January 1, 2008
Membership Sites and Partnerships Online
Membership Sites and Partnerships Online
Take Your Internet Business to the Next Level with a Membership Site and a Partnership
Internet marketing is a fantastic opportunity to make money and work from home. Once your business has reached your initial goals, you may want to look at opportunities to grow your business, make more money, and provide more value and opportunities to your customers.
Two ways to add value to your existing business, give your customers a stronger, more beneficial product or service, and to of course increase your profits is to add a membership element to your website and to investigate potential joint ventures.
Membership Marketing is a company managed program to convert occasional buyers into loyal customers, can provide predictable revenue streams, generate higher revenue by customer and increase referrals by efficiently using company resources. Membership marketing isn’t limited to online businesses. Think about frequent flyer programs, rental car programs, frequent shopper programs, etc…
The benefits for a business are huge:
1. Increased visibility
2. Increased profits
3. Increased credibility
4. Increased SEO
5. More opportunities to communicate with your customers
6. More opportunities to sell to your customers.
7. More exposure and networking opportunities
How will your business profit?
. Affiliate marketing is a great way to make ongoing extra income from your membership site.
Advertising. AdSense is a simple way to make money from your membership site. Every time someone clicks on the Ads you’ll get paid a certain amount per click.
Information products. Ebooks, reports, online classes, workshops, tutorials, audio files, videos, and even software can be created for a relatively low cost and sold for a tremendous profit. The great thing about many of these products is that they are instantly downloadable by your members. This means that they get instant gratification and you don’t have to deal with the cost of production.
Selling PLR Content. Any membership site, no matter what your topic, can offer PLR content and make great money. When you sell PLR content, you’re selling content about a particular topic which the person can use for their own purposes. The PLR content is sold to a number of people so it’s not exclusive content. The buyer can edit the information as they chose.
Membership Fees. Charging your members a membership fee is another way to make a profit. Here are a few possible subscription possibilities.
1. Standard Monthly Subscriptions are the normal course of action for a membership site. They work well for a well maintained website where the content is always fresh and you’re always providing value.
2. Upgraded subscriptions, like silver, gold, and platinum, are a profitable alternative to the standard monthly subscription model. It is one way of adding value and scarcity to your website and membership program.
3.A one time fee joining fee model works well if you are able to consistently add content, resources, and multiple streams of revenue.
How much will you charge subscribers? When adding a membership site to your business model, it is important to charge subscribers appropriately. Generally, prospects are aware that quality information comes at a price, and they’re willing to pay for it. If you’re concerned that you’re charging too high of a membership test it or make your site worth the money.
Product Sales. Your most profitable market are the customers who have already bought from you. Focus on making money from back-end sales as much as you focus on getting new customers and members and you will really maximize your income.
How do you get people to your membership site?
1. Banner Advertisements
2. Sidebar Advertisements
3. Pop-up Advertisements
4. Floating Advertisements
5. Unicast Advertisements
6. Text Links
7. Co-Registration
8. Social networking
Once visitors are at your site, how do you get them interested in joining?
Provide Free Information. This strategy always works to draw visitors to your website and it is a good way to demonstrate the quality of your information. Keep in mind that too much free information may mean there’s no benefit to joining your site. Not enough information and you don’t give visitors enough to base a decision on.
Give visitors a peek inside with a free trial membership. Not only do they instill confidence, once customers get an inside look at all that you have to offer they will want to sign up immediately.
Give free reports and even ebooks to affiliates to give away. This report will include the affiliate’s unique ID and any sales made through that report will be credited to the affiliate. It’s a great way to get people to spread the word about your membership site.
Article Marketing. Article directories are a wonderful way to drive traffic to your membership site. They help to establish your credibility and they give potential subscribers a peek inside the offerings at your site. Also use article marketing to help build your opt-in list. Always include a link back to your website or sales page.
social networking. Forums, chat rooms, and blog posts are a good way to get the word out quickly about your membership site. Most forums, chat rooms, and even blogs will allow you to place a link back to your website in your signature link. Consider that many of the people you speak to in these venues may not be ready to purchase but they will be a good resource in the future – if you collect their information.
A JV Partnership is an online joint venture happens when you join forces with another online business to make some money. There are no tricks to joint ventures, other than finding a good partner, and joint ventures can and do take a variety of forms.
