Time To “Rethink” Your Business
Hey everybody, Lance Tamashiro here, and today I want to talk to you about why you need to be thinking about having a recurring income for your online business. Now, a lot of people that I know and that I’ve worked with in the past think “Oh I’m just going to work really, really hard on this one cool ebook, I’m going price it at $7 dollars and everybody in the world is going to come buy it, and I’ll just be rich! The truth is that’s not the case. The whole key on making money on the Internet is to build a recurring income.
The Key to Long Term Income
Now, that’s the big point here. Everything else that you do is just spinning your wheels, if you’re not thinking of making a recurring income then all that you’re really doing is doing the same thing that you’re doing in your day job, you’re trading your time for dollars, and what you really want to do is get to the point where you basically put up a membership site, get something that’s recurring and get paid for it over and over again.
Niche Is Not Important
Now, the one thing that I really want to stress to everybody here is that your niche is not important. Now, a lot of people think, well, I can only make recurring income in internet marketing, I can only make income trying to teach people how to play the guitar, that’s not the truth! The truth is, is that if you have anything at all to teach or a service to give, then, you can start your own membership site.
Every Successful Business Model Is Based On “Memberships”
How do I know this? Well, look around you! Every single business model that is successful both online and offline is based around a membership model. I want you to change the way you think about memberships right now, today!
A membership is not just something where you get new content every month. Its something where you get to bill people every month either for your information or your service, and let me give you a couple of examples, I bet the majority of you have a cellphone. Guess what? That is a membership site, they have a fix term length, usually it’s like two years and you have to pay over and over and over again. Guess what I bet you most of you have landline service if you don’t have a cell phone service. That too is a form of a recurring membership site.
Do you own a car? I bet you make car payments. Do you own a house? Or pay rent? All of those are types of membership sites, and all examples of things that you can do to trade your time for dollars that are recurring instead of one to one, you want to look at this as one to many.
Building A Membership Site Is Not Hard!
I’ve recently pulled my list and the big thing that I found is that people thought, well Lance this is way too hard! It’s way too hard to setup a recurring membership site, its way to hard to get people to pay me time and time again for my information and I want to tell you right now, that’s false! You need to change the way you’re thinking about this.
Content – Am I An Expert?
So, one of the big things that I found out is that people said, Lance, I don’t have any contents. Am I an expert in anything? How am I going to get people to pay me over and over and over again? Well the truth is that if you know anything at all, then you’re an expert.
One of the big things, especially in the Internet marketing industry that people forget is that there is a huge learning curve. So, even if you just know how to put up a squeeze page, even if you know just how setup an autoresponder, even if you just know a good program, an affiliate program to promote, all of those are information that somebody just getting started doesn’t know that you had to learn and that’s enough information that makes you an expert on somebody, and that’s the key to learning more and more and being able to charge more and more for your membership site.
It’s Not Too Technical!
The second thing that people told me is that it’s way too technical to setup a membership site. Again, false! All you need to know is Wordpress, you need to have the right plug-ins and you need to have the right scripts. This is cheap, this is easy to do, and it’s not hard at all. Even if you just re-think your model and rethink of your autoresponder as a membership, then guess what? You have the ability to make a recurring income and a membership site.
Stop Over Thinking!
So, what I basically want all you guys to do today is to stop overthinking this! It is true, the key to a successful online business or business in the offline world is recurring income but it doesn’t have to be as hard as you’re making it. You don’t need fancy scripts. You don’t need a ton of information.
You Only Need To Be One Step Ahead
All you need to do is to start at the point where you’re at, whether it’s beginning guitar. Remember, if you’re learning guitar, you know something more than somebody that is just getting started, and you have something to teach that person. You don’t have to fill-up an entire membership site for years and years when you don’t even have a member, and that is something that is really, really bothers me. The truth is you only have to be one step ahead of your first member.
So, if you have a membership site, why would you spend a year building up content when you don’t even have somebody paying you yet? Wouldn’t it be a better idea to make weeks worth of content, find that first member and always stay one day, or one week, or one month ahead of that one person? It’s been told on the Internet that the average lifespan of a membership site is two to four months, so let’s round it up and call it three months.
If the average time that somebody stays in a membership is only three months why are so many of you spending months and months and months building six months, one year, two years of content? All you need to do is stay one step ahead of your longest subscriber. In that way you’re not spinning your wheels. You can start bringing in money while you’re increasing your own knowledge and starting to bring money into your online business
Where Are You?
So, with that being said, I want to know where you’re at today. I want to know what kind of site you have. Do you have a membership site setup? I bet you, if you think hard enough, you probably do. Let me give you a perfect example.
A couple of week ago I was with my friend Robert Plank, hanging out in North Carolina, and we started to have this whole discussion where we were talking about what is a membership site. What constitute a membership site? What “officially makes it” so that I have a membership site, and you want to know what we came up with? It’s that all of these big terms that people are throwing around are untrue.
