Step-By-Step Guide to

Creating Your Own

Highly Profitable
Online Membership Site.

Terry Dean
Business Systems 2000
http://www.bizpromo.com
 Digital Newsletter Publishing: Step-by-Step
Guide To Creating Your Own Highly Profitable
Membership Site

Copyright 2000, Terry Dean & Business Systems 2000

The publisher and the author disclaim any personal liability, loss, or risk incurred
as a result of the use of any information or advice contained herein, either
directly or indirectly.

Furthermore, the publisher and author do not guarantee that the holder of this in-
formation will make profit from the information contained herein. All mention of
promises to make money, either implied or not implied are strictly based on the
author’s opinion of the information contained herein.

As with any business, it is up to the individual owner of said business to ensure

the success of the business. You may make more or less than the program may
or may not claim herein. It is strongly recommended that the purchaser contact
any and all federal, state, and local agencies which may regulate, tax, or
otherwise control the commencement of a business such as the one presented
here. The Publisher and Author do not intend to render legal, accounting, or
other professional advice in the documents contained herein.

Business Systems 2000

PO Box 128
Richmond, IN 47375
Terry@bizpromo.com
http://www.bizpromo.com

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 Table of Contents

Digital Publishing is the Ultimate Internet Business 3

Why Not Create a Free Content Site 8

Paid Memberships Have Gone Mainstream 13

Unlimited Built-In Backend Profits 15

Create An Electronic Book or Produce a Membership Site 17

My $1,000,000 Mistake 18

STEP ONE: Seven Steps to the Right membership Idea 22

STEP TWO: Setting Up and Running Your Site 29

Choosing the Right Web Host 30
Write a Sales Letter and Design Your Web Site 32
Create Pricing Options for Maximum Profit from Your Site 36
Pick the Software and Credit Card Processing 39
Create and Upload Content 43
Choose a Schedule for Updates 49
Plan Your Research Methods 51
Contact Other Potential Content Providers 53
Creating Other Products 55

STEP THREE: The 10 Best Ways to Promote Your Site 58

Technique #1: Press Releases 59
Technique #2: Joint Venture Deals 62
Technique #3: Affiliate Programs 64
Technique #4: Send Article Excerpts to Ezines 66
Technique #5: Place Solo Ads in Ezines 69
Technique #6: Participate in Online Schmoozing 71
Technique #7: Postcard Mailing 74
Technique #8: Search Engines 77
Technique #9: Pay-Per-Click Search Engines 81
Technique #10: ClickXchange 84

A Final Note 87

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 Digital Publishing Is the
Ultimate Internet Business
People always ask me what is the easiest business in the world to be in for
someone just starting out. I don’t even have to bat an eye. The answer is
information publishing. Publishing your own information products has been
and probably always will be the best business that the average individual can
get into with the highest chances of success. There is nothing else even
close.

Information is always in high demand. The only product sold more often
than information online is software…and that requires very specialized skills
to create. If you have the capabilities or want to learn how to write code,
then software creation could potentially be a little more lucrative than
information, but 99% of people aren’t cut out for spending hour after hour
staring at computer codes.

All types of information products are currently being sold online. You could
sell information on Internet marketing, tennis, golf, collecting, dogs, cats,
piano, music, jobs, credit, money, RC cars, convertibles, corvettes, movies,
auctions, herb gardens, arthritis, etc. Just go down to a local bookstore and
you will find multitudes of information products on every subject under the
sun. If there is an interest for it, there is an information product being sold
on it.

Anyone can start an information business with little or no cash. If you are
reading this manual, then at bare minimum you have a computer (or else you
could not have found my site). This means that you have all of the
necessary tools you need to start your information business.

You may say, “But I can’t write.” No one said you had to be able to write to
create your product. You could do audio interviews of experts as an
information product. You could do email interviews. You could create a
Resource Directory of sites to use as a product instead of doing a plain
written product. This basically involves doing research and finding all the
resources people need for a subject, such as an Import/Export guide which
shows all of the resources for finding products to sell.

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You could do the research and then give your notes to a ghostwriter and
have them write the product for you. A ghostwriter is someone who takes
your material and writes the book for you under your name. Almost every
one of the autobiographies done by famous movie stars, athletes, or political
figures was actually written by a ghostwriter.

If you follow that strategy you will have to have a little money as most
ghostwriters will charge you $1,000 to $2,000 to write a full length book for
you (not bad at all when you consider the fact that you will be able to sell it
for years to come without having to pay a single penny in royalty fees).

Finding a ghostwriter isn’t too difficult either. You can call down to your
local newspaper office and ask for someone who might like a little extra
writing work such as this. You can also visit a web site such as
http://www.elance.com and post that you have a job such as this for
someone to do. Then, you may have several dozen people offering bids to
do your information product for you!

You can also purchase reprint rights to information products which have
been done by other people. This can give you your start in information
marketing and it can also give you a foundation for putting together extra
“value” packages of work.

For example, in this product itself, you are receiving this manual which I
wrote and you are also receiving Monique Harris’ “the paperless newsletter
publishers guide” as an additional bonus to give you two different
viewpoints to publishing your own digital “membership” site. I purchased
the reprint rights to her manual so that I could package two valuable manuals
together in one good deal (and I sell my value added set of materials for less
than she originally sold her manual alone).

There are so many variations to information publishers that there is no way

we can cover all of them here. You can create reports, books, newsletters,
audio tapes, videos, multimedia CDs, electronic books, content sites, and
“membership” sites. All of these information products have their place and
their value, but we will be focusing on what I see as the most profitable
information opportunity of the 21st century…creating your own membership
site.

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Compare any type of information product to other types of businesses you
could be involved with online. Creating your own software program
requires learning computer codes or hiring someone else who can (and most
programmers don’t come cheaply). Manufacturing a hard product will take
you lots of investment to get the machinery or to hire out the work to another
company.

You could just join an affiliate program or business opportunity, but both of
those have the same problem built into them. You will then be competing
with thousands of other people online without having any type of built in
uniqueness to your business. You won’t be able to tell anyone why they
should do business with you than the other ten thousand dealers out there
with the same product.

That problem can be overcome, but it requires you to come up with your
own unique aspect for the program (the easiest way to do this is to create
your own information product which you add on or give away as a bonus to
anyone who purchases through you). So, even if you are in another
opportunity or another type of business, you still need to learn about
information publishing.

Many service businesses also use information publishing as another stream

of income. For example, a search engine expert can create a search engine
ebook or in our case a search engine membership site where they reveal all
of the secrets they use to get the top positioning. In most cases this won’t
interfere with the service portion of their business because they often sell to
different people.

The Do-It-Yourself audience will purchase the information product and then
those who don’t want to mess with it will pay the expert to position them on
top without having to learn all the hassles involved. Quite often, many of
the members will be the ones to purchase the positioning service because
they now know what is entailed in getting the positions…and they don’t
want to mess with it.

So, virtually any business can find a way to open up their own membership
site. If you are in affiliate programs, you could start your own affiliate
promotion membership site which helps other affiliates promote their
affiliate programs by giving them tools, reports they can use for bonuses,
lead generation methods, and other similar things.

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If you don’t currently have a product, then I consider you to be in the best
position of all for picking up this material. When you are starting from
scratch you are in a much better opportunity to pick the right type of
“information” for you to be marketing. You can sit down and take the time
to come up with a market and product that you will enjoy dealing with even
if there wasn’t any money involved.

In my own involvement, helping people start their own businesses for over
three years, I have found that way too many of them just want to copy other
people and they don’t end up finding something they will be happy
publishing. They want to market “Internet marketing” related products or
services…not understanding that this is one of the most difficult businesses
to be in starting out.

If you are just starting out, you don’t have a track record to show in this
market. If you don’t know how to make money online yet, then how will
you teach anyone else how to make money. You don’t have the element of
credibility that you need to be in this market. It is also quite difficult to
create a UWP (unique web position) in the marketing field as there often
seems to be dozens of people doing each potential service or product.

If you are creating your first information product, don’t try to compete in
this market yet (maybe after you have proven you can sell products online
first then you could create items for this market later). Choose a product
where you personally have current experience or you at least have high
interests in.

We will be discussing this later on in the manual, but you should be on the
lookout for potential membership site ideas starting now. The type of ideas
you are looking for include anything where people are “passionate” about
and where you can help to fulfill their needs and wants in the market.
Having valuable information is necessary in every subject you can imagine.
The whole membership choosing depends on picking the right “angle” for
your product.

In words, you don’t create a “golf” membership site, you create a “golf
travel” site reviewing the best golf courses to visit…or you create the “100
Club” for people trying to break 100 consistently. If you are doing

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automobiles, you don’t do “Chevy.” You do “4x4 Toyota Trucks,”
“Corvette Lover,” or “PT Cruisers.”

By the way, there is already a membership site for “PT Cruisers” and in the
last press release I looked at from their business they had received over
1,000 members paying $40 a year within 30 days of opening. So their
project brought in $40,000 in it’s first 30 days and would require almost
nothing in startup experiences and delivery (you have to own a web site,
have a way to process credit cards, and use some type of membership
protection software). So that is almost pure profit!

Although it is almost impossible to believe, these types of results are

appearing daily through new membership sites. People come up with a hot
topic which is currently receiving a lot of press, and almost instantly their
membership site takes off. This is the kind of idea we hope to be able to
help you find!

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 Why Not Create A Free Content Site?

Before we get too far ahead of ourselves building your membership site
from the ground up, we need to confirm to you that a membership site is the
way to go for your online business.

Too many people come to me and say they don’t know how you can charge
for information when there is so much free information available out there.
The truth is that people are getting tired of the “free information” available
on the net.

The problem with the free information is that you can almost never find
what you specifically need. Sure you can find information, but you can’t
find the right information. Have you ever been looking for a web site and
had to use a search engine to find it? You can spend two or three hours
looking for something and come up with nothing.

You may want to start your own “membership site” so you look for
information on this. You can search for weeks at a time, but you probably
won’t find the right resources to tell you simply and easily how to do it.
Nothing out there will even tell you which software to use to automate it.

The Internet has information available all right…but it is always general

information, not specific information. If you search for information on
Internet marketing, you will find a huge amount of it…but by the time you
are done you will be more confused than when you started with so many
different opinions, products, etc. You won’t have a specific plan to get
started.

This same problem occurs in every type of market that you can imagine.
There is a lot of free information out there on the subject, but it isn’t
valuable. It doesn’t really provide you with what you are looking for. Even
at the free news sites, who spend millions of dollars to produce their free
content, people are complaining that they just aren’t organized well enough
to find what they are looking for.

If you watch the news, you will also notice that one major free “content” site
after another is going out of business. Ever since Internet stocks dropped
down to a reasonable level (after the Internet hype wore off), the content

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sites haven’t been able to pay their bills without the overpriced ad revenue
coming in.

To produce multitudes of content every day requires a slew of writers, web

designers, and content providers. They are quickly finding out that selling
advertising doesn’t cut it anymore since there is a whole lot more space than
ad dollars being spent.

This is a wonderful time for any company selling products. It means that
you can now buy ads for one third to one half of what they used to cost, and
you will be able to produce a profit that much quicker.

Times are hard for the free content providers. This brings us to the next
point for small businesses and home businesses starting out. Every “expert”
on the block recommends you start your own free ezine (electronic magazine
sent out by email) and provide valuable content to it. Guess what, I used to
recommend this to every business and person I came in contact with…I
don’t recommend it to everyone any longer.

Listen when I speak on this subject because I was one of the first people who
started teaching people how to start their own free electronic publications.
The Internet moves at the speed of light and most corporations call every 90
days an “Internet year.” During the past year (four years in Internet terms)
we have seen an explosion of free ezines.

There are now well over 300,000 free ezines out there and this number is
growing every single day. Having your own ezine doesn’t have the
uniqueness to it that there used to be. Almost every web site you visit has an
ezine…and 99% of them aren’t worth anything.

People now receive dozens of ezines every week and the ads don’t pull as
well anymore. For example, I used to recommend buying any type of
advertising in ezines, but now classified ads just don’t pull anymore. So,
now top sponsorship ads and solo ads are all that I am recommending you
consider placing. You just won’t get that good of results from classifieds
anymore.

People aren’t reading the ezine like they used to. Sure, they scan through
them, but they scan right over the classifieds section without taking a second
glance.

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There will probably come a day where the top sponsorships and solo ads
won’t produce anywhere near the results they do today. We have to be
prepared for it and stay ahead of the game…and the rules to this Internet
game change every day.

With the latest growth of Internet ezines, it is also much harder for ezines to
sell their ad space unless they have a recognized name in the industry
already. So, the profits from running an ezine are actually decreasing.

For my own ezine, “Web Gold,” I still get a lot of ad requests because I am
well known in this market and have an ezine with over 30,000 people on it.
I don’t sell advertising often because I earn more money using the ad space
to sell my own products or the products of those I joint venture with for a
percentage of their profits.

I didn’t see this problem at first until I started talking with many of the
smaller ezine publishers who have trouble selling ads for $2. When they
were only running 1,000 or so subscribers they found it very difficult to earn
even a small profit publishing the ezine.

To build free subscribers, you have to provide great content. To provide

great content requires a lot of your time. If you aren’t earning anything from
your ezine, then you are basically working for FREE!

Even if you are a non-profit company, you still can’t work forever without
producing an income. People have to eat…eventually. Too many ezine
publishers are quickly becoming “starving artists.”

This isn’t to say that no one is earning a profit from their ezine. I earn a very
good income, but I am also an established name in the small business
industry. There are quite a few others who have built a strong following of
subscribers and can earn good profits from selling their own products or the
products of others through the ezine. In most cases, they just aren’t earning
their profits though selling advertising. They use the ezine to sell products
not advertising.