For example, a simple joint venture, which is also quite common, is for two information marketing businesses to bundle their products together and promote them to their combined email lists. The benefit to this type of arrangement is huge. Each business increases their exposure and customer base, each business makes money, and each business gives their customer and email list an opportunity to take benefit from a new product.
The benefits of adding a joint venture to your business plan include:
Bigger opt in list. How big is your current opt in list? Does it have room to grow? Would a bigger list mean more profits, tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year? A joint venture partnership has the power to broaden your opt in list in many ways. If you’re list leveraging with a partner, then anyone who responds, visits, your website, or makes a purchase is added to your opt in list.
Better customer relationships. Offering your customers a new opportunity, new product, or new service with a reputable partner gives you instant credibility not only as a respected business owner, but one that has their customers in mind and takes the time and effort to find and present quality opportunities to them.
When you offer your customers a quality product or service, you not only increase your credibility with them, you increase the likelihood that they’re going to buy from you again. You earn their respect and gratitude for bringing them valuable and beneficial opportunities and for connecting them with other spectacular businesses like yours.
New products. Partnering with another online business introduces new products into your product base. For example, you own and operate an information marketing business where your products range from a book on how to organize your home from top to bottom to personal organization services.
You could partner with a small business coach and create a product about organizing your home office for maximum productivity. Your partner will promote the book to their customers and add the product to their product base, and you can market the product as part of your product base. Down the line you could bundle the product with others and create a larger book package. You could interview your partner and create a product from that.
When it comes to online joint venture partnerships, there really isn’t a downside. You get the opportunity to make your customer’s happy, you build your list, you increase your product base, and you make money. It’s all good!
So how do you find the right JV Partner?
A joint venture project is only as good as the team. This makes finding the right partner imperative to a successful, and enjoyable, endeavor.
Where to look for a good JV partner:
1. With people you already do business with.
2.Your online network, forums, chat rooms
3.Seminars and workshops you attend
4. Post an ad in a relevant forum.
Once you identify someone you would like to partner with, take time planning and researching before you approach them. Find out everything about your potential partner before you contact them. Visit their website, read their books, sign up for their newsletters. Get to know their customers if possible. Does their target audience really fit your product or service? If they have a membership site, sign up for it and get to know their subscribers. Additionally, make sure they have complimentary skills. If you are a great writer or programmer then partnering with someone with similar skills will still leave you looking for an outside party to handle the marketing and promotion, however if you partner with someone with marketing and promotion skills, your tasks are taken care of.
Once you’re ready to contact them, consider calling them rather than sending an email. Email runs the risk of being deleted before it is ever read. If email is your choice then take the time to customize and personalize your email to the person. Another option is to contact your potential partner via snail mail. If you choose this option, consider sending your proposal via FedEx so that it isn’t mistaken as junk mail.
Any initial contact is best handled professionally and not as a sales pitch. Many business owners, like you, are extremely busy. They’ll happily listen to you if you present your proposal in a professional manner and present the opportunity as it would benefit them and their business. Pitch it right and you have a brand new and exciting adventure ahead of you.
Things to consider before starting a joint venture partnership:
-A Legal Agreement? With a legal agreement, everything is spelled out. A joint venture partnership legal agreement will leave no room for interpretation, miscommunication, errors or frustration. Absolutely everything from who handles what task to how profits are tracked to how each partner gets paid can be detailed explicitly. This means there will be no questions halfway through the project about who handles the next step or what profit percentages were originally agreed to. This will result in less stress and a better working relationship.
A legal agreement isn’t always necessary. If you’re working with someone whom you are comfortable with, whom you have worked with before, or you’re friends with then a legal agreement may not be necessary. It is fine to simply write down what each person will take care of and how you’ll split the profits and go from there. If you choose to use a joint venture agreement, you can find many legal forms online. Simply type “Joint venture agreement,” into your favorite search engine and you’ll have plenty to choose from. Some of the forms are even free.
-Approach your partner with the right frame of mind. A positive and enthusiastic attitude can and will be felt, and it will make a difference. Go into a potential partnership with an eye toward the possibilities and start things off right.
When presenting your proposal, stress the benefits for your partner. How much are they going to make? What do they need to do? Will they benefit from building their opt in list? Will they benefit by increasing their product base? Will their credibility improve? Present your offer in the most beneficial light for your partner. Tell your potential partner why you want to partner with them. Lay out your proposal, highlighting the benefits to your potential partner as you go. Be ready and willing to listen to your partner’s ideas, in fact it may be a good idea to ask them questions as you go so they feel involved in the presentation.
