$2000/mo Membership Site Using Offline Marketing

lol. yeah easier to get caught in a bookstore than in an airport magazine stand. i've slipped a local newstand a few bucks for this 'insert priviledge' before and never got caught doing it in waiting lounges with mags.
 
This works bigtime.

I know a bloke that advertises in a local small town paper and has 300 opt in emails every week.

Adds up if you can use your list properly.
 
This is a great idea. I can set this up with a week or two of work and begin advertising it. My only problem is a membership script. I don't want to be making html pages with Dreamweaver and e-mailing the link to my clients. I want something they can go to every day, navigate around, ask questions (forum), and in general add content to your website.

So far I haven't heard of many membership script ideas except for Aweber and Joomla. Can anyone expand on these? What extensions to Joomla can create a membership site? Are they free/pay for? etc... Thanks!
 
There's Account Expiration Control for Joomla. And there are lots of great modules like Community Builder which help create the features you're looking for.

If you're tech savvy, you can create pretty much anything you want for free. The one feature I haven't found for free with Joomla is time released content based on member join date. That's a pretty key feature to keep people from joining, downloading everything on your site and cancelling their membership.

I found this vid which I think is a mirrored copy of the same vid I used several months ago as a reference for creating a Joomla membership site with entirely free components.

hxxp://video (dot) google (dot) com/videoplay?docid=6928758790059107004

Sorry, I can't post links yet.
 
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ok, I found an extension called Ninja Content Timer that time released content based on user join date. But it's not free.
 
I use wordpress with wp-member. It's great because you get all the useful wp plugins and you can have different levels of access too.

My problem is not setting up the technical stuff and advertising, it's filling it with content.
 
Sounds like a good idea but Im wondering how one of these sites works from the inside. Say you are teaching someone how to make money once every other day. Do you have a totally different method each time? Or do you split up a method? Because there are lots of ebooks and PLR that can be used, of course, but i would think it would dry up quickly.
 
From the sounds of it, your market is going to be totally new to anything online that falls outside the usual email + light web browsing. That means you get the joys of teaching them the ropes from the ground up. Like "what's FTP?" kind of questions. Thankfully there's lots of PLR articles and videos you can acquire to save you the trouble of having to rehash the stuff yourself.

The joy of such a model is that this stuff tends to take newbs a while to grasp. Rome wasn't built in a day, and a newb doesn't learn how to go from zero to money making website in a week or a month. Plus, the better you are (read: the more compassionate) about teaching them the ropes, the more likely they are to stick with you.

After you've got a decent size member list (at least numbering in the dozens) you can poll them to find out what they want to learn about. That's another joy of this model. You might only have to brain storm the first month or six. After that, you just build to order, which has the added benefit of increasing member loyalty.
 
I'll setup a forum for some more intense discussion on this matter if there is enough interest.

I personally don't think time released content is an issue, you need to remember our target audience here. Most people don't think like we do as BHer's and ripping everything and then canceling won't be an issue.

Plus if you effectively create some "fear of loss" in them as member's they won't want to cancel. Combine that with over delivering ... You get the picture :)
 
I'll setup a forum for some more intense discussion on this matter if there is enough interest.
There's a ton of interest on my part...hope to see the forum soon!

Great thread!

Thanks to all, esp. OP!
 
Suggestion for content how about Camtasia video's on how to do different stuff

1. Register A Domain
2. Finding Free Templates
3. Making A Squeeze Page
4. Starting A Blog
5. Making a Photo Story Video
6. Finding Articles For Bum Marketing
7. Simple Step By Step Niche Research
8. Keyword Research
9. Take some ebooks and read them into an MP3 download for them to sell

and anything else you have learned over the years

:)
 
Suggestion for content how about Camtasia video's on how to do different stuff

1. Register A Domain
2. Finding Free Templates
3. Making A Squeeze Page
4. Starting A Blog
5. Making a Photo Story Video
6. Finding Articles For Bum Marketing
7. Simple Step By Step Niche Research
8. Keyword Research
9. Take some ebooks and read them into an MP3 download for them to sell

and anything else you have learned over the years

:)

You could do these videos with an affiliate link under each one...

How to register a domain = Godaddy aff link
How to Setup Hosting = Hostgator aff link
 
You could also set up an aff program. Offer 50% comm. Have them refer 2 people and pay for their membership each month.

This could be the first thing for each member get them up and paying for their membership.
 
Anyone having results?

The GREAT thing about this is that we're not in competition with each other.

I will be trying this next week - cards arriving before weekend :)
 
For those that have done this...how much time in legwork have you had to do? The only thing holding me back is flying around town. lol This is a great idea. OP: I love your posts.
 
Excellent post. I think offline marketing is just as important if not MORE important than online marketing. Online you have unlimited people that you can reach...but they are surrounded by offers, they have become numb to this on the internet. When they read something in a classified, see a business card or flier..it is something tangible..its real.

Not to mention alot of people fear online scams, people are very paranoid about this now adays.

Some people automatically assume a business card = trust, a real person, not a faceless scam artist surfing the digital highway for credit card numbers :rolleyes:

I am working on a few offline methods myself and will have a nice post coming.
 
Does anyone have an outline of what they will be teaching the noobs? To me, it makes sense to start teaching them the easy stuff. eBay comes to mind here.

Grafxextreme or anyone else who is now doing this: can you share a samle course outline with us just to give us an idea of a proven format and outline to present the content to them? I just dont want to overload my ppl with too much content or something that is too advanced for them. Or vice versa.

