Hey, David Risley here with Blog Marketing Academy, with another reader question of the day! Today’s reader question of the day comes from Frank Angelone, from Social Tech Zone. He’s asking today… “Is it still possible to make decent money with Google AdSense?” And he sent a little bit of background information… “All the talk…
Membership sites come in a lot of different flavors. Some of them do recurring billing while others are just a delivery vehicle for a one-off product.
There are a bunch of different reasons why you’d probably want (or need) to set up a membership site in order to jump start your online business.
In fact, this is why I currently have six different membership sites in operation. Only two of them are recurring and the other four are traditional products where I simply used a membership site as the delivery vehicle.
But, there’s always that story of the first one. 🙂
We know that continuity income is a great idea. And we know that membership sites are a great way to do it.
But, this leads into the next natural step here: Determining what exactly to do inside your membership site.
After talking with a lot of people via email, via consulting calls, via Academy mastermind calls… I see that membership sites are on people’s minds. But, the “why” for it usually goes something like this…
Answer me this…
Which do you think is easier?
It should be obvious, but the second option is much better for your business.
That is called “continuity income”. Continuity simply means that the payments come in on a continuous basis.
One of the most common pieces of advice you hear about internet business is…
Take Action.
Nothing new here. Of course, that doesn’t mean you’re making a habit of it, but still, you’ve heard this before. You can spend time thinking about things, or you could spend time doing.
What you’re about to read is important. If you want to have a successful business – online or offline – then do not simply scan this article and move on in a fit of ADD. Understand it fully and apply it.
I don’t say this to float my own boat. Not at all. I say it because… it needs to be said. We need to come back to business basics. And most people in the online business world gloss over the importance of it. Here we go…
Are you a blogger with a smaller blog… looking to grow your revenue into something worth your time? Then consider this…
When you spend your time chasing “chump change”, then chances are that’s all you’ll ever make. Chump change is basically some amount of money which is insignificant.
Let’s call a spade a spade…
There are a ton of internet marketing products out there to buy. A “shit ton” of them (that’s an official number, as of now). Some of them are good. Some of them suck. Many of them contain the same information as another.
I’ve been to Blogworld many, many times now. Pretty much ever since I knew it existed, I’ve never missed a conference. And for 3 events now, I’ve been the “track leader” for monetization.
In all the Blogworlds I’ve gone to, the 2012 event in New York City is one of the best I’ve attended. For me, this event stood out for a couple of reasons:
I have done my share of hourly consulting for my usual rate of $250/hour. Does the money suck? Of course, not.
But, I’m shutting it down. And I’ll explain why. And why – if you do hourly billing for clients – you might want to think about the consequences.
Political campaigns are an interesting thing to watch, from the perspective of marketing. And you can learn alot by watching the political campaigns in action.
If you remove yourself from the emotions of whichever candidate you support (or hate) and instead just watch from a MARKETING perspective, the lessons are many.
How would you like to learn how to use simple little Wordpress to literally deposit hundreds of dollars a day into your Clickbank account?
Did that sound…. spammy?
Probably.
But, give me a minute. Because, what I have to tell you is indeed the real deal.
A guy wants to open up a store. He is tired of his regular job and wants to do something different.
He reads a lot about stores. And then jumps right into setting up a store. He puts the shelves in there. He buys one of those big glowing “OPEN” signs. He makes everything all pretty. He looks forward to those hoardes of people who will, of course, come by to check out his pretty store.
Let’s say he even gets people to come in. He has the place all decked out. And he’s happy that he’s getting a little bit of foot traffic each day.
Then, one day, he sits down. And he asks…. “HOW AM I GOING TO MONETIZE THIS STORE?”
W.T.F?!
So, webinars are awesome for a variety of reasons. They work well in terms of making sales of a product, too.
But, what product? Do you have to have gone through a bunch of work to create your own product in order to have a reason to do a webinar?
Nope.
Have you ever considered doing a webinar of your own? Or do you think this is something only the “big guys” do?
As you guys may have noticed, I have been doing more webinars lately. I intend to do more, of course. I have some plans coming up in that regard which I’ll tell you guys about soon. 🙂
But, there are good reasons why I’m doing webinars. Here are 6 of them…
If you’re a blogger who is uncomfortable selling from your blog, here’s a technique that is super-simple and can make you more money.
This might work. I’m just sayin’. 🙂
First, look at average conversion rates. The average conversion rate on a sales letter is 1%-2%. Certainly nothing spectacular. Yet, on a typical squeeze page, the conversion rate might be more like 40% (or higher). I’ve had them convert at close to 60% before.
You make an offer. You pack a lot into it. And… it flops. It just doesn’t seem to connect and nobody gives a crap.
What happened?
Well, the reasons could be many. Wrong target market, wrong positioning, not really addressing the real needs and wants of your audience.
But, today, I want to bring to your attention a simple concept called Maslow’s hierachy of needs. Here it is, in all of its triangular glory…
Google Adsense. Probably the de facto way to make money with a blog – at least to newbies.
If you’ve read my Six Figure Blogger Blueprint, you know what I think of banner ads. They’re not the best way to make money with a blog. After all, the only way you get paid is to send traffic AWAY from your blog. And you’re only getting paid a few cents to do it.
This is part 4 of 4 of a series on Membership Sites & Recurring Income.
It is one thing to enroll a new member into your membership site. It is quite another to KEEP them.
The industry average retention period for a membership site is 3 months. That isn’t very long, and with a high turnover rate like that, the pressure will really be on to keep enrolling new people in order to grow your cash flow. There are, however, many things you can do to increase retention and keep people around.
This is part 3 of 4 of a series on Membership Sites & Recurring Income.
OK, step 1 is to build your membership site. Step 2 is to populate it with some content. Step 3 is…. (drum roll)….
Selling it.
The question is – how?
This is part 2 of 4 of a series on Membership Sites & Recurring Income.
Pretty much anything you might think of releasing as a standalone product could very easily be released into a membership site. In fact, any form of content could go in there. Blog posts, videos, ebooks, etc.
I think a lot of people (especially beginners) tend to think about the ebook when it comes to product offerings. The problem with ebooks is that the perceived value has dropped since so many people now do it. Depending on your niche, there are a lot of ebooks being given away as opt-in bribes. This makes the power of a PAID ebook diminished. Many people’s hard drives are littered with PDFs they haven’t yet read.
When you are brainstorming things that you can create and sell, it is useful to know the primary things that people are willing to pay money for.
OK, now THAT’s a weird title for a post on a blog like this. 😉
But, all kidding aside, I have a point to make today. An important point – especially giving the times we find ourselves in. My aim is to help people as much as possible, and I figure I’d be doing a disservice if I didn’t talk about this a bit.
Usually, our little blogging and social media bubble doesn’t talk much about the “real world”. That stuff is relegated to the news headlines and the political talking head shows. And, those of us concentrating on our online businesses don’t like to pay attention to that crap. We’d rather talk about the stuff we’re interested in. I know I would.
But, there’s big things happening right now. And the “real world” will affect our online world. And it will have an impact on us as bloggers, too.
So, let’s do a tiny bit of math here. Yeah, I know. But, this is the fun kind of math. 🙂
So, a lot of bloggers think about selling an ebook to make money. They’ll drop a brain bomb into a word processor and turn around and offer it for some low price.
Let’s say $17. Nice round-about price which ends in 7. Heheh… 😉
So, you go through all this work and you make some sales. Let’s say you manage to sell 100 copies. Gross revenue $1,700.
With me? Cool.
Here’s the problem…