What I am saying is that the number of people able to make a good living
publishing a free ezine is quickly diminishing. It is harder to do now than it

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was two years ago because of the increased competition and the fact that
almost every Internet user is now in a state of “Information Overload.”

NOTE: The term “information overload” will be used throughout this

manual to talk about when everyone is providing you with information, but
you can’t seem to figure out how to use any of it in your actual day-to-day
life. Sure, you have a lot of knowledge, but you are too thoroughly confused
to act on any of it. We all have too much to read and the shorter and more
concise information can be, the more valuable it is.

This also isn’t to discourage you from running an ezine. Having some type
of email contact is still “essential” to selling online. Whether you call this
email contact an ezine, a tip of the day, or a friendly “reminder,” you still
must use email as a primary selling tool for your online business. I wrote
the book on “Email Marketing Secrets” and I definitely don’t want you to
shy away from email contact. It is absolutely necessary to follow up on your
prospects and customers if you want to make the maximum number of
online sales.

What I am encouraging you is that my ezine is not my “business” anymore.

I am in the information business and I will deliver that information in the
most effective format possible. The best way to spend my time isn’t on the
ezine and selling advertising. So, my ezine is becoming smaller and shorter
lately…and my time is being spent on my “paid” membership sites which
are much more profitable.

The free ezine has only one purpose in my mind…that is to move more and
more people over to the paid resources. Give them a sample of the content
available and then follow-up on them to sell more products and services.
Then, once they become a member of the membership site, they get the full
meal.

A term that all ad copywriters use (online and offline) is that you have to sell
the sizzle, not the steak. You can sell best by having people hear your steak
cooking, smelling the sweet aroma, and thinking about the mouth watering
taste. You don’t just tell them where you bought the meat and what it looks
like. The uncooked steak doesn’t look too appetizing, does it? Now, once it
is ready to be delivered it is tasty.

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The ezine is there for the purpose of selling the “sizzle” and giving them one
taste of what they will get when they become a member. They will get the
full steak dinner after they have joined the membership site.

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 Paid Memberships Have Gone Mainstream

You should never start any business unless you have and can find models of
success which are already doing it. It may be profitable to be a frontrunner,
but it can also be quite painful when you find out you were running the
wrong way.

So, think again before you begin to think I am talking about creating a new
model of success online. There are already thousands of web sites who are
creating extremely profitable membership sites in every niche market that
you can imagine. We will be dealing with a lot of these later on in this
report.

There are also some very large companies that are going mainstream with a
membership concept. For example, ESPN has a paid membership section as
does the Wall Street journal. These very big and powerful companies have
already seen the writing on the wall for “free” content sites.

Both of them provide content throughout their free areas, but if you want the
really desirable information you are going to have to pay. They are also
both doing quite well with hundreds of thousands of members.

They’re not the only ones going the membership direction. Microsoft has
announced they will be delivering their software through a paid “member”
format from now on instead of delivering shrink-wrapped boxes. They are
doing this to completely eliminate stolen software and to also provide
software in the most cost effective format.

If the richest man in the world has pulled out his crystal ball and is
predicting that his company needs to deliver “information” in a membership
format, then don’t you think you should start following in his lead?

Inside.com is now offering an inside look at TV markets and information on

advertising purchases for $19.95 a month. Other large companies are also
preparing to produce similar sites for law and medicine. Virtually every
vertical market will soon have several companies fighting it out to be the
membership content provider.

During all of the fiasco of Napster and the other mp3 music sites battling it
out with the record industry, eMusic.com is creating a membership site

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where you pay one yearly fee to download all of the music they have
available. Under their model, the musicians and the record companies can
all receive their financial share of the pie.

Whether they succeed with this model or not, don’t be surprised if you see
other companies quickly entering the fray with the same type of model.
Everyone wins. People get quick access to the music they want, and
everyone can be fairly compensated for it without breaking anyone’s
copyright.

People have become accustomed to paying for information on a monthly or

annual basis. How many magazines have you subscribed to in your life?

When cable TV first starting charging monthly for their services, the major
networks thought it was a joke and said that no one will pay for TV. Now,
those same major networks are the ones who are currently struggling to pay
the bills. They never saw the trend coming. Many online marketers have
the same problem coming up the road. They don’t think anyone will be
willing to pay for online content, but they will find this is a misconception
just like it was for TV.

How many times have you seen an awesome deal where you get 15 CDs for
one penny, ten movies for a dollar, or six DVD’s for a dollar? This has
become an established business. They lose a ton of money upfront because
they then have you as a monthly purchasing customer at regular rates. You
have become a monthly subscriber to their program.

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 Unlimited Built-In Backend Profits

This shows you where the unlimited value of a membership site can be
applied. Every smart marketer knows that the profits in business are not on
the first sale to a customer. The real profits from any business come from
selling to that same customer over and over again during the life of your
customer relationship.

If you are currently only selling to your customer one time, you have left
most of your profits on the table. If your business is profitable now, then
you haven’t seen anything yet once you put backend sales to work for you.
If your business is losing money, this is the first place I would have you look
into. Are you going back to your customers and continuing to sell them
other similar products?

The first sale to a customer is the least profitable sale you will ever make. If
you have treated them well and have Wow’ed them with the quality of your
product or service, you are seven to eleven times more likely to be able to
sell to them as to obtaining a new customer…which means more savings and
a whole lot more profits.

Membership sites have the advantage of having a built-in backend. Once

you start producing subscribers many of them will stay with your publication
for years to come. In my free ezine, I have people who have been with me
for years and don’t have a doubt in my mind they would still be subscribed
even if I was charging since I have helped many of them produce full-time
Internet incomes doing this time.

Membership sites are a little newer of an invention and even the oldest ones
have only been in existence for three to five years. Yes, they have been
around and have been successful that long.

So, if I had to compare them to something, the most similar business would
be those publishing offline newsletters. Publishing a newsletter has been a
profitable information business for small businesses for decades now. It is
also often considered the most profitable product to be selling in an offline
format.

They produce a yearly income and are as close to a “regular paycheck” that
an information producer can have. As a matter of fact, newsletters can often

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sell for 10 to 30 times earnings. If you are earning $100,000 a year, you
may be able to completely sell out your newsletter for a million or more.

Once they have had a newsletter for more than a year, those renewals will
start coming in and producing a monthly paycheck with no advertising being
paid for at all. Having your own newsletter has always been the best way to
build a long-term residual income for an information publisher.

If you take a step back and look at some of the marketing gurus who have
taught people how to market, you will find that many of them have had their
greatest successes while dealing with newsletters.

For example, Jay Abraham had many of his million dollar successes while
working and joint venturing with financial newsletter publishers. They
would create an irresistible first year offer and then would earn a fortune off
of those who renewed the next year…and every year from then on.

Technology has now given us the ability to take paid newsletter publishing
to a whole new level. You no longer have to pay huge printing bills and buy
a truckfull of stamps to send out your monthly newsletter. You can also
have members from around the world now and have the whole system
automated to take care of your members automatically (not having to type
them into a database and keep track of them).

Not only that, but you can also publish more than just text in an online
newsletter. You can publish audio, video, and interactive content. You can
also have discussion groups, have people send in their own articles, and hold
chats. You can deliver software right online and show online samples.

We will be covering all of these content methods throughout this manual,

and every single one of them makes the publishing process much easier than
any newsletter publisher has ever had it. You can do your research online
and in any many cases have much of your potential material delivered right
to your email box.

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 Create An Electronic Book
Or Produce a Membership Site?

Membership sites are not the only type of digital information product you
can produce of course. You can also produce an electronic book instead.
We have included Ken Silver’s book “eBook Secrets” to help show you
more about this format of online publishing. Both an electronic book and a
membership site are good options. Which one is right for you?

This all depends on your personality and your interest in the market you will
be selling to. An ebook can be created one time and requires minimal time
commitment. You write the book and you are done with it (until it comes
time to update it with new information).

Starting a membership site requires a much longer term investment of time

since you will be adding new content every day or every week. So, you will
have to stay in this market and continually write about it and research it.

You will find that the ebook can produce a quicker one time profit while the
membership site can produce an income for you every month or every year
for the rest of your life. It’s your choice. How involved do you want to be
in the subject?

Personally I am involved in doing both. I currently have two membership

sites and will be setting up a third one in an all new market. I also have two
electronic books on the backburner which will be finished some day. They
both have their value, so it up to you to decide which one you want to do.

You may decide to do both. Then, you could have a membership site and
also have an electronic book which you can backend to each other. That is
the system that I currently have in place. The moment you join my
membership site you are told about our electronic book. The moment you
buy the electronic book you are told about the membership site. Our
additional profits go both ways!

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 My $1,000,000 Mistake

Here is where many people are currently making a mistake in creating a

membership site. They are packing it with materials and then charging a
one-time fee. That has defeated the entire advantage of having a
membership site altogether.

This is the same mistake I have made. My first membership site was the
“Instant Internet Cashflow System” which you can see at
http://www.allthesecrets.com. This is the number one best “toolbox” of
training materials available on the net for one low fee.

I have sold several thousand memberships to this site, but I have also created
my own problem in doing so. See, I charged a one-time fee to have access
to all of the materials in the site and I never promised lifetime access (how
could you since you don’t know if you will be in the same business your
whole lifetime). The materials can all actually be downloaded pretty quickly
after ordering since it really isn’t a “membership” site.

I continually have people who come back years later to check for new
materials (I am also adding something into the site from trades I make with
other marketers) and without fail, many of them lost their passwords, can’t
figure out how to download again, or have some other type of problem.

It doesn’t take a lot of time to help them out, but it does take time once you
count the number of them involved. So, I end up having to help people for
years for something that they only paid one time for. That can be very tiring
on you when it occurs every day.

Since my site has been available for quite a while now and I could have been
charging a “yearly” fee while constantly providing the same new materials, I
have lost out on well over $100,000 already from my mistake. Once you
count the years to come, I will be giving up nearly a million dollars in
additional profits I could have had.

This is my $1,000,000 mistake. Don’t let it happen to you.

I see so many other marketers making the exact same mistake…and they do
it even worse. They actually promise “lifetime” access for one price. Are

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you crazy? You are going to actually commit yourself to provide lifetime
updates to a product without ever being paid again.

Yet, many of the new membership sites are making this mistake. If anyone
walks away as a buyer of this manual and does a “lifetime” membership site,
you deserve to be hung at dawn.

The whole purpose of using the membership format of a web site is to keep
your paying subscribers happy so that they renew continually…and give you
a consistent monthly paycheck. If you want a one-time income, then sell an
ebook. At the same time, understand you are limiting your future income.

This is only one of the mistakes I made with the Cashflow membership site
(understand that is has evolved more into a collection of training materials
now than a membership site). I am going to give you several others so that
you can learn from my mistakes.

The second mistake I made was to pick too general of a market. I would
never pick “everything to do with Internet marketing” again. Sure, I did a
very good job of covering it, but it has cost me tens of thousands of dollars
for the rights to all of the products that are in the site. It was very expensive
to cover Internet marketing in such a style.

My newest membership site is focused specifically on “Ad Testing and

coming up with Internet Ad Breakthroughs,” a much more targeted
subject…although still a little broad for anyone who didn’t already build a
reputation in the field.

If I had to recommend an Internet marketing subject for someone to start a

membership site based on, I would recommend you go for “Earning
$100,000 Yearly as An Affiliate,” “Banner Advertising Targeted for Large
Companies,” “Creating a Vertical Portal,” “Web Designers Association,”
“Internet Consultant’s Association,” “Internet Marketing for Public
Speakers,” or something else targeted. Those wouldn’t be the actual titles I
would use, but they are idea starters for you to think about.

As I have already said, and will say again in choosing your subject, you will
have much better success if you choose an area outside of marketing unless
you are already very acquainted with the market. For example, if you are a

19
real estate agent and have learned how to market yourself online that could
be a good subject.

As an individual running a membership site with almost zero overhead, you

don’t need 100,000 members to earn a good profit. You will be very
profitable if you can choose a membership subject where you can sign up
1,000 members. As a matter of fact, you may want to make that as a target.

There is even the possibility you could be very successful with only 100
members if you make the targeting even more specific…such as Cold Fusion
programming (and including free code people can use in their programs)
where you could charge a much higher membership fee such as $700,
$1,000, or more. The more you limit and specify your market, the higher
your membership fee can be.

The third mistake that the Cashflow site had was bad software to handle the
site itself. The software that I installed back then was a major pain to use.
Guess what? It was provided free with the hosting service, so I used it. It
never seemed to work right, couldn’t track people’s password use, and didn’t
seem to want to give people their passwords directly when they lost them. It
caused more aggravation than you could imagine.

I know many membership site owners who are in an even worse state than
that. They don’t actually have a membership system installed so they only
have one password that they change every month or so (sending their
members the new password every month). This type of system is a joke.
That password could be passed around everywhere and you could have
thousands of people accessing under one member’s account without ever
knowing about it.

If you are going to run a membership site, then by all means make sure you
are using the right tool to do it with. This would mean having software
designed specifically for you, but I will show you several software programs
you can buy right off the shelf which have incredible abilities later on in the
manual. Don’t worry. It is possible to have your whole software system
done for free also if you use an outside credit card processor.

This brings me to mistake number four…I didn’t follow-up on members

right after they joined to make sure they were able to access the site. You
should send out an email just to make sure that your members logged into

20
the site and were able to access the files. If they have a problem, many of
them won’t let you know about it. They just forget when they ordered.

