How To Monetize A Blog

CPA Marketing, Profit Blueprint

I proudly present to you my new ebook:

CPA Marketing, Profit Blueprint

CPA, which stands for Cost per Action, is basically a form of affiliate advertisement that is used by almost all companies throughout the world in order to generate leads for their products.

This marketing is done by affiliates who work through their own websites in order to send traffic to the advertiser’s website for the product of the company. CPA deals with specific forms of marketing which involve pay per click and pay per lead ads. CPA is also known as Cost per Acquisition. This makes more sense literally, since affiliate advertisers under CPA networks are paid based on what the advertiser acquires from his or her customers.

CPA networks provide advertisers with a wide range of affiliates who have signed up with them so that various companies can choose the best affiliates for this job.

Unlike affiliate marketing, CPA marketing requires the marketers to receive the approval of CPA networks. Otherwise they are not registered with them.
However, joining a CPA is basically harder than joining a simple market affiliating program. The main reason for this is because everyone is quite used to the easy and automatic acceptance that is associated with many of the affiliating networks. It is more difficult to join the CPA network because of the quality of the service that are as a result, offered.
In reality, there are a lot of sign-in rejections; the eBook describes the steps you need to take to be accepted by CPA Networks, and this is the first priceless benefit.

The general wisdom is to join as many CPA networks as you can. Different networks have different lead programs that can be used by marketers. Choose the ones which have a high pay per lead offer as well as resell options as this will multiply the promotion of your work, resulting in higher income generation for you.

The eBook presents to you a list with good CPA Networks which makes sense to join and their specific characteristics.

After you know how to join and what to do to be approved, the next concern is how to select the right CPA Offers. This step involved some research on your part, but you have enough details to get it right.

You need to know:

• How to study the market competition
• How to compare CPA offers
• How to get your affiliate URLs to promote CPA offers

The ebook offers:

• A list with options of advertising CPA offers
• Show how to generate traffic to your CPA offers
• For correctly planning a CPA campaign you have conversion tips
• The effective keywords Strategies
• How to test keywords for CPA Marketing

You have all the info you need to start the right way, and the eBook also offer knowledge about track online Marketing ROI Using CPA.

The Cost per Action Analysis is a good way of tracking your online marketing Return on Investment [ROI], and it’s a much better way than page views, impressions, clicks, etc.
The advertising medium over the web is expected to grow by about $10 billion in the coming 5-6 years, so it becomes important to appreciate the effectiveness of such huge spending.
If you are unable to measure what results you are getting with ad campaigns, it doesn’t make any sense undertaking them, and ROI is the best way to measure the results.
It’s good for the advertisers that tracking the ROI for online advertisements is easier than tracking it for other mediums like radio, television, newspaper, etc. In online marketing, the ad campaigns can be tracked down to each denomination of money spent on it. This is the main reason why the money spent on online advertisements is only going up with every passing day.

Why is it better than Cost per Impression [CPM] or Cost per Click [CPC]?
For tracking the effectiveness of a campaign, most businesses consider the statistics revealed by CPM and CPC. The only fact that they fail to consider is that for most of the businesses, the impressions and clicks hardly help you in earning money. So by relying on these, you might not exactly be tracking your ROI. The same goes for page stats as well. Impressions, clicks, page views, etc. are not an end itself; they are, in fact, just means to an end. If they don’t result in more sales, all expenses spent on them are useless. If you earn money from the sales, you need to correlate the costs and sales. So you need to measure the Cost per Action [CPA].

In summery: since with CPA you can identify with accuracy, the cost you would have to incur for acquiring a customer, it eliminates any kind of guesswork. You can calculate your ROI with precision. Also, since the online tools and technologies permit you to keep a real time track of the effectiveness of your ad campaign, you can adjust even those campaigns which may still be running.

If you can be an expert at effective web campaigning, you’ll save a lot of implementation costs and get a high ROI in return.

Success is NOT an accident. So you are just one click away.
To your success
Michey

Popularity: 100% [?]

Tags: affiliate offers, Cost per Acquisition, Cost per Action, Cost per Click, CPA, CPA Marketing, CPA offers, CPC, Profit Blueprint, ROI

Wordpress 3.0 Features and Security

We all wait with great anticipation the new born Wordpress 3.0 which now is in Beta 2.0 stage.

