How and why to build an email list

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Even if you’re new to Internet marketing, you’ve heard the same old saying a thousand times. Lists make money. List marketing is probably the most powerful way to create a profitable home based business. You can’t afford to ignore this powerful approach.

Why it works

In most cases, people need to see a marketing message more than once before they’re persuaded to make a purchase. Putting a message in front of an individual on multiple occasions is more likely to result in a sale. You can create opportunities for multiple exposure by adding an individual to your list.

Plus, most people are more likely to make purchases from people they feel they know and can trust. List marketing gives you a chance to develop a relationship with the people on your list. That increases your credibility, producing more sales.

How to do it

List building is an easy home based business strategy and it all starts with a squeeze page. A squeeze pages has only one purpose. It should convince readers to sign up for your list. Nothing else really matters.

The use of a free gift is an effective way to persuade visitors to join your list. This is a proven strategy that you can use to spur the success of your business.

It’s not enough to have a good freebie, though. You also need to build your squeeze page the right way. There are proven ways to build an optimal squeeze page. You should emulate those proven techniques. That will involve closely following three important guidelines.

Squeeze page basics

First, your squeeze page should be free of all outgoing links with the exception of the “submit” button on your sign up form. You want people to sign up for your list, not to have them click away to something else.

Additionally, your squeeze page should have a concise, strong message. You want people to take advantage of your inducement and to become a subscriber, not to complicate the situation. Remember that your squeeze page is there for a single reason – to build your list. You should choose every word with that goal in mind.

Finally, you should handle the sign up procedure as if it’s a sale – you should work to close the transaction. As such, your squeeze page’s sign up form should feature a powerful call to action. Make it crystal clear that there’s a real value in becoming a part of your list.

Summary

If you’re following those three pieces of advice and are offering a smart “bribe”, you’ll have a successful squeeze page! You’ll have the chance to build good relationships with your potential customers. It will also allow you to reach them with your marketing messages on multiple occasions.

Online list building is a powerful way to improve your Internet marketing performance. The fact that so many successful marketers embrace list building isn’t an accident. It’s true – the money is in the list!

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Get indexed, get ranked, get traffic

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No one can deny that you need traffic to your website in order to succeed online. And nothing beats free traffic. So where do we get free traffic? Google and other search engines.

How does free search engine traffic work?

The process works in a way that you have experienced many many times. You load up Google or another search engine. Enter the words you’re interested in. And click one of the links that shows up. Turns out that the website you visit just got free traffic from the search engine. We will be discussing here how to get website traffic to you for free.

You probably only visit a link or two from the first page of results. The truth is that this first page of results receives nearly all the clicks. And believe it or not, the first 3 results receive over 70% of the traffic.

This means that to get any real traffic you need to be on the first page in Google. And this means Google needs to “rank” you as a top 10 result. And this bring us to…

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization is a measure of how well Google and other search engines think your website matches the search terms people are typing into their search boxes. It’s a complex formula that only people working for Google know exactly. But there are several things that we know for sure.

Getting indexed

First, before you can get ranked highly, Google has to know you exist. This is called getting “indexed.” What this means is that Google visits your site and records information about it in their database.

In order to get indexed, Google has to be able to find you. And the best way for Google to find you is to get inbound links from other sites. Google will actually follow the links on sites it already has indexed to find new sites and index them.

A couple of great places to do this are in your Twitter or Facebook profiles. These sites are very popular so Google indexes them multiple times a day. So any new links will be followed right away.

Gaining ranking

After getting indexed, you need to work on your search engine ranking. Google has billions of pages indexed, so just getting into their database does not mean anyone will see you.

The 3 factors in getting ranked:

  • Content
  • Links
  • Activity

Content strategies

This is the SEO you do on your site itself. You need to make sure your content matches the search terms you’re going after. Clearly this article is about search engine optimization. One way Google figures this out is from the fact that it contains the term SEO. Another reason is because there are related words, like website traffic, too.

