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SEO

Before you start spending money on adverts, SEO might be a better first port of call. SEO stands for ‘Search Engine Optimization’ and is essentially the process of optimizing a website and link strategy so that your store is easy to find on Google when people search for it.

To do this, you will often begin by identifying a search term (key phrase) such as ‘buy hats online’. Only you won’t want to choose ‘buy hats online’ because that will very competitive and very difficult to rank for. This is why it’s such a good idea to have a particular target audience and a particular type of product. Remember how we discussed selling brightly colored shirts? Well ‘brightly colored shirts’ is likely a keyphrase that people look for but which isn’t quite as competitive.

To start ranking for this term, you need to ensure you have a well optimized website (meaning it’s fast, mobile friendly and easy to navigate) and that you include the keywords you’ve selected in your descriptions and on your blog occasionally. Aim for around 1% density, so for every 100 words, you can include the keyphrase once. It’s also useful to include it in headers and in meta descriptions and then to try and build as many links as possible on relevant websites (that might mean getting a fashion blog to link to you for example). You might be able to do this by providing them with free content, which is called ‘guest posting’.

Content Marketing

Speaking of content, content marketing is also a fantastic tool you can use. This basically means you’re running a blog and the aim is to get people to subscribe and to look for your site when they want information relevant to your industry. So if you sell gardening tools, you should have an authoritative blog on gardening that peoples subscribe to.

In doing this, you’ll now have an audience that trusts your recommendations and that listens to what you say. You can now recommend them your own products and even provide them with special offers.

Email marketing goes hand in hand with content marketing. Try to build the trust of your audience to the point where they’re happy to hand over their contact details – then subtly sell your products to them.

Building an audience for your blog is of course the tricky part but you can do this by running a social media account and by using SEO.

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Renewals System

Recurring income is one of the best parts of running a membership website, and something that many other types of online businesses lack.

Just remember, while first time subscribers certainly breathe life into a membership website, renewals keep it alive.

Make sure to consistently remain active within your community and to do your best to provide high quality, exclusive material to your subscriber base on a regular basis.

Feature An Affiliate Program

You will also want to incorporate an affiliate program into your membership website, so that both visitors and subscribers are able to generate commissions from every referred sale they make.

When structuring your affiliate program, focus on offering a very appealing commission percentage; in order to recruit active affiliates who will help you jumpstart your marketing campaigns.

Different companies pay different percentages and amounts for leads and sales. The differences paid for a sale can range from 75% down to 1% depending on the company and the product.

What you decide to pay your affiliates will depend entirely upon what you are selling and to whom you are selling it. A good idea would be to check what other companies selling a product comparable to yours is paying their affiliates.

However, how much you pay your Affiliates really depends on how much your product/service costs, its profit margin, how much you're willing to give up and what action you want to take place.

When running an affiliate program, you will want to make sure that your current membership script or software is able to effectively track all sales and leads, as well as provide detailed information to affiliates (including overall earnings, stats, payment dates, etc).

You could also actively join affiliate programs that are focused on your niche market yourself, and incorporate your affiliate links into a “Recommended Websites” page, so that you are able to maximize earnings by promoting third party products and related websites.

For example, if you run a membership based website focusing on golf training, you could feature affiliate products that include golf gear, advanced lessons, physical books and even video tutorials.

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There are a few things to keep in mind when evaluating potential topics for your membership site, including:

1) Are There Existing Membership Websites Within The Market?

You want to build your membership sites around a viable industry, and by determining whether there are successful membership sites already catering to your market, you will maximize your chances of building a membership website that will be widely accepted and of interest to the majority of your customer base. For example, if during your research you determine that there is a very low number of membership websites that target a specific topic, it’s a good indication that the market is too small to accommodate too many membership websites. While smaller niche markets can be profitable, in order to scale your membership website you want to focus on broader markets.

2) How can you offer something new to an existing customer base?

