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Home Business Tips – The Pros And Cons Of $1 Trial Membership Sites

If you’re thinking of starting a home business, there are many models to choose from. One of those models is running a $1 trial membership site. While this may appear to be an attractive option for the owner and the member, there are pros and cons to running this kind of business model. In this article, I’m going to go over those pros and cons so that you can make an informed decision.

First thing we have to do is define what a $1 trial membership site actually is. With this type of membership site, the member gets to try out the site for a specified period of time, a day, week, month, or whatever time period the owner decides on, for $1. After that period ends, the price of the membership goes up to the regular price until the member cancels. That’s it in a nutshell. Okay, so what are the pros and cons of doing this? Let’s start with the pros first.

At the top of the list we have the simple fact that at $1 for a specified period of time, you, as the owner of the site, are going to get more signups than you would have normally gotten at full price. The reason is simple. More people are going to be willing to part with $1 to see what you have to offer than whatever the regular price would be. But what about the cons?

Well, the cons are just as blatantly obvious. At $1 a pop for a trial membership, you’re going to get a lot of people who will join, take what they can out of the membership, and then cancel. You’re also going to lose money on people who would have joined at the regular price anyway, didn’t find enough value in the membership to continue long term, and end up canceling after the first month. In other words, you’re taking a big risk offering your membership for so little money for the first time period.

Okay, so how do we minimize the cons? We want to still keep the $1 trial period but at the same time cut our losses as best as we can. Well, one way to do this is to offer that trial for a very limited time. For example, if the normal span of time of the membership is a month, maybe offer the $1 trial for a week. That way, the members gets a taste of what you’re offering but can only take advantage of so much. Another thing you can do is limit the information or services that the person gets for that $1 trial.

There is no question that running a $1 trial membership has its risks. However, if you have a really top notch product, the money you will make from satisfied long term customers will more than make up for the few people who take the $1 trial and run before the full price kicks in.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Looking for a solid 4 step plan to building your own business…FREE? Pick up my free report at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/4steps.html and get started TODAY!

Discover the #1 Secret to increasing sales on your membership site.  Check out this FREE report that tells you how…   EASY WEBSITE CREATOR

10 Things You Need to Build a Forum

A forum has a few definitions , including:

• A public meeting place for open discussion.
• A medium for voicing of ideas, such as a newspaper, a radio or television program, or a website.
• A public presentation involving a discussion usually among peers and  experts and often including audience participation.

This gives us the basis to say that most “forums” should be public in nature. And the objective of this entity should be towards discussion and voicing of individual opinions of a common nature. The participants can be anyone, or can be of a niche area. When we talk about Internet Forums, we typically do not deviate too much from this basic ideology. So keeping this in mind, we shall proceed to ascertain what we need to build a Internet Forum.

First and foremost, we shall need to identify WHY I am to build this forum. Quite frankly, when i say ‘what do you need to build a forum’ , you may pretty well suggest – Willingness or desire to create one and operate it. And a closely related topic can be “Need of a forum for the topic “. Willingness means you are dedicated towards building a spot for like-minded people. It also means that you can devote time to making it – which is easily a very important factor.

As already mentioned in the first point, you should also determine if there is a need for building the forum you are. Without the need, you may pretty well build the forum, but that might be the end of it as well.

Coming to more practical points, the third is to decide on the software and technology necessary to create the Forum. When we say a Forum, in Internet lingo, we usually mean a Message Board. Among various message board softwares available these days – some are free / open source and some are paid – yearly or one time. As the creator / Administrator you will have to purchase or acquire this software or decide on this platform. Some of the better known softwares include – vBulletin , Invisionboard, phpBB , FusionBB, BBPress, Simpe Machines Forum, Vanilla, UBB Threads, PunBB and many others.

So what next – the choice is many, but an important aspect might be finding a expert who can help you in installing the software, customizing it to your needs and helping with it’s design. While some of you may already have the expertise, it would be best to consult with a developer who has the expertise in working with a few of these softwares. Running a message board or forum, requires dedicated attention over time – so having a knowledgeable expert you can keep returning to or having on a full time basis is needed.