You also need to make sure the title tags, outbound links and the domain itself match the topic of the page. These all play a part in helping Google determine what your website is about.

Your links

The next thing to consider is your links. The links coming in and the links going out are included in this. You want to make sure you have more inbound links than outbound links. So the number of inbound links is important.

Article spinning is a super easy way to get a bunch of inbound links. To accomplish this you start by writing an article that targets the keywords you’re after. Then create a bunch of different versions of it. And then upload a different versions to a bunch of sites that allow you to add content. And the more you do the better.

Increasing your activity

And lastly, it’s seems clear that Google expects important pages to be actively updated. You can’t just put up a page and leave it alone and expect it to rank well. Regular content updates to your site are expected. You can do this with RSS feeds and news posts.

Comments from other people on your page are another fantastic way to keep your content updated. To get comments from others, you need to get others to visit your site. Online forums are simple source of real live visitors.

Set up forum profiles with the ones related to your website. Then become active in the forum. Then put a link to your site in your profile. This generates even more links back to your site. And it also gets people to your web page.

Conclusion

All of the above is important. However, writing a bunch of different articles on the same topic. And creating a bunch of forum profiles. And posting your articles and comments takes a lot of time. And you’re already too busy, so you mostly likely will never do any of it.

The good news is that there are automated software programs out there that will do this for you. So, use your time wisely and automated to tedious tasks. This way you’ll actually do it. And not doing it means you will never get free traffic from Google.

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Affiliate Marketing Revised

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You’re dead wrong if you think you know anything about being an affiliate. Everything you’ve been taught is simply out of date. And if you don’t change your tactics, you cannot survive.

The big lie

You’ve been told it’s easy to get started as an affiliate. This is partially true. There’s no doubt it’s easier than starting your own business. But starting your own business is really hard, so it’s all relative.

The cold hard truth

The worst part is that the information you’ve received is all wrong. The first thing you’re taught is to pick some great products. Next to pick your keywords carefully. Then buy some keyword ads that send traffic to the product. And sit back and collect the profits. But it doesn’t work.

Don’t bother with keywords

This method worked a couple years ago. But the competition has shot the price of keywords through the roof. It’s time for a paradigm shift.

A brand new formula

There is a solution to this problem. Here’s a new method that works!

  • Start using CPA marketing
  • Utilize demographics data
  • Do image ad marketing

Get into CPA marketing

CPA means Cost Per Action. It’s so much easier than promoting products. Because your visitor doesn’t have to buy anything. You get paid when they take an “action”. Such as filling in a form. And it’s much easier to get them to do that.

Do demographics research

You’re not even going to use keywords (explained below.) But demographics are highly important. First you select your CPA offer. Then hop over to Quantcast.com. And discover the exact demographics of your ideal prospect.

Do image ad marketing

Now you have your offer and your demographics. Display networks allow you to target demographics with your ads. And use images as your ads. And there was no keyword research required. The biggest advantage is price. Keyword ads are expensive, but image ads are still cheap.

In closing

This is a great way to make money fast. Because you can start CPA marketing for free. You can buy image ad clicks for a fraction of keyword ad clicks. Display networks let you do demographics targeting. And your commission is much easier to earn.

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7 reasons why you MUST have your own info product

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Think about this: What’s the most common reason people get online each and every day? You probably already guessed that it’s to find information. Google alone serves up 400 million searches per day! So what does this mean to you? Well, this is an opportunity for your to provide what people want – information. And to earn some cash for doing it!

What is info marketing?

This is by far the simplest business you can start. You take information and turn it into a digital product – like and ebook. And then sell it to people who want to learn the info in it. Pretty simple, wouldn’t you say?

But how does it all work?

We’ve established that it’s a simple concept. However, to succeed people need to want the information you’re providing. So the key is to figure out what people want. How can you find out what people want?