With 3.0 release Wordpress will gain in functionality, especially including  Multi User (MU) feature and will be  a better content management system (CMS).

I am not going to repeat what others already did better then I can do. I’ll just point you to great posts you can read, and this will prepare all of us for the new release and for a better blogging concept, security, functionality.

Even though I know that it is not an easy task I applaud Wordpress for doing it and I’ll wait with patience the new version. But I want you and I to be informed which will make us all better WP users and bloggers.

The musings of this post are:

• New features of Wordpress 3.0
• Security on Wordpress 3.0
• Top 10 tips for WP Plug-in Developers
• Top 10 Tools for Running Stats Tracking in WP

New features of Wordpress 3.0

It is really amazing:

1. Custom Post Types
2. Menu Management
3. Custom Taxonomies which will increase the role of keywords for tagging purpose
4. New Default Theme, called “Twentyten” with two important features which will let you customize Header and Background Image
5. Multi User which they renamed as Multi Site feature
   

Mashable did a great job explaining the new WP 3.0 feature, you are in good hands:

http://mashable.com/2010/05/10/new-features-wordpress-3/

Security on Wordpress 3.0

Security is an issue all of us are interested in.

For Wordpress 2.8 Alex Sysoef  has a free DVD with a unique approach for security (you pay only the shipping), and for WP 3.0 he has an interesting post giving us more details, potential issues and I like the idea that a good number of people with deep knowledge on the subject engage in discussion.

In a subject like this even controversy is a great plus added to the subject:

Wordpress 3.0 Security Design that Need to Be Addressed

Top 10 tips for WP Plug-in Developers

This is a post with interesting tips for plug-ins to use in Wordpress Developers.  Sure each serious blogger has his own opinion and favorite plug-ins, but beginners, even for medium bloggers, when we have over 9,000 of plug-ins in WP, some ideas and guidance is useful:

http://mashable.com/2009/03/25/wordpress-plugin-developer-tips/

Top 10 Tools for  Stats Tracking in WP

We already know that the SEO rules and Ranking Algorithms are constantly changing without the courtesy to announce us in advance or telling which is the new rule. So tracking Stats is the greatest game in town. The next article give us some tools to follow them:

http://mashable.com/2008/09/03/wordpress-stats-tracking-tools/

In this post I don’t invent the wheel, but I put together some info I consider vital for us as bloggers. Hope you enjoy.

Until next time be informed.

Michey

Popularity: 22% [?]

Tags: cms, Mashable, plug-ins, Sysoef, tracking stats, wp 3.0, WP features, WP security

Membership Plus Add-On

The Membership Plus Add-on for the later Release of the Affiliate and Sale System called RAP (Rapid Action Profit), which is a relative new Affiliate Management System with:

• Instant payment and
• Most flexible Sales System on the net

Membership Plus Add-on is coming bundled with:

• The PayPal subscription Add-on (at no extra cost)
• A Quick Reference Guide
• Professional Membership Site Layouts
• Highly-secured Site Protection

This is the bundle:

I highly recommend RAP System (Rapid Action Profit System), you can sign up for free, and the scalability, extensibility, and flexibility which are just some of the key benefits  for the membership site created with Membership Plus Add-On script.

In Summary: This has been one  add-on created  at RAP-Extras as it involved streamlining what is typically a very complex system and coding and has a very simple installation and setup process , you can start launching some amazing Membership Sites with it.

Until next time

Be informed

Michey

Popularity: 15% [?]

Tags: member management, membership, membership addon, Membership Layouts, PayPal Add-on, RAP, Rapid Action Profit, script, secure registration

Pre-Launch or Pre-Sell

The launch of a Digital Product, or any other type of project has 3 important steps: pre-launch, launch, post-launch, and ignoring one of them it is a big mistake.

Today I’ll chat with you about pre-launch which has a vital role, and a potential to sink or catapult your product to a spectacular success.

I am doing this as I noticed in many cases a disproportional attention to the pre-launch steps vs, the launch.

I dedicate this post to my mentor Ken Evoy, this is my way to thank you Ken for all you did and still do for the Internet Marketing community. I am not going to call you “a Guru” as guru has a pejorative nuance nowadays,  I just call you My Favorite Teacher.