Although nowadays most forum softwares come with a sleek looking design template of its own, it is important to know that the default design will exist on hundreds of forums. But for you to succeed, you must think of getting a new template to make your website forum look better than the rest. If you have a budget , think of getting a custom template designed for your site only. Adorn it with your website logo , colors and theme – for example , if your forum is for Books , having the look and feel of a bookstore, book cover or library and anything similar might be an idea. Custom icons such as bookworms, page marker, buttons and anything that you can think off – just goes on to show how much contextual you want your site to be.

Apart from the basic software and its template , you may not necessarily need further modifications, but the Forum business is quite competitive. Running a forum requires keeping your members happy and interested in your ongoing activities. Since majority of your visitors can be returning visitors, and your site thrives on their discussion, commenting – try to find out if any custom modifications can keep them engaged. Some of the commonly known modifications are having a Points system. Every user interaction can be rewarded with points, user badges and contests and prizes.

Once you have got your Internet forum up and running, you will need to fill it up with new members, attract more and more traffic from other hangouts, chat rooms, Forums and most importantly the Search Engines. Without ample members, a forum will dry up and become dead. Not only will you have to get members, give them topics to discuss and comment on but also you will have to ensure that they are some unique offerings. All the regular members come to forums to participate but you as the site owner, will have to take the initiative . Start off addictive games, controversial topics, share new and thought inspiring articles .

From my experience I can tell you that getting off to nice start is not that much difficult . In my time, I have had the good luck and opportunity to administer 3-4 semi-large to large forums. One on the topic of webmasters, one on Television and one adult in nature. The largest had over 100,000 members and this brings me to the topic of controlling the forum and forum activity. As the Admin or from the Admin group, you must keep a popular yet strict stance on Forum policies and rules. without proper rules set, not only will you run into trouble, much of your time will be wasted in unnecessary activities when it could have been spent in popularizing and monetizing the forum. The need for Rules and Guidelines can not be underplayed while making a Internet Forum.

As your forum grows and keeps growing , I believe you will find the need for building a Team. A committee formed from amongst your existing forum members, who will help you  out in running the administration. Not only will their task be administrative, but also in content generation, advertising elsewhere, liaising with the members and also helping your site in showing a democratic face – so to speak.

And last but not the least , by far, should be the need for making money out of the whole deal. While many of us make Forums because they can – they have the resources in terms of money, hosting space, webmaster abilities, experience in gathering a team of like-minded individuals, in the end the forum will not run for long unless it helps the owner in gathering money – directly or indirectly. As the site owner, you can generate income through PPC Ads, Banner Ads, Text Links, Product Endorsements, Forum Memberships, Newsletter sponsoring and several other ways and means. But I can again tell you from my experience, that the more popular the site becomes, generating money will become a necessity .

Arindra runs a template design business at http://www.phpcafe.net/. Besides being an experienced WordPress designer and Magento theme developer, he often blogs at http://www.phpcafe.net/blog/ about his practical experience in projects involving vbulletin forums, 4images, osCommerce , Joomla along with his volunteer time on the DMOZ.

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Membership Website – 4 Strategies to Ensure That Your Site is Profitable

Want some insurance that your membership website will be a big hit, and remain profitable well into the future? Here are some strategies that will put you a step above your competition.

1. The goal of your membership website, must require continual effort to maintain.

This may seem too basic, but it must be said. Make sure that the goal of your membership website is to obtain something that truly does require regular maintenance and updates to achieve. Otherwise, your attrition rate will be atrocious and you will spend all of your time chasing down new clients. Don’t make that mistake.

2. Be a marketing machine.

Notice I said, “machine” not “maniac”. Often people think of marketing and the words artistic, and creative come to mind. It’s true those qualities can be a great help, but remember you are not trying to win an award for your advertising, you are trying to get dinner on the table. Be creative, honest and direct in your marketing, but do not be carefree. Track the short and long term effects of every marketing event, every time, no exceptions. This will allow you to apply what you learn and you will easily begin to advance past even your strongest competitors because it is a little known secret that this is one of the most important, and most frequently overlooked part of your online business.

