How Being Fired Saved My Life

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Yes, as the title says being fired from my job saved my life and this post is going to explain to you exactly why I believe that. You see it has been almost 2 years since that day that I heard the new GM say to me, “We are going to let you go “ I was shocked, pissed, scared and probably every other emotion that we have when it happened. I mean how could this happen to me and what was my life going to be like now that the job and career I had worked hard for was now gone. Little did I know that I was on a new journey that I believe has saved my life and has given me a clear picture as to what my purpose in life is all about. My goal for telling you this story some two years later is if there is someone out there who might be struggling after losing there job don’t lose hope because just maybe you too will be saved and found your true calling.

Now I am not going to go into all the details as to how and why I was fired but I do want to start with maybe a little foreshadowing event that happened when I first graduated from college. I have to admit I was not a big reader in college but soon after I graduated people who had created big companies and appeared to be successful fascinated me. So, one day I was at Barnes and Noble and picked up a book about the guys who started Home Depot. In it I found out that one of the founders of Home Depot was fired from his job. He said it was the best thing that had happened to him; little did I know that would be the case for me too.

So here is why I feel that way:

Probably the single most reason I have come to believe that being fired has saved my life I feel is because I have not spent enough time developing my spirituality. You see, for years I worked on building my career, my health, my wealth and my family, but the one area of my life that was out of balance was my spirituality. Now I had been attending church but wasn’t really growing and maturing in my spirituality. What I came to realize is that I had been going at everything alone and was fighting what my true purpose here on earth is all about. Through reading Scripture and the “Purpose Driven Life” I have a renewed sense of trust in my faith and my savior, Jesus Christ. It is strange how the good Lord works but I now know that me being fired was his way of saying it is time to get closer to me and stop doing things on your own. Understanding and realizing this has brought a sense of calm and peace to my life. I now have a clear picture of what I am called to do and no matter have tough things get I know I am not alone.

Another reason I feel it has saved my life is because I am able to use this as a teaching moment. I know it sounds strange but being fired has given me the opportunity to show my kids that life is going to hit you and knock you down, but the important part is how you react to life’s struggles that matters. Hopefully by me showing them that dad did not quit and had faith throughout will help make them stronger.

My final breakthrough and realization that my life has been changed comes from being an entrepreneur. For starters being an entrepreneur has taken me out of my comfort zone. I no longer have the luxury of having a paycheck delivered to my bank account any more, but making a sale and knowing that a person has trusted in one of my products or services gives me such pride and more personal satisfaction than any paycheck has ever brought me. Also, by being my own boss (Oh, the real boss is my wife J) I have had opportunities to do the things I like and take the chances on projects and ideas I am interested in.

As I wrap up my story I am going to admit to you that finally coming to this understanding has not been easy and I hope you don’t have to go through tough times to find out your true purpose but if you do embrace the struggle and realize that the old cliché “Everything happens for a reason” is true. There is a plan for us and part of that plan is to learn from your struggles.

So, my goal moving forward is to use my blog and this platform to help and encourage others to live the life they always wanted. I will also begin to share more about my struggles and insights as I continue down this path of entrepreneurship. I hope you will join me on the journey.

To your success,

Dave McGarry

P.S. If you know someone who needs a little inspiration please share this with him or her. Also, I would love to get your feedback and learn your story by having you comment below.

How to Create a Membership Site that Generates Passive Income #5

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Simple Membership System

 

 

 

 

 

If you’ve followed the How to Create a Membership Site to Generate Passive Income article series, then you already know that there’s a truckload of profits waiting for you on the backend of your site. That is, you can make extra money by offering more products and even more expensive complimentary products to your members.

Now, one option is to be an affiliate for related products and services. The better option is to create these products yourself. That way, you keep 100% of your profits.

Here’s what I suggest: While you’re planning your first membership site, you should also simultaneously plan what complimentary products you’ll sell on the backend. And one way to make money on the backend is by creating a family of related sites and linking them together.

Let me give you an example from my own business. I run and use the following membership sites:

  • Simple Member System – This is my signature product that teaches marketers how to start and run a fixed-term membership site in as little as 48 hours from now.
  • Affiliatenaire.com – Here’s another membership site. This one teaches marketers how to make money selling other people’s products and services.
  • Traffic-Fuel.com – This site teaches how to get completely free traffic to any website.

You can see why linking these sites together (cross-selling them on the backend) works. Any marketer needs to learn how to create content, so they join Contentnaire™.

Most marketers – even if they create their own products – will make additional money as affiliates, so they’ll join Affiliatenaire™ to learn how to get bigger affiliate paychecks.

Finally, most marketers will want to learn how to incorporate residual income streams into their business, which Simple Member System™ teaches them how to do.

Tip: The advantage of creating a family of sites goes beyond merely having something to sell on the backend. A family of sites also helps you develop your brand and grow your brand recognition. And that means more sales, more customers and more profits.

