“Anything worth doing is worth doing badly,” declared the philosopher G.K. Chesterton.
He most likely meant that most people who try something with the best of intentions will make mistakes – but that shouldn’t stop us from trying. The key to advancement is to avoid the curse of perfectionism.
This axiom can be applied to the creation of your membership site. You should strive for excellence rather than perfection.
Avoiding the most common mistakes made by most marketers is one of the best and fastest ways to achieve this, so let’s dive in.
Always remember that simplicity is the ultimate goal when creating your first membership site. Do not attempt to create a sophisticated membership site with multiple tiers, trials, and other features.
You want to start with a free trial and then upgrade to a paid membership. Content should be supplied efficiently, on time, and with ease to members. In a nutshell, that’s it.
You’re not constructing a space shuttle, but a membership site. Keep it straightforward.
It’s understandable that you want to blow your consumers’ minds by providing them with a wealth of information. There is one question you must answer:
Is it viable long-term?
Setting the bar too high at the outset might lead to unrealistic expectations, and if you don’t deliver, they’ll see it as you failing to keep your promises, and they’ll cancel their membership. So you’ve already set yourself up for failure by setting the bar too high.
Less really is more.
This is one of the most serious errors you can make. When it comes to having your deliverables ready, make sure you’re at least two months ahead of your ‘oldest’ subscribers. This will provide you some breathing room in case content creation is delayed.
Many newbies make the mistake of planning next month’s content during the current month, and they’re always racing to finish it. Being behind the eight ball is a bad situation to be in. It’s frantic and exhausting.
If you’re late with a delivery, you can bet your subscribers will lose faith in you and leave. You never get another chance to make a good first impression. Make certain yours is flawless in terms of content delivery.
Make sure you thoroughly test your membership site when you first create it. Pay for it, sign up, and see how easy it is to join the membership – and how easy it is to get to your material.
It’s a good idea to wait a month to see if you’re billed again – and if you are, did you obtain access to the content for the following month? You should’ve got it.
Before you start your membership, double-check all of these things. You may shout it from the rooftops once it’s finished, and there will be less snags once people start joining your site.
It’s a marathon, not a sprint, to run a membership site. Your goal is to increase the number of subscribers and produce quality content on a monthly basis. Do not attempt to oversell your customers by bombarding them with new offers every two days or so.
Allow them to digest the information. If you want to make more money, provide upgrades within the membership site so that members can obtain more privileges and so on.
Give your potential clients two or three options, but no more.
Anyone interested in creating membership sites must put in the effort. Engaged members and a continual stream of new users are the keys to membership sites’ success. Prioritize the consumer experience to accomplish this.
You want your members to be happy because they paid for the privilege of joining your site. Customers will not have a positive experience if your website performs poorly–if it loads slowly, has a clumsy interface, or has disorganised content. Users want simple membership sites that are easy to use.
Using a landing page builder to construct independent pages for a specific purpose will ensure that customers obtain the information they require as soon as possible.
You can expect more interaction from site visitors if you create a nice website design. Examine the user experience before investing in a membership plan for your website. Consider yourself a member and go through the emails that validate your purchase and membership. Use the site to navigate and manage your account.
As soon as your membership site is up and running, make sure it stays that way. Posting regular content, introducing relevant tools, and launching engagement campaigns are the best ways to excite and keep users engaged.
Remember to prioritise the consumer experience by creating a user-friendly and easy-to-navigate website. Since we’re discussing user experience, make sure you’re continuously sharing new and relevant information that’s still in line with your content strategy.
While it’s easy to focus just on attracting new subscribers, you must remember that your current subscribers are also vital. Focus on customer retention and providing a positive user experience. When you have the opportunity, engage them.
Avoid sending spam or making frequent updates if you care about your members. Additionally, the right tools and automation will greatly assist you in managing your subscriber base. Don’t forget to pay attention to customer service.