Once the meeting, phone call, or email is coming to a close, give your partner time to think about it. You can either make a date to check back in to see if they have any questions or you can leave it open ended and contact them again if you don’t hear from them after a few days.
Go into the partnership with a willingness to compromise and communicate. Any partnership has moments where one partner will need to compromise. If you’re prepared for these moments, then you’re a step ahead of the game. Stay focused on the larger purpose of the partnership and don’t allow yourself to get swallowed by the finer details that are often so easy to get stuck on. If your partner wants 55% of the profits, then fine, make sure that you negotiate the proposal so that you benefit elsewhere. Communication is also key, if you’re unhappy about something, be sure to express that to your partner while remembering to stay positive. Additionally, communicate when you’re pleased. Positive comments are helpful in maintaining a healthy equilibrium with your joint venture partner.
The big picture of a joint venture partnership is that you’re building a benefit that goes beyond profits. The potential for a successful joint venture partnership can be more customers; more associates in your network, more credibility, and yes…more profits. The right attitude toward your partner and your partnership can and will create a lasting benefit for years to come.
Promoting your JV Partnership.
Once your project is ready to launch, how do you get the word out? How do you create a buzz? Here are a few ideas to get started.
Ezines. In addition to talking about and promoting your upcoming joint venture in your own ezine, advertise your upcoming joint venture project in relevant ezines. Don’t forget to chat up the event in your partner’s ezine too. It’s great free exposure for me. Additionally if you offer reprint rights, other people can use your articles free of charge, in exchange for displaying your contact information, links to your site, and giving you credit for the writing. With any e-zine, the general rule of thumb is 80% content 20% promotion.
Blogs. Blogs, like ezines, are excellent free publicity. Not only can you promote on your own blog, you can guest blog on relevant blogs and promote your event there. Use the 80/20 rule here too.
Press releases. Tell the world about your project by issuing a press release or two. If you release it in stages you can issue a press release for every stage of the release. Press releases can be distributed both online and off.
[/tag]Advertise[/tag]. Share already planned advertising space, billboard space, and radio and TV time with your joint venture partner. OR you take on the cost of the advertising in exchange for a bigger piece of the joint venture pie. Don’t forget PPC campaigns. A highly targeted pay per click campaign can generate new members for your list and new prospective customers.
Freebies. Give away free reports, audios, and e-books . Build anticipation for the event by giving away freebies and attach links and ads inside the freebies to promote your upcoming joint venture
website. Create a website devoted specifically to your joint venture project. You can drive traffic directly to this website by a pay per click campaign, and email campaign, press releases, article marketing and search engine optimization.
Direct mail. While direct mail can be costly a postcard campaign to a purchased list is generally between .32 and .50 cents. If you have a 1-3% response rate, depending on the cost of your product, the postcard campaign will most likely pay for itself. Additionally, to cut the cost of the campaign, you can sell ad space on your postcard. Just take care to not let the ads detract from your offer.
Email campaign. Email campaigns are definitely cost effective and a highly targeted promotion can yield tremendous returns. Combine your opt in list, your partner’s opt in list and consider purchasing a list to send your promotion to. Your promotion for a purchased list will be different from the promotions to your opt in lists however, it is still possible for a purchased list to have great results.
affiliate programs. Many people forget to include their affiliates in their joint venture promotion plan, however affiliates can be the key to real profits. Why rely on your own marketing resources when you can employ your affiliates, and your joint venture partner’s affiliates, and really multiply the number of people who you reach and who buy your product or service?
Getting the word out about your joint venture project is just as important as marketing your business. You have a few key elements with a joint venture partnership that make marketing and promoting it easier. You have the potential element of urgency if you do not intend to keep this offer available for a long time. You also have the element of increased credibility when you work with another business owner. Take advantage of all these elements and use the marketing and promotion tools mentioned to make your joint venture the next big hit.
Membership marketing and joint venture opportunities are both excellent tools to grow your business. Start slow, create a plan for either or both, and enjoy the fruits of your labor. Your business will benefit, your customers will benefit, and your profits will grow. Good luck! 
Popularity: 10% [?]
Comments