TM

Success Guide

Creating a Million
Dollar Member Site
by DAn Caron

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Creating a Million Dollar Member Site

Success Guide

WELCOME
I
n this guide I’m going to share but they’ll never actually tell you how to do it. If
with you how you can build a $1,000,000+ they did, you wouldn’t need them anymore. And
revenue stream per year, harnessing the you wouldn’t join their next coaching program or
power of membership site marketing. Now seminar. And for them, that would be bad news.
before you say it...look, I know: You’ve heard of
“membership sites” before. I get it. But you’ve But that’s not me. I don’t make my money
never heard about it like this. selling “how to” information. I make my money
running my businesses. So I’m happy to share
You see there are a lot of people out there who everything I know about what I do, and how I
will brag about their success with membership do it. The Internet marketplace is vast. And I am
continuity streams...But when it comes time to not afraid of letting you in on the blueprint. I’m
actually teach you how to do it - you are left a big believer in “paying it forward” and helping
to figure it out for yourself. No mention of the people who are searching for answers on their
specifics of exactly what markets you need to go journey to success. Call me “crazy,” but if I can
into. No mention of exactly how you need to be help even one person, just ONE person, achieve
acquiring new customers. No mention of exactly their dreams then I will consider what I’ve written
what software you need to use, and why....And here to be well worth the effort. And I hope that
the list goes on. person is you!

My goal in writing this report is not to brag If you apply

about the millions of dollars I’ve brought in from these concepts
my membership sales. Plenty of people before with diligence,
me have done that. And if you want to ogle with some
at pictures of mansions and jet skis...there’s luck, you too
plenty of places on the web where you can go can build a
to do that. What I’m here to do is give you the substantial
real story on how to actually build one of these business that
businesses for yourself. gives you the
freedom to live life on your own terms. So with
Now, I’ll let you in on one of the biggest “insider” that said, allow me to “take you inside my office”
secrets in the marketing game: lots of “teachers” and show you the underlying blueprint of what I
out there are perfectly happy to to tell you what do and how I do it...so that you can do it, too.
you need to do (build a membership business)
and why you need to do it (because it can
potentially earn you massive passive income)

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MILLION DOLLAR In this guide, I’m going to share with you how I
MEMBERSHIP SITE? think about membership site marketing. I am not

PIECE OF CAKE going to dive into the technical details of how

to setup a blog, you can find tutorials like that

W
elsewhere. But I am going to share with you the
hy should you build
parts of your business that are critical to optimize
membership sites? Well, because
should you wish to reach seven figures in revenue
raking in huge profits selling one-
with your membership site.
off-products on the Internet is difficult. I’m sure
you can find someone who is making millions
doing it, but they are an exception. For every
Special Note:
one-time-sale marketer who has a seven figure
In this report I’m going to give you several examples
business, I can show you ten other guys who
of how I used the MemberMouse platform to
are making a fortune with subscription style or
increase my business. Now, you do not need to
membership businesses.
use MemberMouse to get value out of this guide.
You can apply all of the concepts if you have the
One of the main reasons it’s easier to achieve
technical knowledge or if you have access to a team
success with a membership business, is because
of programmers. I will however, be highlighting the
you can acquire customers easily with low price-
reasons why I recommend using MemberMouse if
points, say $19.95, $39.95, or even a free-trial.
you’re getting started with your first membership site,
Then once the customer sees the value of your
or even if you’re considering switching from another
product or service and decides to stay with you,
platform. But do not let these recommendations take
you’ll automatically earn more of their business,
away from the big ideas revealed inside.
thereby earning much more from each customer
than you would from a one-time sale. If you try
selling each customer a $200 dollar item on their
first visit to your website, it’s going to be very
difficult unless that prospect is already sold on
FROM $30,000 TO $100,000 A
the merits of your product and your brand. MONTH

T
You have to prove enormous value to the here came a day when I
customer to keep them on board every month, became totally frustrated with my lack of
but if you can do that, you can have an average progress. I sat there wondering, “What am
customer value that’s easily over $100 dollars. I doing wrong? How come I can’t seem to grow
If you can get 25 customers a day, you generate this business any further? Why am I just barely
$2500 a day in revenue, which is $912,000 a year. treading water?” Then it occurred to me that I
Not bad. didn’t have the answers to these questions, and

