Membership Site Ideas

Let’s discuss some ideas for membership sites. These sites will enable you to offer your expertise and information to others on a regular basis. I’ve been using Wishlist Member, the WordPress plugin, to set up all of my membership sites since 2008. You will be able to house all of your content in one place, have a product available to give away or sell, and build your credibility and visibility by showing that you have specific knowledge on your topic. Allow me to explain in greater detail exactly what I mean by this.

Over time you will write articles, blog posts, and short reports on your topic, and by adding them to the member’s area of your site you will have them all in one place. This keeps you from duplicating what you’ve already written, and also allows you to see where the gaps are in your information. I like to make a list of the topics I have written about, and then add the content slowly over time.

Membership in your niche specific area will be a benefit to your prospects in that you can offer them a free membership where they can learn more about you and your topic. Over time you can invite these same free members to join your site as a paid member. The paid membership will have much more information, content, and privileges than the free one will have. This gives you two products right away; your free access and the paid access to your site. You may also want to offer a monthly teleseminar or other coaching as a part of this.

Increasing your credibility is much easier when you have content available on a free or paid site. This lets your prospects and clients know that you are an expert in this field. The next step would be to combine your content into a book. Your visibility will also skyrocket because people will begin to see your name everywhere as you create more articles and other content to add to your member’s area.

As you can see, setting up a membership area in your niche makes a lot of sense. This is something you can get started with right away. Take a look at your blog to see which posts could be repurposed and added to your site. Also, think about teleseminars or live trainings you have done where the content could be transcribed or added as audio or video. This will make your site even more appealing to those who come to you to learn more about the topic you are an expert in.

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Reasons To Learn From An Experienced Online Marketing Trainer And Mentor

I have been an online marketing trainer for more than four years now – since 2007 – and my students continue to make great progress and achieve success with their online businesses. I am extremely proud of this, but all the credit goes to them for choosing to learn from and work with a mentor to begin with. Attempting to do this on your own is not very easy, and the time and effort you save will more than make up for the cost and commitment required.

Learning from the experts who have been online for so many years is an excellent way to move ahead quickly with your online business. When I was new to the Internet, back in 2006, I quickly saw that there were two groups of people sharing information with the rest of us. One group had been online for ten years or more, and the other consisted of people who were not much further along than myself. There’s a place for both groups, but you don’t want to trust your financial future to those who are still figuring it all out for themselves.

Now I do realize that everyone has to start somewhere, and that we were all new at one time, but that’s a different topic. What I am talking about here refers to whom you will receive your online education from so that you can move ahead quickly.

How do you find out if the person you’re spending time and money with is experienced enough to be teaching others? Here are a few things to look for:

1 – They have a blog or portal site at their name dot com – example: ConnieGreen.com

2 – They have written a minimum of 100 articles on their topic

3 – When you Google their name you can see a variety of products and courses they have created

4 – They have authored, or at least co-authored, one or more books on their topic

5 – They have other raving fans, as evidenced by blog comments, book reviews, and social media postings

While I was a classroom teacher I went from being a student teacher to finally being a mentor teacher to student teachers. During the years in between those two roles, I learned in a variety of ways, including teaching hundreds of children, attending conferences, and reading what the experts had to say on various topics. It would not have been right for me to give other teachers advice during my first two years as a student teacher. My third year gave me more insight, but I was still in learning mode. By my fourth year I was ready to share my experiences with others, and by my fifth year I was asked to work with a first-year student teacher as a part of a team.

This is similar to what I recommend online. Study with a variety of people, and know that the ones who have been consistent in one main niche for a minimum of three years are the best people to learn and take advice from.

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Internet Marketing Training – From Big Box to Mom & Pop

Internet marketing training has changed significantly from what it was just a year or so ago, because the Internet marketing trainers have changed. Now that so many people who are relatively new to the marketplace (such as myself) are training the absolute beginners (newbies) who are coming on the scene, people have a choice in who they will spend their time and money with in order to get started with an online business. I think of this as a shift from the gurus (Big Box Stores) to the indiviual Internet marketing trainers (the Mom and Pop’s) when it comes to receiving your information.