A super simple trick is to just to check “answer” sites. Just go to Yahoo! answers or ask.com and look at the questions being asked there. You want to find something a lot of people are asking about. Something that most people don’t already know. Then just give them the answer in your ebook.

Power tip

Don’t worry! Info product creation is easy… Consider this: An ebook is just a series of articles. Don’t try to write a whole ebook. Just try to write one or two articles a day. And once you have bunch of good ones, expand and embellish them and combine them into a single ebook.

OK, what’s so hot about digital products? Well, that bring me to the tile of this article Here are 7 reasons for you:

1. Simplicity and ease

An info product business runs on auto-pilot. There is almost no support. So you can just set it up and let it run. It really is like and automatic money machine.

You don’t have any inventory. You never have to deal with shipping. It’s digital.

2. Product combos

After you’ve created a few ebooks. You can put together bigger more expensive information products. It’s nothing to combine the content from several ebooks. Then you can sell it for a lot more. Your customers will gladly pay more for a single bigger ebook. Versus multiple smaller ones.

3. Private label right

When you own the product, you can sell resell rights to it. Recently, resell rights have become extremely popular, because people just don’t want to invest the time and money into making their own. And what’s more you can charge double, even triple your selling price for resell rights!

4. Leverage

Leverage your ebook by using the content in different ways. Use part of it to make an autoresponder series. You can use this to build a list that you can marketing to again and again.

5. More leverage

Don’t stop there . . . break it into several smaller reports. Then you can use the reports as the front-end of your product funnel. You can make these low cost or even free. Either way, you win because you’re feeding your funnel. Taking this technique to the max, you can let your affiliate give the reports away for you. Which brings us to…

6. Affiliates

This is a real power strategy. When you own your own products. You’re able to let other people market it for you. How would you like to have an army of affiliates selling your products? You’ve got to have your own products to have affiliates.

7. JVs

I’ve saved the best for last. Setting up joint ventures is the fastest way to gain success. Period. That makes this is the biggest reason for creating your own info products. Without your own products, you can’t do JVs.

Summary

If you don’t want to sell digital products by now, then you’re either crazy or not listening. ;-) You’ll become the ruler of your own fate. Because you’re 100% in control. So, decide to just start:

  • Visit an “answers” site
  • Find out what people need to know
  • Start providing information

The steps on how to write an ebook are really that easy. Before you know it, you’ll have your own info product.

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Using Web Audio for Success

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It’s undeniable that if you add audio to websites it will increase your results. In fact, not using audio is a big mistake. It will boost your opt-in rate. And your sales.

What makes it so effective?

It’s simple. Audio breaks the silence of the web. It adds a human touch to your site. And makes people feel they’re dealing with a real person. In short, it makes your site come alive. And this aliveness creates more interaction with your visitors.

Here are the benefits

There are actually two profit boosts from using audio. First, you’ll make more sales. Secondly, you will not have to spend as much to make the sales. You won’t have to hire someone to write your sales letter. Just record some audio and add it to your site. Your honest message about your product will sell better than a professional copywriter.

You’ll also get better conversions on your list opt-ins. The reason this works so well is because people need to be told what to do. So you make an audio recording that says: Fill in your name and email and click submit. Just this one simple thing will boost opt-ins up to 315%!

Some ways to use audio

Put a welcome message that plays automatically on your site, A warm welcome can be the deciding factor. Your welcome message could make them stay when they would normally leave.

A guided tour. The same principle the we used to boost opt-ins applies. You just explain what to do first, then next, etc. And take them all the way through buying your product.

Get testimonials for your services and products. It’s good to get written testimonials. But what’s even better are audio testimonials. It’s much hard to fake an audio testimonial. Using audio makes it much more believable. And will definitely increase your results.

Sneaky tick

What about creating an entire product using audio? This is by far the easiest content to produce. And it still has a high perceived value. Think about how popular podcast are. And once you record the audio, you can pay someone to transcribe it for you. Then you’ve got an eBook, too – but it was easy to create!