If you have established that a specific market is actively purchasing and subscribing to similar membership websites, you need to determine your unique point of entry. How can you create a community of your own that offers something different than what other membership sites are offering?

How can you offer distinct value in your own membership program?

You need to set yourself apart from other membership sites in the marketplace by first defining your USP, and then creating a membership website that clearly demonstrates how you are different, how your members benefit by being part of your community, and why they should choose you over the competition. Your USP could be as simple as the delivery methods that you offer, or the format in which your content is made available.

For example, if you find a competing membership website offering ebook-only products to their members, consider offering both ebook and video or audio based versions of the information products that you create. Since people prefer to learn in different ways, by offering many different formats for your training tools, you are able to cater to a wider audience while separating yourself from the competition.

3) Do You Have The Ability To Provide Quality Information And Resources To This Market That Aren’t Already Being Offered?

Just because you've confirmed that a market is a viable one doesn't mean that you will be able to create a successful membership site for that market, unless you have the ability to create content that your subscribers will be interested in paying for. Consider the costs of outsourcing content for different markets, as the more popular a topic is, the greater the number of freelancers to choose from. If your topic is too focused or specific, you might find it difficult to locate qualified freelancers who have enough experience to produce quality content for your site.

Developing a membership website that offers specialized content is a great way to develop a USP (unique selling proposition) so that you can stand out in the market and attract subscribers.

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Important Things To Avoid

You might be tempted to try any number of free ways to get more attention and more traffic to your website. That’s understandable – after all you want to make sure that your website is seen by the right target audience.

But don’t let that tempt you into trying anything and everything without considering the consequences first.

For example, link farms are a definite no no. They basically exist just to provide links to peoples’ websites, and Google has taken to frowning on them as a result. That means you won’t get any benefit from being listed with any of these link farms, and you might actually do your website some damage as well, as far as its reputation is concerned.

Another method that a lot of new Internet marketers do involves traffic exchanges. Now I am not dismissing these entirely, but you need to know exactly why you are using them if you want to go down this route.

A lot of people put their website home page address on there and surf for hours to get credits. These credits are then turned into visitors to your own website. But how many of those visitors have any interest in what you are showing them? In truth, the only reason they are looking at your website is because they want to view sites in order to earn credits and get their own websites seen.

Do you see how it works? You might be getting visitors, but they won’t be the people you want.

The only people who really use these sites are other Internet marketers. That means that unless you have something that is relevant to that market, you are better off devoting your time to some of the methods I have shown you above. It can take quite a while earning enough credits to really make a difference to your traffic levels anyway… and once they run out, you are back to square one again, with no traffic at all.

This is very different to the other methods you now know about, such as creating pages on Hubpages, writing articles and press releases, and using those social networking sites. Once you have put these into motion you can reap the rewards from them even when you aren’t actively working at developing them any further. All of the methods I have shown you can be targeted to your specific audience. There is no point going for free marketing opportunities online that send your message out to the world at large. You might reach a lot of people – but a lot of those people simply won’t be interested in what you have to tell them. So always make sure you evaluate any future free marketing opportunity you come across before you dive

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Email Programs

The easiest way to set up an email based membership website is to create a simple subscription page that features a subscription button (You can create these directly within your Paypal account). When a visitor to your site decides to enrol in your ecourse training, they can either choose to subscribe to a monthly payment plan, where they receive one new module every month, or perhaps a one-time flat fee for the entire training series.

With an email based membership program, you are able to set up complete membership sites quickly, with very little start up costs or work involved. After all, since the majority of the content will be delivered via email, you don’t need a dedicated server, or expensive membership software to manage your program! You will also want to determine a delivery schedule, making sure to send out the newsletters on the same day each week, for consistency.

When it comes to frequency, the most common formats include eCourses sent weekly, bi weekly or monthly. When you are deciding what your publishing schedule will be, keep in mind the kind of information you will be supplying to your membership and its “dated importance”.

