Your membership site is only the start of it. When it’s up and running and you’ve launched your first one, then you need to start thinking about ways in which you can make lots of extra money, preferably for doing very little.

Exit strategies. First of all, there’s your exit strategy. What do you want to do it with it when you’ve built it and it’s working well? Here, you’ve got lots of options.

You can keep it and continue to work with it and build it. That way you keep all of the money the money it generates apart from your joint venture, affiliate and business alliance commitments.

But do you want that to continue indefinitely? Successful membership sites sell for considerable amounts of money, these days and that’s something you really should consider in the longer term.

You can walk away and simply put cash in your bank. You may choose to retain a controlling interest in the business having raised cash from selling a portion of it toanother interested party. You could choose to earn from a buy out, spread over say 3 or 5 years. That way, you earn over your buy out period, but you know there’s an end in sight to your involvement. You could sell it but retain a directorship in the business that would still give you an income, even though you’re no longer directly involved in the site’s day to day management.

When you’re talking about a business with say 2500 members, all paying £20 a month, you’re talking about a business that is turning over £600,000+ a year, even allowing for typical membership churn rates. A lot of that is pure profit so the disposal of your asset and your exit strategy deserves very careful consideration.

Put together 4 or 5 such sites, all performing at roughly the same level and you’re looking at a £2.4 million to £3 million a year business. All for being involved with and doing something that you simply love to do.

Making use of your money. But as with all things, how long do you let a good thing go on? That’s your decision and it’s one I can’t make for you. However, making money is one thing, creating the time to enjoy it is quite another. The point about making money, lots and lots of it, is not to gloat and gleefully sit counting it. As far as I can see, the purpose of making money is to:

1. Distance yourself from debt.

2. Thoroughly enjoy yourself!

3. Use to make yourself (and others) happy!

4. Use it to do great things.

Don’t hoard it and turn yourself into Scrooge! Use it to make yourself happy and put at least some of it back into circulation so that it can make others happy too. Use it to create something special – a successful business that allows other people to feed off it too (writers, designers, content suppliers and creators).

Give some to your favourite causes and charities. You’d be amazed at the very real sense of satisfaction you get when you have given some of your wealth away to some highly worthy and deserving cause. And the best part is that no one need ever know. Just you. You don’t need to beat your chest and have buildings, roads and parks named after you and statues erected in your honour.

Some of the most delicious moments in my life have arrived when I’ve given to help a worthy cause. But do it because it feels right to you. Don’t do it because everyone is telling you that you should.

But the way you leave your business and when you’ll do that are things you should be considering from the outset.

Building multiple income streams. Secondly, when you’ve sorted out your on exit strategy, you’ve got to look at ways to build multiple, continuous income streams from and off your membership site.

The site you’ve built isn’t the end of anything.

It’s just the beginning! So where can you draw extra revenue from?

Well, you’ve built a list and that’s a valuable commodity in its own right. What’s more, it’s a current and active list of people who share your own passion. That means there’s a fair chance that they will be interested in things that also interest you. If a company or an individual should approach you with an interesting product or service to offer, why not mail it and offer it to your list?

Naturally, you want to keep editorial control over the look and feel of anything if it is being sent out from you, or under your name. Remember also that your members probably signed up in the belief that you would not trade or sell their email addresses to other companies for any other purpose. If that’s so, then you must observe your members’ wishes. But that does not stop you from approaching your member base with an offer that you believe is right for them. It does mean however that you cannot offer the list you own for rental purposes to other entrepreneurs. It’s just something that you have to be careful about whenever you have signed up people who, like you, detest spam.

But commercially, lists sell for high prices for one-time only usage. If the list is of sufficient quality, clean and relevant, you can expect to pay anything between £150-£300 per 000 names!

Even from an nth selection of names (nth = random selection), if you own a list of 25,000 members and you can rent it out, you’re looking at putting a tidy sum in your pocket i.e., £750 – £1250 off 5000 members’ names @ £150-£300 per 000.

And it isn’t difficult to use your membership site to simply build lists that you can make commercially available. All you need is a big enough offer or an attractive enough hook. For example, a prize draw, an ebook, a special report, a How To videocast, a useful piece of software, or a clever free gift can easily do the trick can help you to build a list that you can easily mine for money.

