  Members will stay a lot longer if they see you are committed to helping them and giving them what they want.

If you can get feedback from members who cancel also, it will give you clues as to what you need to change keep people.

3. Price it below the pain
The more expensive your membership site, the more members you’ll have cancel as a general rule. If money is tight, people look at their monthly payments and start cancelling them first.  If your site costs a lot per month, it needs to really create massive value or you’ll lose people.

If you can price your site low enough that the monthly payment doesn’t ‘hurt’ people’s budgets you’ll keep a lot more members (many gyms have realized this and dropped their membership fees to $20 per month–they know a lot of people won’t even use the gym but at only $20 per month they will keep the membership ‘just in case.’)

If you decide to start a membership site, keep those points in mind.

Make it happen…
Brett

Check this out if you want a TRAFFIC membership site created FOR YOU: My Traffic Business 2.0

There is ONE thing, that if you lost everything else but had this you could start making money again almost instantly.

It’s a following.

When you have a loyal following–whether it’s list subscribers, podcast listeners, ustream viewers, or whatever–you have the most powerful and profitable asset you can get.

Attention is the scarcest resource now because we are bombarded by information all day every day.  When you have a following, you have the attention of a group of people who trust you and want to see, hear, or watch what you have to say.  So even if your whole business disappeared, your following would still be looking out for new communication and content from you.  That’s how you build a brand, overcome competition, and secure your financial future.

So how do you build a following?

1. Focus more on developing a relationship with your subscribers than on the size of your list. 
It’s better to have a list of 1,000 people that love you than 50,000 that joined your list for some freebie but
have no idea who you are

2. Provide content that solves problems
It’s okay to promote products, but it’s very important to give people real content that helps them.  That’s how
you build relationships and trust.

3. Engage and validate people

To build strong relationships, it’s important to listen just as much as it’s important to share what you know.  Ask for feedback, collect comments, and make people feel part of something.  When you follow those tips, you’ll build a following.  Then just keep growing it–the bigger your following, the more influential you become, and the more money you’ll make.

Make it happen!
Brett

P.S. Post your comments and questions–I’d love to know what you think and what challenges you’re facing in Internet marketing…

More than anything, it comes down to 2 key skills:

1. Persistence – if you’re gonna’ make it as an Internet marketer, you need to expect challenges and setbacks and be willing to keep going.  No one is an overnight success.  If your thought is you’ll ‘give Internet marketing a try’ and see if it works I can save you the trouble–quit now.  To be successful you need to commit and don’t settle for less than your goals.

When I was starting out, I had a zip drive stolen that had ALL my marketing stuff on it–3 months worth of ideas, marketing tools, info products–everything I had done to that point in Internet marketing.  It was GONE.  But I didn’t quit. I started over and stayed determined to make it.

2. Acuity - along with persistence, you need to always evaluate what you’re doing and what results you’re getting, and modify your approach.  Some things you try will work, and some won’t.  It’s important to recognize what’s working and expand on it, and recognize what’s not working and stop doing it.  Persistence is important, but you don’t want to keep ramming your head into a brick wall.

By constantly looking at what you’re doing and adjusting your approach, you keep getting closer and closer to your goals.

If you adopt those 2 skills and take it to heart, you have what you need to succeed.

Make it happen…

Brett

But it was a royal pain adding video to webpages–trying to upload, decide what format, and getting them to display on my pages.  I’d spend tons of time re-rendering and changing formats and trying to get the layout to look right on the webpages.

Here are a few tips to help you out:

1. Use .mp4 format – .mp4 is widely viewable by most browsers and software, and yet it’s a small video size with great quality

2. Render at 800px wide or less – you won’t usually display videos bigger than 800px wide and the bigger the video size the bigger the file size so the slower it loads and plays

3. Render audio at 64kbps – that will give you good quality audio and keep the file size small

4. Host videos on Amazon cloud – Amazon lets you store as many videos as you want, their servers deliver high speed so your videos play well online, and they are by FAR the cheapest video hosting solution available.  Setup an account at: http://aws.amazon.com/ec2

That will get you great videos, smooth playback, and unlimited storage.  But you still need a way to add videos easily to web pages and make them look professional.  Trust me, I’ve tried dozens of tools for this–media players, video skins, and all kinds of software tools.  Most, quite frankly, suck.

This one tool, though–Easy Video Player–rocks.

Upload videos and it gives you a simple code to paste into any webpage to show your video in an awesome, professional layout.

I use it for all of my online videos now.  I just upload a video and it automatically adds it to my Amazon cloud account and lets me choose tons of options–video skin, video size, whether to autoplay, whether to show controls, what to do at the end of the video, whether to add social media sharing links, and a ton more stuff.  Then just take the code and paste it into any webpage.  And you can change video options in the software and it will automatically update on whatever pages you’re displaying the video.  I’ve been using it for months and it’s the ONLY video tool I use now.

Check it out here: Easy Video Player

To awesome videos…

Brett

But it’s also one of the most difficult to do.  These tips will get you started–then it’s just up to you to follow through

1. Target the right potential partners – the most important first step is to focus on getting the right people to help you.  First, potential partners need to be in the same target market.  They can even be competitors.  When your partners’ target customer is the same as yours, you’ll make a lot more sales and your partners will make more commissions.

Second, look for partners at one level above you.  Trying to get a “guru” level marketer with a 200,000 list to promote for you when you only have 1,000 subscribers will be nearly impossible.  Smaller marketers will be much more open to partnering with you.  Then grow with those partners, and notch it up a level by going after slightly bigger marketers.  Repeat the process until you can go after the big fish.

2. Use a warming approach – the mistake a lot of people make in trying to get partners is they ask immediately for others to promote for them.  You won’t get much of a response with that approach.  Instead, send an email or call with a very low key message just asking in general terms if they want to partner and help each other.  Give them an easy way to respond with yes or no, and then follow up with more details for anyone who replies and is interested.

3. Be willing to give more – it’s important to think long term about partners.  When you establish JV partner relationships, offer what you can give before asking for what you want.  When partners see the value in working with you, they are much more likely to be open to it.  Also, when you setup solid JV partnerships you’ll benefit from them for your entire professional life so it’s worth giving more to get more over time.

Keep these points in mind and just start approaching people.  The more potential partners you contact, the more JV partners you’ll get.

Make it happen… Brett