Good Morning, Warriors!

Let me make on thing perfectly clear – The Battledome will always be FREE FRONT ROW SEATING FOR EVERYONE! You may have seen the comments on yesterday’s Battle, and that’s one of the things I was afraid of with this Challenge.  Yes, I am showing you how to set up a Membership Site.  But it is NOT for the Battledome.  Rest assured, ladies and gentlemen, you will never be asked to pay admission to enter the ‘Dome!

The Challenge!

The Challenge, as issued by The Arrogant Alchemist is this – Take a PLR product, be it a book, a method, a plugin, whatever, and turn it into Gold.  More specifically, the Challenge he has issued to The Fair Maiden Beamer is to turn $97 Ebooks into a membership site, selling PLR products, with the initial goal of earning $5,000 by the end of December 2009.  Yes, that’s 2 weeks away.  I’m aware of that.

For you newcomers to the site, the intention of The Fair Maiden Beamer has always been, and will remain, to test Warrior Special Offers and prove whether or not they’ll really do what they claim they’ll do.  According to The Arrogant Alchemist, all I need to do is chose one of his methods for Converting PLR Into Gold, and then TAKE ACTION! and I’ll be able to make 5 Grand by the end of December and a Million Bucks! by this time next year.  We’ll just see about that!

That December 31 deadline has me a little worried.  The Alchemist issued this Challenge about 4 or 5 weeks ago and I just haven’t been able to get started because I had so much writing to do for people.  And I still have another day or so to go before I’ll be done.  I could try playing on his sympathies and ask for an extension on the time here.  But that would mean I’d have to give him at least a few points and I’m not ready to concede.  Not even an inch!  So we’re going to operate under the assumption that we’re going to make $5000.00 in 17 days.  It’s definitely possible.  Look what happened with Monkey Boy.  It’ll be a Challenge, that’s for sure.  But…

Wouldn’t it be cool if I did it!

money


Membership Site Stuff

I gotta tell ya – personally, I think membership sites pretty much suck.  And the biggest reason they suck is because people look at them as a way to make easy money.  They aren’t really concerned about what they’re selling or who they’re selling it to, or even how they’re selling it.  They just want that person to sign up, pull out a credit card and make that first payment.  And then, they’re actually counting on you to get so bogged down in email and day to day business stuff that you forgot you signed up with them and you just leave that recurring payment on your credit card for the rest of eternity.

Go ahead, tell me I’m wrong.  And then I’ll show you a copy of my Paypal account with all the stupid recurring payments I have to track down so I can figure out how to get out of some of these worthless membership sites I inadvertently joined.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  Not all  membership sites are like this.  But you and I both have a lot of recurring payments that pop up every month for stuff we don’t even remember we signed up for.  Sites that we may not even be hearing from any more.  And I don’t want my site to be like that.  When people see that payment from $97 Ebooks pop up on their credit card or paypal account, I want them to look at it and say, “Hey!  There’s my payment to $97 Ebooks.  I’m so glad I joined that site because I get…..every month.”  I want them to know why they’re making that payment.  I want them to remember it.  And I want them to be glad to make it.

I don’t want to be one of those people who thinks, “Well, if I over deliver and give them lots of Free STUFF, they’ll join my membership site and I’ll get a payment from them every month.”  Because I know what I think of those kind of sites.  And you probably feel the same way.  They try to dazzle you with the quantity, but there’s really nothing of any quality in that first truckload of crap they send you.

Anyway, I could go on and on about the evils of membership sites, but I’m sure you have your own horror stories.

I do belong to a couple of quality membership sites, though.  I get a lot of valuable help and information from these sites, so I’m going to try to remember what it is I like about them and work it into $97 Ebooks.

Step Number One – What Are My Goals For This Site?

The Arrogant Alchemist tells me that before I even make the first keystroke on this membership thing, I need to have my goals clearly defined.  If I don’t know where I’m going, how will I be able to get there and how will I know if I’ve arrived?  Which makes perfect sense to me.  I don’t often get in my car and just drive around aimlessly.  But when I do, it really sucks to see how much gas I’ve wasted to get nowhere.

So, here are my goals for the $97 Ebooks Membership Site

I want to make my life easier – Seriously!  Let’s face it.  Nobody ever goes into any new project and says, “Hey!  Let’s try to make this as difficult as possible because I have way too much free time on my hands and I’m tired of hanging out at the beach all day”.  And if you’re honest about it, you’ll admit that that’s your main goal, too.  Well, that and…

I want to make some money - There are some people out there in the real world who will accept “Other Types Of Payment”  for the services and products provided.  But, since Beamer just isn’t that type of gal and Boo still expects to get a pig’s ear every day, I need to make some cold, hard cash.