And remember, no matter what you do in the Internet business, your list is key to everything you can do and ever will do. Your list will always be the most precious thing you own. Guard it well, treat it with due respect and reverence and it will continue to put money in your pocket.

Membership Types & Tiers

Offer different tiers of membership:

There’s a base level that covers everybody, but then there should be something more for members who are prepared to pay more to go further. For instance, Platinum members pay extra to get extra special access to member areas with extra special privileges and exclusive offers. This way you are segmenting your list into different value members so that you know whom you can realistically target for “higher value” offers.

Offer different types of membership. Some members may be trade associations, businesses, or organisations. Some may well be suppliers or peripherally interested parties such as paper merchants, party planners, isotonic drinks manufacturers, or companies working at the edges of your market sector.

Others will simply be consumers, the general public. Each type of member has different needs and each could be approached in a different way enabling you to charge each member according to their type.

(You would naturally charge more for a trade association or Business-to-Business (B2B) membership than you would for a Business-to-Consumer (B2C), or general public membership.)

Offer advertising space at your membership site.

If you’re “out there” and you’re reaching lots of people, companies will happily pay a commercial fee to join in.

The biggest problems that even the world’s biggest organisations are facing are:

• How do you get to people at an effective cost?

• Where are people congregating in significant numbers?

• How do you reach exactly the “right kind of people”?

You have a membership base of committed and passionate people. They love your product area and market sector. That’s why they’re there. That’s a valuable commodity to any organisation that is trying to market products, services and solutions to your kind of members.

Offer Google AdWords space. Why not? If it’s a relevant product or product area then you make money every time a member or site visitor clicks through to the AdWords advertiser’s website.

Obviously you don’t want your website to be awash with offers so that it looks like an estate agent’s hoarding. But a few well-chosen advertisers offers could end up making you some serious money, for doing nothing at all.

And of course it all helps to provide those essential “active links” that bounce you up the search engine ladder and get you somewhere near the top.

Mentoring & consultancy. Offer business consultancy. You have done it. They want to know how you did it and how they can do it too. Mentor your members. Help them to become successful.

Don’t worry – it’s a big world! There is plenty of room for everyone so you don’t need to fear either the opposition or the competition … provided you continue to offer excellent quality and outstanding service.

Power branding. It’s at this stage that you really start to elevate the awareness of your business and power drive your own brand. You start to dominate your market sector and you quickly become recognised as the best source for information. But it’s not just about being the best source. It’s everything else that goes with it. You’ll be invited to speak at seminars and offer content to other market sectors and business areas. Offers will flood in as awareness grows about your site and you. All of which is good for the bottom line of your business.

You’ll be able to partner with and forge business relationships with all of the really bigplayers in your sector and suddenly your whole perspective is different. Everything has changed. I know that is some way down the line from where you’re sitting right now, but that is actually how it happened for me.

From really humble beginnings, I looked at what I wanted from a business membership site. I joined quite a few, but the trouble was that none of them was delivering what I actually wanted.

So I thought I’d better start one myself that actually did deliver all that I wanted. And the money I’ve made and the fun I’ve had has made it all worthwhile.

Now, I do get offers from the big players. I am invited to speak at international conferences and seminars.

I’m often asked to contribute content and I have developed a lot of alliances, partnerships and very strong business relationships.

I am also mentoring several business students of my own, but I also know that there is still a long, long way to go and there is much that I still have to do!

Selling from your membership website. Sell products from your membership site. I do. I have a string of specially and carefully selected products that I offer to my members that I think are especially useful to them. They are, of course, business-related because that is what my site is all about. But a recent addition, a copywriting course, has sold extremely well for me and continues to put good money into its author’s pocket as well as my own.

Again, don’t set your membership site out like it’s a market trader’s stall. It isn’t and it should never appear that way. Your site is a serious commitment. It is about quality, class and content and those values should shine through in everything you ever do for your members.

So, simply select 4-6 quality products related to your market sector, position them properly to your members and change them as frequently as you need to. Don’t let them get “old and dusty”. Who wants to buy a “cobwebby product” that has simply sat on your site and been seen by your members since the day you started?

Keep a smart eye out for other products that may be useful to your product portfolio. It’s an easy way to earn good money for providing a legitimate service offering good quality merchandise that’s highly relevant to your audience.

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