Then, two months later when they see the charge from you on their credit
card bill, they call in to reverse the charges because they don’t remember
who you are or that they ever ordered your member site. All they know is
they have a suspicious charge on their card.

This is what the merchant industry calls a “chargeback.” They take it right
out of your bank account and usually charge you a fee of $15 to $25 per
occurrence. If it happens too often, they can also take away your merchant
account…leaving you without a way to accept orders.

I received a few of these chargebacks and to combat it with the Cashflow

System I added in a bonus CD containing many of the online files plus a few
more bonus training products.

This completely eliminated chargebacks as the person could look at the

receipt they were sent in the mail and the CD they actually had in their
hands. Providing the CD was part of the change from a membership site to
becoming a product toolbox for the Cashflow program.

Another solution which would have been possible (and is what I do with my
new membership sites) is to contact the customer a few days after they order
with an email asking if they have any questions or need any help. Basically
I give them a few instructions on using the membership site to it’s fullest
potential for them. This is to ingrain my company name in their minds again
so they won’t dispute the charge when they first see it on their card.

All of these problems and solutions will be covered in more detail in each
section of this manual, but I wanted you to know that I am coming from a
position of experience. I have earned several hundred thousand from
membership sites. I have done everything wrong you can imagine in the
process of setting up my sites, and then I figured out how to do it right.

You don’t have to make the same $1,000,000 mistake I did. Aren’t you glad
you can just learn from my experience?

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 STEP ONE: The Quick And Easy Seven Step
System to Choosing the Right Membership Site

The first step and probably the most important step in the whole process is to
come up with the right idea for a topic in the first place. This is the whole
ball game right here. Your idea and business will live and die on this point.
If you choose the right idea, it is easy to generate loads of free publicity for
your project. If you pick the wrong idea, then you won’t be able to generate
the traffic you need without spending lots of money doing it.

If you choose the wrong idea, you will quickly tire of it and you will find
yourself facing a deluge of quality competitors…sooner or later. If you have
the idea everybody wants, then it won’t be long until everyone is copying
you and you find it a constant battle for subscribers.

The biggest key is to refine your membership site down until it is highly
specialized. Then, magazines will be open to giving you free publicity,
other businesses will refer customers to your specialization, and it will be
easy to profit.

Don’t worry about not being able to find enough people for your topic…no
matter how specialized you become. The more specialized your site is, the
easier it is to sign members up and the higher price you can charge for it.

As I said before, you shouldn’t do Internet marketing. You wouldn’t stand a

chance in this market. You may do Internet marketing for real estate agents
though. You may also do Internet marketing for Professional Golf Clubs.
You wouldn’t do a site on pets, but you may do one on training your golden
retriever to be a hunting dog. You could also refine it to any of the lesser
known dog breeds as a ____ Lover’s club.

You wouldn’t do a member site on traveling the world, but you may do one
on “moving to Belize.” It shouldn’t be on outdoor events, but it could be on
“professional women’s outdoor extreme sports.” You will have a better
chance of success by specializing your membership site and having fun with
it.

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#1 – Generate a Minimum of 10 Potential Ideas and Topics

Go out to the store and pick yourself up a small notebook. Every publisher
has one of these to write all of the ideas which come up throughout the day.
We might as well get you trained right in the beginning. You will keep
using these notebooks for the future on potential topics and ideas you find to
actually create the content for your membership site from now on.

For now, we are going use this notebook to come up with potential business
ideas. Give yourself a minimum of a week for this step in the process.
Remember, ten is just a minimum number. You may have better luck
finding the right topic if you give yourself 100 ideas to choose from in this
step.

Spend some time reading magazines you already have looking for potential
membership ideas. Look through article headlines and grab ideas you may
use. The bonus ebook which comes with one of my own membership sites
at http://www.bizpromo.com contains ten idea generators you can use to
come up with product ideas. Below I will give you some of them and a short
representation of each:

1. Create Ideas out of Headlines You Read in Magazines.

Oftentimes, the magazine publisher knows what types of subjects their

readers want to know about…so you can often get all the information you
need just by reading the front cover of the magazine. Go to a local
newsstand and scan the headlines from magazines. You don’t even have to
look in them to find out what is popular. The next most powerful technique
would be to open them to the Reader Letters section where you can find out
what the readers are thinking.

2. Create an Idea which Combines Hobbies With Making Money

Making money is always a perennial topic and if you can provide a way for
people to make money while doing their hobbies, it is the perfect idea:
“How to Make Money at Home Doing Needlepoint,” “How to Create Your
Own Greenhouse,” or “Sewing For Fun and Profit.” People are really tired
of their jobs and would love to do something out of their homes…especially
if they can have fun doing it.

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 3. Look at the Most Searched For Keywords Online.

Go to http://www.wordspot.com and look at the top 500 most searched for

keywords. If you can find something that is coming up in the top searches,
then you will have a topic where it is easy to find your targeted market (this
is one the keys to success). For example, mp3’s are coming high…this
could be a source for potential membership ideas such as “How to Promote
your Band using Mp3’s” or something else dealing with this market.

4. Look at the Best Selling Non-Fiction Books

You can go to a local bookstore or go to Amazon at:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/lists/best/paperback-
nonfiction.html

Subjects which come up in the top 100 may be potential ideas that you could
develop into a membership site (you will probably have to specialize more
than the book did for best effectiveness).

5. Deal with Technology

Technology is difficult for most people and anyway you can find to help
people deal better with technology will be a step in the right direction. You
do an entire membership site based on almost any “expensive” software
program such as Premiere, Pagemaker, Dreamweaver, Flash, etc.

If someone paid $500 for a program, they will be more than willing to pay
$97 to learn how to use it as quickly and easily as possible (they would also
make good member topics since software programs are always being
upgraded to newer versions).

#2 – Cut Out Anything That Would Not Be Fun To Do.

If you are going to dread dealing with this subject every day for the rest of
your life, then you better mark it off your list. You may have written down
technical subjects, but you really hate working with software…so mark it
out.

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You do not want to tie yourself into a business you hate. That is what most
people are trying to get away from. Who wants to be forced to write
something all the time about something they can’t stand?

One thing that almost every successful entrepreneur has in common is that
they are truly passionate about whatever subject they are dealing with. They
LOVE their product. They wake up every morning thinking about their
product and their customers.

You have to find a subject where you will be able to jump out of bed glad to
spend another day talking about it and studying about it.

This is another hint for product ideas. Pick something that you already
spend a large amount of time talking about. What subject do you talk about
so much that people almost want to tell you to “Shut Up” once you get on it?
There’s the subject for your membership site.

#3 – Play…Where Is My Customer (Search Engines, Magazines, etc.)?

Once you have a lot of potential ideas written down, then you can start
playing the game of where is my customer. If you can’t find them now
before you have started on your project, then you won’t find them later when
you need to sell to them.

Start out by doing a keyword search that you would use to find your site at:
http://inventory.go2.com/inventory/Search_Suggestion.jhtml

If the keywords you can think of don’t produce at least several thousand hits
here, then you will find it very difficult to find subscribers for your
publication. The number of hits being produced for your keywords here will
determine how much energy or money you should spend later on trying to
achieve the top search positions.

Also check the newsstand to see all of the potential magazines that you can
send out press releases (and articles) to once your membership site is
running. In most cases, the magazines you will be submitting to will be ones
who cover a more overall topic than yours.

25
For example, if your membership site was about promoting your band with
mp3’s, you would probably send out press releases and articles to all of the
music related magazines.

If there aren’t several dozen magazines that cover a broad view of your
overall topic, then it will be hard to get the free publicity you want for your
ideas. The best case scenario would be if you could find some topics that
come up high in the search engines and also have a lot of magazines where
you will be able to get future publicity.

Then, you may just have a winner on your hands…

#4 – Go Undercover (Examine Forums, Mailings Lists, etc.)

You need to go to where your customers are currently hanging out. Find out
what your future customers are thinking about and talking about. If they
never even mention an idea such as yours, then you may be in trouble (on
the other hand you may be well off because no one has thought of your idea
yet). Go to:

Forums: http://www.forumone.com
Mailing Lists: http://www.liszt.com
Newsgroups: http://www.deja.com

Use all of the above resources to “search” for your subject using the same
keywords you used when doing research on Goto. Find at least five or ten
discussions where they are dealing with the overall topics (remember you
will be more specialized than these groups for maximum effectiveness).

See what everyone is saying about your potential subjects. You may also
want to post some potential membership topics in the targeted groups to see
if people feel there is a “want” for your information. This is also a good way
to scope out your competitors as they will probably come up in the
discussions about your subject.

#5 – Refine Your Ideas with at least 5 Possibilities Each

OK…so you have your list narrowed down to only a few options now. Put
each of your ideas on a new page and come up with 5 more variations on
each theme. For example, with our “Promote your Band with mp3’s” idea,

26
we now decide to write down “Promote Your Heavy Metal Band with
mp3’s,” “Promote Your Singing Career with mp3’s,” and “Find a
Musician’s Job with mp3’s.”

What we are trying to do in this section is either one of two things. If you
find that there are competitors who are just as good as you in your business
while doing your research, then we will use these ideas to further refine our
entire membership site. The goal is to narrow down our category until we
can be the #1 web site and source for all of the targeted members.

If you think it will be hard to be #1, then you should narrow down your
membership topic until you are sure you will be able to claim the number
one spot. Go for number one and don’t accept being number two as a decent
option.

If you already have a subject you are thoroughly confident you can do the
best job on, then you will use the five new possibilities as potential sections
in your membership site. Not only will you be the best site, but you can also
include information on different areas of your subject to give people the
maximum value for their money.

#6 – Choose Your Final Project and Plan It.

You have all of the ideas. You have done all the research. You know all the
possible variations. Now choose the topic for your membership site. You
aren’t poking blindly at a subject. Your mind should be overwhelmed by
information by now and you should only have a few ideas left in your head.

So, here is the moment of truth. Pick and get with it. I have no more advice
on which subject is right for you after you have done all of the above
research. You should know by now.

Once you have chosen your idea, then you can begin coming up with
possible sections for your membership site. You may have one devoted to
web site resources. Another devoted to training articles you write. Another
section may be for guest articles.

You may have a section for some of the 5 specialized ideas you came up
with. You could also have an audio or video section. There could be a
discussion board. You may have weekly scheduled chats.

27
Decide and write down everything that you are going to be offering in your
membership…and possible future offerings as well.

#7 - Create a Compelling Reason to Join

Come up with a compelling reason that will make people whip out their
credit cards and order. Once they see what you have to offer, they just won’t
be able to hold out any longer. They will say to themselves that they can’t
live another day until they get a hold of your information.

This compelling reason will become the motto of your web site, the headline
for your web site, the title for your press releases and articles, your signature
file statement, and the basis for everything you do starting out on your site.
It will be the benefit rich phrase that will cause people to join in droves.

The best advice I can give you on this is to really pay attention to those
magazine article headlines you read…and to also possibly purchase yourself
a book on copywriting and especially on headline writing. The headline of a
web site is often compared to 90% of the web site’s effectiveness. If your
headline doesn’t do it’s job, then you will find your subscribers few and far
between.

The biggest and best promise on your web site should be in your headline.
Be willing to work on it for a week if necessary and write a bare minimum
of 50 potential headlines before you choose the one that’s best and most
compelling for your site.

People like to think that success is all inspiration when it is really 99%
perspiration. The work of spending time agonizing over your headline will
be forgotten once you have hundreds of new subscribers flooding into your
publication every month. Everyone else will just think you magically came
up with such a compelling headline. Only you and I will know better…and I
will keep your secret safe with me.

28
 STEP TWO: Setting Up and Running Your
Membership Site

We have finally come to a subject and have created a convincing headline.

The next step is to actually set up our membership site itself. We can’t sign
up members until our site is up!

To get our site up, we will need to:

• Choose a Web Host.
• Write Our Sales Letter and Design our Web Site.
• Create Pricing Options.
• Pick the Software to Secure Our Membership Section.
• Upload Our Content.
• Choose a Schedule for Updates.
• Plan on Our Research Methods.
• Contact Other Potential Content Providers.

Follow the suggestions throughout this section as I have spent months (in
some cases years) learning the tools and techniques presented here. In many
cases, it was experience itself which taught me which providers and software
tools to use, and which ones not to use.

It can be extremely expensive and time consuming to go to all the trouble of

setting up a hot membership site idea and then using the wrong tools to get
the job done. I know this because several times I have had to change the
software programs I was using for my site. There is no worse pain than
having to spend days transferring your members over to a new membership
software program.

Do it right the first time!

29
 Choosing the Right Web Host

Our web host is our “store” online. You must choose one who will keep
your web site up and running, provide technical support when needed, and
be willing to fix hosting problems when needed (they don’t work on your
web site as that is your job).

This is not a place where you can try to save money by getting the cheapest
host physically possible. If you were planning a retail store in the real
world, would you choose the one with the cheapest rent…even if the
building was falling apart? I hope not. If your web site doesn’t stay up, it
will cost you business…and it will hurt your reputation.

There are a lot of different web hosting options you can choose when setting
up your membership site, but there are a few things you really want to be on
the lookout for:

• CGI access: You must have access to a CGI-bin to run your

membership software and other programs you need for your
membership site.
• Secure Server: No matter what people tell you, customers will not
order from you if you do not make a secure server available to them.
• Real Audio/Video: You may not need it or plan for it yet, but in two
to three years much of the online content on the net will be in audio
and video formats. Might as well prepare to get used to it and make
sure it is available to you.
• Fast Tech Support: This is an essential and it is probably the condition
that you will have the most trouble finding. Before you buy in at any
host, check out and try their technical support. They should get back
to you in less than hour…and you should be testing them after
business hours.