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the only way I was going to get them would be to

put everything under a microscope.
CHOOSING A NICHE &
DEVELOPING VALUABLE
So I opened up excel and started entering all the
critical numbers in my business. I decided to track
CONTENT

I
everything. And I did this every day, for months.
’m going to show you several
Eventually, I was able to spot the weaknesses
tactics to help you build a seven figure
in my business. Numbers don’t (usually) lie. In
membership site, but if those tactics are
fact, they will scream at you and stand there and
applied to a small, unprofitable market and to
point impatiently at problems and bottlenecks.
boring content, then no trick in the book is going
The numbers will make you feel inept at times,
to get you to where you want to be. While it’s
but it’s nothing personal. They’re there to help, so
all well and good to follow your passions, if you
pay close attention to them.
want to make money, it helps to stick to a few
tried-and-true verticals until you are confident
When you look at all of the numbers in your
and have enough experience to know whether it’s
business, eventually you will spot opportunities
possible to turn your hobby or your passion into
for improvement. Before I implemented the
profit.
tactics I’m going to share with you in this guide,
my membership business was earning roughly
Of course, if your hobby happens to be
$30,000 a month. After a few tweaks, we started
bodybuilding, weight loss, or getting rich in the
averaging revenues of $100,000 a month with only
stock market, then you’re already in the right
four employees—myself included. My personal
place. I wish I could tell you that you can make
taxes also went up.
a million dollars a year teaching people how to
knit, but I just don’t think it’s possible. Of course,
To grow your membership site you need to
I could be wrong, but if you’re just starting out,
reliably bring targeted visitors to your site,
you’re better off to stick to markets with tried-
convert them, and increase the amount of
and-true profit potential.
money each customer spends with you. All this
requires a strong focus on metrics and knowing
What are those markets?
which metrics to track; since there are dozens
of them. I’m going to spend a lot of time in this
1. Stock market / investing / personal finance /
report showing you how to think correctly about
real estate
membership site marketing and how you can
2. Marketing / business opportunity
avoid the common mistakes that hold people
3. Weight loss / body building / nutrition /
back from building a substantial business. So read
health and wellness
on!
4. Dating / relationships / self-improvement
5. Hosted software / software as a service

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6. Training / tutorials / and technical education this may not apply—but even then, people
still want the website to be fast and easy to
You want to make sure there are other people use. Remember: quick and easy results should
selling products similar to what you are thinking constitute the lion’s share of your sales pitch.
about selling. If no one is selling anything similar,
then there’s probably not a big enough need for
your product.
HOW THE MEMBERSHIP
PROFIT MODEL WORKS
If you’re selling information products, let’s clear

I
one thing up right away. You do not need to f you’re going to make money
be the guru. In fact, if you’re a marketer, you with a membership site, you need to know
probably shouldn’t be the guru. It’s tough enough exactly how to drive the numbers that are
to create great content, nevermind market it. going to be responsible for the cash that you
You should look for someone who is an expert want flowing into your bank account. I’m going to
in their industry and has something insightful to give a simple example below, to show you how
say. Find a strong voice to market, and make that you should think about the variables that affect
person a partner. There is nothing worse then the profitability of your business. Again, this will
half-baked content that’s slapped together by only be a simple example, but that’s ultimately
someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking what you want, because if your profit model
about. High quality content is an assumption for a is too complicated, then it becomes difficult to
seven figure membership website. If you flake out optimize and improve.
on content, retention will
Let’s say you get 2,000 visitors
What makes fail. Do not try and teach
a day to your site and you
content valuable people how to create wealth
if you’re not wealthy. Find convert 0.5% of them into paying
to customers is
members. That means you get
the efficiency of someone who has, and give 10 new customers per day. If
them a generous portion of
the results you your retention rate is 70%, that means each
profits in exchange for their
create. and every month, you’ll lose 30% of your
track record and expertise.
members. So between the time the customer
What makes content valuable to customers is first made a purchase with you and their first
the efficiency of the results you create. If you are rebill (usually 30 days later), you’ll lose 30%
teaching someone how to do something, they of your customers to cancels and refunds.
want the result as fast as possible. Here are some That means of that initial 10 customers, 7 will
examples: “5 Minute Meals, 7 Minute Abs, How be rebilled. After the first rebill, you’ll lose an
I Made $250,000 A Year In The Stock Market.” Of additonal 30%. So you’ll go from 7 members to
course, if you have a different style membership 5 members, and so on and so forth.
site, such as a price guide for baseball cards, How many months you retain your members