Ken was the creator of the concept of pre-selling which immediately was adopter to the entire Internet Marketing.

Why? Because it is brilliant, and Ken Evoy is a great teacher. He created an entire system, his “The Affiliate Masters Course” is a classic, his SiteSell.com is the most ingenious course on designing WebSite which sell on the Net.

PRE-selling means knowing how to warm-up your visitors and put them into buying frame of mind. It is

• the heart of what makes selling successful
• very important for high conversions and great earning regardless if they are direct earnings of affiliate commissions

According with Ken we have 5 distinct stages, and we must put ourselves in the mind of visitors, to help them we have to understand them first.

Your visitors arrive on your site, blog, or ezine. You must:

1) Get attention! Use selling/landing pages are designed to create awareness. When a visitor arrives on your site, blog, ezine he can fall in one of those categories:

• completely unfamiliar with online marketing
• slightly interested in online marketing or building an online business
• considering but doesn’t know how to make money online
• failing in his efforts and looking for a better way (this is a huge category)
• seriously looking for ways to make money online

2) Grow interest! If the visitor gets the attention of your product he is maybe in one of those categories:

• interested, but want to know more
• seeking more information about the process and tools
• ready for benefits that is specifically relevant to him

3) Build credibility! At this point, your visitor is a pre-customer who is moving from info-gathering to find credibility! Here you can easily lose you pre-customer, he is:

• currently evaluating various online marketing products, including yours
• considering yours, but are unsure or otherwise have questions
• seeking reassurance about your product
• comparing your product to others

4) Involve! Some pre-customers are extremely careful, diligent info-seekers. You must offer high-value, free information and tools to work with. They fall in one of those categories:

• getting closer, but need more exposure or “comfort” about your product
• procrastinating, so stay in front of them with free tools and info
• thinking seriously about your product and just need reassurance

5) Close the sale! The entire process funnels must shift from Pre-selling to SELLING. You “Get the sale” from customers who are…

• ready to buy your product but have not made the final commitment
• 99% of the them are merely looking for the final reason to buy, your unique preposition will pay a great role at this point
• all the way there and are merely looking for the Order Page!

The above stages are meant to help you think about your customers’ mindset stages within the buying cycle.

Keep in mind that:

• Each customer is at a slightly different place in the buying cycle
• One customer buys within 24 hours of “attention-getting,” another may take months
• Some will never buy even on this stage
• And of course, you don’t deal with just one customer at a time. If you have 1,000 visitors, each will have a slightly different type of thinking along the “Attention-to-Order” process

So… your job is to move as many of them ever-closer to the final action, press the buy button. How do you address all of their needs? You must pre-sell effectively creating actions which will affect your visitor’s mindset in a positive way.

Pre-selling must be:

• First step of getting attention
• You have to create a crescendo in the entire pre-sell period which will entice a sell at the launch time
• You have to be precise, give a date for launch,
• If you don’t give a date it will be very hard to create the crescendo I am talking about
• You must keep that date
• You have to tell people the truth, no hype recommended
• Provide tools, give free staff related with the niche
• Make you pre-customer comfortable building creditability
• Talk about benefits and your unique preposition to distinguish yourself for the crowd especially on niches which are very popular

Pre-sell is really all about selling yourself to your potential customers. You must reach the right people in a proper fashion, you deliver value content and recommend your product after their have come to respect you and like you.

Create an affiliate system, tools for affiliates, and find Join Venture partners. Those are not direct pre-selling but are stand alone activities which must occur prior to launch which can coincide with pre-sell period.

How to do it:

Using FREE viral eBook or Report – those can be a very effective component of your pre-launch, if you have the good components:

• The Content – Related your free viral eBook or report with your product’s niche. Balance:
  • giving an idea about the unique proposition you have for your product,
  • your viral eBook or report needs to be considered valuable to readers regardless of whether or not they buy your product without to tell all about your product
  • portray yourself as an expert in your niche, so must be well-written
• The Size – Keep viral reports between 10 – 19 pages and viral eBooks between 20 – 40 pages
• The links - Viral eBooks used to as a tool to promote an upcoming product should have fewer, important links, like  a website of Blog you created for that product (which you put it in the footer), maybe some affiliate links in a resource section, but not many
• The Timing – Timing is vital don’t forget that you are trying to mount the maximum benefits from your product launch marketing components. I good recommendation is  to start disseminating your viral ebook(s) as soon as you have:
  • Your squeeze page – because when you setup your squeeze page to advertise your future product you are launching, your offer the free ebook(s) as an incentive to signup for more information.
  • Your Blog or Website and
  • Your affiliate program signup page setup.