My worst nightmare came true one weekend when my main web site went
down on Friday night and my web host wasn’t in the office again until
Monday morning. I lost out on a whole weekend’s worth of traffic and
sales. It was one of the most frustrating times in my whole online business
career.

30
Never again I said…and I immediately moved my web site to a host who
had 24 hour a day 7 days a week tech support.

You can find a list of web hosts at http://www.webhostlist.com

If you would like to be hosted on the same host I am, then you could also
check out my web host (who I promise will have the fastest tech support on
the planet) by checking them out at http://www.virtualis.com/vr/tdean2

If you are on a lower budget and feel that Virtualis hosting may be a stretch,
then I recommend Host4Profit as your secondary hosting choice. Their tech
support isn’t as good as Virtualis, but they do meet the requirements on
every other level.

They are a little cheaper and can also provide you a way to pay for your
monthly hosting fees by signing up other members. If you have signed up
three other hosting clients, then your own hosting ends up being free.

You can check them out at:

http://www.Host4Profit.com/cgi-bin/home.cgi?2708

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 Write a Sales Letter and Design Your Web Site

Your sales letter text is the most important element for your web site. If
your text doesn’t sell your membership site, then all of the most beautiful
professional designs in the world won’t be able to help you sell more
memberships.

Professional web site design can add an element of credibility to your offer,
but the text of the sales letter itself is what will sell your products for you.

Actual copywriting is way too broad of a subject to cover in this book itself
(we have a whole course designed just for this and have spent years learning
the subject). I can recommend some extremely good books on the subject.
We have at least a bare minimum of $10,000 of copywriting training
materials on my home office shelves.

Here are some of my favorites, all available from Amazon or any other
bookstore for $20 or less each:

• “The Ultimate Sales Letter” by Dan Kennedy

• “Magic Words” by Ted Nicholas
• “Advertising Secrets of the Written Word” by Joe Sugarman

The key to writing ad copy is to focus on the benefits, not on the features.
Every single line in the entire letter must be faced with the question,
“What’s In It For Me?” If the line doesn’t tell your reader what’s in it for
them, then it needs to be either changed or completely taken out.

If I had to pick one difference between online copywriting and offline

copywriting (everybody loves to sit around pointing out all this imaginary
major differences) is that you have even less of an opportunity to “bore”
your prospects.

If your letter loses the prospect for one instance…if one single line of the
site doesn’t tell them “What’s In It For Them,” then it only takes them a
single second to click away and go somewhere else. Your ad copy has to be
emotional, exciting, and must keep their interest all the way from the
headline down through the order form.

32
In an offline sales letter, you still can’t bore your prospects, but you may
have a little better chance. If you lose them for an instant, they may put the
letter down and come back to it later (if the rest of it was exciting enough to
keep reading). Online though, that finger is poised above the mouse button
waiting to click to the next web site…never to return again.

If your ad copy can’t keep your prospect excited and drooling for more
throughout the entire piece, then you will lose out on the majority of your
sales. They will not be bored on the web for even an instant.

The sales letter writing process is similar to every other process when it
comes to creating your own membership site. It is 10% inspiration and 90%
perspiration. Most good copywriters will sit down and write the entire piece
in one sitting of 90 minutes or so. Then, they will go back and refine it…and
refine it…and refine it.

They will examine every single line for the “What’s In It For Me” statement.
They will scan through their “Swipe” files (a copywriter’s swipe file is a
collection of winning sales letters they keep to glean ideas from when
writing their own ads). They will keep going over and over the piece until
they have “perfected” it.

Please read through the books I recommended above several times each if
necessary so you can start getting the “Copywriter’s Thought Process” into
you. The best technique of all to becoming a magical copywriter is to find
the best sales letters and write them out by hand word for word in your own
handwriting…or by typing them on the computer.

This is hard work, but if you write out enough winning sales letters, your
mind will begin to associate itself with good ad copy and you will find it
flowing out of you next time you need to write a sales letter.

If the above seems to be too much hard work for you, then you may want to
consider hiring out your sales letter writing jobs to someone else. I
personally will take on these jobs from time to time, but I am also quite
“expensive” (but you get what you pay for). If you are interested in possibly
having me write the ad copy for your next web site, then please contact me
at CopywritingServices@bizpromo.com.

33
I know that many people starting out can’t afford my services, so I have also
found you another potential writing source. Dr. Nunley is a great
copywriter and you can inquire about having him write your web site sales
letters at http://www.drnunley.com.

We also are putting together an entire collection of sales letters which you
can legally copy, edit, and modify for your own projects at a very low cost
(under $50) so that you can have good ad copy at a low price. If you are
interested in this, please let me know by writing me at Terry@bizpromo.com
and asking for the sales letter template information.

Having your web site designed is the next step in the membership site
creation process. Having a good clean professional looking design is quite
important, but should be done by yourself if at all possible. You don’t need
“Flash” or any other fancy service starting out. In many cases flash is not
usually used correctly by web sites, and it detracts more from your site than
it does to help you sell from it.

I really have to honestly recommend that you learn at least a little about web
design so that you can at least update your web site. Membership site
owners can’t be scared of going in and getting their hands dirty working on
their web site. Since you will be constantly adding new content to your site,
you have to at least do part of the work yourself.

It would be way too expensive and impractical to hire a web designer to

update your site every time you want to add new information. If you need
help first setting up your site, you may want to consider hiring an outside
designer to first set up your site and to give you basic training of how to edit
it yourself.

There are many software programs which you could use to design your web
site, but I think that Macromedia Dreamweaver far excels anything else out
there when it comes to setting up and working with a membership site.
None of the other programs give you the professional looking appearance
that Dreamweaver gives you in an overall look.

It is possible to design a web site using straight HTML (which is the

programming language that web sites are designed in), as it really doesn’t
take too long to learn HTML. The problem with this is that membership site

34
owners are constantly putting up new pages and working with each page
individually can get quite tiring when working with HTML.

The primary reason I recommend only Dreamweaver for membership sites is

that it is designed to work with templates and “Cascading Style Sheets.”
Both of these capabilities give you the option of designing your web site and
being able to quickly generate similar looking pages quite easily. It will
speed up your web site design processes considerably.

It takes time to learn Dreamweaver just like anything else takes time to
learn…but doing so will give you the ability to edit and update your site so
much quicker than any other option out there. If you need help getting
started, then hire a web designer to create those cascading style sheets for
you…and then give you basic instructions on how to use them to quickly
update your own sites.

35
 Create Pricing Options For Maximum Profits
From Your Web Site

How much are you going to charge?

Remember you will not be giving lifetime access. You will have a yearly,
quarterly, or monthly pricing option at your site. How much you should
charge depends on your market and the value of your content to them.

There are various pricing models for membership sites all the way for
$29.97 per year up to $997 a year or more (there are even several
membership sites which cost as much as $4000 per year to be a member of).

If you have a Britney Spears Fan Club site (which there is one by the way),
you would be near the lower end of the pricing structure. If you have a web
site especially designed for the network operations managers of Fortune 500
companies, than you will be on the higher end of the price structures.

A “Hobbies for Fun and Profit” type of site would generally fall in a $47 to
$97 yearly price range…as would many hobby sites. A software tutorial site
would probably cost $67 to $197 yearly. You have to look at your market,
what your information will do for them, and how much they are accustomed
to paying for information. The more specialized you are, the better off you
are. Stock market training sites often charge as much as $997 a year or
more.

I honestly wouldn’t recommend a quarterly payment structure as that would

get a little confusing for many of your members. I like the yearly or
monthly fees much better personally. If you were charging quarterly though,
you would basically just charge about 1/4th of your yearly fees.

This may be a potential option if you think your market can’t afford the
yearly fees (such as if you are charging $497 or more per year) and would
prefer to pay quarterly instead of being put on the recurring billing required
by the monthly option.

The final option and the one that requires the most software monitoring is to
provide a monthly recurring billing option. You would have your software
setup to automatically bill all of your subscribers every month for as long as

36
they were a member. Whenever they wanted to cancel, they could email you
and be taken out of the system.

If you are going to have a monthly option, you will have to use recurring
billing. You don’t want to have to go through all of your subscribers every
month charging their cards by hand. That would be completely impractical.

Notice that monthly recurring billing is the option that Monique Harris in
“the paperless newsletter publishers guide” used to create an avalanche of
new members for her membership site. She had the yearly option at $67,
$97, and $197.

No matter which of those prices she was charging, she always seemed to get
around the same number of subscribers (that means she would have always
missed out on a large portion of her income if she just kept her first choice
of $67 since the number of new subscribers didn’t change as she raised the
prices).

Once she tried a $19.95 a month option, her orders went crazy. People
starting ordering from everywhere. It actually jumped her web site sale rate
to an incredible 4%. People in her market were able and willing to risk
$19.95 to order, but they weren’t willing on average to spend $197. Once
they found out they liked her material, they were quite willing to stay a
member (and she is actually making more money as $19.95 a month adds up
to $239.40 yearly).

For her market, this was the perfect price point for maximum profit. One of
my membership sites is following the same price level since it is in a similar
market to hers. On one of the membership sites we are working on (not
revealing my secrets here), we will be using a price point of $97 yearly with
no monthly billing option.

It all depends on your market. Monthly recurring billing will be the best for
some markets. Other markets will work better with one yearly price.
Pricing points are often one of the most difficult options to come up with
when creating your own business. It is something you will have to test out
on your own or potentially ask your future prospects.

There is also a new tool from Ken Evoy which he calls “Make Your Price
Sell.” This is a survey generation tool so that you can poll your visitors to

37
find out what your ‘perfect’ price should be. Although I don’t have full
confidence in his system, I have tested it and it does produce more
interesting results which may help you determine the correct price for your
membership site. You can check it out at:
http://myps.sitesell.com/webgold1.html.

The one dangerous aspect of pricing is that for setup purposes you should
really decide whether you want to use a yearly option or a monthly recurring
option before you set up your entire marketing system – that is why I am
telling you to test prices, take a pricing survey, ask your customers, and
everything else before you have your site fully up and running.

If you choose to change between a yearly price and a monthly price after
you have started, it could have severe repercussions on the setup of your
membership site (since most software programs do not offer recurring
billing as an option you may have to pay some customization fees to switch
over to this software option).

38
 Pick the Software And Credit Card Processing
to Secure Your Membership Section

To provide a membership site will require that you use membership software
to secure your web site from “unwanted” visitors appearing and stealing
access to your content. As I mentioned in my $1,000,000 mistake section,
having the wrong software has been a major pain to me from my Cashflow
site.

Don’t let the same problem happen to you. Just setting up simple password
protection where you have several usernames and passwords (you would be
surprised but probably half of the people I talk to try to do this) isn’t the
option you need.

You absolutely must have a dedicated membership system to keep track of

all of your members, their purchases, and the length of their access. It also
needs to have a built in monitor to keep track of their membership accesses
to make sure they aren’t handing out their passwords to other people.

This is probably the most important job that your membership software
needs to accomplish since many of them don’t have this option built in. If
one of your members decides to steal your content and post their username
and password on hundreds of newsgroups or forums without your
knowledge, you could easily have thousands of people being able to access
your site without paying for it. It could easily become a money draining
nightmare for your business.

Your membership software needs to be actively watching for this kind of

unusual access and to notify you whenever it is occurring so you can do
something about it. Then, you can take the appropriate action of canceling
their account or whatever else needs to be done.

Below are three Account Manager Programs which meet our approval as
having all the tools you need for a good membership site. Please also note
that both Clickgate and the Superscripts are both value added packages that
contain other CGI programs for one price.

The ClickGate also contains a very good email program and associate
program. It is the one I would recommend for most people. The

39
SuperScripts membership contains around 50 scripts in all, but they are
much HARDER to use and setup for the average person than the ClickGate
script set.

Account Manager: $199

http://www.cgiscriptcenter.com/cgi-bin/cgiscsoft/redeem.pl?cgisc578

ClickGate: $197
http://www.cgitoolbox.com/c.cgi/bizpromo_book

SuperScripts: $249
http://www.superscripts.com/revshare/enter.cgi?tldean

The ClickGate Software is my favorite from above and gives you the ability
to watch the IP addresses of members, have different account plans,
personalized email and more. Plus, the affiliate software which is included
is one of the best available. So I recommend you go for this package:
http://www.cgitoolbox.com/c.cgi/bizpromo_book

If you are running a yearly access membership site, I would use this
program. It has everything you need. You also need to check with your
merchant account to find out if they offer real time order processing through
the web.

If you are planning to go into a monthly recurring billing though, you will
need to find some additional options (Superscripts may be a little better
choice with their multitude of possible script installs).

If you already have a merchant account and need the ability to offer
recurring billing from the web, then Net Billing can hook into your existing
merchant account for online billing options.
http://www.netbilling.com

One warning that I want to add in with this is that recurring billing gives you
a lot greater chance of receiving chargebacks by people forgetting that they
signed up for “monthly” access, although NetBilling overcomes this option
by sending them out an email receipt every month when they do the charge
for you. If you are using your own merchant processors Internet Gateway
for orders, make sure you take this same precaution.

40
If you don’t have a merchant account and need a company to take credit
cards for you and do monthly recurring billing, then Web Charge could be
what you need - http://www.web-charge.com.

Personally, even with all of the other possible options, for my recurring
billing site, I like to use an outside credit card processing company like the
ones below (even though I also have my own merchant account). They are
able to offer you recurring billing, credit card processing, monthly checks,
and can even set you up with an affiliate program. They give you everything
you need all in one simple to use package so that you really don’t even have
to mess with software, billing, or anything of that nature.