These six errors are widespread and can harm your membership site. Keep them in mind and avoid them, and your site will develop into a profitable investment that pays off time after time.
If you want to know more about creating a profitable online course to put behind your membership portal, check out the featured resource below for a free detailed report; download, read it and take action 😊
When you first get started online, you might be worried. Frankly, you probably should be worried.
Yes, you made sales this month. But will you make sales NEXT month? And how will you pay the bills if you don’t make sales?
It can be scary going from a job where you know exactly how much you’ll get paid and when you’ll get paid to working your own business online.
Of course, online businesses don’t have the large overheads that physical businesses do, and you can get started for virtually free, but for most entrepreneurs the slowly, slowly approach can be a lot to swallow and they want to dive in head first. Sound familiar??
Once you have your business up and running, what then?
In your business you might have a brilliant month and then two months of starving followed by a mediocre month followed by (hopefully) another great month.
The trouble is that if your business is your sole source of income, you want your profits to be a lot more reliable than that!
Or… how do you KNOW for a FACT that next month you can make the mortgage payments and eat, too?
Simple – continuity programs. Call it what you want – memberships, recurring payments, monthlies, etc.
It all boils down to getting people signed up into a continuity program so you can continue to get paid month after month.
Now you have a choice here: You can either promote other people’s continuity programs or create and promote your own.
Drive the traffic, offer your own bonuses, and do what you’ve got to do to get people signed up.
The problem, of course, is that in exchange for less responsibility, you also have less control and more competition.
The membership site owner has control over content. If s/he takes a “churn and burn” mentality and doesn’t care about keeping members happy, then people won’t stay long. You’ll have to continually make new sales, which isn’t what you’re looking for.
You want stability. That’s why you only want to promote truly great memberships and continuity programs that deliver a ton of value.
As to competition, you are competing with every other affiliate who is promoting the same program.
Unless they’re on someone else’s list (they are) who has already promoted the program. In which case, you’re not going to make many sales.
Promoting affiliate memberships is a give and take. Less responsibility, no control and lots of competition.
And this is why you might want to start your own membership. Look around and see what people in your niche desperately want and need, and then fill that want with your site.
Outsource the content creation if you can, so you can focus on the important part – filling it with people.
Use either a WordPress plugin such as Wishlist Member or an independent solution such as Product Dyno to create your membership site.
Once you’ve got your membership site up and running, it’s time to get busy promoting it. Use every technique you can think of and track everything.
Find out what your best sources of traffic are, and then put all of your effort into just those methods.
9 out of 10 new members are coming from Facebook, so what are you going to do?
Drop all of your other methods and focus exclusively on the Facebook advertising.
Get your conversions up and your costs down and now you have a viable way of getting a continuous influx of new members into your site.
One thing you need to be aware of is that selling a membership can be a big ask with cold traffic and your conversion rate probably won’t be stellar.
So, what you could do is offer them a cheap product upfront to get them into your funnel, and then offer them your continuity program.
Plus, most folks won’t even notice a payment for $10-20 leaving their account every month.
Another thing to think about is whether you want to be creating content month after month, year after year. You could outsource the content creation if financially viable, or you could create a fixed membership site with 12 months of content that the customer pays to access.
Want even more members? Show affiliates how well your offer is converting, and you can get them to promote your membership site, too.
There are plenty of affiliates out there who want that continuous, month to month income that a good membership site provides. All you have to do is show them that your funnel is converting, and members are sticking.
Naturally, there are a lot more details than this to starting a membership site. But hopefully this gets you thinking in that direction.
One more thing – the first site is the hardest. Once you have a membership site that’s clearing at least a couple of thousand dollars each month like clockwork, continue to build on that one while building your second membership site, and so forth.
Create a membership empire to secure your finances, and then you can experiment with anything you like.
Security first, right?
By the way, if you want to know more about outsourcing check out this article here and the featured resource below where you get a free report all about successful outsourcing; download, read it and take action 😊