How hard is adding audio?

It’s so simple you won’t believe it. There are quite a few audio streaming software programs out there. There’s no knowledge required on your part. The software creates the audio button code for you. Just paste the code you copy from the software. You don’t need to even consider this part.

Summing it up

Here’s a recap of the benefits. Using website audio will increase your conversion rates. No doubt your sales will go up. You will also increase your subscriber opt-ins. And you can quickly produce products and website sales copy. You’ll be one of the few you use these strategies. So you’ll be one of the few reaping the rewards. Don’t be lazy! Add some audio today. ;-)

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Sneaky Affiliate Tricks

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Yes affiliate marketing rocks, but it’s really hard to get started. The reason is because there is a lot of competition. In order to survive you have to beat your competition. There’s also a lot of information out there about how to do affiliate marketing, so it can be confusing. Here’s one trick that almost no one else is using.

Marketing with video

The power of video is undeniable. People love watching videos and that’s why they’re everywhere. About the only thing that keeps people’s attention anymore is video. So why wouldn’t you use it in your affiliate business?

Here’s how to use videos for affiliate promotions:

  • Testimonials
  • Do a video walk-through
  • Record the order process
  • Sneak peak

Do a testimonial video

This is probably the easiest of all. Just click record on your web cam and start talking. It does not need to be polished or pro. Seeing a real person on the other end helps your viewers make a buying decision. And the mess-ups or mistakes just make the video more real. You really can just click record and start talking. And if you don’t want to show your face, use one of the next ideas.

Record a walk-through

This is a great way to promote something without selling it. Make this more like a tutorial helping them use the product. And seeing it being used is a great way to make people want to buy it. If the product is useful, watching the tutorial makes them want to buy it. So just make sure you’re demoing a good product.

Record the order process

This one is killer! Do a screen capture of the ordering process. There is nothing more motivating than watching someone buy something live. First of all it’s what’s called “social proof”. People will feel more comfortable buying after seeing you do it. This also makes your viewers trust you. People believe you’re giving them good advice if you take that advice yourself. And finally, it creates envy. People want what they see you getting. You can add additional juice to this one with: In order to get to see the inside, you gotta buy the product.

Sneak peak

This is a great way to build value. What you do is record a tour of the back end. You show them the entire contents of what they get. This one also helps to remove the skepticism. It’s much easier to trust they’re getting something if they actually seen it.

It’s easy!

No special skills are required. Some very easy to use programs make the videos for you. Really, the software does all the work. So there’s no need to even think about the technical side. Keep focused on the rewards:

  • Make more money You’ll earn more affiliate commissions when you add video. People love video, so please use them.
  • Less refunds You’ll lose less of the commission your earn. Thanks to you people know what’s inside before buying. So less of them will ask for refunds.
  • Rise above the competition! This is such a simple technique. But pretty much no one does it. That puts you ahead of the pack.

So get serious about your affiliate business and add video in now. Not using video is detrimental to you business. So do it!

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Email List Building Strategies

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Honestly, everyone making money online has an email list. It’s the number one key to opening the success floodgates. After it’s built, it’s yours to use any time you want. It’s a resource you can tap at any time and generate income.

OK, but how?

Here are the three components of list building:

  • Your Opt-in Page
  • The Incentive
  • Your Confirmation Page

Your Opt-in Page – The squeeze page is the first thing your visitor is going to see. This page is the one that asks them for their email. That’s why it needs to look like a professionally designed page. And have an easy to understand opt-in form. And have a clear call to action.

Failure to include a great “call to action” will result in failure. This “close” tells your visitors what you want them to do. You opt-in rates will take a dramatic nose dive without it. Oddly, if you don’t make it clear, people will be confused and end up doing nothing.

