Bill Gates Was Wrong! Only Off By $197,000,000

Back in 1996 good old Bill Gates estimated Internet Membership Sites would be a $20-$30 million dollar a year pie. He also stated that was on the high side. Man was he off!

Mr Gates has got more things right than wrong in his career, but that wasn’t one of them. Just 14 years later and the figure is more like $2 Billion Dollars annually. Membership sites are big business and despite the worldwide recession, continue to grow in importance.

Membership sites are not just about monthly subscriptions any more. Another great model is to offer Free Membership to the site, yet each and every time the subscriber logs in you monetize the site through special offers.

Whichever membership model you choose, you will need a few things in place:

You Need fresh content to the site to keep the members happy and hungry for more. You will definitely need an autoresponder like Aweber or i- contact. Of course you need a site, and that will need hosting and a catchy domain name. Last, but not least you will need Membership site software.

In This article I will focus on Membership site software. Domains,Hosting and autoresponders I shall save for another day.

Membership site software

There is software out there for everyone and everyone’s budget. Take Easy Member Pro real good for new comers to the Internet Marketing world. Very user friendly. Then there is a WordPress plugin that will make a WP blog a membership site in 3 simple sets. This one is best for people comfortable with WordPress. Then we have the big daddy of them all Login Frequency Marketing. Yes there are some free options as well.

So what makes Membership Sites So Hot?

Although tremendous amounts of information is free on the Internet, and people are accustomed to getting the information for free. Many People have come to realize that they is little quality control with the free information. If they need and want good quality content, they know they some times have to pony up for it.

Further more Online Memberships offer people a place to meet and have all exclusivity that they crave. People love belonging to a club.

In order for the Membership Site to survive it needs certain things, fresh content, and a good sense of community for the members.

The advantages to building membership websites

Well lets look at it this way. Every Month we are looking for the next big launch of the hottest new niche. It gets a bit worry some at times. What if we can t get in on the lasted product people are clamoring for? So wouldn’t be nice to have a group of happy customers month after month? Help take the pressure off for sure.

With a membership site, you remove most of that ongoing stress. You do your job of selling the memberships and then they pay you month in, month out, automatically. You don’t have to ask for the money – your payment processor just takes it – and you never need to remind anyone to pay up.

You will find that, although you will have cancellations if you do your job most will stay.The ones that cancel can be added back into your sales funnel for targeted offers.

The average “stick time” of a member is said to be about 4 months,but depending on the quality of your site you can have a retention that is much much higher.

The end product of all your efforts will be a site that keeps attracting new members that out strip your loses. Your business will now be based on residual income, and leverage thats in your favor. Your members once they start paying, and you deliver, they will keep on paying.

This is the objective the ambrosia of residual income. The sweetness of it all can last for years with no real extra effort on your part.

Of course, with a membership site you do have to add new content, or provide some kind of service to keep your members interested.

If you are just on the software end of this model,your input maybe very small after the site is launched. If you are on the entertainment side, the guy that provides the super content you will need to be involved on a regular basis.

Many people ignore the power of membership sites to build themselves a very useful income, but to do so is a folly. After all, 100 members paying just $9.99 per month amounts to $1000 a month and may only require you to write a new article each week.

Alright, alright you don t want to write 4 kick butt articles for $1000.00 per month. So this deal is dead to you? No, No, No. You can model your membership site off the top recipe sites. Here is the deal with them, you encourage your members to post their super recipes for dinner, desert,and snacks. You ask them to get involved in the members only forum you have set up. You watch them make friends, share their passion for cooking and you collect a nice monthly fee in the process. So in this model the members create the content for you! What a great world this Internet is.

Whatever your current online marketing business model, consider adding a membership site or two to your stable of Internet properties. Your residual income will skyrocket and your workload may well be lower than you ever imagined possible.

Your Internet lifestyle could be just a membership site away!

And now I would like toask you to claim your Free instant access to several of my highly acclaimed reports. When you visit TomPaige.com. You will be able to instantly download valuable reports to help you with your internet properties. From Tom Paige “The Prince of Print” and internet Marketing Guy.. Also published at Bill Gates Was Wrong! Only Off By $197,000,000.