If you are offering information that changes quickly or regularly, then you are going to want to consider sending out your ecourses more frequently, perhaps even implementing a RSS feed into your course, so that members can receive instant broadcasts of new updates.

If your information is evergreen and unlikely to change quickly, you can set up a weekly or even monthly e-course, where subscribers receive a new module or lesson through email on a regular basis.

eCourses are exceptionally profitable, because you can minimize the workload involved in launching your membership program. You will only need a professional autoresponder/email delivery account, such as https://www.Aweber.com or https://www.GetResponse.com, the first month of content, and a way of accepting payment for each subscription.

The easiest way to set up an email based membership website is to create a simple subscription page that features a subscription button (You can create these directly within your Paypal account). When a visitor to your site decides to enrol in your ecourse training, they can either choose to subscribe to a monthly payment plan, where they receive one new module every month, or perhaps a one-time flat fee for the entire training series.

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Marketing in the real world can also be a useful way to build more leads. One of the best things that any business can do is to have its website address on the side of its van, along with something that will get people to look at it. This can create some qualified leads without that company having to do anything! The same goes for fliers and leaflets – the recipients will start off as cold leads but when they get in touch knowing what it is you’re selling, they will be qualified leads.

The same goes for t-shirts with your address printed on them (corporate gifts) and these will work even better if you hand them out to your visitors. This also helps to make those visitors feel even more like they are a part of your movement and simply by wearing your t-shirts they will be increasing their engagement and their ‘score’ as leads.

Finally, consider any contacts you already have that you can potentially use to build more visitors and leads. This is something that a lot of people forget to do or even feel too shy about their business to try. We don’t like the idea of marketing to our friends and family and especially if we aren’t confident in our businesses. But think about it like this: if you don’t have the confidence to market to people you already know and who will support you, how can you market to people that you don’t know? If you don’t take your business seriously enough and aren’t proud enough of it, how can you expect anyone else to take it seriously? Your friends are also the people most likely to forward on your emails, to like your social media posts and generally to help you grow your audience. Don’t overlook them because this can end up leading to exponential growth!

And in many cases, you might well know someone who can help you to build a lot of links – you may someone who can offer you a great route to market. In fact, the savviest business strategy of all is to look at your existing contacts and opportunities and then create a business/product based around that opportunity. If you happen to know the editor of a top magazine and they owe you a favor, then creating a blog aimed at that very same audience may just be the best thing you can do!

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4) Find Your Ultimate Purpose

As we are all different, we will all need different paths to help us find our passion and purpose. If you’ve struggled to find the direction you need to complete your destiny, if you’ve always felt you were made for something, but a little unsure what t was that try some of the following ideas to explore what your purpose may be.

Every one has a purpose, and there is potential in each of us. It’s just a matter to exploring and investigating a little to discover it.

What terrifies you?

It’s an interesting concept but what you don’t like, or what you fear may be the very thing pointing to your destiny. It’s like the concept of yin and yang- there are two sides to each coin.

The fear may originate from blocking off an early passion that you were unaware of.

Write a list of your fears and the negative feelings that come from them. Then look at that list and see if there is an opposite charge to the fear. For example, if you are terrified of public speaking, but love to share your ideas, then you may be well suited to expressing yourself through the written word.

When are you scared of failing?

Those things that are important to us hold a great deal of weight to how we see ourselves and our success.

If you are scared at failing at something, you’ll often avoid it at all costs. But those things we are scared to fail at are often the very things we most want to do.

Explore the times you’ve said no to something, or avoided something because you’ve been scared of showing yourself to not be good at it.

Who energizes you?

Stay away from people who tear or wear your down..

Align yourself with people living a full life and their enthusiasm rubs off and affects your own passion.

Go for people you respect, and work underneath them- serving them. That is the very best way to learn. If you can’t find anyone like that around you, devour books about people you admire and learn by proxy.