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is highly dependent on the quality of your algorithm, I decided I wasn’t going to play that
content (or service) and your price point. Let’s game anymore; nor did I want to rely on begging
assume your monthly price point is $19.95. joint venture partners and affiliates to send
If you get members to stick, on average, me traffic. I wanted a business built on paid
for 6 billing cycles (let’s include the initial advertising. Why? Because it’s controllable.
purchase in that figure) you have a customer
value of $119 dollars. Now, if you are offering You can always go out and spend money on
the custom upsells immediately after their advertising. You can’t (and probably won’t) easily
purchase, you can expect to add a few dollars get top ranking in Google, no matter what anyone
to that averaged figure. Let’s say your upsells says. If you’re still holding on to the notion that
add approximately $10 per customer. That getting a high search engine ranking is the key
means your customer value is now $129. to exploding your business, then I wish you the
best of luck, because you’re going to need it.
So if you’re getting 10 customers a day, and There is a very slim chance you’ll be able to do it
each one is worth on average $129, then for any highly competitive
you’re generating $1,290 a day in revenue or keyword, and even if you
$470,850 a year. As you can see, it’s pretty do, you’re still putting If you can get all
easy to generate a substantial amount of your income stream at the numbers to
revenue if you understand how to drive the risk should Google decide work through
numbers. Now, to get the initial 2,000 visitors to change their algorithm, paid advertising,
to your site, you should start with affiliate, which happens quite often. you’ll be able to
performance-based deals; and when you have Treat SEO like icing on the simply increase
money coming in the door, you should simply cake. And having to rely on your spend, and
purchase the traffic, with the goal of deriving joint venture partners and your business
most of your traffic from paid sources. Here’s a affiliates to put food on will grow
quick look at why you should strive to pay for your table is also quite an by leaps and
most, if not all, of your traffic. uncertain enterprise. bounds.

WHY YOU SHOULD PAY FOR I would challenge you to

build your business through paid advertising.
YOUR ADVERTISING Sure, it’s harder, and costs more money, but
you’ll end up with a much stronger, scalable,

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any years ago, I used to and controllable marketing process. Plus, if you
spend a lot of time on search engine can get all the numbers to work through paid
optimization. I was actually pretty advertising, you’ll be able to simply increase your
good at it, but back then, it was relatively simple. spend, and your business will grow by leaps and
After seeing a few of my friends lose 90% of bounds. You can’t do that with free advertising,
their sales when Google decided to change their unless you get some sort of viral effect going on,

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but even that tends to burn out quickly.

7 KEY METRICS OF
Growing your business with paid advertising is MEMBERSHIP BUSINESSES
hard, but if your campaigns are breaking-even,