IBill Internet Billing Company:

http://www.ibill.com/Services/Revshare

Globill Systems
http://ww.globill-systems.com

Verotel
http://www.verotel.com

All three of these companies are going to charge you considerably more than
you would have to pay using your own merchant account. With a merchant
account (and gateway fees) you would expect to pay around 2.5% to 3.5%
total per sale. Using one of the above companies will cost you up to 15% or
more.

You have to remember they are taking all of the processing risk, taking care
of the programming, and they don’t charge you a monthly fee like you
would have if you are processing the cards yourself.

So, for monthly recurring billing sites I would recommend one of those three
companies or possibly Superscripts if you really know what you are doing
with CGI programs. If you are charging yearly I would recommend getting
your own merchant account and using their gateway (or netbilling.com)
combined in with Clickgate software.

If you are a larger company, we can also help you obtain access to a major
membership software program which can not only process credit cards and
handle your memberships, but it can also allow you to easily post content,

41
set up various department managers, and basically automate your entire
online membership site. It is not for small companies though as it also
carries with it a $30,000 price tag for full setup, support, and consulting.
Please contact me at Terry@bizpromo.com and tell me you are interested in
the Cold Fusion Membership software.

42
 Create and Upload Your Content

Several of these steps we are covering should be integrated in together – you

can’t write a good sales letter until you know what content you are going to
use. The web site design should be involved with the creation of your
content and the uploading of your content. So, you need to really be
thinking of all of these steps together in the creation of your membership
site.

What type of content are you going to be using?

There are a lot of different options you can use:

• Plain text
• eBooks
• Audio
• Video
• Downloads
• Screencams
• Multimedia
• Discussion Boards
• Chats
• Other…

The most common form of content is plain text. You just take the content of
your message and paste it into a web site file and upload it to your
membership site. This would be done using your Web Site Design
program’s upload features (Dreamweaver’s is pretty easy to us).

Because of the ease of editing and the fact that most of your customers will
still be accessing the net through slow speed connections, I would
recommend that you make your primary content vehicle be just straight web
sites. This would be the easiest format to use and the format that would
cause you the least overall problems.

Some of the other sources of content will have the potential for causing
problems on both your end and your customers end. Always keep
“Murphy’s” law in mind when providing other sources of content.
Whatever can go wrong will go wrong!

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These other sources of content are going to be how you add additional value
to your membership site. Text is your main source of content, but it can sure
give your site quite a bit more value if you add audio, video, eBooks, and the
like to it.

I don’t really want to get into a serious discussion of the creation of each of
these forms of content, but I do want to give you a few ideas how you can
add value to your site with each.

Electronic books could be created and offered as bonuses for signing up to

be a member. They could also be added every three to six months as an
additional bonus to keep all of your current subscribers very happy. Any
time you sell a product you want to find and offer additional bonuses with
the purchase of that product. These eBooks make great value added bonuses
to tell your prospects about in your sales letter.

This is the reason we have added in Ken Silver’s “eBook Secrets” as part of
this training package. Ken offers a lot of very valuable information and
experiences to digital infoproduct creation. Go through his book and use his
material to help you create your own eBook bonus to go along with your
membership site. I recommend you follow Ken’s instructions in the creation
of your eBook package.

Audio and video could also be used through Real Networks Real Player and
Real Publisher. Real Networks is really the standard to online audio and
video and you can read more about them at http://www.real.com.

Currently audio is very good choice for use online. Most people have the
capabilities to hear it quite well. Video is another story since it requires so
much bandwidth. Most online video is very jerky and cannot really give
your company a good image yet (I have experimented with it extensively).

To plug Real Audio into your web site is quite cheap. All you need is the
lowest priced Real Publishing software from Real Networks (currently under
$50) and then you can plug in audio through your computer’s line in
connections to record your Real Audio.

A Real Server is required for good audio playback online, but that should be
supplied by your web host at no extra charge. I can’t really give you

44
specific instructions for uploading audio as it depends quite a bit on your
web host’s setting for audio. You will be using the Real Publisher to create
a .rm file and a .ram file and then you will be uploading both of them to your
web host in the host’s special Real Audio section.

Then, it should be as easy as linking to the .ram file from your web site. For
example, if I created an audio file I called terry.ram, then all I would have to
do is upload where my hosts tells me to and then link that address like I
would any other web page.

Then, the audio will stream from my server. If you have problems with this,
it is often a problem with your configuration and you should contact your
web host’s technical support.

You could also provide other types of downloads and Screencams. I have
found that using Lotus Screencam is a great teaching tool for any type of
technical training application. This software gives you the ability to create
an exact screen representation of what you are doing on your computer.

You can video record your entire computer screen as you teach how to do
whatever it is you are teaching. It also gives you the ability to plug in a
microphone to your computer and record audio narration of your training
video.

You can produce short 3 to 5 minute Screencams and then offer them as
downloads to train on many different types of programs. It is a perfect
bonus item to offer from a membership site if you are dealing with anything
of a technical nature.

You can also offer other types of downloads…software programs, demos,

zipped files, etc. You could either find royalty free software programs or
you could also hire someone from http://www.elance.com to create software
for you to give away from your site.

Here is an idea I haven’t seen any of the small membership sites

implementing yet, but I have seen it on many larger sites and in university
sites. You could create multimedia training materials to give away from
your membership site.

45
These types of materials can be created with a program such as Macromedia
Authorware. This is a highly expensive program which costs over $2,500,
but it can also be had for about $1,000 if you buy it at eBay (that’s where I
bought my copy).

Authorware can help you create multimedia training programs including

audio, video, text, graphics, interactive tests, and interactive examples. Your
customer can actually take tests and do lessons that you place in the
program…and the whole program can help them keep track of their
progress.

When I look out into the future, I can see that the web is destined to become
the greatest educational tool in existence…and will probably be used in the
future to provide much of the interactive educational process.

Authorware is an expensive program and is quite difficult to learn, but if you

spent some time learning it you will definitely be ready for the future of
online learning.

A little bit cheaper program and one that is much easier to implement is
Coursebuilder which is a $200 application that fully integrates into
Dreamweaver. It allows you to set and build interactive tests and
applications right into html web pages using Java.

If you want to add a little bit of interaction to your web site or a few tests
and quizzes to help your members learn your material better, then I would
recommend the Coursebuilder application be added onto Dreamweaver (you
must have Dreamweaver installed for Coursebuilder to work). You can read
more about all of these programs (and my favorite program for graphics is
Fireworks) at http://www.macromedia.com.

You would have the ability to build fully interactive membership sites if you
picked up the Dreamweaver/Fireworks combination and then added
Coursebuilder to it for the interactive elements. Please understand these
tools and even if you do smart shopping such as looking for auctions at
http://www.ebay.com for these materials you will still be spending several
hundred dollars.

These programs give you the perfect setup to build a membership site, but
they are definitely not necessary if you don’t have the budget.

46
Two other ways that you can add value to your membership site are through
hosting chats and through having your own discussion board. Both can be
setup right into your member protected site and are pretty easy to use.

Discussion boards are actually becoming a mainstay for membership sites

now with many of them focusing quite a bit of the membership experience
around the discussion boards.

Discussion boards give you the ability to offer an element of interaction and
a way for you to have your members providing a good portion of your
content for free. Discussion board software can be picked up for free by
doing a search for “discussion” over at http://www.cgi-resources.com.

They are pretty easy to install, but if you need outside help you should be
able to pay an installer around $30 or so to get it up and running for you. It
makes a nice beneficial addition for your membership site with very little
cost.

Something that isn’t being offered as often, but would still be a possible
good idea for interaction would be to offer a chat room inside of the
membership site. Then, you could actually get in and interact with your
members in real time…

Chat rooms take up a lot of resources so you need to ask your host for
permission before you set one up. The best chat rooms are designed in Java
and there is a new “best” one created every month. First ask your web host
to see if they have a Java chat room available for setup (as it would work
best if it was available straight from your web host). If they don’t have one
for you, but they give you permission to use one, you can do a search on one
of the major search engines for “Java chat rooms.”

You could make a regular weekly chat with an expert as part of your
bonuses to the membership experience at your web site. People love
interaction and this would be a good way to add it cheaply…

All of the above tools can help increase your value and your subscriber
response rates, but you should still make plain text web sites the primary
source of training information. All of the other elements are great, but still

47
people expect a quick source of the information they need…and it is much
easier for them to find what they need when using the text web sites.

48
 Choose a Schedule for Updates

You need to plan and schedule for when you will add your updated content.
Is it going to be daily, weekly, or monthly? How often will you update
everything?

The updates are what give a membership site it’s value against other forms
of information products. People can find out what information is accurate
and up to date for right now.

So, you are going to have to create a plan for when you will do updates. For
most people and most sites I would recommend you start out with doing
weekly updates to your materials. Once a month just isn’t often enough for
the online world in many cases…and any more often than once a week could
drive you literally insane with the schedule.

Make a plan of what you will add and how you will add it each week. For
example, you may be doing a membership site on “Greenhouses For Fun and
Profit” so you schedule three sections to be done every single week. Section
number one is that you will write an article on growing plants each week.
Section two will be a section on marketing. Section three with be a 30
minute Real Audio Interview with a different Greenhouse owner every
week.

Even though you may decide to upload and actually add your content on
Wednesday each week, you should still sit down and write a research and
writing plan for every day of the week. Running a membership site is a
long-term commitment and does require you to work on it almost every day.
What day will you do the interview? Which days will you be doing the
research on? When will you sit down and write the articles?

Don’t just say when you get time for it. That won’t do when running a
membership site. You have to make a weekly commitment that you will
research the subject 2 hours on Monday and 2 hours on Thursdays. You will
do the web site on Wednesday. You will write on Tuesday and Saturdays.
Then, you do the interviews on Friday.

A good membership site can produce a very good lifetime residual income
so you need to really concentrate and give it the time and value it deserves.

49
If you don’t commit, you are going to pay for it in not having members
staying with you for the long term.

Once you have your schedule down, then you can let your members know
on the site and in the sales materials that new content is added every
Wednesday or whenever you are scheduling to do it.

50
 Plan Your Research Methods

You are going to have to constantly research your market to make sure you
have the cutting edge material people want…so you should scan all of the
magazines, trade journals, and news for your industry. Now you have a tax
deductible way to get all those magazines you love anyway!

You also have to keep up to speed on everything that is going on online for
your business so you are going to have to learn the “Lazy Man’s Way to
Research” online. Instead of going to search engines and doing searches this
way which takes just way too long each time, we are going to have your
research material delivered right to you while you sit and wait.

Tracerlock is a free service which automatically scans new sites for you and
sends you over the information whenever a new web site is added into the
search engines under a keyword that you have specified.
http://www.peacefire.org/tracerlock

SpyOnIt monitors search engines, sites you regularly check, and even
newsgroup postings. You can spy on all of your favorite resource sites and
see what is being said about your subject throughout the newsgroups. By
the way, this site is also a good way to keep close tabs on your competitors
and what they are up to.
http://www.spyonit.com

PR Newswire will allow you to sign up as a member of the press and receive
the press releases related to your industry. Then, you can find out what all
of the movers and shakers in your business are up to.
http://ww.prnewswire.com

If you set up 10 or so keywords for your industry and sign up for all of the
above services you should be receiving somewhere between 50 and 200
resources a day sent to your email. So, now your job as a researcher is to go
through all of the sites being sent to you and check them out and see what
you can find out.

Throw out the useless, and keep all of the good ideas in a notebook for later
use. You may even want to create a special section of your site for the best
web sites each week for your members by choosing the best ones you
receive everyday.

51
Along the same lines, you may want to set up a few syndicated columns
which are published every week as part of your membership. Sure your
members could get this information for free for themselves, but you can
collect it altogether for them in one easy spot for quick reading…and you are
only including it as a bonus to your regular service.

For example, if you would like to host some plain text tutorials on specific
subjects, then you can use the tutorials provided by Free Skill. They have
several hundred tutorials available on most subjects and it is possible you
will find a few that fit right into your chosen topic. You can find out more
about their free co-branding services at:
http://www.freeskill.com

You may also want to host syndicated articles on your web site which
automatically update themselves. You can find this article series updated
regularly on just about any subject at:
http://www.isyndicate.com

The News Clipper from Anaconda Scripts is another possible program you
could use to offer regularly updated content. This program costs under $200
and can go out and clip news headlines which you can then offer in your
membership site. All the articles being linked to would be free content, but
if you set up the system right it could be offering the exact news that your
members need to see, providing them an invaluable service:
http://www.anaconda.net

52
 Contact Other Potential Content Providers

So far throughout this report I have been assuming that you wanted to
provide the content for your membership site all by yourself. No one says
you have to provide your own content. You can actually make deals with
other experts in your field and convince them to produce your content for
you.

For a simple example, you could contact all of the top experts in your field
and offer them a free lifetime membership to come and be a regular
contributor to the discussion board on your site. This would give them a
chance to get a little more publicity and it would give your members more
experts to correspond with in the site.

That would be just a basic participating. You could also invite those same
experts to produce monthly articles for your site. If you had eight different
experts each giving you originally content once a month, that would give
you the ability to offer twice weekly updates even if you never write a word
of your own content.

For your membership site to work, the content provided to you by these
experts can’t be given away for free anywhere on the net. It has to be
original content not available anywhere else (excerpts from books or reports
the experts are creating and selling would be fine also as long as the material
isn’t available free).

How in the world are you going to convince highly paid experts to write for
you for free you may ask?