Create 4-7 emails and post them to your list, each at the odd day… if you have a list.

Use some Social Media – choose carefully, I suggest only: massive Blogging, Tweeter, Facebook, Google Buzz, Squidoo Lenses, and Hub Pages… anyway only 5-7 of them which produce results for you in the past, as each of us has a different experience and preference.

At this point, you have a product or a project, we discus the pre-launch, the launch is the next step, and the post-launch activities must follow.

For the launch you have enough info on the affiliate e-course where I point out all the necessary steps of the process.

Don’t even think about relaxing after the launch, the post-launch activities are extremely important as well, as they are related with driving traffic, monitor results, do some split testing and so one.

In the next post I’ll summarize the post-launch.

Until then be well

Michey

Popularity: 28% [?]

Tags: building creditability, free products, Ken Evoy, pre-launch, pre-sell, prelaunch, presell, social media, use your list

How To Set Up A Drip-Feed Membership Site

Drip-Feed Membership Site

If you need a membership site which drip-feed content to your customers, you need to set up the structure first

Let’s assume that you are setting up your membership site to distribute content to your members 4 times per month on autopilot.

If you choose a different distribution of your content; all you need to do is modify the format below to accommodate more or less frequent content.

You need to set up your internal file structure in your secure member’s area to facilitate the drip feed process.
You will do this by accessing your file server through your FTP

Create Content Folder Structure

• You need to create the main content folder for your membership site and then each individual month’s content folders within your main content folder. The content folder is where each month’s members content goes.
• Inside your secure folder create a new folder and name it “my-content”
• Inside your secure members’ area my-content folder which is http://yourdomain.com/yourmemberarea/my-content/ you need to create a folder for each month the site will run, you can always add more later but for now we’ll just do 12.
• Inside your “my-content” folder create 12 folders using the following names: m1, m2, m3, m4, m5, m6, m7, m8, m9, m10, m11, m12

After doing this you should have 12 different months of folders in your
my-content folder and it should look something like this:
... yourmemberarea/my-content/m1/
… yourmemberarea/my-content/m2/
…
… yourmemberarea/my-content/m12/

Upload Your Membership site Content To Your Server

The next step is to upload all of your content for your members into
their respective month’s on  “my-content” folder.

So using your FTP program you will want to upload all your Month 1
content to your “my-content/m1/”, your Month 2 content to your
“my-content/m2/” folder and so on for each month.

Now you can create your download links for each piece of content.

Edit HTML Files

You need edit/create/modify the private members-only web pages that your members will access from within the members area.

One more time, Which Are the HTML Pages You Need To Create:

• Sales Page – This is your sales page that is designed to convert prospects into paying customers
• Thank You Page – The thank you page is the first page your new customer will see after completing the payment process. This page will either contain an opt-in form or a link to your membership sign-up page
• Members’ Area Homepage – This is the secure members’ area home page that will show up first when your members log into the members’ area. This home page could be a basic webpage with a bunch of download links, or it could be a fully functional website, blog or forum, depending on the type of site you are designing.
• Download Area – Depending on what your membership site is offering as content, you will need to have some sort of download area located within the members’ area where your members can download or access their content as it is released. This could be a separate web page or just a section on your member’s area home page.
• Contact Page – You technically should have two contact pages, one in your “public_html” folder or “public_html/addondomain/”  and linked to your sales page for prospects to contact you through, and you should also have a private members-only contact page within the members area, so that your members can get a hold of you if needed . This is very important. A contact page can be
  • a simple page that contains your email address or
  • a better choice is to have your contact link lead to a help desk or contact form
• Affiliate Page – If you have an affiliate program, you will need to have a separate page that is dedicated to letting people know about your affiliate program and how it works
• OTO1  and OTO2  Pages– if you decide to have otos, you need separate pages for each of them
• Upgrade page – if you have many levels for your membership site then you need to upgrade from one level to another.