The gurus – they even refer to themselves in this manner – tend to offer two thousand dollar courses and very little, if any, personal contact. Their webinars mute out all guests and customer service is done exclusively through a ticket system. Very impersonal, and not very effective these days.

People such as myself, and there are thousands of us, tend to focus on building relationships with our prospects and clients as we teach the fundamentals of getting started with an online business. If you think about it, I’m sure you will agree that having access to those you spend time and money with is a huge benefit.

Live events are changing as well. The events I used to attend consisted of a series of presenters throughout each day, each offering a package for sale at the end of their 90 minute presentation. At the end of three days you had heard conflicting stories as to what you should be doing to build a profitable business online. Most of these speakers did not even stay for the entire event, so they did not hear that someone else was contradicting their opinion. None of the people I met at these events enjoyed this process, but it seemed like the only way to connect with the big names in our industry.

Now the live events consist of more ‘workshop’ style training, where the speakers are expected to teach you how to do something to further your business. There may still be something for sale, but it is done in a more gentle way. Relationship building is seen as more important than just making the sale.

The bottom line is that relationship marketing works. When you choose someone to learn from, make sure you will be able to get to know them as you learn from them over time.

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Are You Developing Self Confidence In Your Online Business?

Developing self confidence is a topic that seems to be discussed primarily when we are dealing with children, but I believe it is crucial to adults, particularly those wanting to become online entrepreneurs. Those who are more confident and sure of what they can do are typically the ones who achieve the highest level of success. Being able to persevere, and feel like you are always at the top of your game, will affect everything you do.

Confidence is a trait I saw regularly in children entering Kindergarten. I taught for twenty years, so I was able to make a study of this as I spent time with children of various ages over the years. A Kindergartener enters school with a thirst for knowledge and a quest for the truth about the world around them. Within a month, that confidence can either be enhanced or shattered, depending upon the circumstances and situations they encounter, both at home and at school. By the time that same child entered the third grade, it was more likely than not that they had lost most of the self-confidence they had demonstrated just a few short years before.

I compare this to the feeling most of us have when we come online to start a business. We are wide-eyed and enthusiastic. We believe that success can be ours as soon as we figure out how to set up a few key things in our business. We have dreams of changing our life and being able to accomplish goals we had forgotten about from many years ago. Our imagination runs wild as we allow ourselves to dream.

Then we hit a stumbling block in the road. Perhaps it’s the realization that the technology is more difficult than we had imagined.  It might be the writing that will be required. The marketing may seem like it is just too much for us to understand and implement. In my case, it was all of these things.

That’s the point where we have to make a choice. Will we give up our dream and Continue reading →

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Hosting Teleseminars As Part Of Your Online Marketing Strategy

Hosting your own teleseminars will be both rewarding and profitable as you continue to build your online business. I’ve been doing this as part of my online marketing strategy since 2007, and it has been an excellent way for me to build my list, answer questions on my topics, and connect with people whom I may not ever meet in person. As you begin to incorporate hosting teleseminars into your business, you will want to think about the time of day and frequency of your calls, which topics you will focus on, and how you will monetize the calls from the very beginning.

There is no perfect day of the week or time of the day for you to host your teleseminar. Our online businesses serve people around the globe, so someone will always have a time conflict. I recommend that you choose a day and time that is convenient for you, and then have your call at this same exact time every single week. The idea is to get your audience used to when and where they can hear you each week to hear what you have to say and to get their questions answered.

Choose topics of discussion that are most comfortable for you. In the beginning, I shared information on blogging and article writing with my listeners. This was because these were the areas I was actively pursuing at that time, and I had many tips and much information that was helpful to them. I prepared a two or three page study guide for each call, and promoted two or three affiliate products and courses within each study guide. By keeping my offers in line with the topics I was discussing, people began to make purchases during that first month. Later on I began repurposing these study guides into short reports I could give to my list on a regular basis.