Well…you just have to figure out what they want most…and give it to them.
Of course, you will give them a free membership. They will get publicity
with your members inside of the site through resource boxes on their
articles. What else can you offer them?

You can also offer them a Expert’s page on your main site. This page would
even be available to non-members so it can create them quite a bit of
publicity if you have a high traffic site. On this page, you would list their
name, expertise, product offers, service offers, and feature their picture. In
other words, you will advertise for them for free as long as they send you
content every month.

53
You may also offer them advertising. Membership sites have a paid for
content section, but they also have a free content section containing basic
information. You could offer to give them banner ads across all of your free
pages in exchange for their monthly content.

Since you won’t be seeking to make money off of advertising anymore (not
that your membership site provides your income), this ad space doesn’t cost
you anything to give away. It may be just what the expert is seeking…more
exposure.

You may want to find something that you are an expert in and then trade that
with them as well. For example if you own a product, you could trade them
the rights to your product for one of their products if they agree to let you
chop it up into 12 different pieces for your membership site. There are a lot
of ideas that you can try. It all depends on what they want and what you
have to offer.

What I would most focus on trying to do would be to barter a deal where it

doesn’t involve me having to pay them any cash. If I had to get eight top
experts on the payroll, it would eat up my membership profits in no time
flat. I have to get this information for free if at all possible.

You could even make one of your sections an Interview with an expert.
Then visit the forums in your niche market by going to
http://www.forumone.com and posting that you are looking for people to
interview about whatever your site is about. You would give them a chance
to mention their products or services during the interview. If you post in the
right places, you should have more people asking to be interviewed than you
can handle.

54
 Creating Other Products

Your membership site is going to be your primary source of income from

your customers, but you shouldn’t make it your only source of income. It is
only one piece in your whole infopreneurial funnel.

I want you to think about your information business as a funnel of

customers. Some customers may want to purchase an ebook. Others may
want to be a part of monthly membership site. Still others may want
consulting or to attend a seminar about your business.

These are all different parts and profitstreams that you can build into your
business. That’s why I am so excited about being an information producer.
I can create an ebook package and sell that. Then, many of my customers
will also subscribe to my monthly membership site. Then, there will be
quite a few members who want to purchase consulting or attend a seminar I
am involved with.

I can profit from all of this. Your first sale to a customer is only the
beginning. Successful business people know this and base their entire
business around this principle. We call it the “lifetime value of a customer.”
How much is each one of your customers worth to you during their lifetime?

You may sell a membership site where each member pays $97 a year to be
in, and then 50% of those members renew year after year. Then, you decide
to add in monthly seminars at a price of $995 per person and 10% of your
members attend at least one conference each year. Let’s say you also joint
venture with another company every 6 months and 20% of your customers
purchase a $200 product each time.

How much is your average customer worth? Is it $97? Nope, not by a long
shot. Your average customer would be worth $236.50 the first year…and
then $118.25 every year after that (this is because half of them leave your
newsletter after the first year). I added the $97 membership fee to the
$99.50 you made average per year (10% paid $995) for the seminars and
then added on 50% of the profit from your joint ventures.

You could afford to spend $200 for every customer to your web site to sell
them a $97 item and know that you will earn a profit during your first year
in business…and then earn a major profit every year after that.

55
This is probably the most misunderstood business principle on the Internet.
It doesn’t matter if you earn a profit up-front from your customers. You can
actually afford to lose money off of them up-front if you continue to follow-
up and make additional sales to them over and over again.

This is what most businesses base themselves on…and it is even more

valuable for a membership site owner to understand. Let’s say you charge a
monthly subscription fee of $19.95 per month. You will find it very hard to
make your money back from the first month of advertising for customers.

Would it be worthwhile to spend $30 to buy a new $19.95 customer? It sure

would. You would lose money the first month, but you would be in profit
the second month automatically even if you didn’t have any other products
and services.

I am saying “buy” a new customer, because with some of the techniques you
are going to learn for advertising you can almost predict to the member how
many people will sign up once you have done your ad testing.

For example, you send out 1,000 postcards and 15 people sign up for your
membership site. Then, if you are using the same list and offer you should
get 150 customers when you mail to 10,000 people. If you can use the same
list and mail to 100,000 people, you should get 1,500 customers.

It becomes a game of math once you have a system working. You

essentially know how much every customer costs you to obtain. You could
put the same system in place for free online advertising as well. You could
learn that it takes you one hour to obtain each new customer on average.

Twenty dollars an hour may not seem like much to make at first, but if those
customers all stay for 12 months, each hour promoting would have been
worth over $239 during the course of the year. Now, that is a much better
hourly paycheck.

That is why we tell you that you should “Wow” your customers. You want
your customers to take one look at what they purchased from you and
immediately say “Wow.” Then, they will stay with you for years to come
and purchase all of your other products and services.

56
You must understand the lifetime value of a customer to succeed online and
before you start spending time or money on advertising.

57
 STEP THREE: The 10 Best Ways to Promote
Your Membership Site

Your web site is ready. Your membership site is all set up. You have tested
the whole ordering system. It is time to launch the site. There are dozens of
Internet marketing and traffic building techniques you can use for your site,
but I am going to cover my ten favorite techniques below.

Don’t try to learn all ten techniques at one time. It is just too much for you
starting out. Pick two or three of these advertising techniques and really
concentrate on building your membership base with them. I definitely don’t
want to put you into a state of “Information Overload” where you know too
much information to get started marketing.

Get started with the techniques in this section. Make your mistakes and
learn along the way. Don’t wait to get things perfect, because that will never
happen. I have been doing this for years now, and I am still learning new
techniques and variations every single day.

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 Membership Building Technique #1:
Press Releases

This has been the primary marketing tool of home based information
producers for decades. One free article about you by the press is worth more
than placing a full page $20,000 ad in the same publication.

When a magazine places an article about you, it immediately gives you

credibility in the eyes of your prospects that you could never have received
writing big advertising checks. You’re the expert. This magazine they read
every month believes in you. They now believe in you!

All advertising is taken with a grain of salt and no one really believes what is
said in an ad anymore. They believe you are just out to take them. Once the
magazine or other type of publication writes about you, everything changes.
They believe what the magazine writes, so you have credibility you never
could have obtained no matter how much you paid for advertising.

Obtaining radio interviews for your product is actually quite easy, especially
with the “hot” nature of the Internet and membership sites at the moment.
We have the perfect product for doing interviews as you don’t have to give
ordering information or phone numbers or anything else in an on-the-air
interview.

All you need given out is your web site address which you should say as
often as allowed. Then, your web site can takeover with the selling process
from there.

Smart webmasters not only use them, but they rely on them by continually
sending out press releases (if you don’t send out a press release at least every
three months you are costing yourself money).

As a membership site owner, you have several options in obtaining free

publicity. You can:
• Send Out a Normal Press Release About Your Member Site.
• Send Out Articles For Magazines To Use With a Resource Box.
• Offer a Free Membership To Members of the Media.

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The key to getting your press release used or an article published is to send
the media real exciting news…not just a veiled ad for your product or
service. What is newsworthy about your subject?

The news media has the same question for you that your prospects
do…What’s In It For Me? How can you make the media’s job easier for
them? Can you provide them with resources they need to do their stories?
Can you send them complete articles they can use on your subject? Are you
a good and exciting candidate for an interview? Are you going to be able to
increase their ratings?

That is what they will be thinking about when they look at your releases.
You better make sure it answers those questions for them. Too many press
releases just say Company A has released XYZ site. That is boring and isn’t
news!

Once you are ready to start sending press releases, you are going to have to
choose which format you want to use. You can mail, fax, or email out the
press releases.

Mailing press releases usually returns the best results since you can do more
to make your release stand out. You can include quality paper, pictures of
yourself or your product, and even product samples. The disadvantage of
this method is that it is the most expensive and time consuming of the three.

Faxing press releases has become the standard during recent years. It is
quicker and much cheaper at only around 10 cents per fax. The most popular
and effective businesspeople I know are still using this as their primary
method of delivery.

Emailing press releases is the newest method available and is becoming

more popular all the time. It is also the cheapest method of all since it is free
to send out your press releases using this method. Do take one caution
though if you are going to email your press releases. Do not send them to
every media outlet you can find just because they are free to send. Make sure
you target your media outlets appropriately so that you don't end up
annoying those people you are trying to reach.

Below are a few online sources if you want to have a company submit (and
possibly even write) your press releases for you. I am not giving a personal

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recommendation of any of the companies below, but I do know certain
people who recommend each of them.

http://www.xpresspress.com
http://www.newsbureau.com
http://www.gapent.com/pr
http://www.mediasubmit.com
http://www.onlinepressreleases.com

The best way to get involved with doing press releases is to do it yourself.
Remember, we are not going to just do a press release one time and forget
about it. We are going to make it a constant habit in our businesses. You will
send out another press release whenever you have a new product, come up
with a new angle, or find a trend/holiday that somehow relates to your
business.

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 Membership Building Technique #2:
Joint Venture Deals

This can be one of the quickest ways to grow…and it requires ZERO

advertising investment. Instead of going out and trying to find customers for
yourself, why don’t you have customers given to you freely?
First go to http://www.alexa.com and download the Alexa research tool.
You will be using this tool to see how much traffic sites are getting and to
find other sites which sell similar items.

Now, do a search for any major web site who is currently selling to your
targeted market. You are going to be looking for any company who is
selling to your potential customers, but who does not have a membership site
of their own to compete with you. In other words, you are looking for web
sites who are going to be good setups for joint venture partners.

Alexa will give you the ability to look over on the left side of your browser
and see just how much traffic a site is receiving. You are looking for joint
venture partners who have a minimum of two star traffic and even better
sites have three star traffic.

Alexa also will give you the full contact information for the domain owner
on the left (to make it easy to contact them for the joint venture) and will
show you a list of links to competing sites…so you can potentially contact
competitors as well.

You are looking for sites that are selling non-competing products to their
customers. For example, if your membership site is on “4x4 Toyota Trucks,”
then you would be looking specifically for sites who sell products to Toyota
truck owners…such as truck accessories, etc.

You will mark down the company owner’s name and address from each of
these sites using Alexa, and you will then contact them with an irresistible
offer.

You are going to offer them the right to give away free one month
memberships to your site to all of their paying customers. Whenever
someone buys a product from them, they can then give them a certificate (if

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they mail out products) or send them an email letting them know they also
get a free membership to your site for one month.

This gives them an additional bonus and reason for customers to buy from
them. It gives you unlimited new potential customers who may or may not
stay on and continue with you for months to come. Some will probably
cancel before the month is up, but many of them will stay subscribers for
years to come if you provide the information they are seeking after.

If you have also set yourself up with an affiliate program (see traffic
building technique number three), then you could involve actual cash
payment in the joint venture. You could allow your joint venture partner to
give a free month’s membership to all of their customers, and then they
would get a percentage share from then on from every customer they
referred.

Then, they not only will have an additional bonus for their members, but
they will also be receiving income for referring you. What better deal and
reason could they have for working with you?

Please Note: You can also do these type of joint ventures offline. You could
offer your one month free membership to offline catalog owners or local
stores who sell to your targeted market. All you need to do is contact them
and offer your product as a free bonus to their paying customers only. You
give them a benefit and you get hundreds of new customers.

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 Membership Building Technique #3:
Affiliate Programs

This is another zero cost advertising strategy. You can start up an affiliate
program and pay other companies to refer your subscribers to you. They are
only paid when a sale is made…so you have a zero risk advertising strategy.

The Superscripts membership and the CgiToolBox membership (Clickgate

software) both come with affiliate program software for you to use. So, if
you purchased either of these sites to set up your membership software
management program, then you also have the affiliate software that you
need. You won’t have to make any additional purchases.

If you signed up with one of the three recurring billing companies iBill,
Globill, or Verotel, then you also have an affiliate program available to you
for free. These three companies will even allow you to run your own
affiliate program and they will handle all of the affiliate payouts on your
behalf. You won’t have to touch the checks!

All three of them can also set you up to pay your affiliates every month.
Instead of an affiliate only being paid one time for referring customers, they
can be paid a set percentage every month their referrals stay a member. This
is a revolutionary idea and can be used to help you build your affiliate base
very quickly.

Once you have an affiliate program set up and in place, it is time to get out
there and sign up some members. The biggest reason affiliate programs fail
is because the affiliate manager takes a passive approach to signing up new
members. You can’t sit back and wait for good affiliates to come to you.
You need to go out and get them yourself.

The first place I would go is to the affiliate program announcing service at

http://www.affiliate-announce.com which will fill out over 40 affiliate
directories for you for only $79.

The next step you should take is to download Copernic which can be
searched for and downloaded at http://www.download.com

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Write down your major competitors who have their own affiliate programs
and then load up Copernic. Do a search using your competitors web site
addresses as the search term.

You are going to be looking for all of the affiliates who currently link to
your competitors. Then, you are going to visit each one using Alexa looking
for the highest traffic sites.

Email each of the high traffic web site owners offering them a better deal to
refer your site to their audience. For really high traffic sites (three stars or
above) you may also want to offer a free membership at your site so they can
try it out before they endorse it to their audience.

You may want to also look through your magazines again and find web sites
who are currently getting publicity and make offers to them to become a
member of your affiliate program. This way you may be able to coattail on
their publicity for the profit of both them and you.

Make sure to only send personalized emails when contacting all of these
very high traffic sites. If the email you send isn’t personalized and it doesn’t
get to the point very quickly (What’s In It For Them), then it will quickly be
disregarded never to be looked at again.