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or even losing a little money, that’s a good sign. et’s take a look at the
It means you’re in the ballpark, and with a few numbers you need to keep a close eye on.
tweaks, you can turn that campaign profitable. If you focus on improving these numbers,
One very cool feature that MemberMouse provides or at least keeping them healthy, you can grow
is the ability to serve up custom landing pages your membership site quite quickly.
to your visitors based on the advertisements (or
website) that the user has seen. This allows you 1. Lifetime Customer Value – This is the average
to tightly tune your messaging, which increases amount a customer spends with you. This
the likelihood that your paid advertising will be number will tell you how much money you
profitable. Do not under-estimate the importance should spend on advertising, and is the key
of matching your ad with your landing page. to making intelligent decisions about your
marketing budget. You should always be
The Silver Lining (Boot-Strapping): Although I’m thinking of ways to increase this number. The
recommending that you make paid advertising higher this number, the more you can spend
the end-goal, I want to stress that this is not on the front-end to acquire a customer, and
necessary when you’re just starting out. In fact, the higher the probability you will be able
in all of my previous businesses I’ve started with to outspend your competition. One effective
performance-based affiliate deals. If you can get way to do this is with MemberMouse’s 1-click
a few small and medium sized partners on-board, upsells, which I will discuss a little later in
you can use that cash flow to seed your media this report.
budget. I’m living proof that it can be done. Just
make sure you make the move to paid media as 2. Click Through Rate – Since we’re focusing on
soon as possible. building a controllable, scalable marketing
process to bring in new members into
The remainder of this guide will assume you are your site on a daily basis, one of the most
willing to work with paid advertising to grow your important metrics to stay on top of is the
business, because it’s the only controllable and click through rate of your search ads and your
scalable form of advertising. With that in mind, I banners. Click through rates will drop quickly
will show you how to grow your business using on high-traffic sites – so make sure you
lifetime customer value as the key metric to make continually refresh your banners.
this possible. But before we do that, we need to
highlight the important metrics you should always 3. Conversion Rate – This is typically defined as
be monitoring. sales over visitors. Even with a conversion
rate as low as 0.3% (three tenths of one

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percent) you can still make money if your putting people to sleep. One excellent feature
customer value is high enough. But typical that MemberMouse provides is their “Save
conversion rates for large successful direct the Sale” process. This allows you to down-
response campaigns range from 0.5 to 1.5% sell the customer when they are contacting
across a broad range of traffic. Remember, the you to cancel their membership.
higher your customer value, the lower your
conversion rate can be while still maintaining 7. Chargebacks – A chargeback occurs when
a profit. a customer calls their bank or credit card
provider and disputes a charge on their card.
4. Upsell Rate – Immediately after someone They may not recognize the charge, it may
joins your membership site, you should be actual fraud (if their credit card number
offer them a one-time discount on a related was stolen) or they may be dishonest and
product. You should be able to get roughly simply want their money back. It’s extremely
15% of visitors to take this upsell. Study the important to keep chargebacks at a minimum
upsell paths from GoDaddy and Vista Print. or you could potentially lose your merchant
They are masters at taking a small order and account. Fortunately, this is easy to prevent, if
transforming it to a large dollar purchase. you provide good customer service.

5. Retention Rate – This metric tells you how

many customers are “retained” after each
YOUR MARKETING
cycle. If you are losing more than 30% of your FOUNDATION: LIFETIME
customers each month, you should implement
strategies to improve this number. Bumping
CUSTOMER VALUE

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up retention just a little bit has a huge impact hen it comes to
on your customer value and thus the profits membership site marketing, and
in your business. After implementing upsells, direct response marketing in
retention should be your next focus. We’ll talk general, there is no metric of greater importance
about some techniques to increase retention to your business than average Lifetime Customer
later on. Value (LCV).

6. Refund Rate – You should aim to keep Although it can be sliced and diced in many ways,
this number as low as possible, with one LCV is essentially total sales divided by total
exception. If your refund rate is exceptionally customers. For example, if you have 1 million
low (say under 2% — then perhaps you are dollars in sales, and you have 10,000 customers,
not marketing as hard as you should be). then each customer is worth (on average): $100.
You always want customers to be happy, This, of course, is an over-simplified example.
but if you’re not making any exciting claims
whatsoever, your marketing is probably Advertising is priced in many different formats

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both online and offline. source A and 10 new customers from traffic source B
Knowing your Knowing your customer and you might assume they are equal. But in reality,
customer value is critical because the 10 customers from traffic source A could stay in
value is critical it allows you to know your monthly billing cycle for twice as long, rending
because it allows how much money you them much more valuable! If you don’t track the
you to know how should spend to acquire spend of each customer over several months by source,
much money a customer, regardless of you might assume these traffic sources are equally
you should the type of ad-spot you valuable; when in fact, you should be maximizing
spend to acquire are buying. Start with your your spend on traffic source A, before spending money
a customer, customer value and work on B.