One way to really spice up your squeeze page is to add a compelling video to the page. Adding video will help keep your visitors attention. It also allows you to tell them what to do several times. Then at the end of the video you can print “sign up now” on the video.

It’s OK, if you’ve never made a video before. You can hire freelancers to do this for you for a few hundred dollars. There are also list building systems that give you squeeze page templates.

Your Bribe – The next thing you need is an incentive to subscribe to your list. People won’t give you their email for nothing. Nobody likes spam, so most people guard their email closely. This means your bribe needs to be very attractive.

You have to provide value in your bribe for it to be good. It has to be something that people actually want. And will be able to actually benefit from it. This can be:

  • A free report
  • Software
  • Training videos
  • An email series

You’ve got to create some great content. Something that’s useful and helpful to your visitors. And of course it has to be free. If you make it good enough, they will give you their email in exchange.

Now, if you don’t know how to create the bribe don’t worry. You can just pay someone else to make it for you. Just give them a topic and they will write the content. One easy and effective bribe is a 5-part email training series. You can have ghost writers create emails for under $25 an email. So, you’ll get the whole series written for under $150.

Or again, you can find complete list building packages for sale online that include an email series. There are two important things about the email series. First of all it has to give the subscriber what you promised – valuable information. And second, it needs to make you money. The easiest way to do this is to market affiliate products in the emails. Affiliate products are easy because you don’t have to do anything at all. And you can earn some commissions immediately from your emails.

The Opt-in Success Page – Finally, you need to consider your opt-in confirmation page. This is where your visitor goes after opting into your list. It’s a great idea to give them some valuable information right on the thank you page. Then they feel good about giving you their email address. And it helps you establish the relationship. So when they get your email, they’re happy to hear from you.

You can use a “done for you” email marketing system. You can also put the whole thing together on your own. You can either write the content pages on your own. Or hire ghost writers to write them for you.

Summing it up

Whether you decide to build your email funnel yourself. Or pay a freelancer to write produce it all for you. Or if you get a ready-done package. The important thing is that you build your own list starting now. Once you’ve got it built. You’re free to make money at the push of a button.

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Affiliate Business Tips

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Preselling for profit

If you want to make more money as an affiliate, you must presell.

Before we start, let’s talk about what preselling actually is. There are two components to it – art & science. The goal is to get your reader prepped to make a purchase. Then when they’re ready, refer them to the product website so they can buy it. If you do it well, it’s completely invisible.

Basically, you give them some content. Then send them to the sales page. In a second we’ll talk about how to do actually it. First, it’s important to understand why we do it. Just a few of the reasons you want to presell.

  • Preselling creates trust – Readers who trust you are more likely to click your links. Which obviously means you’ll make more sales.
  • It disarms your reader – When you’re not hyping or pitching a product, your reader lets their guard down. Unguarded reading means they’re not filtering what you say. And your intention is conveyed more easily.
  • It creates buying readiness – Now they’re open to hearing what you’re telling them. And in turn, they’re open to other messages, as well. Like the info on product sales page you’ve linked to. And being open to the information there means they are much more likely to buy.
  • It increases your sales – They arrive at the product website prepped to buy. With a feeling of trust and openness. This dramatically boosts your sales rate!
  • Your customers are happier – Plus, they feel they’ve made the buying decision on their own. Instead of being manipulated into buying. And this leads to greater satisfaction with the product.
  • Preselling increases your bottom line – Satisfied customers are less like to refund. Which means you keep more of your affiliate commissions.

Obviously, it’s important to presell. You earn more commissions. And produce happier customers. Everybody wins!

How does it work?

OK, now you understand why it’s so important. And I hope you’re resolved to being preselling, too. So, it’s time to break down how it works. As I mentioned earlier, it’s both an art and a science.

Becoming an artist

The first step is in getting your readers to trust you and open up. And the only method of doing this is to give exceptional value to your readers. But you can’t give them so much that they think they have everything they could need, and that’s what makes it an art. The idea is that they want more and the sales page you send them to gives them more. And because you’ve gained trust, they’re more receptive to the sales message and more likely to buy.