Upload Your Site’s Web Pages To Your Server

The next step is to upload your membership area web pages to a secure member area folder inside of your site. You should have four (4) web pages for each month.

Page Naming Structure
All the web pages for your membership site have been named to
correspond with the month and delivery time for when they are
supposed to be delivered.

For example: The month 7 web pages are named:
“index-7-1.htm”
“index-7-2.htm”
“index-7-3.htm”
“index-7-4.htm”

This is the scenario for all months with the exception if month 1 which will start with index.htm

The basic delivery format for 4 times of Month 1 is:
“index.htm
“index-1-2.htm
“index-1-3.htm
“index-1-4.htm

Note: It is recommended to create this structure first using FTP. And load HTML pages as you create them but pay attention to the rule you already established, 4 times per month must be “4 times per month”.

To be sure that you are not stressed with the dead-lines of delivery, you need to have minimum 2 months of info created prior you launch your membership site.

In summary: I hope the Drip-feed membership site is clear now, it is not a rocket scientist theory behind it, but you must be careful to set-up right to be sure that the automate process will work properly.

Until next time be well

Regards Michey

Popularity: 45% [?]

Tags: Drip-Feed Membership Site, folder structure, secure member area, site structue, upgrade page

Create a Knowledge Base

We already know that content is the King.  So forming a Knowledge Base must be one of your objectives from the start of your Blog.

You will do it in time, you will become a genuine expert in your niche, and the domino effect will start  rolling in your favor.

The Knowledge Base I am talking about must be related to your niche, not a bunch of non-related subjects. To decide what  you choose to have in your Blog,  you must discover first the type of info the people are craving to get it.

There are many ways to discover what is useful for your readers:

• You can engage your audience,  giving them surveys, pols, open discussion in webinars, interviews, even the comments on your blog can serve you well to discover what topics are wanted
• Find Forums related with your topics and read articles, questions, and answers
• Sign-in those forums and put questions, then read the responses
• Browse  Yahoo answer
• Search ezinearticles.com and read article related with your niche
• When buy digital products, buy as many rights possible (Resale, Master Resell Rights, and  PLRs). You can buy at: PLR eBooks
• Buy PLR articles as well, I am not a bid fun of them but a lot of people buy and use them.  You can buy at: ProPlrPackages

It is important to know how you re-write the PLRs articles. Copy and paste one article on Microsoft Word, go to “Tools”, choose “Auto summarize”.  After you have your summary, enhance a little, re-write a little,  and you have a new article. This is a nice little trick which will save a lot of time and make easy for you to re-write articles.

I noticed that only a small number of people use effectively Yahoo Answer, so I’ll stop to give you some info.

Yahoo! Answers is a community-driven website launched around 2005. It is driven by user participation in asking and answering questions, allows all users to participate in a discussion forum format.

The service itself is free of charge, and anyone can post a question and have it answered in a reasonable amount of time. Information that is posted on Yahoo! Answers is free; it can be accessed by anyone, anywhere in the world and published in a variety of formats.

This is how is working:

• You the user, put a question
• Your question is indexed within the appropriate category and made available to the community
• Questions are opened up for four days only, but you can extend the question if a sufficient answer is not found

How you ask a question:

• Sign on on your account
• Click on the ASK button on the top-left corner of any page
• Type your question, similar questions will automatically appear underneath; this can be helpful in having the question answered immediately
• If nobody has asked or answered a similar question, you need to select a category for it
• Decide whether an e-mail should be sent to you when someone answers the question
• After clicking on the PREVIEW button, you will need to click on SUBMIT
• Once the question has been answered and approved it will turn into a RESOLVED status

I encourage you to spend time in Yahoo! Answer, takes some time to familiarize with the format but can be a valuable source for discovering trends, open problems.

A successful Blog from Search Engines prospective will be one with fresh quality content.  So, after you decide which info is requested, you must provide info using all resources you discovered in your search, forming your knowledge base must be for you a road map leading you to more info and development.