Now let me give you a few examples of how you can create a family of membership sites around a related niche (or even around a singular topic):

  • Let’s suppose you run a health site on the topic of lowering one’s blood pressure. You might also create sites around similar problems, such as lowering cholesterol levels and leading a heart-healthy lifestyle.
  • Maybe you run a training site that teaches people how to housetrain their new puppy and teach him basic manners (sit, stay, etc). You might create another site focused on getting rid of problem behaviors such as jumping, biting, digging and similar. Your third site might be for those who want to teach their dogs tricks. You might even create another sites centered around dog agility.
  • You run a homeschooling site that focuses on delivering lesson plans and ideas for math. You can create a family of sites on other topics such as science, English and history. Or, you can offer homeschooling lessons by grade (e.g., 7th grade, 8th grade, 9th grade, etc).

When you’re building your first membership site, ask yourself: What ELSE do my customers want?

Do your market research to find out what other products they’re currently buying. Then create a family of sites around related topics. It’s the quick and easy way to tap into the backend profits… on autopilot!

So I hope you have enjoyed this series of articles and have decided to start your own membership site. If you want a simple and fast way to get started then I recommend trying the Simple Member System to get your membership site up in the next 48 hours!

To your success,

Dave McGarry

 

How to Create a Membership Site to Generate Passive Income #4

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Simple Membership SystemWelcome to the fourth installment of this series “How to Create a Membership Site to Generate Passive Income.”  In part three of this series we talked about how to set the membership site on auto pilot, so you can live the “Internet Lifestyle” dream. Well, today, we are going to talk to you about one of the best ways to increase your profits from a membership. Few people do this but those that do are making it big time!

When you first thought about opening a membership site, you probably spent at least a little time crunching the numbers.Right?

Example: You did calculations like this: If you have 200 members each paying you $50 a month, that’s $10,000 per month. Or if you open multiple membership sites, charge $27, and get 500 members, that’s $13,500 per month. Or maybe your goal was 1000 members across one or more sites each paying $19 per month, which puts $19,000 in your pocket.

Chances are, however, you stopped calculating when you figured out that final front-end figure. But here’s the thing: That “final” figure only tells half the story. If you’re only taking into consideration your front end profits, you’re leaving a lot of money on the table.

You see, some of the easiest money you’ll ever make is by selling more products and even more expensive products to your existing customers on the backend.

Consider this: If you put up a good sales letter for your membership site, you may convert anywhere from 2% to 5% of your visitors. So if 100 people walk through your virtual door, two to five of them will become members.

Now let’s say you have 100 members paying you $20 per month (that’s $2000 per month). These 100 members are going to be open to your other offers, meaning you’ll likely convert in the double digits. So perhaps you offer these 1000 members a $50 ebook – you may find 20% (20 members) taking advantage of the offer, which puts an extra $1000 in your pocket.

With just one offer you boosted your income by 50%, simply by selling a product to your existing customers! Now imagine if you did this with 500 customers… 1000 customers… or more. You can see the possibilities!

Now in order to tap into these backend profits, you need to offer something that complements but does not compete with your membership site. One of the best ways to do this is to recommend related products from within each lesson. That is, you tell your members where to get more information on a topic that you’re not covering in depth.

Examples:

  • Let’s suppose your membership site teaches people how to create and market their own products. And let’s suppose you get to the topic of search engine marketing. You may go into depth on the topic of SEO, but refer your members to another product in order to learn more about PPC marketing.
  • Your general “how to adopt a child” site might refer members to specific sites or products if they want to adopt children from specific countries, such as Guatemala or China.
  • You might refer your dog obedience and training members to a “trick training” book (since you’re not covering that topic in the site).
  • Your weight-loss site might refer people to an ebook that covers weight loss supplements, herbs and vitamins in depth.

Another way to make money on the backend is by recommending that your members buy a specific tool in order to complete a task.

Examples:

  • During the lesson on SEO (search engine optimization), you may recommend that your readers purchase a WordTracker.com subscription.
  •  You’re teaching people how to do build and profit from a mailing list. You recommend Aweber.com.
  • You’re teaching people how to repaint a classic muscle car. You recommend a specific store (using your affiliate link) where people can pick up the sanding and painting supplies.
  • Your golf site might point people towards buying a specific set of clubs.

There’s a fortune that lays hidden in the backend of your membership site.

You can tap into this fortune by regularly making related, complimentary offers to your existing members!

Stay tuned for the final segment of this series. If there is only one article to read it will be this one because knowing this will take you from playing small ball to playing in the big leagues!

To your success,

Coach Dave

 

How to Create a Membership Site to Generate Passive Income #3

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Simple Membership SystemQuick, what is it about a running a membership site that makes you NOT want to run one? If you’re like most marketers, the idea of being chained to your computer week after week delivering content is a major downside.

When you first got online, you probably had dreams of living the “Internet lifestyle.” You couldn’t wait to get away from the daily grind and job responsibilities. And yet if you run a membership site, it can feel like a job. You can’t see yourself running off to play on some exotic beach when you need to upload content at least once a week or more.