My recommendation is to only promote one affiliate product on each call during your first one to two months of hosting your own teleseminars. This will get you used to the idea of selling, and help to make the transition from whatever line of work you used to be in to online marketer a smooth one. You will also be less likely to forget something, or to confuse your listeners by promoting many things at the same time.

You can see that hosting your own calls can be beneficial in many ways. I use the Instant Teleseminar service, and have been with them since they began in May of 2007. Get started right away, and you will find that your online business grows very quickly once you get into the habit of doing this to reach out to your audience.

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Money From Mini Sites

When I started online in 2006 I knew that there were many things to learn, and that I would have to spend some time laying my foundation before I could move up to the next level. By 2008 I was meeting people who were talking about making money from mini sites, and I would listen to see if I could understand what they were doing to make the kind of residual and passive online income we all dream of. The conversation would become very technical rather quickly, and that’s when I would be lost.

During this past year I decided to make a study of how to set up these mini-sites, and to learn more about the different types of revenue possible. I chose several niches rather quickly, just to see if it would work for me. It does.

Now, you won’t make a million dollars with this strategy, but you can fine tune what you do to earn anywhere from about $20 to $100 per month from each site. The secret is to set up lots of these niche sites, and to use a combination of AdSense, Amazon, Clickbank, and other programs to make sales while you are doing other things, like sleeping, spending time with your family, and just living your day to day life. That’s sweet.

I decided to ask two colleagues, Geoff Hoff and Jason C. Maxwell, to join me in teaching this information. Take a look at our Money From Mini Sites page to see if this is for you. We’ve made the investment as low as possible to include everyone who wants to learn how to do this.

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Article Marketing Tips – Build Your Online Business With Articles

Article marketing is responsible for me being able to start my online business and create the business I have today. By writing short articles you can generate traffic to your blog and other websites, build a highly targeted and responsive list, and repurpose your articles into other content to both market yourself and your business and to create many information products to sell on the Internet. I’d like to share some of my best article marketing tips with you here.

When I started out in 2006 I had no idea of how I could get visitors to my sites. It wasn’t until I started writing and submitting articles to the directories in 2007 that I began to see massive targeted traffic to all of my sites. This was an opportunity for me to try a variety of topics and approaches to what I wanted to do in my business. I had almost immediate feedback on what was working and what was not doing so well, and I could make adjustments that would make a huge difference for years to come.

As more and more people began to read my writing I began to build a list. This was the best possible type of list, because the people had just read one of my articles and were now interested in what I had to offer them. They were not strangers who had found me randomly by searching on Google or one of the other search engines. Instead, these were people who had a chance to read what I had written on my topic, clicked on the link in the resource box, and then visited my site to see if they wanted to know more about what I was doing that could help them to achieve their goals.

These article marketing tips really work. After you have written at least ten articles, start to think about the other content and products you could create. Combine several articles into a short report to give away to your list and on the social media sites, including a call to action at the end. These reports can be used to promote your own or affiliate products. This is just the beginning of how repurposing your articles will work well to build your online business.

I recommend that you repurpose everything you write for best results, so turn those articles into eBooks, audios and videos, and outlines for courses you can create on your topic. I have even written four books that all started out with the articles I wrote on the topics I am an expert in. The sky is definitely the limit as to what you can achieve.

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Create Information Products That People Want To Buy

Creating information products does not have to be a complicated process, and your products should also contain information that is simple and direct. Remember that many people are just getting started with an online business, and need simple products they can easily consume. When you are creating your info product, be sure to think about the person who is most likely to benefit from the information you have to share.

During my first couple of years online I purchased many products that simply went over my head. I yearned for information that was concise and taught me just what I needed to know at that time. Now I realize that the product creators were trying to develop the best product possible, and didn’t even think about someone like me. I know I was not alone in feeling like I was on information and technology overload. Then I learned how to create information products that were simple.

So, how do you make sure you are creating products that will be helpful to the people you are trying to reach? Ask them. Yes, that’s right. Send out a survey to your list, ask people on the social media sites, and host a teleseminar to see how much your audience knows and what they would like to learn.

You already have the knowledge and the skills to create products that people will buy. Now it’s time to take action and get to work creating them.

