Whether you have an existing membership site or you have an idea for one and are in the process of starting it up, you’ll have one burning question on your mind: how to get new members.
The truth is, no matter how many members you have today, or will have tomorrow, the amount of work you have to do to keep your site fresh and compelling is exactly the same, so you may as well continue to add paying members to make it worthwhile, right?
There are three simple steps you can follow to attract more members:
STEP 1: Create a Small Paid for Report
Write a simple 12-to-15-page report on a sub-topic of your site’s main topic. This is not a “freebie” to give away to anyone who signs up. This is a valuable product customers will be willing to pay for.
Sell this report from your membership site’s domain name but not from the membership page. Create another page that is dedicated to selling your new product and add it to your domain.
For example: Main membership domain: www.abc123.com <http://www.abc123.com>
New product sales page: www.abc123.com/yournewreport.html <http://www.abc123.com/yournewreport.html>
One reason you stick with the main domain name is simply to save time and costs. There is a far more important reason why you should do it this way, however: to expose them to your main membership domain name and site.
Set up your traffic driving sales strategy to point at the page selling the report. Because people are curious beasts, most will see the sub-domain name, strip it off and go look at the main domain as well. Two sales opportunities – one strategy. Cool, huh?
STEP 2: Give the Customer a ‘Test Drive’ of Your Membership Site
Setup your report fulfillment page – or your “Thank you for ordering” page – to also have a trial subscription option. This option should be at the top of the page. Make sure you ‘sell’ it as an “unadvertised bonus.” Tell customers of your new product they are entitled to use the membership site for free for two weeks.
Setup your report fulfillment page – or your “Thank you for ordering” page – to also have a trial subscription option. This option should be at the top of the page. Make sure you ‘sell’ it as an “unadvertised bonus.” Tell customers of your new product they are entitled to use the membership site for free for two weeks.
A reasonable percentage of report buyers will automatically enroll, simply because your site relates to the report they paid for and you have provided a special price for just them. The psychology here is, many of them will feel they have paid for the free trial by purchasing the report and will want to make sure they claim what they paid for.
You can add a deadline if you want, such as: “For today only” but, if you do, make sure you stick to it. Lie and you’ll blow your hard-earned credibility straight out of the window.
The next step is to provide a small list of benefits to being a subscriber to your membership site and a link to the main site itself.
The process follows this path:
1. A prospect arrives at your report’s sales page.
2. They read and like the sales message for your report.
3. They place an order and become a customer.
4. You skillfully move them to the download page containing your unadvertised bonus offer.
5. The customer now sees they can also get a two-week trial for free, or maybe $1.
With me so far? Great, here’s the killer step:
STEP 3: Present a Bonus which Requires Activation
To make sure the customer makes the right decision, which is to sign up for your trial membership offer, create an additional, highly-desirable bonus the customer will receive if he or she activates the trial membership immediately.
Here are some ideas for this killer bonus:
1. Free coaching – this can be delivered by webinar so you don’t have to do it in person.
2. Ready-made templates to make their life easier.
3. Another topic-related resource you are an affiliate for, or a JV offer.
4. A software tool that automates a process in the topic matter.
5. A shortcut “how-to” guide.
6. A good PLR product.
7. A good public domain product (make sure it is copyright-free first).
It doesn’t matter what this “activation bonus” is, as long as you have something of perceived value to the customer that is about the topic matter. Make it so good, the customer believes it is too good to miss.
The bottom line is this:
* You create a qualified customer list for free as the small report fee covers your costs.
* You get a percentage of immediate sign ups.
* You bring in automated subscribers through follow-up mailings to your list.
Make sure you add the autoresponder series behind the report order page and the membership trial subscriber page – then you’re good to go!
Once you have this system in place, simply keep driving traffic to your report’s sales page and you’ll keep a trickle of new members coming in every month.
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