Do you survey your members to understand their experience level?

Thanks!!
 
Hello

I'll try to answer some of your questions. As to experience level you should know this in advance. Your website should be set up for a specific market niche. I personally targeted those with little to no experience with the Internet. People who only used the Internet to download email, search for recipes, use MySpace, look at YouTube, etc...

As far as marketing or starting an Internet business they know ZILCH. Which makes them the perfect client/member for you. Because they're open to what you have to teach them and there's nothing for them to unlearn.

I start all of my members with the very basics. I first review what a website is and what it can do for them. Give them a taste of affiliate marketing. Then I start teaching them the real basics. How to choose a domain name, hosting service, ftp, setting up a blog, etc... Once they mastered that then I go on to teach them more advance things. It's a step-by-step progressive system.

Think sales funnel...

...start out wide and narrow it for bigger profits.

My conversion rate is a bit higher than most because I don't sell. I teach. People tend to buy from those that teach than from those who try to sell.

In case you don't believe that teaching makes more money then let me say that from BHW alone I've earned more than $4000 in the last two weeks for about three hours worth of work in teaching people how to do something. All of them sought me out because of this posting and another posting where I taught something. I didn't try to sell. I just taught.

I also DO NOT use the guru's business model. They're forced to reinvent the wheel every month. With a membership program you don't have to do that. But you do have to provide high quality information.

You also DO NOT want to inundate them with one asinine offer after another. That's another place where membership owners go wrong. They start sending out all these third party offers and end up confusing and annoying their members.

As to content, all of mine is video, audio with some high quality ebooks thrown in there.

I also conduct webinars via one of my sister sites and earn about $1200 to $2500 for an hour and a half of my time giving them more focused information. Webinars are a something that will give you much more bang for your buck than affiliate marketing UNLESS you use the IMG business model which is a thinly disguised sales presentation.

If you use the webinar with your membership then you can do what I do. I do a lot of JVing with other owners who offer my webinars to their members. They collect the money, pay me 50% of their collection and I conduct the webinar for them. You can do the same.

My webinars run about $99 to $1499 per person with a maximum of 24 attendees per webinar. This means my JV partners can make a minimum of $1200. That in itself could be very profitable for many of you and much better than trying ewhoring, cpa and some of the other methods which may be too advance for a noob.

Everyone has something they've mastered. Just find yours and offer to conduct webinars on it.

If you want your site to last a long time then you're going to have to focus on always providing your members with VERY HIGH QUALITY content. Start taking short cuts and you lose credibility, sales and profits.

Hope this gives you more of a clue on how to set this up for maximum profitability.
 
Hello

I'll try to answer some of your questions. As to experience level you should know this in advance. Your website should be set up for a specific market niche. I personally targeted those with little to no experience with the Internet. People who only used the Internet to download email, search for recipes, use MySpace, look at YouTube, etc...

As far as marketing or starting an Internet business they know ZILCH. Which makes them the perfect client/member for you. Because they're open to what you have to teach them and there's nothing for them to unlearn.

I start all of my members with the very basics. I first review what a website is and what it can do for them. Give them a taste of affiliate marketing. Then I start teaching them the real basics. How to choose a domain name, hosting service, ftp, setting up a blog, etc... Once they mastered that then I go on to teach them more advance things. It's a step-by-step progressive system.

Think sales funnel...

...start out wide and narrow it for bigger profits.

My conversion rate is a bit higher than most because I don't sell. I teach. People tend to buy from those that teach than from those who try to sell.

In case you don't believe that teaching makes more money then let me say that from BHW alone I've earned more than $4000 in the last two weeks for about three hours worth of work in teaching people how to do something. All of them sought me out because of this posting and another posting where I taught something. I didn't try to sell. I just taught.

I also DO NOT use the guru's business model. They're forced to reinvent the wheel every month. With a membership program you don't have to do that. But you do have to provide high quality information.

You also DO NOT want to inundate them with one asinine offer after another. That's another place where membership owners go wrong. They start sending out all these third party offers and end up confusing and annoying their members.

As to content, all of mine is video, audio with some high quality ebooks thrown in there.

I also conduct webinars via one of my sister sites and earn about $1200 to $2500 for an hour and a half of my time giving them more focused information. Webinars are a something that will give you much more bang for your buck than affiliate marketing UNLESS you use the IMG business model which is a thinly disguised sales presentation.

If you use the webinar with your membership then you can do what I do. I do a lot of JVing with other owners who offer my webinars to their members. They collect the money, pay me 50% of their collection and I conduct the webinar for them. You can do the same.

My webinars run about $99 to $1499 per person with a maximum of 24 attendees per webinar. This means my JV partners can make a minimum of $1200. That in itself could be very profitable for many of you and much better than trying ewhoring, cpa and some of the other methods which may be too advance for a noob.

Everyone has something they've mastered. Just find yours and offer to conduct webinars on it.

If you want your site to last a long time then you're going to have to focus on always providing your members with VERY HIGH QUALITY content. Start taking short cuts and you lose credibility, sales and profits.

Hope this gives you more of a clue on how to set this up for maximum profitability.

Thanks. I see your point about how you should know the niche first. Its funny, I was just thinking that in the shower like 15 mins ago before reading this. lol

Your posts are very valuable to the BHW community. Again, thanks for this and all your other posts.
 
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