Start with an outline. This is how each of my products started. I now have more than twenty for sale and available on the Internet, so I know this method works. I divide my outline into three or four parts to make it more manageable and to see if I will teach the course in one session or more. It is also at this point that I am going to make the decision as to whether it will be a live course, an evergreen training program, or some other format that makes sense for what I want to accomplish.

The sales letter is next. Start with a headline that jumps out at your target audience. Writing the sales letter while you are creating the product may sound counterintuitive, but it actually makes sense. Your product will be better when you do it this way, and as you write your bullet points and other copy you will be able to add even more to your outline.

Information product creation is something you can do on a regular basis to build your online business and increase your income over time. Create information products that are simple, and you will make lots of sales over time.

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Creative Content Creation – Why Content Creation is Crucial To Your Online Marketing Success

Content creation needs to be a regular activity as you continue to build your online business. This seems to be an obstacle for many of my students, so I thought I’d share my thoughts on how to create as much content as you want or need in just a couple of hours each day. Your content can be repurposed into many formats so that you get the most out of the time you spend creating. You also want to think about the topics you write and talk about, as well as the outcome you hope to achieve as a result of what you are creating.

We call this content creation, instead of writing and recording, because creativity is an important part of the process. Being an online entrepreneur means that you must have ideas for products, courses, programs, marketing strategies, and more, and this requires you to be creative in everything you do.

Making a schedule will many times stifle your creativity. Instead, figure out quickly when you have the most creative and productive ideas. For me, the hours between six and eleven in the morning are best, so I make sure to create content seven days a week during this time. I do nothing related to my business between about eleven and four in the afternoon, and only work during the evening one or two days a week. This all works out for my lifestyle, because in my former life I worked three or four times as many hours each week. These days it feels like I’m on vacation every day. When you love what you do each day, you’ll never work another day on your life.

Remember that each time you post to your blog, write and submit an article to the directories, record a teleseminar or other audio, write a short report, or create a video, you have added more content to your inventory on the Internet. If you take just one action every single day, you will soon have more content than the vast majority of people already trying to build an online business.

Do not wait to be inspired before you begin with this; instead, tell yourself that this is the way to get your name out and to lay the foundation that will carry you through to even bigger things. It all begins with you making that decision to write or record a new piece of content every day that is relevant to your business and lets others know who you are and what you have to offer.

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Social Media Marketing for Introverts

Social media marketing has opened up a whole new way for people to connect on the Internet. With the advent of Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, as well as the hundreds of smaller social sites, our lives and our businesses have changed forever. Even if you’re an introvert, as many of the people working online today are, you are able to interact with friends, prospects, and clients on a regular basis. You will be the most successful with this marketing strategy if you have a plan, and then stick to it to achieve measurable goals. I have a course on social media marketing that you will find very helpful.

You must first decide if you are using social media for your own personal use or for a business. I like to make this decision up front, because once you start connecting and sharing with friends and family it is sometimes just too difficult to make the switch in both your thinking and your actions to use it to promote and build your business. If you must do it for both, then set up separate profiles by using a different email address. Keep this straight in your head, or you will finally be too confused to carry on. I’ve seen this with my own students, so I know this can become a huge issue.

Remember that social media marketing is a visual means of communicating, so be sure to use photos and videos as you share what you are doing. It’s easy enough to carry a digital camera with you everywhere you go. You can also upload pictures to sites like Facebook with your cell phone. Add a caption and make a point as you share these pictures with your friends and followers.

I am not comfortable in social settings, so social media has been wonderful for me and my business. I don’t have to dress up, leave my house, or make small talk with people I hardly know. Instead, I can be funny and engaging with my thousands of friends and followers when I choose to connect with them. I always say that I am a social butterfly on these sites, and that I can simply swivel my chair ninety degrees to the right when I no longer feel sociable.

Build your business one tweet or status update at a time by sharing who you are, what you do, and how your business can help others to achieve their goals. This has revolutionized the way we connect with others, and you can benefit by learning as much as possible and then jumping in to take part in what we are all doing online.

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