This process can take quite a while, and that is why most affiliate programs
never do it. They are too lazy to find the winning affiliate members. Only
20% of your affiliates will make 80% of the sales. You find those great
affiliate members by going out and searching for them.

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 Membership Building Technique #4:
Send Article Excerpts to Ezines
Currently there are over three hundred thousand ezine publishers online and
almost all of them have one thing in common. They are all looking for good
content to publish in their newsletter.

If you have good content (not a sales letter cloaked as an article), then you
can be their savior. You can give them exactly what they need. Then, they
will give you what you need in exchange. They will give you exposure for
your business.

Every article comes with a resource box attached at the end of it. While your
article should not be an effort to promote your business, your 4 to 6 line
resource box should be an outright ad for your membership site. You are
free to advertise it in any way you see fit in the resource section.

Below is a quick step-by step system to submitting your first article.

1. Decide on a topic.

You want to choose a hot online topic. What are people talking about on the
news, in discussion boards, and in ezines that you are receiving. Look at the
articles from some of the magazines in your industry to gauge where
people’s interest is at. You want to make sure that your article is covering a
subject people are excited about.

2. Create a Title.

The title will make or break your article. A title for an article is just as
important as a headline for an ad. If your title doesn’t grab people’s attention
they will never read the rest of the article. If they don’t read the article, they
won’t see your resource box. Write a minimum of 10 - 20 titles and then let
your family or friends pick the most interesting one to use in your article.

3. Write 3 - 5 Major Points.

The key to making your writing easy is dividing up the content. Through
creating these main points you can also establish a flow to the article. Using
a step-by-step system will also help you stay organized in your mind . You
have to keep the ezine article short so you must be very focused.

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4. Decide on the number of words...probably around 500 for ezine
articles.

Most ezines publish shorter articles than what you will be publishing inside
of your membership site. The best number to plan for is to create articles that
are around 500 words in length although some ezines may ask for a little bit
longer of articles.

5. Divide up the number of words and create each section individually.

If you have 5 points, each one only gets 100 words. Once you add on a short
introduction and a short conclusion, then you are at about 80 - 90 words per
section. If you have 3 points, then each section will have around 150 words
plus an introduction and conclusion. It is easier to get started when you think
of it like this.

6. Create Your Resource Box.

Give your contact info such as your name, email address, and web site.
Then, give one or two benefit phrases, headlines you could say, along with
web site links. You will receive your absolute best results if the benefit
phrases coincide with the article you have just written.

7. Edit it.

Take a step back after you have written and prepared your article. Sleep on
it. Come back to your article the next day and edit it. Rephrase sections that
you can make better. Do a spellcheck. It is amazing what a short rest will do
for the creative process.

8. Email it to ezine publishers with a short cover letter.

Find a large section of ezine publishers with their name and contact emails.
Send it to them with a short personalized cover paragraph at the top.
Personalization is a major key since most ezine publishers receive hundreds
of these emails every day. You need to make your emails stand out of the
crowd...

To find ezine publisher addresses, use databases such as:

http://www.homeincome.com/search-it/ezine/

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Also, pick up the names and email addresses of any publishers you currently
receive mail from.

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 Membership Building Technique #5:
Place Solo Ads in Ezines

When you are ready to start spending some money on your advertising, the
cheapest and most effective form of paid advertising are solo ads throughout
ezines in your target market.

Where else can you reach 10,000 potential customers for your membership
site for only $100? Where else can you advertise to 200,000 potential
customers with a full page ad for $650?

We have regularly been able to produce five times our money and ten times
our money when placing top sponsorship ads and solo ads throughout
ezines. We have never been able to produce results such as this using
banner advertising or any other type of paid advertising.

With other forms of advertising, our goal is often to just break even on the
customer acquisition costs. Then, we earn a profit several months later
through backend offers to these clients.

With ezines, we are often able to produce a profit on the first sale to the
customer. So, we recommend everyone start their paid advertising campaign
with ezines. If you can’t profit here, you won’t be able to profit anywhere.

The best resource for finding ezines to advertise in is at

http://www.topezineads.com.

An even better source if you want to see the exact results of what types of
ads are producing is to subscribe to our “Internet Breakthroughs”
membership site at http://www.bizpromo.com. We place paid ads every
week and we give you our exact results including both the clickthroughs and
sales. You can find out what advertising is working…and what advertising
isn’t!

The most important element to figuring out where you want to advertise is to
only choose ad sources where you read the ezine yourself. Since you are
now the number one researcher in your industry, you should subscribe
yourself to all of the top ezines anyway. The ones that you read and find
good content in are the ones you should be advertising in.

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I really encourage you to get started advertising as soon as you can in these
advertising bargains of the millennium. They aren’t going to last much
longer. As many of the good publishers get a hold of this training material
and learn they could have a much more profitable membership site than
ezine, those ezine ad bargains are going to start disappearing.

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 Membership Building Technique #6:
Participate in Online Schmoozing
The easiest way to get traffic to your site quickly for free is through
networking with other people in your industry.

In the past, doing this meant you had to attend meetings or fly across the
country to attend seminars. This was a real pain, especially if you were a
little shy and didn't especially like the idea of having to go visit tons of new
people (that describes me to a tee).

Now, with the advent of the Internet, you can attend dozens of meetings in
your industry for FREE. You can participate in these discussions, meet new
people, and achieve extra traffic at your web site. If you prefer to just learn
new things and watch for a while, you can be there completely invisible and
not noticed by anyone if you like.

These meetings online are called newsgroups and forums and I am positively
shocked at how few budding Internet entrepreneurs actually put them to use.
I attend a few of them everyday!

There are two purposes to these boards for me...

#1 - I can learn more about many different subjects. Since I focus on Internet
marketing and marketing in general, I keep my eyes out for new information
in these areas.

#2 - I post answers to people's questions and I actively take part in the

conversations. By doing this, I can post my signature file with information
about something that is free on my site, such as this newsletter or some other
free report.

You cannot post direct ads to these groups, BUT you can use a short
signature file about some benefit you offer (free items work best). Whenever
I post to any of these groups I make sure to include information about one of
my free reports or information about this free newsletter.

Again, I want to emphasize to you that you CANNOT post an AD to these

groups or you will be flamed. You have to get involved in the conversations
and let your signature file or Link to your site give a short free benefit for
visiting your site.

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There are two versions to these types of online community meetings, web
site forums and newsgroups.

FORUMS

A forum is a web site where you can go read and post messages to one
another. It doesn't require any other software than just your regular web
browser.

There are thousands of forums out there. A good place where you can find a
listing of all of the available forums is at: http://www.forumone.com

Once you go through there and make a list of forums to visit, find the ones
which are most suited to your business. For me, this means I spend time in
marketing forums. Below are my favorites which contain a wealth of
Internet marketing information:

http://www.wilsonweb.com/cgi-bin/ubb/Ultimate.cgi
http://www.profitlines.com/ipub/index.html
http://www.ablake.net/forum/
http://www.gethighforums.com/bin/Ultimate.cgi?action=intro
http://www.free-publicity.com/cgi-bin/talk.cgi
http://www.bizweb2000.com/wwwboard/

NEWSGROUPS

Newsgroups are slightly more difficult. You need to use newsgroup reading
software to participate in them. There are many varities of software for this
purpose, but my favorite reader is "Free Agent" which you can find at
http://www.forteinc.com for free.

To find listings of what types of discussions are going on in each of the

newsgroups (there are more than 20,000 of them), go to
http://www.dejanews.com

At this web site, you can search for specific keywords about your industry or
business. Then, pick out the newsgroups that are discussing your subjects
and use "Free Agent" to subscribe to them.

START TODAY

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As I said at the beginning of this section, participating in newsgroups and
forums can be one of the easiest ways of networking and getting your
business started online.

1. Go to the forums I have listed above.

2. Mark them in your "Favorite Places."
3. Read some of the postings.
4. Wait a couple of days...visiting the forums everyday and learning.
5. Start making a couple of posts to the forums when your type of
subject comes up.
6. Be consistent!

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 Membership Building Technique #7:
Postcard Mailings

Many Internet marketers never even think of advertising their web sites
offline, yet if you take one look at TV ads you will notice that a large portion
of offline advertising is being bought up by large Internet companies.

They are trying to reach people out in the real world, but they are doing it in
the wrong way for many of them. By advertising on TV they are going after
too general of a market for many of them. One of the key principles of
advertising is that you always have to target your perfect customer.

This is something that can only be done in a limited portion online. For
example, if you advertise in an ezine which talks about Internet marketing
you are probably reaching people who are interested in Internet marketing
products. What you aren’t reaching though are buyers of Internet marketing
products.

Just because someone wants to read free information about Internet

marketing doesn’t mean that they will be willing to pay for information on
Internet marketing. Most ezines and web sites are being visited by freebie
seekers, not buyers. The majority of visitors and subscribers to free content
will never purchase anything from you or from anyone else.

When I told you to go out and offer a free month’s membership through
joint ventures with companies selling products, notice that I only wanted you
to offer this freebie to people who already purchased a product in your
industry. We don’t want you to waste your time with giving your valuable
information to freebie seekers. We want to get your material in the hands of
buyers.

The freebie seeker mentality is the problem that you will be dealing with in
most forms of online advertising. They are searching for free information,
reading an informative free ezine, and clicking on banners to find more free
stuff. Ninety percent of any of your online advertising is being wasted by
this.

How about if I told you a way that you could reach 100% buyers of similar
products and services?

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There is. It is what we call direct mail.

Direct mail was the key backbone of the direct marketing industry until the
Internet came into existence. Names such as Ted Nicholas built direct mail
empires with over $500 million dollars in sales.

We can follow in their lead and using direct mail even more effectively than
it could ever be used in the past by combining it with the advantages of the
Internet. The Internet is the world’s cheapest printing press and it gives you
the ability to provide information to your prospects, follow-up for free, and
take orders 24 hours a day through secure servers.

Direct mail gives you the ability to reach “Hot” prospects who have bought a
product similar to yours within the past 90 days. By the way, these types of
names are called hotline names and you can often find hundreds of
thousands of them in certain markets.

You never want a compiled list of potential prospects even if a list broker
recommends it to you. You don’t want a list of response people either. You
are only interested in mailing to a buyers list.

What we are going to do is send a lead generation postcard to a list of buyers

to get them to go to our web sites. A postcard is cheap and is the perfect
lead generator for web sites. You can use the headline from your web site
and then use the most convincing and powerful copy from your web site to
design the lead generating postcard.

Then, contact a mailing list broker such as http://www.edithroman.com and

have them help you find a list of hotline names under 90 days old who have
bought a very similar product or service.

Start testing very slowly with only 500 or so postcards at one time. Build
from there if the tests go well. Do 1,000 cards, then 3,000, 10,000, and so
on. Never jump up and do the whole list just because a small portion did
well.

List owners have been known to be deceptive in the past and give you the
best portion of their list first and then give you much poorer names when
you come back to purchase.

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Be careful and test slowly, but if you can find a large list of names who are
very responsive to your offer you can make an unbelievable amount of
money.

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 Membership Building Technique #8:
Search Engines
When you obtain a top ranking on the search engines, you can generate
traffic without having to spend a single penny for it. For many web sites,
this is their only source of traffic. We don’t limit ourselves to only search
engines, but you should use them if at all possible.

Below is a simple step-by-step system for getting top listings on the major
search engines. It isn't always easy. Sometimes it is frustrating when things
don't work out right, BUT it is worth it because one top 20 listing can bring
in sales to your site day after day and month after month without a penny
spent on advertising.

* The Number One Key is Content *

The number one key to getting good positions on the search engines is
having fresh and relevant content about your subject. This is becoming more
and more important all the time not only when dealing with search engines,
but also with linking with other sites, causing people to come back, and
making sales online. The winner in online marketing is the company who
provides the most useful content for free to their customers.

The most important directory of all online is the King "Yahoo." They have
reviewers who actually go out and take a look at every site which is going to
be included in their index. If they see just a bunch of sales letters or links to
affiliate programs, then you won't even have a chance of being listed. They
only list around 1 in 10 sites which is submitted to them, so the only way
you are going to be listed is by having unique content for their index.

NOTE: A recent tip which I have learned for Yahoo is that when you submit
your site to their index, take a look at the other sites in the same category
and make sure you include some content on your site about the subject
which is lacking on the other sites.

Then, in the comments section or in an email to Yahoo, let them know how
well they have covered your subject, but that you have found some
information on your site which will help to complete their index. Remember,
they are not there to help you. They are there to build a resource for their

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visitors. If you can provide some unique content on your subject, you are
that much more likely of getting listed.

* Basic Strategy *

The first step in successful search engine promotion is to pick and identify
the right keywords to use in your page, in your title, and in your keywords.
Select 3 - 10 keywords that will target and identify your targeted market
online. What will people be searching for who will potentially purchase your
products or services?

Don't try to list 100 keywords in your keyword section and try to come up
under everything. It just won't work. Don't try to come up under "sex" if
your site is about internet marketing. You need to target your market on
search engines just like you would in any other market. If you wouldn't want
to pay money to come up under that keyword, don't focus on trying to earn it
on the engines either. Use laser targeted marketing.

* Your Main Page *

Many of the search engines are now giving higher weight to your main page
if your domain name also contains the keywords. For example, if you
wanted to come up under "Internet Secrets," then the perfect domain name
for you to have would contain those two words. If you were to get that
domain name, then you would have an advantage on the search engine
listings in almost every search engine you submit to.

Some of the search engines such as Yahoo won't even list a page besides
your main index page anymore. In other words, if you are on a free hosting
server, you can't get listed there anymore. You have to own your own
domain name to even stand a fighting chance.