Part 2 – the Science

There’s also a specific formula you need to follow.

First of all, it’s important HOW you present your information. You need to know where you’re going before you begin. In the end, you want to sell a specific product. You use the information to do this in one of two ways. First, you can provide useful but incomplete information. The other method is to explain all the details and expose how difficult it is to do what you’re explaining. In either case, the product you’re referring them to solves the problem for them.

But you can’t link to your affiliate link. Instead you link directly to the product sales page. This increases your clicks. But, without your affiliate link, how do you get credit? This is all part of the science of preselling. You “pre-cookie” your reader before sending them to the sales page.

Next, you want to make sure you’re linking on related words and phrases. Hyperlinked words are clicked more than anything else. Plus, if you link on relevant words, it only makes sense to click on there.

Using this system, you’re virtually guaranteed to increase your affiliate business success.

Now for the bad news…

This process is not easy – at all! Let’s look at the skills required to pull it off: Great content. First and foremost, you have to be able to write a great article that provides valuable information. To do that you have to have enough information to be valuable and be able to present it in a useful way. Writing to presell. Yes, you must providing useful content. You also have to present the info in a way that provides real value. And somehow also make them want to learn more. Or provide so much information that they see how hard it will be to implement.

Product selection. After that you have to figure out which products you want to promote. Even if you get the article written. You’ve wasted all your effort if the product doesn’t sell well.

Techy stuff. One of the keys to this system is using “covert cookies” for the tracking. This is fairly simple – you use a 1 X 1 image and set the “source” to your affiliate link. (But if you do it wrong, you won’t get paid for the traffic you send.)

Wrapping it up:

Now you know what it takes to be a Presell Pro. And doing this increases your affiliate commissions by over 500%! The important thing is to use these techniques for everything you promote as an affiliate. Take action now. Put in the effort to reap the greater rewards.

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Traffic Generation Tips

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The most important thing in any web business is traffic – lots and lots of traffic. Obviously, this assumes you actually have a reason for wanting this traffic. After getting the traffic you just need to convert it into subscribers and customers . . . but that’s the easy part. The most crucial aspect of this process is getting the visitors to your site.

Here are some tips for generating website visitors:

Here are a few of the most popular way to get traffic to your site – for free:

  • Web 2.0 Sites
  • Article Marketing
  • Video

And here’s how to use each method…

Web 2.0

By web 2.0 we mean any site where the users actually create the content. These are great sites to work with because they allow you to participate in this content creation. The other interesting thing about these sites is that all the search engines (including Google) treat them as “authority sites”. And that’s important to you because it means that Google and the other search engines treat links from these sites as more meaningful than links from other sites. So, if you place links to your own site inside your content, you get a search engine ranking benefit from those links. The direct traffic from the Web 2.0 sites themselves is only part of the benefit. There are many more web 2.0 traffic tactics we don’t have time to get into here, but this will get you started.

Article Marketing

The natural next topic is article marketing. Article directories fall under the category of web 2.0 sites. Article directories are sites where users (including you) can upload articles they have written. And because they are also considered authority sites by the search engines you get all the benefits of other web 2.0 sites just by putting your articles on them. And the hidden benefit here is that your reach grows as other people take your articles and put them on their blogs and sites. And because the terms of the directory say they have to include your “resource box” you get links back from all these other sites, too. In order to get the most free traffic make sure you:

  • Figure out what keywords you want to go after
  • Write your article for the keywords you’ve chosen
  • Use anchor text links in the article and the “resource box”

Video

The last of this group is video marketing. Just like article directories, video sharing sites also rely on user-generated content. And just as article directories give you great SEO benefits and allow others to redistribute your content on their sites. video sharing sites give you all these same benefits. And if all that wasn’t enough, you also stand a much stronger chance of getting a high search engine ranking for the keywords you want with video than you do with text-based content.

