Getting Members

It would help if you let us have the url to look at your website so we can comment.

nicho said:

It would help if you let us have the url to look at your website so we can comment.

Click to expand...

Sure:

That photoshopsecret website is graphically superb and would cost thousands to reproduce yourself unless you are artistically inclined.

My advice would be to offer some professional photos for sale on places like flickr etc and include the url link to your membership page on profile pages etc as one route and also set up some kind of Facebook and Myspace group or business page as another.

PPC is a good route, but you must use membership joining keywords. Up your PPC campaign keywords and cost per click and increase your membership fee per month so you at least get a small profit from each initial signup, then you can bombard members with other profit making offers later.

If you're using ppc, send them to a squeeze page for some free stuff, then use an AR to softly sell your membership site,

day 1 benefits
day 2 more benefits
day 3 testimonials
day 4 tip
day 5 benefits
day 6 testimonials

something along those lines.

get a websitedesigner

Hi maximart4u,

l have a quick look at your new members website and l have a few comments that may help you which l think are objective but the only real way of knowing if my commets are correct for your website is to actually track and test each element with split testing.

The problem that l can see with your market is that there are way too many free photoshop tutorials around or cheap packages that people can purchase like an ebook or cd of photoshop tutorials.

Here's what l suggest you look at....if you go to this website http://www.landingpageclassroom.com this is a great way to use your photoshop skills and makes ana excellant members website because it has the magic ingrediant that you need a ....ie a starving market.

These people are desparate to make money in the cpa market and need top class landing pages to be able to CONVERT into leads to collect their payouts.

The problem with your site as l can see it , is that it is too general and you need to ultise your talents which you obviously have to digg a little deeper and a fill a need.

hope that helps you some.

When I went to your site I got a suspicious site warning from zone alarm.

That is enough to kill conversions.

Also, consider what sets you apart from all the other sites, most of which are free.

Get rid of whatever you have going on there, and try to get an original angle.

Well I have a site in the same niche, so I'm only only going to tell you so much. lol.
My advice to you is that the site is saturated and you should try something else. j/k (gotta try to discourage the competition)

Anyway I'll leave the site design stuff to the other guys, I'm still struggling with that part on my own site as well. Definately figure out what is triggering the zone alarm thing someone mentioned. You won't sell anything if you are unknowingly spreading any malware.
OK, Here comes my real advice.

The first thing I have to say about this is the same as some of the other posts. There is so much of this tutorial information that can be found for free, trying to monetize that aspect of it will be very difficult. Just go to youtube a do a search for photoshop tutorials and you will see what I mean. Many of them are very good, created by professionals.

This is a basic outline of what I suggest you do. I shouldn't tell you this because I'm in the same niche and have thought about doing what I'm going to tell you now.
Just give it to them for free. Yep you read that right. Make it free... Well Kinda!!

You should change your business model to offer what your wanting to monetize now, into a free site. The membership idea is good, but instead of charging for the membership, just make a few photoshop tools that you can sell instead.

Then use the membership site as a support forum that they get free with their purchase. In reality you are just keeping your customers close so you can make upsells later.

For instance you are trying to sell for $3/month which is $36/year, so instead just create some really good actions, put them together in a package that you can sell for $36. (if you can't make actions, then just pick some other type of tools). Then as a bonus for buying the actions they can get free access to your photoshop forum, which includes more actions tutorials, etc. Next come up with a value for that and market it as a savings bonus.

So now they are making a one time purchase of your photoshop actions package for the "Limited Time Low Price of only $36", and as a Bonus they can get access to your forum full of blah, blah, blah useful info for one year (A $60 value) "But Act now while the Bonus is still available."

So now the rube (er.. I mean customer) isn't worried about recurring billing, because you already let them know, it is a one time charge only. You can even value the actions package at regular price of $46 by itself, but price is reduced to $36 and free bonus added for this limited time special offer.

The customers are happy because by paying $36 for something that is worth more than that all by itself, they are actually getting $106 worth of stuff for the same low price. You're happy because your getting $36 for something you already are hoping to get $36 for.

I'm just giving you the idea, you'll have to work out all the sales copy for yourself, but I hope you get the idea.

Now the harder part is to make some actions that are worth the money. If you are as good as you're promoting in your ad, then you should be able to create some new actions. Just like everything else there are a ton of free ones available. Just do a search and download a few of the free packages to see what they have. Then do a search and find some packages that aren't free to see what they are offering for the money. Then using what you learn from that research, create your own unique actions that you can legitimately say is worth $37.

Remember you are going to be having a year long relationship with these people in your forum so you have to make sure what you're selling them is good. Then after the year is up offer them a discounted renewal price. Remember you placed a value of $60 for the membership site, so you can give them a discount for say $36 for their second year.

By doing this you are still getting the price you are asking now, but you are getting it in lump sums. You provided the exact same thing, but just marketed it in a different package and the customer thinks they are getting a better deal. You can also put adsense on the forum and it would feed very relevant ads to a site like this. So the bigger your membership gets the more you can make on just the adsense alone.

Then throughout the year you can also create additional tools that you can offer the same way, sell them to new customers for the $36 with the same bonus $60 forum membership, but to your forum members they can buy the new tools for a 25% discount. Members can even get the special opportunity of buying it for the 25% discount, before it's released to the general public. That lets your forum members feel like they get special vip treatment, when in reality it gives you a chance to test the new product before you start your new marketing campaign.

Ok, there you go. I just gave you some ideas for you to work with on how to sell something people can get for free, by making them think they actually are getting it for free, when in reality they are paying the price you already detemined you want.

I probably shouldn't even tell you all this. LOL. I should probably write this up in an e-book to sell. In fact I might just do that, so I don't want to find this being sold on dp next week. LOL. I usually don't ask for thanks, but this is some good info here, so if you think it will help you out then feel free to show some love. :beer:

hope this helps

I say charge more for your service.