Released on: October 5, 2008, 10:55 am

Press Release Author: Lekh Raj

Industry: Internet & Online

Press Release Summary: Membership sites can be very profitable indeed; but
maintaining them is no walk in the park, especially if you do not have the proper
knowledge or experience.

Press Release Body: Membership Sites are one of the most lucrative business models
on the internet. Some of the benefits include earning continual income, incurring
less advertising expenses, earning the trust and respect of members, building your
reputation, and being able to make various offers to members.
Membership sites can be very profitable indeed; but maintaining them is no walk in
the park, especially if you do not have the proper knowledge or experience.
Here are the most common challenges encountered by membership site owners, and the
steps you can take to resolve these issues.
1) You have to provide excellent content or products on a consistent basis.
To keep members happy and satisfied, you have to provide quality content. Unless you
are happy creating the content yourself, you are better off outsourcing the task to
qualified freelancers, so you can focus on the moneymaking aspects of your business.
When you outsource, you may run the risk of hiring incompetent ghostwriters. That is
why you should test them with a small assignment first to separate the wheat from
the chaff.
Once you have chosen your ideal freelancers, ask them if they can provide the same
type of quality content on a consistent basis.
Before you launch your membership site, make sure that you have already found the
best freelancers or ghostwriters for the job, and that they are committed to
providing their services every month.
Keep the contact details of other good freelancers. In case your main ones fail to
deliver due to any reason, you can choose the 2nd or 3rd best to fill in their
positions.
2) Reports indicate that the average member cancels after 3 months.
Even if you have monthly income coming in, you need to continuously promote your
membership sites so that new members can replace the ones who have cancelled.
However, your ultimate aim is to keep your members from canceling by providing
excellent products and services. Over deliver and strive to exceed their
expectations.
As an example, let us say you are providing quality PLR products and teaching your
members how to make money with them through a step by step system. If your
techniques and products really work, and their ROI (return on investment) is high,
they would be crazy to cancel their membership.
3) Membership sites have lower conversion rates than other site models.
Since membership sites charge monthly, people are more doubtful of joining because
they have to shed out money every month without knowing if it is truly worth it. So
how can you resolve this?
Forced continuity is the answer. You can set up a free trial offer or a special deal
.You can then bill them monthly after the trial period, unless they cancel.
Forced continuity has gotten a negative reputation because either some customers are
not aware of the monthly charges, or the membership site owner did not make the
forced continuity statement clear on his website.
That is why you should clearly state that your members can cancel anytime, and tell
them exactly how to do it. Give them your helpdesk url, email, or phone number as an
added assurance that they may contact you if they want to cancel.
If you can set up a system where the members can automatically cancel by themselves,
it will be a huge advantage since some members might be too hesitant to ask for a
cancellation (hence they would not join in the first place).
4) Members can not handle information overload.
Many membership sites simply provide too many materials that tend to get members
confused.
Giving enormous amounts of valuable stuffs is an effective strategy to keep members,
but it may backfire if the members do not know what to do with everything you have
given them.
Consider providing step by step, foolproof instructions on how to use the membership
products. Unless you know your members knowledge or experience level, do not assume.
Ask your members to fill up a survey so you will know how to treat the majority of
them. If there are many differing opinions or if in doubt, explain everything as if
you are doing it to a 12 year old.
5) You may have to deal with some unethical members (Members using one-time credit
cards, those who sign up, download everything, and then cancel immediately, those
who share their login info).
What you can do is to blacklist these unethical members so you can avoid having them
as your customers in the future.
You may also use a download protection software like DL Guard to prevent members
from sharing their download details.
Since we can not do much about these issues, do not waste your energy on them, just
focus on the more important aspects of your business.
6) Credit card has been declined or has expired.
Use a membership management solution that allows a reminder email to be
automatically sent to any member whose card has expired or has been declined.
The way the software works is it will automatically ask members to update their
credit card details if it fails to re bill them. Members will regain access once
they have given valid credit card information.
If this is not feasible for you, you (or someone you hired) can always contact them
to update their information to restore their account access.
Operating and maintaining a membership site can be challenging, but the benefits far
outweigh any disadvantages. In this article, you discovered how to handle the most
common dilemmas encountered by membership site owners. Are you now ready to cash in
on this billion dollar industry?

Web Site: http://www.awesome-membership-riches.com

Contact Details: Lekh Raj v.p.o-Barin Teh-Baldwara Distt-Mandi (Himachal
Pradesh)-175033
+91-9882164277
arun258944@gmail.com