Here are just a few video marketing tips:

  • Sign up for YouTube
  • Turn off all the modules in your account profile
  • Use the tags in your profile to enter the keywords you want to rank for
  • Make sure to include in your profile a link to your site
  • Add 1 or more videos to your profile
  • In the title, the description and the tags for each video, include your main keywords

Summary:

If you take action on the items listed here you’ll have free traffic in no time.

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Membership Niche Selection Tips

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In order to make sure your membership business is profitable, you have to select the right market. Here’s how.

First – Look for Fanatics

The first step in developing a profitable membership business is to find a market with fanatics in it. Simply put, a fanatic is someone who’s willing to spend time and more importantly money on a topic they are interested in. OK, so we know what a fanatic is, but how do we find them?

  • Look at magazine racks. This is an often overlooked, yet extremely simple way to find niches that people are interested in. Because it’s becoming harder and harder to keep print periodicals profitable these days, if you see a magazine on the shelves, you know it’s making money. And that means there are lots of people interested in it. If they can make money in a print version, you can probably make money with a membership website.
  • Pay attention throughout the day in your regular activities. See what people are talking about on the radio, TV, at parties, in public, etc. People generally talk about things they are interested in. And this means there may be a market for information about it.
  • Again, looking in the physical world for clues you can tell there are lots of people interested in something if there are clubs and organizations around the topic. Likewise, if there are enough people to hold a convention, there are definitely enough people to fill your membership website.
  • And of course there are all the things you have an interest in, too! If you’re interested in something, it’s highly likely others are, too. And, as an added bonus, it’s much more fun to build a business around things you’re interested in.
  • Google Trends. This is a great way to figure out what people are interested in. This service shows you the current most popular search terms. These topics are the hottest topics because lots and lots of people want information about them. Building a membership business around things people are actively searching for is a great way to ensure your success.

Second – Analyze the “commerciality”

OK, so you’ve got a great idea for your niche membership business with lots of fanatics. But will they actually spend money? One way to figure this out is to see if other are making money in it.

Here’s a punch list for figuring out if anyone’s making money in your niche:

  • Are there blogs or forums in this niche? Take the name of your niche and search for “niche name blog” & “niche name forum” in Google to see if there is an active group of people talking about and interested in the niche. This lets you know there is a market (a group of people actively interested in the niche.)
  • Check Amazon, eBay and Google Shopping to find out if others are making and selling products in your niche. If other people are creating and selling products in this niche, it means there is money to be made.
  • Monitor Google Adwords to determine if people are running the same ads for weeks in a row. If they are, this means they’re making money on these ads – otherwise, they’d stop running them. Which means there is money to be made in your niche.

Step 3 – Determine ease of entry

Once you’ve found a niche and figured out that there is money to be made in, you need to determine if you can break into this niche. Here are some things to look at to figure this out:

  • Figure out what kinds of products people are interested in. If it’s mostly physical products, coaching and live seminars, then it will be harder to break into this niche. Membership websites based on information are the easiest to start and maintain.
  • Competition. How many other people are trying to sell to this market? You want to start in a market that’s not completely saturated with competitors.
  • Compare the size of the market versus the number of competitors. Some competition is a good sign – just make sure the market is big enough for you to join in.
  • How ready is the market for marketing messages, and how willing are the fanatics to buy. Every market is different. Sometimes people are looking for information and are ready to pay for it right now. And sometimes it takes weeks, months or even years for them to make the decision to purchase.

In Summary

So far, we’ve talked about exactly what it takes to pick a great niche: One with a hungry crowd of fanatics, who are ready to spend money on information about their topic. And you’ve determined your barrier to entry is small enough to give it a go. Now that you’ve prepared properly, you’re success is 99% guaranteed. How to actually run your membership website is the only thing left to talk about…

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