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

Posted on May 23, 2012 by Dave McGarry

Welcome 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

Niche Marketing: How to Profit from it Part II

Posted on February 27, 2012 by Dave McGarry

This post is the continuation from the previous post on “Niche Marketing: How to profit from it.” you may recall in the previous post I talked about my story and how I came to be where I am today but the main point I really want to drive home to you is that I was not born an entrepreneur and as I explained most of my life I never thought about owning my own business or leaving a legacy behind. So, for those of you who say, “well I don’t know where to begin or I am not sure I have what it takes to be an entrepreneur,” then look at my story and realize you just might have an opportunity staring you in the face and telling you to go for it.

Okay, so let’s move forward with part II of Niche Marketing.

What is Niche Marketing?

If you ask a dozen marketers you will probably get a few different answers, but the one I gravitate towards is, niche marketing is a focused, targetable portion of a market that you try to sell goods to.

For example, one of the most recent and best niche marketing products to hit the market was done by Toyota. Toyota knew that there was a percentage of car drivers who were environmentally conscience and wanted a car that could go long distances without consuming a lot of gas. These individuals cared less about what the car looked like or how fast it went but was more concerned about the environment. Toyota exploited this market and built a car that these individuals would pay more money for and also be put on a waiting list to get one. No other major car company at the time went after this highly focused and targeted group leaving the opportunity for Toyota to capitalize. There are many more examples of niche marketing but the Toyota example is a real good one to study. Although Toyota had success many companies do not but here is a list of positives and negatives to niche marketing.

Positives and Negatives to Niche Marketing

Positives:

Profitable – As I just mentioned Toyota was rewarded handily for their entry into the environmentally friendly conscience consumer, which helped their bottom line and profits for the entire company.
Hungry – If you find a market that is dying for their need to be filled you have ventured into what I call a “Hungry” market. Finding a hungry market is key to successful niche marketing.
Loyal – Most of the time if you find a highly focused and hungry market these individuals become raving fans and are very loyal to you. That is if your product and service are good!

Negatives:

Too small of market – Sometimes you might find a niche that is too small to offset costs associated with bringing a product or service to market.
Untapped for a reason – A big mistake that marketers make sometimes is that they think they find a niche market that is untapped but the market is untapped for a reason.
Crowded – Sometimes if a market is hungry and there is a lot of competition that can lead to an over crowded market and lots of competition.

Most effective Marketing Strategies

Now there are many different marketing strategies you can implement, but for the sake of this post and for my presentation to the YEA I am going to focus in on the ones that have been effective for me and my business.

When I first started my online business I thought it was going to be as easy as building a website and having hundreds if not thousands of people come to it. Unfortunately, I was way wrong and the sad part is I should have known better. Having a product or service is one thing but getting be to know about it comes down to marketing. After some work with my business coach I implemented the following strategies to help sell my product:

Email News Letter – One of the best ways for me to deliver information and build a trust with potential clients came from my online newsletter. I created an option for subscribers to join my list and every week I would send them an e-newsletter with tips, suggestions, and personal stories. By providing them solid and valuable information I helped build credibility and trust before I even pitched them something.
Blog – I am sure you have all heard about blogs and what they can do for a business and this is the very first thing I started when I began my marketing. Several of my articles where picked up by the search engines and brought traffic to my site, which then allowed me to establish the relationship
Facebook Ads – Facebook Ads really was one of the best strategies I implemented. As a marketer the ability to dial into a selective target market, which is what Facebook let’s you do is priceless. At one time over 50% of my traffic came from Facebook Ads
Facebook Fan Page I created a Facebook Fan Page for my site Working Mom Workouts , which also allowed me to build a tribe of fans that I could build a relationship with before I tried to sell them anything.
Mommy Bloggers – I reached out to a particular group of moms who blog and are well connected in the “mommy circle”. What I did was I provided them a sample of my product and in return I asked them to blog about it to their followers. Nothing more powerful then to get a good review from a person who has influence over a lot of your target market.
Google Adwords When I first started using Google Adwords I lost money and was not very successful but after taking a course I learned how to lower my cost per click and also write better headlines to get clicks to my site. Another great strategy that paid off.

Those strategies were just several that I tried but they were also my most effective. The key to any good marketing plan is to test, measure, and track your ads or strategies to see if they are working. Keep the ones that work and ditch the ones that don’t. Simple as that!

Well, with that I will end my talk on Niche Marketing and I hope you learned something that you can take along in your entrepreneurial journey!

3 Simple Ways to Profit From Your Blog

Posted on February 16, 2012 by Dave McGarry

If you have a blog and want to make some money and profit with it then here is 3 simple ways to profit from your blog!

Establish Yourself as an Expert

I am sure you have heard that by writing a book you almost instantly position yourself as an expert. Well, the same is true with a blog because no matter what you’re selling or what business your business model is, a blog can help you achieve more because it helps establish you as an expert.

As I mentioned earlier whereas people use to publish books to showcase their expertise, now most anyone can publish a blog. And once that blog becomes popular, the blogger’s status is further elevated in the niche.

And that is NOT all.

The more good content you pst, the more your readers start to trust you…and that indirectly leads to more sales.

Plus if you allow your readers to interact with you(by allowing comments), that further strengthens your bond with them. End result? A more profitable blog.

Get Publicity Opportunities

Some people use blogs to raise their status in a niche. And some people use this elevated status as a springboard to more opportunities, such as free publicity and book deals.