regardless of the backwards so that you can

figure out how much you Sometimes it’s difficult to calculate lifetime
type of ad-spot
should pay for your banner customer value. And you may never get an
you are buying.
ads, text links, affiliate “exact” number. But as long as you’re close, you
payouts, etc. Operating can use that number to make significant gains in
from this premise has resulted in many multi- your business.
million dollar direct response businesses.
Take a minute to consider how you would
For instance, if you know that your calculate your marketing spend if you didn’t know
average customer value is $160, what your lifetime customer value was--you’d
then you might feel comfortable simply be guessing. You would have no accurate
spending up to $100 to acquire a idea of how much money to spend on your
customer. If you’re spending money advertising, and you wouldn’t be able to scale
on a pay-per-click basis, and your conversion your business with confidence.
rate is 1%, then that means you should pay
no more than $1 per visitor. Because with 100
visitors, that will be $100 of spend. You’ll make
WHAT FACTORS AFFECT
one sale (assuming your 1% conversion holds) CONVERSION RATE?
and on average, a customer is worth $160, so

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you’ll make a $60 profit on every 100 visitors. hen you’re trying to
figure out how to grow your
This metric becomes even more useful when membership site, you’re faced with
you start comparing it across different sources the challenge of trying to understand what factors
of traffic. Your customer value can vary widely you should focus on, and in what priority. You can
from different sources of traffic. For example: waste time if you don’t know why your website is
not converting prospects into customers.
If you’re only looking at order count as a measure of
success, you might see 10 new customers from traffic After years of testing and tweaking, I’ve come to

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rely on a simple framework that I learned from too much money for their products and end
a mentor of mine, Michael Masterson. This is up turning a lot of potential customers away.
the “Source / Offer / Copy” framework. Basically, I can’t tell you exactly what to offer your
this is the order of importance to recognize prospect, because it’s going to be highly
when it comes to analyzing and optimizing your dependent on your market. But make sure the
conversion rate. price point is right. There are many split tests
that will yield inconclusive results and are not
1. SOURCE: The most important factor when worth your time, but price is always worth
analyzing conversion, is the “source” of your testing, and MemberMouse can help you split
traffic. If you’re selling a membership to test your registration process in order to help
baseball card collectors, and you buy traffic you acquire the maximum number of new
on [Link], that traffic has a much higher members.
chance of turning visitors into buyers than
traffic from the [Link]. This 3. COPY: The last order of importance is the
may sound obvious, but you would be actual copy that sells that offer. If you
surprised at which sites convert the best. It’s spend all your time analyzing the copy,
not always obvious. You can run your offer to and tweaking the copy, without trying
one traffic source and it will completely fail, different offers, or sources of traffic, you’re
and then you can run it on another traffic not optimizing your business in the correct
source and knock it out of the park. And order. The source of your traffic is extremely
the only way you can find these profitable important, and cannot be under-estimated.
sources of customers is to test. I would Ignoring this advice could set you back
recommend hiring a full-time media buyer to months or even years. With that said, you
make this happen. It’s hard enough to run have to test your copy. Don’t make the
the site and optimize conversion, never mind mistake of jumping to conclusions with too
having to reach out to publishers and make little traffic. You have to wait for significant
deals happen. results to appear in your split testing
software. I know it’s not fun waiting around
2. OFFER: The next variable of importance is for days or weeks for the results of a split
the what you’re offering the prospect, (i.e. test, but just try to set-it-and-forget-it. Then
the product, the price-point, the format, and come back to it later when enough data has
the guarantee). Make sure you look at some accumulated for very conclusive results to
offers that are doing well in your industry. appear.
What are the price points? How many
deliverables are there? You have to make
sure that what you’re offering is a really killer
package. Make it easy for the customer to
say, “yes.” I think too many peopIe charge

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INCREASING CUSTOMER customer value by $6.79. Your actual upsell rate

could vary quite a bit depending on the market
VALUE: ONE-TIME OFFERS and what you’re offering. Just use this figure as a
benchmark and always work to improve it.