Until next time be well

Michey

Google Buzz

Popularity: 17% [?]

Tags: Blog, ezine, forum, knowkegde Base, PLR, Yahoo answer

Membership Process Flow – OTO Logic

I am going to show the  Traditional Membership Site Process Flow and how OTO(s) logic is impacting the process.

Any other types of Membership are build with the same logic with small variations.

Some scripts don’t have OTO capability, but if you choose one which has it, I  explain OTOs logic as well.  My opinion is never avoid OTOs, even if you don’t use them from the beginning, in time you will.

Traditional Membership Process Flow!

A visitor lands on your Sale-Page of your Membership Side.  He clicks on the level of his choice for your Membership.  In general it is a free level with some restrictions and 2-3 paid levels with more value.

The beauty of Membership system is that each person has a different level of skills and within a well designed membership site each visitor can choose what is good for his level.

The Visitor pays through Payment Processor which is designed to redirect him to Thank You Page.  If he chooses a free membership level he is redirected to Thank You Page avoiding the paying loop.

Your visitor is now a customer.

The Thank You Page, also called Payment Confirmation Page is the first page customer see after he paid.

• He  reads an acknowledgment that  his payment has been completed
• He reads the instructions on what to do next, which in general is set up his membership account:
  • He can fill in an opt in form and when he click submit he is redirected to a membership sigh-up form
  • Or he will get just a link to the membership sigh-up form

The customer create a Membership Account.

Usually he will get an email as well with the URL of a sign-in page to the membership member area.

He sign-in and can access to the membership member area, and now he can access the content design for this level.

Note 1:  it looks very simple from the customer point of view, and you must do everything to keep it that way. From the designer point of view it is more complicated as  we must protect members areas from intruders. So, some extra security must be designed and implement.

The OTO Logic.

I give you the facts under the surface for a system with 2 OTOs.

I heard so many complains that OTO is hard and convoluted, well, within a membership site it really is a piece of cake. This is the good news, the bad news is that not all scripts support OTOs.

In your membership system exist a file named otofiles.txt (can have a different name in different script but you will find it easier as the word OTO is always  on it.)

Basically this is a simple text file in which you:

• live it blank ( this means you don’t use OTO
• OTO1.html – provide the URL of the sale page for the first OTO
• OTO2.html – provide the URL of the sale page for the second OTO
• each OTO html must be in a separate line
• the order counts must be in the order you want them to appear

This is it, the logic build in the script will take care of the rest.   Now the logic:

The customer log-in in log-in form.

1. If there is the first time:

If yes, system set up cookie for OTO1.html which must be the first line on OTOfiles.txt  and show the sale page for it.

If customer buys, complete OTO1 purchase, go back to 1.

If customer don’t buy go back to 1.

If is not the first time

The system ask:

If it is the second time

If yes, system set up cookie for OTO2.html which must be the second line on OTOfiles.txt  and show the sale page for OTO2.

If customer buys, complete OTO2 purchase, go back to 1.

If customer don’t buy go back to 1.

If is not the customer go to Member’s area

Note 2: This is how the 2 OTOs are handle, basically by cookies without to repeat them and show each of them just once. It is ingenious, it really is, it is not a surprise for me that everything can be programmed, but this is very well done and very easy on users.

Until next time be well and well informed.

Michey
http://michaelacernescu.com
http://www.google.com/profiles/MicheyCernescu

Popularity: 16% [?]

Tags: member area, membership process flow, OTO, payment processor, sale page, scripts, thank you page

Installing and Roll of the Script

Think at your membership site as a home of your niche, we already know that we have to plan, have to find the proper script which will allow the needed functionality, build the details: pages, content, communications, and now the script roll and installation.

Let’s say you have a piece of land and you build your home on it.

What you do:

1. Come with a long term plan of functionality (you decide you need: 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a large living room, 3 car garage…)
2. You build the foundation, the wood skeleton
3. Then you build the walls, with doors and windows, the roof and so on

What is the roll of our script for your membership home?  The script will produce no 2, the foundation and the wood skeleton, which will never work right if you don’t do a great job with no. 1, planning long term functionality.

I insist on the roll of the script as I know that will make or break your niche.

So I don’t want to talk about no. 1, this must be your and only your research, and final decision.