3. Create a marketing funnel.

Don’t be a one hit wonder. It’s ok to get started with only one product. We all have to start somewhere, but you need to make creating a complete marketing funnel a priority. In order for your product offerings to create a funnel you must offer a low commitment, entry-level product(s) first and then a never-ending continuity membership, that leads to upper level premium products. This allows your typical client to start your program even though they may not have a lot of confidence in you and then become more committed as you build trust. If you are missing a part of the funnel it will stop some of your potential clients from ever being involved, and keep others from spending more money with you.

4. Work “on” your business, not just “in” it.

When you start your membership website business you will likely be so busy that it is easy to spend all of your available time working “in” your business and very little working “on” the structure of it. Although, getting the day-to-day business activities completed is very important, if you rarely take the time to improve the structure of your business, implement new coaching tools, and learn from others who have had success, it will take much longer to get to where you want to be.

Are you ready to take the next step toward turning your skills into profitable membership websites that can earn you massive (and practically passive) income? I will lay out for you the step-by-step process I used to build a paid membership website that generated over $50,000.00 per MONTH (with practically no overhead), in less than 4 years. This includes:How to choose your specialty, systematize it, market it and deliver it to your clients, all served to you on a silver spoon.

You can download your “Profitable Membership Website” E-book to your computer in a matter of seconds Click Here: Membership Website E-Book and get your success tools today.

Erica Joneson is an expert at building profitable membership websites.

Discover the #1 Secret to creating a membership site fast.  Check out this FREE report that tells you how…   HOW TO BUILD A MEMBERSHIP SITE

Creating a Membership Site

Thinking about running a membership site?

you are most likely in a niche market that needs provide your readers with the best solutions in a timely manner. You can struggle with membership websites, that require you to have on hand a designer to handle basic HTML.

Though, using the WordPress platform, you can get a plug-in that will fulfill all these needs. Whatever Web content you need, you don’t have to have it fully complete, as long as it provides quality relevant information to your market match, you can start and gain traction from feedback.

With some of the latest membership site creation tools, you can be up and running in no time.

Start a Member only website,

with clear goals and plans, with a definite course of action. Like anything at the beginning of starting your website, you may not feel as if you are satisfied with the results. By launching it and getting it going you will build your dreams, and more dreams are built on action than inaction, with WordPress and its ease of installation, you can have a membership site up and running with the tools that are out there very quickly.

Membership retention

A standard membership retention rate seem to be at around three months, obviously if you provide excellent content, you may have customers stay with you for a lot longer, or indeed, you just start a fixed time membership site. With your pricing, you will understand your niche and understand what is the price levels that you can work with, if you are supplying good knowledge that is easy to digest and is serving your marketplace it is about what it is worth to your customers.

In the old days, It would cost you thousands of dollars to get a website developed, but now, a simple plug-in will give you a WordPress platform fully functional membership site, as in all things there is a learning curve. What you need is a good support with the programs you work with and adequate community involvement that are willing to share what they know.

By investigating the different types of membership website,software you will understand what is lacking in some and the need for ease of application and short learning curve.

Membership websites as a business

So what is the attraction about having a functional website as a business, recurring income is a gold mine. This is what you will get with a membership site, also remember that it is not just the membership income that you are receiving that is your only potential income by understanding the profiles and makeup of your membership site participants, you can also send various offers that may enhance their experience, either in the niche that you have a membership site catering for, or a related product.

1. With a membership website, encouraging an active membership creates good, SEO for the site itself, benefits of running a membership site include
2. easy management delivery of e-learning and training
3. customer queries supported around the clock
4. automatic payments
5. integrated customer reports
6. instant communication with the membership e-mail and contact the get through any spam filters
7. and best of all having an affiliate or partner program in place

I think you can see that running a membership site for your niche, whether it be on a fixed term or an ongoing basis has all the benefits that running an online business is all about

I invite you to take a look at some reviews of different membership site reation applications and continue the conversation at http://www.membershipmasterplan.fouru.org.