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ne of the easiest ways to
increase your customer value is to One optimization trick is to make the “Yes, I Want
make a one-time offer after the initial This” option to be a large button, and the “No
sale. So when a customer joins your website for Thank You” option to be a text link below the
the first-time, offer them a related product at a button. This makes the “yes” option stand out.
steep discount (50% works well). If you ignore Simple, but effective.
this technique, you almost certainly won’t be able
to spend as much money on advertising as you Remember: you need to offer the customer
could, and may even jeopardize your ability to something immediately after they purchase,
grow a successful membership site. because you will not get a better opportunity
to sell them something else. Better yet, offer
This upsell should be priced roughly two to them multiple items in sequence. If you’ve
three times higher than the initial purchase. If ever purchased anything from [Link]
the initial sale is $39.95, then this upsell should or [Link], you have witnessed masterful
be roughly $80 to $120. But this is just a rule of upsell chains in action. It’s worth going through
thumb, and you should test several price points them simply for the learning experience. In
for your upsell. You might want to try very low addition to one-time offers, 1-click upsells are
priced upsells as well, say 50% of the initial also very effective at increasing your customer
purchase price. Again, this one-time offer is a value.
major source of profit, and you need to have the
ability to capture this sale without requiring the
customer to enter their credit card details again.
INCREASING CUSTOMER
VALUE: 1-CLICK UPSELLS
You should be able to get around 15%-20% of

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your customers to take a high priced upsell (and hen you’re considering
as high as 50% for a very low price point). What membership software, you need to
matters most is how many dollars per name each choose one that has the ability to
upsell is adding. For instance, if you have a $97 offer 1-click upsells to your members. This allows
upsell and 7% of the customers purchase, then a you to continually upsell members additional
simple trick to figure out how many dollars your products and services within your memberships
upsell is adding to your average customer value site without requiring the customer to enter their
is to multiply the price point times the conversion credit card details again. MemberMouse has built
rate. In this case: $97 x 7% = $6.79. So, by having in functionality that handles 1-click upsells and
the upsell in place, you’re increasing your average cross-sells, which is one of the main reasons I

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switched to their platform. This feature alone is

worth the price of the platform.
METHODS TO INCREASE
RETENTION
Upsells to consider are physical versions of a

I
digital information product. You can also upsell f you’ve built a spreadsheet
customers into coaching programs and other live and run some numbers, you’ll quickly
services. You can decide the format and content see how improving retention by just a
of the product, just make sure they don’t have few percentage points can really improve your
to enter their credit card details again, or your customer value. You should spend a significant
conversion will suffer. amount of time implementing stick strategies to
keep customers happy and involved with your
Inside your membership site, place banners and membership site. Here are a few things you can
links to sales pages that promote these upsells. do to improve your retention.
You should choose a membership platform that
allows you to target the user based on their 1. Provide a quick-start guide for new users:
membership level and what products they’ve immediately after a user signs up, make sure
purchased, so that you can always make relevant you hold their hand and give them precise
offers. MemberMouse does this using their instructions on how to get started. Don’t
SmartTag system, which allows you do display leave them stranded after the sale, or they’ll
targeted offers based on the member’s purchase become confused and disappointed. Provide
history and membership level (i.e., gold, silver, step-by-step instruction and make it feel
bronze member). exciting.

The price point of the upsells inside of your 2. Get them to take action. For every positive
membership site can vary dramatically. It’s my step the user takes while interacting with
opinion that you should have a mix of low and your program, the more committed they
high priced products so that customers who really become. So encourage the user to do
enjoy your content can spend as much money something: join a forum, download a report,
as they would like with you. You need to have fill out a questionnaire, send in a question,
low-priced products to get people in the door, write down their goal, email a testimonial,
but once you’ve proven value to them, be sure etc.
to offer them higher-priced products in order to
maximize your lifetime customer value. If you’re 3. Give them free stuff for sticking around. You
not using 1-click upsells, then you’re leaving can encourage users to stay through their
money on the table. Just make sure that you’re next billing period by emailing them about
not tricking the user into purchasing when they upcoming content that will be available. Get
didn’t expect to do so. them excited about future videos, reports,
etc and they’ll be more enthusiastic about

