Making A Membership Site is HARD! If you are planning one or even considering making one I have some tips and tricks that I have discovered while making my Small Business, Entrepreneur and Realtor Marketing Membership site.

Step One – Figure out what you are going to sell on your membership site

I have A TON of marketing information all around the internet, some free and some paid. It is on different blogs, on different pages and some is even hidden from the world right now (I am a great marketer, NOT a great organizer). So a membership site allowed me to get it all in one place at one time. It also allowed me to get up and running with content quickly. If you do not have “stuff” made already, you are going to have to build that into the timeline or cost of setting up your membership site. Here are some things I am going to be adding to my site:

• Videos
• Recorded webinars
• Recorded teleseminars
• Ebooks
• Posts for members only
• Photos of how I do my internet marketing
• PDFs and Word Doc of forms I have set up for doing each part of my business

Step Two – Figure out what software to use to make your membership site

I have checked out a number of membership site options online including WildApricot.com, iGroops.com and a WordPress pluging called Wishlist for WordPress. While wishlist seemed like it would take more time (and money) to set up initially, since I planned on going for the long haul it just made sense. Here are some of the things I liked about Wishlist:

• It allowed me to pay one time ($99) instead of a monthly fee like some of the others had
• It allowed me to set up different levels (I have realtors and entrepreneurs who are interested in different things so I HAVE to be able to separate them)
• It allowed me put everything in one place
• I can add people on the back end without having to have them come through my shopping cart (this was SUPER important to me since I have people who have already purchased services and who I don’t want to have to charge again)
• I could set up one time charges for a lifetime membership instead of having to bill monthly (I am anti-subscription because I CAN NOT HAVE one more thing that I pay for monthly AND I don’t want to have to keep up with monthly billing hassles….:)
• It integrated with PayPal and 1ShoppingCart so while I am using PayPal right now for ease of setup, I can switch to 1ShoppingCart down the line if I get all fired up to do affiliate programs

Lastly you have to Figure out how to get people to sign up for your membership site!

I am fortunate to have a vast network of people and internet properties where I can market my membership site. If you do not have that you need to figure out a way to get people interested in your topic or information. Here are some of the ways that I plan to market my membership site:

• On my blog(s)
• In my newsletter
• When I speak for free
• When I speak paid
• Tweet it
• Facebook page it
• Direct mail
• Ask for referrals
• Have my project manager call my database
• Give away free memberships to get people interested and using the site (my “free” memberships cost a dollar because I can’t figure out how to make them free-free…:)
• PPC – Pay per click

Final thoughts! DO NOT let anything stop you if you want to make a membership site. It was scary and frustrating getting it set up for the first time. I am not sure it works exactly right (I think some levels can see things they shouldn’t be able to and the navigation bar is a little wonky) BUT it is up and ready to roll. If you think you are going to be able to roll something out on this scale without a few hiccups you might as well stop right now and read The Dip by Seth Godin! In every endevour there is a dip where you think it will never work right and if you start not knowing that you will get through it then you have failed before you began!

The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

Right now this post is the only way to access the site, since I wanted to give my marketing artfully readers the first crack at banging around in there. I will keep you up with how it goes over on the membership site AND if you have gotten this far and would like to access the site for half price lifetime memberships – please call me and I will send you a payment link and get you set up personally (this will come off as soon as I know that the site is working properly and will not be repeated)

Related posts:

1. Should you digg your own site?
2. Internet Marketing – Making the most of your marketing efforts
3. Big Changes Coming!

What a time we live in! Marketing is free, I am SO happy about that and so confused that more businesses are not leveraging these channels.

Some history…in 1999 I worked at Digital Chainsaw, an internet company, where we built websites for small businesses. Many of these companies had no online presence and were trying to be early adopters. The cost to do the blueprint for the site (NOTHING was built) was $1,000 and the cost of building the site was from $20,000-$40,000. Now don’t get me wrong, there are still some businesses that have to have professionally built websites with big back-end programming, but most small businesses do not. The last thing about that time to tell you, it was deep in the heart of the tech boom and small business start-up money was flowing freely!

Fast forward 10 years to a new business start-up (if you are not doing marketing you are a start-up no matter how old your company is). I talk to more and more small business owners that do not have ANY resources for marketing. And THAT IS OKAY! I can’t even believe I can say that but it is true.

Today we are going to talk about FREE MARKETING! Upcoming posts will talk about low cost marketing and then big money marketing  – which still will not come close to the $20,000 that used to be the norm!

FREE MARKETING IDEAS!

• Blogs – today you can have a blog set up in minutes for free! I suggest starting with www.wordpress.com but www.blogger.com works and is my geeky husband’s favorite. You can add widgets, customize the blog with your logo and get your marketing message out there! The drawback, for me, on free blogs is that it is hard to put contact forms on free blogs which will be part of our moderate pricing marketing. If you want to skip the free blog and go to the medium priced blog. I recommend a self-hosted wordpress blog for as low as $500!
• Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn – These social media sites allow you to put up a profile, communicate with your customers and friends, post links to your blog posts and set up FREE event notifications. They allow you to build a community around your brand and I can’t tell you how many referrals I have businesses get while watching my “friends”. If you would like to find out more, check out our social networking video series (not free but VERY affordable!)
• FREE Websites – www.wetpaint.com, www.squidoo.com and other sites will allow you to put a free page on the subject of your choice. When I was a realtor in Dunedin Florida a few years ago I put up this page, years later it is still there AND if you do a search on Squidoo for Dunedin real estate, my page is the only page. Do a search for Dunedin screen printing and NOTHING comes up, same for Dunedin Lawyer, Accountant, and cleaning. Imagine if you had the Tampa Bay area sewn up for your local business? What would that do for your bottom line? AND google LOVES these sites!

So these are my three best FREE marketing ideas. They cost you nothing but time and provide BIG results! If you have some other free ideas let me know in the comments…:)

Related posts:

1. Duplicate Content for Small Business Owners and MLMs
2. One-offs – How they cost small business owners time and opportunity!
3. Realtor Marketing – FREE Social Networking Workshop

I LOVE WordPress blogs! They are easy to use and basically FREE except for the domain name registration and hosting costs! I had a client (Ken Rossi of www.HomeBuyingTampaBay.com) who wanted to add a video to a post. One note to WP users – you do not have to do “turn off visual”, just go to the the “HTML” tab and don’t switch back to “Visual”!

Here is how! THANK YOU JACK HUMPHREY FOR THE VIDEO!

Related posts:

1. How To Add A Postlet To Your WordPress Blog
2. Thesis For WordPress – How To Videos
3. Difference Between Small Business Websites Versus WordPress Blogs