What I can do is to contribute to the understanding of the concept of working with the script and give you ideas you for implementation of 2, and 3.

I consider no. 1 done by you, research and also decision about which script you will use.

Bullet No 2  is the equivalent of:

• installing the script you decided that is the right one for you on your web server and
• customize the script for your functionality

Each script is different, but the majority of scripts are design to work with cPanel, and they are written in php . I try to give you a general view from the script I am working with.

• Each script must have an “installer folder” in which you have an php files for each level the script allows, in my case I have 5 levels, but I need only 3 of them:

• Install-free.php for a free membership
• Install-bronze.php for a bronze membership
• Install-silver.php for a silver membership
• Install-gold.php for a gold membership
• Install-diamond.php for a diamond membership

• You can install the script:

• on your hosting account main domain or
• on an add-on domain

• You must fill out the Form on the installation Panel on cPanel and click “Create Membership Site”, In this moment a lot of files are created for you
• Then you go to FTP program and open the “public_html/your-script-name/” folder. This is your Secured Member-only Area, and if you decide to work with many levels you will have  for each of them a Secured Member-only Area
• You use  FTP to load
  • specific files in each area
  • set up permissions for each area, and
  • upload you members-only web pages
• If you script accepts OTO,  follow the instructions to load necessary files for it
• Now you have to create necessary web site pages, they can vary from a script to another, some functionality to another

In general those website pages can be:

• Sale Page
• Thank you page
• Members’ Area homepage
• Download area
• Contact Page
• Affiliate Page
• Blog
• Newsletter
• Forum
• Video and or Audeo
• and more…

I enumerate them in next post I’ll give the flow of actions, and I’ll discuss the most important pages:  Sale Page,  Thank You Page, and Members’ Area Homepage,  which are mandatory, the rest are pages based of the functionality you initially decided.

In summary with the exception of loading and customizing the script, the rest looks similar with what we already know from Affiliate e-course.  This means  that the knowledge you already have as an affiliate is priceless and now you build on it a new level of your business – recurring income.

Until next post be well.

Michey

Popularity: 17% [?]

Tags: install, Membership Site, php, script, Secured Member-only Area

Types of Membership Sites

In my effort to layout the foundation for a Membership site, I decided to chat with you about how many types of membership sites exist. It is easier to start with exactly what you need vs. changing the course a coupe of times until you find you way to get what you want. This will save you ton of time, delays, and frustration later.

When I am talking about a Membership Type, actually I am thinking about the Secure Member’s Area home page that will show up first when your members log into the Member’s Area.

This is the scenario:

• You advertise a sale page for your membership site
• I visitor sign-in your sale page,
• If it is a paid membership site he is redirected to complete the pay process, after that he is redirected to the sign–up page for the member ship
• It is not a paid membership site he is redirected to the sign-up page for the member ship
• The visitor who is a member now, sign-up his name and password on sign-up page
• He is redirected to a Secure Member Area of the membership site
• A membership Secure Member Area will define the type of your membership site

Those types are:

1. Traditional Membership Site in a form of classical static Web site
2. A Blog Membership Site – for this one you need a theme
   
3. A Forum Membership Site – for one this you need Forum skin
   
4. A Drip-Feed Membership Site – you need a script that has a built in drip feed feature, if you don’t have one then it is hard and tedious to manually create that logic
5. An Auto-responder Membership Site – definitely you need aweber and by far is the easiest of all membership sites to set up, as you don’t need a membership site script
6. A Help-Desk Membership Site

You choose the Membership Site Type which is the best for your purpose, and in each of them you can combine the elements from the rest of the other 5 types as simple elements of the site.

Example:
For the sake of explaining, let’s say that I choose a Membership Site Type  a Blog because my main focus of Member Area is blogging. On the Secure Member Area of my Membership I can add as pages:

• Forum
• Download
  
• Help-Desk
  
• Audios
  
• Up-grade and
• Many more

If  I choose a Traditional Membership Site for my Secure Member Area I can put buttons in the top for:

• Forum
• Blog
• Download
• Help-Desk
• Up-grade
• Affiliate
• Videos and
  
• Many more
  

In summary, the Type of your Membership Site is the Type you choose for your Secure Member Area.