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Useful Tips for Membership Websites

Launching a membership website is quite a challenging task and to make it really successful one has to incorporate certain practices and tips. These tips will engender a website which can rake in revenue of $2 to $5 million per year after a period of 3 to 5 years.

Targeted Customer Group for Membership sites

The Membership website should be focused at a specific group which wants to gain a particular kind of information. The targeted group must be willing to pay to receive the information. The Information should be properly profiled on people who have already expressed an interest in your subject.

They must be proven subscribers or membership website visitors. The group must be a stable or expanding one. The subject you deal in must be a unique one which is not sufficiently covered by other membership sites.

Quantifying and Analyzing the Market

You must have a competitive market analysis by comparing samples of competitive publications, look into media kits having related information, and grasp the intricacies of advertising and subscription policies that your competitors are following.

Evaluate your competitors by analyzing their strengths, threats, opportunities, and weaknesses and try to be different and sustainable. Make a quantitative analysis by calculating the number of free members, paid members, the annual subscription, and cost of taking in a new member, other revenue sources, the time period that each member is likely to stay with you and so on. Keep upgrading your membership website to keep up with the market trends.

Budgeting Tips for Your Membership Website

Calculate the pre launch expenses and make a complete budget analyses and book the best personnel you may require for help. Membership site capital can be raised online depending on your own personal resources, the kind of subject you are dealing in, and the company’s resources.

Try to expand your subscriber base and engage personnel who will be able to achieve this. Look out for partners who will complement you. Capital can be raised from media companies who like your subject or idea.

Tips for the Content of the Membership Site

Make sure you have enough content to publish and that it matches the chosen frequency of the editorial content. You must plan out all the details of the content or subject. Check out the specifications and keep a tested prototype to implement a website which is user-friendly.

You can create a non working membership site prototype to try out all the various paths that a user might take in your membership website.

Conclusion

Finally after organizing and starting the membership website let the product fulfill the expectations of the subscribers and follow the trend of their needs and requirements.

To know more about earning through membership sites, visit our site
Membership Website

Name: O. Naga Nandini

Blue Rose Web Services

http://www.wix.com/nandini16184/Butterfly

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4 Good Reasons to Build a Membership Site

If you’re an internet marketer and you DON’T yet have your own membership site it’s time to create one! Take a look at the top marketers and ask yourself how many of them haven’t built a membership site (if not more than one)?

What can membership sites do for you? There are 4 fantastic reasons why you should one of your own.

1. You get recurring income

The most obvious benefit is a recurring income and the security that this brings. I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s much easier to sell something once and get paid for it over and over again than it is to constantly be searching for new customers just to earn the same amount.

2. Membership sites establish you as an expert

Being the owner of a member site gives you a certain kind of status. People stand up and take notice of a good membership site, much more so than a standalone product.

Anyone can throw together a product and start selling it but to have taken the time to set up a proper member site means you are serious about your business. Even if you only have 1 product, by saying that your members will get the product as part of the membership, it’ll amp up your value.

Give great content and your reputation as an expert in your niche will develop.

3. You get customer loyalty

Think of the membership sites you belong to yourself. There’s a good chance that you’ve bought many products from the same person since joining. Right?

The loyalty factor can also be somewhat linked to the 1st point of recurring income – because they are constantly paying money, they are also paying attention to what you’re saying.

Therefore, your members will pay more attention to what you’ve got to say because you could be offering something new, an update, or just about anything at all.

4. Membership sites can give you the internet lifestyle

This also kind of goes back to the recurring income thing, but for as long as you can encourage people to stay in your membership sites you’ll have their money plopping into your bank account each and every month. It’s the internet lifestyle most people dream of!

Let’s do a quick recap of what membership sites can do for you – it gives you recurring income, it establishes you as an expert, they can create loyalty among your customers and most importantly, it can give you the internet lifestyle you’ve always desired.

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Sell Your Expertise Through Membership Websites

In a membership website only members who subscribe or pay can access the related information that they seek. One must give valuable information depending upon individual expertise and sell this information to a targeted or niche group who are ready to pay for that expertise. The members can be roped in for a fixed term rather than giving them all the information at one stretch.