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remaining a subscriber to your site. of a problem for you. But if you’re running free-
trial offers that get a lot of tire-kickers, you are
4. Remind them of how valuable your content is. bound to get a high number of chargebacks.
Part of any good sales strategy is reminding
the customer after they’ve purchased that The easiest and most effective way to keep
they’ve made a good decision. Continually refunds and chargebacks low is to give full control
re-inforce the idea that the content they’ve to the customer. Make sure your membership
subscribed to is invaluable. You can do this software allows the user to cancel their own
directly and with testimonials. account. This will cut down on support costs
tremendously. Having to handle each customer

KEEPING REFUNDS AND when they want to make a modification to their

account is a recipe for disaster. This is another
CHARGEBACKS LOW one of the reasons I choose MemberMouse as my
membership management platform because they

I
t’s extremely important that provide all of this functionality for you right out
you take care of all customer problems as of the box. In fact, you can turn cancellations into
soon as possible. This is for several reasons, downsells (a lower priced product) using their
the first being that it’s the right thing to do. The “Save the Sale” functionality. This is an extremely
second, is to keep refunds and chargebacks as valuable feature that you shouldn’t overlook.
low as possible.
After a customer orders, it’s incredibly important
One of the easiest ways to lose your membership to let them know that you’re there to help them,
business is to have chargebacks creep up and and that you will provide support if they need it.
your merchant account provider will terminate Tell them how to contact your support department
your account. If you’ve never heard of this issue, on the thank-you page immediately after they
you might think it’s an esoteric problem that order. You should also tell them in the order
could never happen to you. But it couldn’t be confirmation email.
further from the truth.
Here are a few things you can do to keep
If you’re running your business with a domestic chargebacks down:
merchant account based in the United States,
then you need to keep your chargebacks under 1. Make sure your customers can cancel their
1% of your transaction volume. You should talk accounts easily in an automated fashion.
with your merchant account provider to get the
specifics so that you understand what the banks 2. Post a notice on your confirmation page
expect from your customer service department. that tells the user what they will see on
If you have a high-priced membership site that their credit card statement. This should be
targets a very small niche, then this might be less the name of your product or your website,

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something that the user will recognize. If it

doesn’t ring a bell, the customer will likely call
MAKE YOUR LIFE EASY AND USE
their bank and dispute the charge. WORDPRESS

I
3. Tell the customer that you can resolve any billing f you’re going to operate a
issues faster than their bank. If they want a membership site, you’re going to need to
refund, give it to them as soon as they ask for it. provide fresh content to your users on a regular
This isn’t just good business practice, it’s also the basis. With that in mind, I would strongly recommend
best way to keep chargebacks from occurring. you use WordPress as your “content management
system.” It’s the most ubiquitous blogging platform
4. Make sure your descriptor is accurate and on the Internet and there are several reasons you
is reminicent of the product the customer should use it to manage your membership site.
purchased. Also make sure there is a phone
number on your descriptor that leads to either The first is that it’s easy to install and it’s easy to
a live operator or a voicemail system that gives use. Plus there are tons of plugins and themes that
them specific instructions that will help resolve allow you to customize your site with little help from
their issue. outside developers. Even if you are a programmer, I
would still recommend using WordPress because of
In addition, you should consider the cancel process the time-savings and extendability that WordPress
as a potential revenue generating opportunity. When provides.
a customer is canceling, offer them a discounted
subscription (using a feature such as MemberMouse’s Custom websites can wind up taking a long time
“Save the Sale” process). Don’t discount too to build, and can become a money-pit, if not
deeply though, or customer will feel like they’ve carefully managed. If you’re new to the game, then
been cheated for the duration of their full-price save yourself a huge headache, and just go with a
membership. Now that you understand how to WordPress installation. You’ll be surprised at just
manage the business aspects of a membership site, how flexible WordPress can be, but chances are,
let’s take a look at how to get your membership site you already know that. Plus, there are thousands of
up and running. themes available and custom graphic designers that
can make your site look very professional on the
cheap. And with all the readily available plugins, it’s
really a no-brainer, especially if you’re just starting
out.