And the type must by related with the main focus of your Member Area.

Until next time be well

Michey
http://michaelacernescu.com
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Tags: autoresponder, Blog, drip-feed, forum, help-desk, Membership Sites, secure member area, traditional, types of sites

Keys To Success – Membership Site

Keys To Success for Membership Sites.

In previous post, which I still published in Monetize Blog category to smooth the transition to recurring income, I exposed the prerequisite decisions you needed to make.

Everything is important but to choose the right script for you is crucial.

Today I’ll chat with you about the most important two keys which will catapult you to a massive success from the start, and a list of seven common mistakes you must avoid.

Those 2 keys to success are:

• Strong marketing for your site and your products: this will help you attracting people to join your membership site which need members from the beginning
• Creating great content: this will entice people to stay with you as members, and minimize the refunds

I know what you are thinking, those are common sense items for any Internet adventure.  It is true but they are extremely important and vital for membership sites.

You need members, and as soon you have them, you strive to make them happy, remain members,  and spread the word about you and your site, to entice other people to become members too… this must be an on going viral effect you need as part as your right strategy to survive in the jungle.

The next two topics are still part of a strong planning of you membership site.

Content and Adding Value is an on going Process.

1. You need content, but a content people want. The research is equivalent with the one you use when you determine a niche for you, and you use the emotional triggers on your advantage without to hype. Doing the following research you joint down all good keywords, and long tail keywords you find:
   • Brainstorm and research with Amazon.com (use search inside), BN.com, Clickbank
   • Think about what is easy and what is difficult for you
   • Decide what you can do it yourself and what you maybe need to outsource.
   • Consider how much knowledge do you need to get to your desired level with your niche
   • Rank everything for a better planning
2. Create a product your members  want. From the beginning you go with what you already have, know, but as soon you start to have members, this must be a strong bullet for you – creating products your members want and need
   • Use plug-in SEO-image to help yourself with image optimization
   • Do Google research using: allinurl: your key word (using allinurl parameter in research we help you  finding only sites which have your long tail keyword in the URL
   • Find experts to interview in:   http://www.expertclick.com
   • Where you can find content and in which format:
     • eBooks
     • reports
     • e-course
     • Blogs
     • Articles
     • PLRs

Point 2,  is blending very well with the next topic which is my favorite:

How to Make your Membership Site Sticky.

What you need to have in your Membership Site:

1. Forums, but make the effort to start populating them from the start, don’t go public with an empty Forum:
   • Read similar forums and collect ideas from them to establish the right pattern
   • Use moderators, the prestige of your forum depends on the quality of posts, so you need to moderate the topics
   • Divide your Forum in sections well related with your niche
2. In addition with Forum I suggest to have in your member site
   • An Advice Section
   • Monthly Interviews
   • Monthly freebies
   • Polls and Surveys
   • Different levels of Member only Section

Note 1: Not all the items on the above list make sens to have in all niches, but I list them to give you an array of possibilities and you pick up only what is important for your niche.

I will say that Forum is mandatory for your success.

Note 2: In the script I use I have 5 levers of membership site.  Only free, or a combination of : free, bronze, silver, gold, and diamond. (You can name then differently this is just classic list of names.)  I’ll use only 3 levels: free, silver,  gold and rename them.

Common Mistakes to AVOID.

1. Month One, is very important:
   • Everything must be ready
   • Must be whatever you claim is doing
   • Enough content
2. Drip-feeding – give your members a little bit of info at a time. ( I am very guilty of this in my e-courses, and I plan to change the way I construct them in the future. You will see the difference in the  “.php” e-course)
3. Forums - must doing well other wise you can compromise entire site
4. Payment processor, use what is the best for your members
5. Working too hard, yes if you exhausted yourself in the first 1-2 month you cannot provide a equally divided attention to the Membership site
6. Don’t present enough content to entice the curiosity and the needs of your members
7. Not Surveying your Members, if you don’t engage then to tell you their needs, how you will know to feed them…

I hope you have an idea about  the prerequisites, the planning part,  the possibilities as well for a membership site.

Until next time be well.

Michey

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Tags: adding value, allinurl, forums, googal search, Keys To Success, Membership Site, research, seo-image