Expertise Generates Continuous Flow of Money

Your expertise in a particular field can generate a constant flow of money in a membership website. You can give weekly content which is shared by an auto responder for a specific time period with paid members only. It is like an e-course which is fee based and can be delivered in a PDF file.

This method of selling your expertise is quite easy as less work is involved. One has to simply write one article each week, load it to the auto responder and the subscribers can access it. Access to the whole series can also be offered at a price. This can last for a few months.

Selling Expertise in Small Bits

When one sells his expertise in a particular field through his membership website, the information is easily digested by eager and interested members. It will ultimately be more useful for the subscriber than a chunk of information provided in a blog. Expertise thus sold will create a permanent income.

Linking Your Expertise to Other Products through a Membership Website

You can also link your expertise with other products and services that you are offering at any other site. For instance if your membership site is dedicated to teaching people how to organize their business, then you could sell your expertise in other related fields such as marketing a particular product by mentioning it in your program.

Converting Your Knowledge and Expertise into High Pay Packets

You can bottle and sell your knowledge, expertise, and wisdom into a profitable brand. There are many ways to do this. You can use video testimonials and impress your subscribers thus retaining them with your expertise. Visitors are more impressed when they see a name a few times on the very first page of organic search engine results.

To sell your expertise you must put some resources to show up as a high-ranking membership website by using target keywords. Hone your search optimization skills but don’t be over aggressive as this can rebound and hurt your expert image.

Online Credibility Can Convert Your Expertise into Regular Income

The design, content, and your social networking sites can have a substantial bearing on your ability to sell your expertise through the membership website.

To know more about setting up membership websites visit our site:
Membership Websites

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Find Out the Best Free Website Creator

The internet technology exists since 1960 but the beginning of web development started in 1994. People showed more and more interest towards it. HTML was commonly used by developers for building websites. As the technology developed, programmers came up with lots of solutions for non-programmers to build a website.

As of now, tremendous amount of software are available to create a website. Some of them are free of cost and some cost a lot. Some of the free website creators are even better than the paid ones. Dreamweaver is considered to be the best website maker and the most powerful one. A lot of complex websites are made using this software.

But Dreamweaver costs a lot and not so easy to use, so it is used mostly by developers. There are other great software you can use to build your website for completely free. They are extremely powerful and designed for beginners. With all my researches, I think Yola, formally called Synthesite is the best website maker.

There are some other ones as well such as Weebly, Wix, Wetpaint and others. But Yola stands out from them because of its simplicity, cost and the features. Whether you are creating a website or a blog, their service is perfect for you. There is no download needed, it’s all web based.

All you need to do is to register for an account and it’s all set up. The best thing about this service is, it offers unlimited disk space and bandwidth for absolutely free. Their free website creator is amazing; anyone can use it without facing any trouble. You just need to drag and drop the content on your site.

They have ready made templates for you, so there is practically nothing to do in terms of designs. There is also a lot of add-on that can be done just with a click of your mouse. Overall the service is extremely recommended, because first of all, it’s free and secondly it’s extremely easy to use.

They also provide you with a sub-domain but you can also add your domain name for only 15$/year, which is relatively cheap for unlimited hosting and bandwidth with a great website builder. Now the best part about this service is, they let you monetize as well.

AdSense can be easily integrated in the system. Unlike their competitors such as Weebly, they don’t take a share from your ads revenue. Weebly is a great service as well, but it takes 50% of your ad revenue. Yola does not hold any rights in terms of your ad revenue.

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Define Your Market and Then Target It

To make a successful marketing strategy for your online subscription website you will have to define if the market you are targeting is the one that is happy paying for the product you are offering. There are two kinds of people out there- one who are ready to pay for a good quality product, provided they feel that they require that product, and two the people who do not want to pay for any online content may it be e-books, games, pictures or reports or any other net published material.