So, basically, and this is a scary thought, my MAIN goal is the same as all those other membership site owners who we all know and hate – I want to make it easier for me to make money.  I know that sounds harsh, but stick with me here.  There’s a LOT more to it than that.

Step Two – How Do I Plan To Accomplish Those Goals?

If you read yesterday’s post, then you’re aware of some of the problems I’ve been having with $97 Ebooks.  I need to address the following issues:

Communication – I need to make it easier for my customers to communicate with me, and for me to communicate with them.  No more of this multiple user names and email addresses.

If I get my customers all under one roof, I can funnel them to a contact form so we’ll have one name and one email address that goes directly from them to me and back again.

A big benefit of this communication solution will be that I’ll have all of the emails coming to one place so I can address each one individually.  This will allow my customers to tell me what they want and feel confident that I hear them.  And I’ll be able to see the entire discussion in one place, with all the “needs” and “wants” right there for both of us to see and agree on BEFORE I start working on their book.  This will save sooooo much time in rewrites!

Another big benefit of having all of $97 Ebooks’ customers under one roof will be that I can post something somewhere, or give them all a guide or something, that will help them earn money with these ebooks they’re paying for.  I don’t think some of them realize the possibilities here.  For example, someone will send me a payment and tell me they want an ebook about “Twitter”.  And that’s it.  That’s all they want.  Just “Twitter”.  The possibilities are ENDLESS!  What do you WANT? What are you going to do with the book and what do you want the book to do for YOU?

Scheduling – It’s been impossible to meet scheduling commitments because people wait until the last minute to tell me what they want.  And when they do tell me, it’s usually way more than what was originally discussed.  I have no problem trying to meet their quality and quantity requirements.  I just need enough time to do it.

Having my customers under one roof will allow me to send email broadcasts at the beginning of the month and give them a deadline for submitting their topic and content information if they want to have their book back by the end of the month.  This will also give me a better idea on how to schedule myself and other writers for the month because we’ll know exactly how many books we have to do and what the topics are.

Payments – This part is a no brainer for me.  Sorry.  But I know I wrote at least FOUR 12,000 word ebooks over the last 6 weeks and did NOT get paid for them.  This will never happen again.  You got me once, and I’m sorry, but you’ve now forced me to move your name to the top of my list of people who can just kiss my….!  Beamer is normally a very generous person, and, if you had asked, I probably would have said, “Sure.  Let me help you out on this one.”  In fact, I’ve given away Ebooks over the last 6 or 8 weeks, because I myself wasn’t happy with the way the turned out.  The recipients loved them.  And they’re out there selling them.  Which is fine with me.  They were happy when they left $97 Ebooks, and that’s really all that matters to me.

But you four people, and you know who you are, cost me a lot of valuable time.  However, I do need to thank each and every one of you because you taught me a valuable lesson.  ‘Nuff said.

Reasons For A Membership Site

There are a lot of reasons that people set up membership sites, and, for most of the ones I’ve seen, the biggest reason seems to be to try make a bunch of money and not have to do anything to earn it.  One of the most attractive aspects of a membership site is that you can, if you’re so inclined, just load it up with contenct and drip it out to your members.  Then, you just move on to setting up the next site.

I think I’m stepping outside the box again with this one.  I’m not setting up this site so I can suck in a bunch of customers and build a big community and keep adding more and more content and attracting more and more members.  I’m not doing this site to build a “Continuity Program”.  In fact, I don’t even think that would be possible with this site.  How can I load up custom content?  Each person orders a different book.

I’m really setting this site up to make it easier for people to order the ebooks that they want, and to make it easier for me to give it to them.  The whole thing will be set up like the traditional membership site sales funnel.  But not with the intention of sucking them further along the funnel to the big MAJOR OFFER at the end.  The funnel is going to be set up so that I know who is ordering what and when they want it.  And that’s it.

So there you have it.  We’ve officially taken the first step of this Challenge, as directed by the Arrogant Alchemist.   We’ve set a goal, which is to make $5,000.00 by December 31, 2009.  We have a method of achieving that goal, which is to set up a membership site.  And we have directions – address communication, scheduling and payments.

Tomorrow we’ll take a look at the engine under the hood – the membership site itself.  I’ll give you as much information as my technologically challenged mind can regarding the plug in and try to give you a look at the actual map we’re going to follow while setting up this funnel.

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