Example: The big book publishers like to see when one of their newly signed authors has a platform. By platform I mean a waiting audience. A blog is one such platform. If you build a popular blog and then go after a book deal, you can bet the publishers will take note.

Promote Affiliate Offers

The third and final way to make money from your blog is to promote affiliate offers. What do I mean by affiliate offers. Well, there are lots of products being sold online and people who own those products are willing to pay a commission to you if you sell it to your faithful followers. One of the biggest affiliates out there is Amazon. Back in the early days that is how Amazon built a huge business by having other people sell the product on their site or to their list of followers while paying a small commission on each sale.

So how do you go about finding and promoting an affiliate product?

Complete these steps to get started:

Choose a hungry niche
Select a profitable, in demand product to sell to that niche.
Set up a blog and start creating content that caters to the niche.
Promote your affiliate product on your blog (sometimes even directly in your posts) and start making money.
Drive targeted, cash in hand prospects to your blog…and cash in!

**One mistake to not make and that is do not promote crap…meaning make sure you believe in the product and use it yourself! Surefire way to lose credibility!**

Those are just three simple ways to to profit from your blog. If you would like to learn more you can check out my “31 Day Guide to Blogging for Profits.”

The Top 3 Business Principles I Learned from my Daughter selling Girl Scout Cookies!

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Dave McGarry

Everything you need to know about basic sales and marketing for your small business can be learned from observing the selling of Girl Scout cookies. Yes, you heard me right I am talking about those cookies that are sold only one time a year, which if you are like me you could eat a whole box in one sitting if you tried 🙂

This past year happened to be my daughters first year in Girl Scouts. Now, throughout the years I have bought many boxes, probably more than I care to share with you, but I never really saw the power and insight behind the actual selling.

In case you do not have daughters or have not been associated with something similar to Girl Scouts I will give you a brief overview of my understanding, which I am not totally in on the inside so I may have a few facts wrong but here is the overview.

The first step that the girls take is to pick a charity that they want to raise and donate money to. Then, each troop is asked to set a goal of how many boxes of cookies they want to sell as a troop and also individually. Now, if you are health conscious like me and do not want to gain weight from eating so many cookies they have an awesome way to get around that by donating cookies to the troops. Finally, a small portion of the proceeds go back to the troop and the girls use that money to do some team outings. It really is a great way to teach our young girls entrepreneurship, teamwork,philanthropy, and many more great skills.

Okay, so that is a brief overview of the Girl Scouts and now I am sure you are asking yourself, ” how can I learn everything I need to know about sales and marketing from selling Girl Scout cookies?” Well ,that my friend is going to be easy, so let me explain.

First of all, if you have a product that people want, then selling it will be easy. I know what you are thinking, “well duh, that makes sense.” And yes, all of us keenly understand that basic concept in theory but when you look around and study businesses that have failed you see that sometimes the entrepreneur believes in their mind that they have a product people want but in actuality the market does not. Now, I am not saying everybody is going to by Girl Scout cookies but anyone who has ever had a thin mint is not going to say no to buying some boxes, which goes to my argument that the product is great and people want it 🙂

Key #1 have a product or service people want and need and you will have no problem making sales!

The second key concept is to have an irresistible offer. Now, I know I am biased but my daughter is the cutest thing to ever walk this planet and how could anyone turn down a little girl walking up to you in her Girl Scout uniform. Shoot before I had my daughter I could remember getting out of my car and seeing the girls sitting outside the grocery store selling cookies. Every time they got my order because I could not resist the offer of a little girl selling a great product.

Key #2 is to have an irresistible offer that a prospect can’t refuse!

The final key concept to learn is the call to action. The Girl Scout cookies are only sold once a year, around the Jan-March time frame, so if you don’t get them during that time period you have to wait until next year. Shoot, the other day a gentlemen bought enough to almost make it the entire year. That is of course if you don’t eat entire sleeve in one sitting like I have done before 🙂

Key #3 is to have a call to action that will prompt the client to buy. We as human beings tend to put things off until the last minute but if you set the urgency in their mind you have a better chance of getting the sale.

So, just to recap the key points here:

#1 create a product or service people want

#2 create an irresistible offer

#3 have a call to action

If you just implement those three concepts into your online or offline business you will have no problem attracting leads and making sales.

If you want to learn more principles to growing your business check out this FREE webinar at www.attractmoreleads.com

Have you heard of Facebook Webinars?

Posted on June 6, 2011 by Dave McGarry

I know most of you at some point in the last few months have either been on a webinar or has had someone invite you to a webinar. Also, you have probably heard all the buzz about automated webinars. Now, I have to admit I have been struggling with what webinar system I want to use to promote my www.workingmomworkouts.com , until now.

As most of you who own or run your own business it is not uncommon to be working on Saturday or Sunday. Well, my wife and the kids were out shopping and doing the girly stuff, so I decided to sit down at the computer and read through some emails. I think probably one of the best decisions I have made in a long time and here is why.I follow quite a few internet marketing “gurus” but as of lately I have been real selective on who’s email I actually open up and read. Well, one of the guys who I am following is, Keith Baxter of Affiliate Radio. I am so glad I did because I have now decided on which webinar system I am going to use to promote my products.

Listen, I can not do it justice by writing about it. You need to take the next 30 minutes and turn everything off and go watch it. Here is the link . If you are serious about taking your business to another level and webinars are not part of your marketing strategy, you are going to be losing a lot of money! Plus, when you see how this webinar uses facebook to promote your products or services you are going to flip out! Go check it out NOW!

Let me know what you think when it is over!