Recently a survey was conducted by the Consumer Electronics Association, where in they found that almost 51% people expected to pay for the goods and services they subscribed to and a little less than 50% did not want to pay for online content or information. Given a choice people were ready to pay for the informational content and other services they used over the net, in the same way that these people always paid for their houses, cars, education, meals etc.

This is very good news for the people in the business of online publishing, because there is at least 50 % of internet users who are ready to pay for the online content they read/used and hence a large market for subscription websites. In fact if some things are offered free, then these people have a tendency to get suspicious, if things are offered free of cost.

The million pound question then ‘is your website targeting the percentage of the market that is willing to pay for your subscription website?’ Therefore your site and the marketing strategy, both should target the customer who is ready to pay for the content they get on your site. In a way you should try to address a niche market with specific requirement, who are ready to pay your sites’ subscription fee. On the other hand do not expect any good results if you are making the site that does not offer anything unique or does not address any unique requirement of a select market- this will mean when people do not value the content you are offering, then they will definitely not want to pay to register to your subscription website.

Before launching your subscription website make sure that your site is offering content for the users who are ready to pay for it- (define your market right), further your marketing strategy should target that clientèle.

This article was written by Craig Dawber of www.ukEntrepreneur.com [http://www.ukEntrepreneur.com/]

Need advice and guidance with your online business [http://www.ukEntrepreneur.com/] check out the resources found in this website.

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Members Only Websites – Getting Affiliates the Old Fashioned Way

If you have a members only website or you are thinking of starting one, eventually you will want to get some affiliates. Everyone is talking about affiliates on the internet and often you will hear experts say that you should e-mail potential affiliates and talk them into doing cross e-mail promotions with you. There’s nothing wrong with that, but what do you do if you want affiliates, but don’t have a list big enough to offer as incentive for a company to do cross promotions?

Not too long ago I was in that very same position. Fortunately, I found a simple method for getting some great affiliates to send new clients to my members only websites, and eventually the marketing that I used to find affiliates eventually lead to a joint venture partner. All of these things were key factors in building the business to over $50,000/month in revenues with practically no overhead. You will be amazed at how easy it was.

1. I simply made a list of 30 businesses that would benefit if their clients were members of my members only websites.

2. Then I sent them unique bulky mailers telling them about the site and the benefits that the businesses would get if their clients were members of our site.

3. I would provide them with a temporary user id and password that would be good for 10 days.

4. They also got a pre-stamped card that they could return to me if they wanted to get a discount code to give to all of their clients.

Every month I basically repeated some variation of this process. Over the period of 3 years I got lots of different affiliates, some would send a few clients, others sent a lot. I just kept sending very unique direct mail pieces talking about the benefits to them each month. Eventually someone contacted me about setting up a joint venture that lead to ton’s of additional revenue for the business.

My purpose for telling this story is that if you want your members only website to be the exception of the rule, the one in thousands that makes insane profits, then you need to be the exception to the rule. You can’t do things the same way everyone else is and expect to get exceptional results.

I’m sure some people would laugh at mailing 30 marketing letters out every month, they would send them for two months and then say it’s a waste of time and stop. But I didn’t even get my first affiliate until the 4th month. If I had only mailed them for two months I would have gotten zero results instead of the $50,000/month that the affiliate and joint venture partners eventually built to.

Also, some may say that it’s silly to waste money on direct mail when everyone is using e-mail. Of course, since everyone uses e-mail you will be lumped in the same category as everyone else, which makes it, highly unlikely someone would choose to send his or her clients to you. Who wants to recommend their clients to the “average Joe” and damage the reputation they have worked so hard to build?

Are you ready to take the next step toward turning your skills into profitable membership websites that can earn you massive (and practically passive) income?

I will lay out for you the step-by-step process I used to build a paid membership website that generated over $50,000.00 per MONTH (with practically no overhead), in less than 4 years.

This includes:How to choose your specialty, systematize it, market it and deliver it to your clients, all served to you on a silver spoon.

You can download your “Profitable Membership Website” E-book to your computer in a matter of seconds Click Here: Membership Website E-Book and get your success tools today.

Erica Joneson is an expert at building profitable membership websites.