One of the most important plug-ins for WordPress

that you’ll need is a membership management
plugin. This is an extra piece of software that will
allow you to do things like password protect your

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member’s area, “drip” pre-canned content out to up leaving a lot of money on the table that could
your members, and manage billing and payment otherwise be used to grow your customer value
options. Clearly, choosing the right membership and thus your ad-spend.
software is crucial to your success, and is one
of the most important decisions you’ll make in BEWARE OF CUSTOM DEVELOPMENT: And,
the early stages of getting your business off the unless you’re a programmer by trade, or have
ground. already built a team of reliable, cost effective
programmers, I would not recommend going the

CHOOSING A MEMBER custom route. I’ve heard of way too many horror
stories of guys sinking $50,000 into developers
MANAGEMENT PLATFORM who end up abandoning the project, leaving the
business owner with a mess of spaghetti code. I

Y
ou might be tempted to would highly suggest that you leave it up to the
choose software based on price, guys who spend all of their waking hours building
especially if you only have to pay a one- membership site software. I certainly don’t have a
time fee. But, as a guy who’s “been there” and year or three to devote to building a membership
“done that,” I wouldn’t recommend it as your management platform, nor would I want to.
only criteria. When I first got my membership
site up to a substantial number of customers, As a client of MemberMouse, I can say that
I realized that I didn’t have the functionality they’ve built the only membership management
that was necessary to handle a large number of platform I know of that has the requisite features
customers. And when you get into this position, to run a high-volume membership site. You
a number of bad things happen. Customers get could start with a cheaper platform, but you’ll
upset if you cannot service them fast enough, you end up down a dead end, and you’ll be forced
miss out on revenue opportunities, and things are to migrate your entire business at a later stage.
just generally a lot more difficult than they need Plus, the fly-by-night operators rarely have the
to be. level of customer support you need for a serious
business. For these reasons, I highly suggest you
So when you’re looking at potential platforms, sign up for a trial account with MemberMouse,
you need to realize that what you pay is actually and start building your site on a solid foundation
a very small factor in the end. If the cheap from day one. These guys work day in and day
software you’re considering isn’t capable of 1-click out to refine their membership management
upsells, downsell processes, and automated platform, and it’s one that I am willing to
customer service, (and all the other things I’ve personally endorse.
mentioned in this guide) then you’re probably not
going to be able to run or grow your membership
site successfully. If you’re fortunate enough to
grow your site to any substantial level, you end

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MASSIVE ACTION = MASSIVE as you are providing value to your users at a fair
price. Of course, you need compelling marketing
RESULTS to get them to join, but there is more than
enough good advice out there when it comes to

I
f you’ve read this far, you’re generating compelling sales copy.
clearly interested in starting or growing your
membership site. So what are you waiting To get started, get WordPress installed, and
for? As long as you’re confident there is demand sign-up for MemberMouse. One of the great
for content in your niche, then you should be things they’ve done is offered a free trial
taking steps to make that membership site a so you can get started risk free. So get your
reality. Don’t put it off for another day! WordPress installation going and then install the
MemberMouse plugin. You’ll quickly get the hang
There are lots of things that hold us back of things, and you’ll be on your way to having
from achieving our goals, and one of them is your own cash-generating membership site.
uncertainty.

What’s great about membership sites, and the

Internet in general, is that you can get started SIGN UP FOR A FREE
with a fairly low amount of capital. So don’t
let that be an excuse. You can do it, if you’re MEMBERMOUSE TEST-DRIVE
committed enough to stick through it when you’re
The Most Powerful, Marketing-Driven
second guessing yourself. Just make sure you’re
Membership Platform with Unlimited Phone
operating in a profitable niche. Make sure you & Email Support
have a compelling sales message, and make sure
you’ve got the right tools. If you decide to use [Link]/signup
MemberMouse as your membership management
platform, you can sleep well at night knowing
that you’re building your business on a solid

R
foundation. And when you have that kind of emember: When you take
knowledge, it gives you one less thing to worry massive action, you get massive results.
about, and allows you to focus on growing your I’ve shared all of my secrets with you in
business, instead of worrying about (and running this guide, and if you apply them, I know you’ll
up against) the limitations of your technology. see results too. And when you see results, you
How nice is that? become more and more motivated to take action,
and a snowball effect occurs. So get started today.
Once you get your first few members on board, I’ve given you the blueprint for your own seven
you’ll see that it’s actually pretty easy to make figure membership site. What are you waiting for?
money with membership site marketing, as long

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