* Eight Keys for High Ranking Pages *

1. TITLE: Your page title needs to contain the keywords that you are trying
to get listed under while at the same time being interesting and having
exciting ad copy. Remember, your title tag will be what gets listed on
people's favorite places if they bookmark your site, and the title is the first
thing they see when they are searching on the search engines. If they don't
like your title, they won't click to your site.

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2. KEYWORDS: Make sure your keywords are in the keyword meta tag.
List all of them, but also be careful to make sure that none of the keywords
gets listed more than two or three times total. Example: If your keywords are
internet marketing, internet promotion, internet secrets, and internet tools;
change them to internet marketing, promotion, secrets, internet tools.

3. DESCRIPTION: Make sure your keywords are in a 25 word description

of your site, but at the same time remember that many of the search engines
will also be listing this description for your potential visitors to see. So it
needs to sound inviting to get them to click through to your site.

4. COMMENTS: The comment tags aren't used by all of the engines, but
you should still include a short comment on your site full of some of the
keywords. It could help you out on a couple of the search engines.

5. TEXT OF YOUR SITE: Your site needs to look attractive and list your
keyword throughout the text. How often your keyword should be seen
throughout the actual text is up for debate and is different on each engine,
but it varies between 3% and 10% of your text. In other words, every 3 - 10
words out of a 100 on your site should be the keyword you are targeting
most. This isn't as easy to change on your main page, but it is something for
you to really play with on your doorway pages which we discuss below.

6. IMAGE TAGS: List your keywords once inside of an image which you
have on your page to give you one more extra chance of being listed under
those words. People will see these tags before your pictures become visible
so make sure you use them in a sentence that makes sense and that you don't
just list them over and over (spamming the search engine with them).

7. LINKS: Many of the search engines count the number of links coming to
and from your pages and other sites linking to your site throughout the
Internet. This is another reason to trade links with as many sites as possible.
So, link back and forth between your pages (this is a smart thing to do
anyway so that people can go through your site simply and easily).

8: CREATE DOORWAYS OR LEAD PAGES: Sometimes, on some

keywords, it just seems that you can't get a top 20 ranking no matter what
you do with your main page. On these occasions (which occur very often),
create what is called a doorway page. These pages are specifically created
with one or two keywords in mind and really focus on these words.

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These words are in your title, your keywords, your description, and your
comment tags. They go inside of an alt image tag. And you make sure they
are used on 3% - 10% of the page...sometimes as high as 15%. They should
be around 3 - 5 paragraphs long and link back and forth between other lead
pages you create for other keywords.

* Use Competitive Research to Stay on The Cutting Edge *

I was preparing to list some of the specific tips for each search engine in this
report, but then I realized that just wouldn't work. Whatever I list today for
one search engine could be completely different by tomorrow afternoon.

The various directories are constantly changing their ways of indexing pages
(partly to keep us from keeping up with them) and one resource just won't
tell you how to submit to every individual search engine 100% all of the
time.

What you can do is become a digital detective and keep an eye on the
rankings on the different search engines for yourself. After you have created
a page and had it listed a certain rank, start visiting the sites which come up
above your site in the rankings and check them out. Judge them by the 8
guideliness given to you above.

All you have to do is go to their page (go to several of them to get a better
idea of the rankings) and then click on "View" at the top of your browser.
Then, choose "Source." Your Notepad should come up and show you the
source .html code for the page you are looking at.

Take notice of the keywords in their title, keywords, description, images,

comments, and especially on how often it is used throughout their text. What
are they doing differently? Keep in mind all the engines are changing
constantly and each one of them is completely different from all of the
others.

If you constantly do this and learn the basics I have given you above, you
will be able to start getting your pages listed in the top 20 of the search
engines and watch your traffic and sales soar. It isn't always easy, but it is
worth it.

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 Membership Building Technique #9:
Pay-Per-Click Search Engines

I love the pay-per-click search engines such as http://www.goto.com.

All of the pay-per-click search engines work on the same principle, you give
them a deposit and then you bid how much you are willing to pay per visitor
to your web site. Then, they organize all of the bids in order with the
highest bid receiving the number one position under a search for that
keyword. Then each successive bid goes down in descending order.

When someone does a search for your keyword and ends up clicking on one
of your links, Goto or the other search engines subtract the bid you placed
from your deposit with them. If you bid 20 cents per visitor, then they will
subtract 20 cents every time someone clicks on your link and visits your web
site.

If you can come up with hundreds of potential keywords for your web site
and place good bids on them, you can receive thousands of visitors to your
site every month through Goto’s searches. That is part of the reason I love
pay-per-click engines. The whole setup is based on being able to figure out
how much you earn on average per visitor.

With paid membership sites we earn a very good upfront profit every month
compared to most of our competitors. We can afford to bid at a much higher
level than any of our other competitors so that we end up in the top
positions.

My own rule of thumb is to figure out what my average profit per visitor is
and then be willing to bid about half of that. So, if my web site earns an
average of 50 cents per visitor, I am willing to bid up to 25 cents per visitor
for my keywords to give me whatever position I can get in with those bids.

This virtually assures that I will be earning a good profit…especially when

you consider backend sales and other types of future sales to my customers.

SPECIAL TRICK: Here’s a special trick I have developed just for Goto and
the other pay-per-click engines. Sometimes I am willing to bid at the very
top of the list, even over $1. To accomplish this, I also put the price of the

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product I am selling inside of the title so that it is shown on the engine. That
way my visitors are very pre-qualified before they visit giving a higher sales
rate.

All of the top Goto users that I know try to pick out a minimum of 100
potential keywords people could use to find their site. I have even talked to
several marketers who have as many as 800 keywords in their accounts all
going for lower bids and a tiny amount of traffic from each one.

The way that you can create so many keywords for your web site is to use
the Search Term Suggestion Tool that can be found at:
http://inventory.go2.com/inventory/Search_Suggestion.jthml

You come up with a keyword idea, put it in the Suggestion tool and it will
generate 20 new keywords for you to use. You then copy and paste those
keywords into a simple text file for later use. You come up with another
keyword idea, put it in the Suggestion Tool, and copy down some more
keywords. You can also look at the suggested keywords and come up with
new ideas to try out.

I am usually able to generate several hundred keywords after playing with

the Suggestion Tool for a couple of hours. You can then go to the “Direct
Traffic Center” link on Goto’s advertising page to sign up for an account
with a minimum of $25 deposit. You can also download a form in Microsoft
Excel to fill out with your keywords. Then, send them into Goto for
approval (they usually don’t approve all of your keywords but will approve
many of the relevant ones).

I always place my bids at one penny when first submitting the keywords.
After they have been put up, I always log in and raise my bids to achieve
higher positions that I am willing to pay per visitor.

The traffic produced by using this method can be quite impressive if you are
just willing to do the work.

There are now over forty pay-per-click search engines competing with Goto
for the market. So, you can take many of your keywords and use them on
some of the other engines as well. None of these other sites have anywhere
near the traffic Goto does, but they can still be profitable to use since you
don’t have to bid nearly as high to get the top positions.

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Here Are Several Pay-Per-Click Search Engines Worth Using:

http://www.7search.com
http://www.ah-ha.com
http://www.findwhat.com
http://www.kanoodle.com
http://www.sprinks.com

You can also research and look into other potential Pay-Per-Click Search
Engines which come up everyday by visiting:
http://www.payperclicksearchengines.com

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 Membership Building Technique #10:
ClickXchange
It has become popular to make fun of banner advertising, but many of the
top marketers use banner advertising as a primary source of sales. The
average banner only receives a clickthrough on one out of every two
hundred impressions. This is pitiful, but you can find a way to use it to your
advantage.

Instead of buying impressions for your banner, you can buy clickthroughs
for your banner. One of the places I like to purchase banner advertising is at
http://www.clickxchange.com

You can join there for $100, put your text ad and banner into the system, and
then choose how much you are willing to pay per clickthrough. That’s right.
You choose how much to pay for each visitor to your web site. It has
become a great source of customers for us.

Figure out how much your web site makes per visitor and then you can
choose how much you can afford to bid for visitors. Please note that you
shouldn’t bid anywhere near as high here as you would be willing to on the
pay-per-click search engines as the traffic from these sites won’t be at the
same level of quality. Even with highly profitable web sites I rarely go over
ten cents per clickthrough.

To give you some ideas on your banner design, try putting these 10 banner
design techniques to the test.

1. Use the words "Click Here" or "Enter" every time you design a
banner.

You may think that these two words are overused online, but tests have
proven that these words are able to increase the effectiveness of a banner ad
by 20-30% without changing anything else in the banner. They inspire the
reader to click on the ad if the headline of the banner interests them.

2. Animate Your Banners.

An animated banner will increase your banner ads effectiveness by 30-40%.

The key in using animation in your banner is keeping it small. The reason
that you don’t want big pictures or images that look like live video in your

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banners is the fact that the banner will load too slowly on people’s pages.
The visitors just won't see it.

3. Create quick loading banners.

Keep most banners under 10-12 KB. This will be very difficult to
accomplish when you are using animation in your ads, but it needs to be
done. Most animated banners are 15-20 KB, but that is way too large to load
quickly. Keep them small. As a matter of fact, try to keep your banner under
10 KB to have good results from a banner exchange.

The way to do this when using animation it to keep it simple, maybe only
one or two movements. Then, use Paint Shop Pro to decrease the number of
colors. A banner that may have been 15 KB can often be decreased down to
3 or 4 KB when you decrease the colors to 16 or 256. You need a nicely
designed banner that is high quality but loads quickly.

4. Use an awesome headline in your banner.

Don’t think that just having a good looking banner will make people click
through. The key to effective banner advertising is having a good headline.
A good technique to use is to keep the same headline on your banner ad that
you have on your entry page. Then when they click through the banner, they
will come to see the same headline that sparked an interest in them in the
first place.

5. The best word to use in your banner headline is "FREE."

This doesn’t mean that you just need to put the word "FREE" on your
banner without any other text. Tell them exactly what they will be getting
for FREE. Using the word "FREE" in virtually any headline will make your
response rate increase dramatically.

6. Blue underlined text will often increase your response rate.

When Internet users see blue underlined text, they know they are links. By
placing your headline in this type of format more people will realize that it is
a link to another site. It will achieve a higher click through ratio.

7. A blue border will give you a better response rate then any other
color border for your banner.

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Use blue as the border color for your banner and it will influence more
people to click onto the entire banner. These little things may not seem like
much, but they can increase your response rates.

8. It is often a good idea to use your web site address or some type of
company logo in the banner.

Don't focus your banner on your logo or web site address, but do include it
in many cases. Your main benefit headline should be the focus of your
banner. Your use of a web address or company logo in a small section of the
banner just helps to produce a branding effect on people’s minds giving you
a few extra hits.

9. Use trick banners.

Make your banner look like something in windows that people can click on.
For example, a lot of effective banners I’ve seen use what looks like a
windows slider. People create trick banners that look like sliders, buttons,
checkboxes, and drop-down menus. These types of tricks will bring out the
curiosity in people. They want to see more of the text and will click on the
banner.

Please note that I wouldn’t use these when placing clickthrough

advertising. I would only use them for impression advertising as they
increase the clickthroughs but do not increase your sales dramatically. They
would be extremely dangerous to use for any type of clickthrough
advertising such as http://www.clickxchange.com

10. Change your banner ads frequently.

Studies have proven that most banner ads start losing effectiveness after the
third time a person has seen it. If they haven’t clicked on it by then, they
probably never will. If you are spending a lot of money on advertising and
purchasing hundreds of thousands of banner impressions, you will need to
come up with a lot of different banners.

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 A Final Note
You now have been handed the most valuable business you can possibly be
in as an Internet entrepreneur…becoming a digital infopreneur.

All the insider secrets have been revealed to you from choosing a topic,
setting up your membership site, and generating traffic and sales to your web
site. We have left no stone unturned and you have the ammunition you need
to get started building your business.

Please follow my advice and work hard on coming up with the right topic.
Your whole future relies on it. The research on how to setup the site and
how to generate the sales has already been done. You have even been given
a product idea creation formula.

Please use that formula and come up with a winning idea, not just a copy of
someone else’s ideas. Over 50% of the people I talk to want to go into the
area of marketing not realizing that this is most competitive market you can
be in.

If you don’t have a track record, then your membership site won’t stand a
chance competing against those who already have a strong groups pf
followers. Don’t pick a subject you don’t have experience in.

Membership subscribers are often the cream of the crop when it comes to
customers and they will see right through you if you aren’t an expert on your
topic. Pick something that you really enjoy spending your day studying and
something that you just can’t stop talking about…even if there isn’t any
money involved.

Because of the nature of building a subscription site such as this, you might
start out and only get one subscriber your first week. That can be quite
discouraging at first…having to write content for one subscriber. It has to
be done though. If you take good care of that subscriber, then you will get
another…and another…and another.

Keep working with your idea and you will have the life that all of your
friends and family dream of. You will get to spend all of your time studying
and writing about your favorite subject, and people will pay you thousands
of dollars a month to do it.

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You can do this with no employees and no equipment other than the
computer you are currently using. You don’t need to be able to sell to
people on the phone and it doesn’t matter where in the world you live.

This business can be done from anywhere that there’s an Internet

connection.

Follow the advice that’s in this guide and in Monique Harris’ companion
manual “the paperless newsletter publishers guide” and you will be on your
way to the success that you have been dreaming of.

These two manuals work hand-in-hand. Print them out. Read through both
of them completely and then read them again highlighting the text as you go
through. You have the tools you need. Now what are you going to do with
them?

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