One alternative is to outsource this task. That is, you hire someone else to upload the content every week when you’re not available. But outsourcing comes with it’s own problems – namely, you need to 100% trust your freelancer to upload the content on time.

So if you haven’t yet developed a relationship with a freelancer, you probably won’t feel comfortable leaving your business (and your customers’ satisfaction) in a stranger’s hands.

Now before you toss aside the idea of ever having a vacation while running a membership site, let me give you two game-changing words: Autoresponder delivery.

You see, with a traditional membership site (like a PLR site), all members get the exact same content. So the person who just joined today is going to get the same content this month as the person who’s been a member for a year. Next month, everyone gets the same content again.

Obviously, this doesn’t make sense if you’re running a training site. That is, you want everyone to start with lesson #1 and get the lessons in order. So the person who joins today gets lesson #1. Meanwhile, the longtime member may be getting lesson #50.

The solution? A true “set it and forget it” model, which you can achieve by delivering all the content using an autoresponder.

Here’s how it works…

1.   You create content for your entire course. So if you have a yearlong course with weekly lessons, you’d create 52 lessons. If you have a three month course with weekly lessons, you’d create 12 lessons.

2.   Load your course into your autoresponder. Next, you need to get an autoresponder through a service like Aweber.com or GetResponse.com. Simply load up your messages into your autoresponder. Set the first lesson to go out immediately after the customer joins the course. Set each subsequent message to go out on a weekly basis.

3.   Create a sales letter. Now create your sales letter and insert your order button (from a payment processor that accepts recurring billing, such as PayPal).

4.   Drive traffic to your site. Here you can use all the usual methods of driving traffic, such as affiliate and joint venture partners, content marketing, pay per click marketing, social media marketing and similar.

5.   Play golf (or whatever). Now the members roll in and your autoresponder takes care of the rest, leaving you free to do what you want!

Just imagine: You could set up multiple autoresponder-based, fixed-term membership sites. Just set one up, drive traffic and move on to setting up the next one. Rinse and repeat until you’re making as much money as you want!

In part 4 of the 5 part series on “How to Create a Membership Site to Generate Passive Income” we are going to focus in on creating real passive income by having Back End Offers.

If you missed the first two parts of this series you can find them by click on this link for part #1 and this link for part #2.

Until the next one to your success,

Dave

 

How to Create a Membership Site that Generates Passive Income #2

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Simple Membership SystemIn Part 1 of the “How to Create a Membership Site that Generates Passive Income”,  you’ll notice that I gave an example of a 12 week course. That was no accident.

You see, most people who think of “membership sites” think of content that’s delivered weekly or monthly… indefinitely. Members pay month after month and the owners deliver month after month.

This works fairly well if you’re running a PLR membership site or similar. But if you’re running a training site, your members are going to drift away if you just give them tips and tricks indefinitely. And they might even bail out a couple months after joining, simply because there’s no end in sight.

So here’s what you do instead…

Create a fixed-term membership site. This is a site that runs for a specific period of time, such as three months, six months, twelve months… or any length of your choosing.

Tip: For best results, create a step-by-step series as described in Part 1 of this article.

Here’s why this works…

Imagine if your site went on indefinitely. Someone might join and after a couple months quit. That’s pretty normal. But if the course only stretches out for six months, psychologically the customers will feel better if they just remain a member for the entire six months. They want to see through to the end.

This is actually a Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) trick. Simply put, people don’t like unfinished business. That’s why they’ll even read books they don’t like or watch boring movies – once they’ve invested some time into the activity, they want to see it through to the end.

While just creating a fixed term site created this psychological commitment to your course, you can make the commitment even stronger by building anticipation for the upcoming lessons. That is, from the very first lesson you work on “selling” the other lessons. Like this:

Build anticipation for the whole course in lesson #1. Your first lesson should include an overview of all the lessons. But don’t just write it out like a table of contents. Instead, write it like bullet points to a sales letter.

Example: “In Lesson #3 you’ll discover a simple trick that will triple your conversion rate!” In other words, arouse curiosity whenever possible.

Build anticipation for the next lesson at the end of each lesson. At the end of each lesson you’ll want to include something like, “Stay tuned for next week’s lesson, where you’ll find out the secrets of creating cash-pulling headlines!”

Build anticipation for future lessons and bonuses periodically. Finally, from time to time you should remind members of upcoming lessons. For example, in lesson #5 you might remind members of a particularly valuable lesson or bonus that you’re offering in lesson #9. Again, write it like a sales letter bullet, where you arouse curiosity and put forth a benefit.

The biggest challenge in running a membership site is retaining members.

With a typical membership site, your members may only stick around for two or three months. But you can quickly and easily ensure that more of your members stay around for six months, twelve months or even longer by creating a fixed-term membership site!

In part 3 of this series I will be showing you the fun stuff, which is “How to set it and forget it!”

Stay tuned!

Dave