The only thing that you need to have a membership site is to charge one person one payment or more, and that makes it a membership site. It can be fixed term, it can be open ended, but think about the example like I gave you earlier. You have a car payment, you know exactly how many payments you’re going to have to make until that membership ends and you own the car. If you have an ebook that you sell for $97, guess what if you’re having trouble selling it at $97, make it two payments of $47 and suddenly you have a membership site. So, stop over thinking it, but I want to know do you have a membership site?
What Is Your Membership Site?
Finally, what is your membership site? If you think you have any sort of product at all, you have a membership site, and another thing that I want to tell you is that I personally own a membership site that is made completely of other people’s products. That’s right, I took master resell rights, private label rights, and different types of products, threw them up all on a single website and I charge people month after month after month to get access to these. So, without even owning your own product, you can successfully start your own membership site.
What is your Retention Rate?
Finally, one of the most important things that you need to know about your membership site is what is that retention rate? And how long do people stay in, and it’s sort of like what I was talking about earlier, what is the purpose of having a hundred days worth of content, if you only keep people on average for 30 days? You’ve just wasted 70 days worth of time, of content that people would never see.
Wouldn’t it be better to restructure that content so that you can build over and over and over, or stretch it out so that you can only have content for the amount of time that people are going to see it?
Lots of Easy Solutions!
So, the main point that I’m driving home here is that there’s lots and lots or easy solutions! In fact Robert Plank and I have six proven models that we use over and over again to build recurring income, and most people just think of us as like these “Products Creators” that’s people that are always pimping out new things but the truth is, is that we try to put everything we can into a recurring income because we would rather do the work once and get paid for it many times, than do the work once and get paid for it once, and that’s what I want to encourage you to do.
Please comment below and let me know... I would really appreciate it.Notice: Only 19 More Comments Will Be Allowed in This Blog Post...
Sid Semsem
HARRY
Lance Tamashiro
Robby LeBlanc
Thom
Thomas
gregory
Gary Calvert II
Kathy
I am at work with bandwidth police, so will have to watch the video after closing. Well, I am working on my unique selling position and starting to review all the stuff I have bought or downloaded and deciding what I can honestly recommend to a blog audience, as well as an ebook on my take on the industry and how to learn without going broke. I have a question though. All things considered, not sure if I am correct or not, but I feel I would make more money with email marketing than through setting up a membership site. Yes, in your way of explaining it, I suppose that could be considered a membership site. But I feel I could charge more for certain products than I could, just starting out, in a membership site. At some later point, then I would consider a membership. But also, I plan to recommend other membership sites where I would be getting a commission, the video and article submission sites, another membership site that is reasonably priced that I feel is superior to what I could come up with at this point. But it has information on how to set up various online business models as well as PLR. But again, I feel I could make more money initially selling the PLR stuff from there that I buy. Any comments?
Lance,
I don’t have a membership site yet but am looking forward to your seminar on how to avoid the pitfalls in setting one up.
Thanks much,
Fred
703 203 4648
I used a old free plugin on my wordpress blog to turn into a membership site, and charged 10 euris a month and they are already on my site for two year. On the 20 members I have only 2 unsubscribed making me 200 euros each month for the last two years, that’s 2400 euros a year, and I even did not promoted the site very actively. It is the same work as a normal blog. Membership sites are easy to setup and to run, just do it guys. Keep up the good work Lance, and get rid of this ennoying background music.
Hi David … which plugin did you use? …sounds cool…Izzy
Been collecting lots of PLR’s and MRR products and some other sites with affiliate promotion stuff, but yeah been wondering how I could use these and not let them go to waste. Interested in the membership idea, you gave me an idea, now! Send me info on Webinar, thanks!
Great points, Lance!
Seems to me you could create a course out of “pain” you’ve read right here in the comments.
I have 5 membership sites and have made all possible mistakes from giving away free (BAD) to thinking I needed months of content before getting customers.
The “raising the free line” the big guys preach turned in to a disaster for little guys like me. All I did was attract people who EXPECTED free. Couldn’t convert freebie seeker into paying customer.
Good luck if you think you can.
Micro-niche appears best model for me. One of my membership sites is:
http://www.fixmyuglycredit.com/index3.html
When I convert the site to Wordpress as all my other sites, I simply will use Wishlist to lock it down.
Many people asked about which theme to use. My opinion: it doesn’t matter.
Just pick one and get started and insert a compelling offer to load your funnel from the top.
A couple people have mentioned Russell Brunson’s micro-continuity. I too *thought* the free + shipping + fully disclosed continuity sounded good. Now, I don’t believe it.
Especially with many MC people not disclosing continuity and getting their merchant accounts shut down.
In all the time I’ve listened to Lance & Robert, I am impressed with their strategic approach to making MONEY. Isn’t that why all of us are doing this?
Of course it is.
Yet, many of us try to make it daunting…even downright impossible.
What might be construed as common sense from Lance & Robert is anything but “common”. I wasted months (maybe years) allowing myself to be herded around by the big-name “gurus.” When I stopped following their “buddy” launches, I started succeeding.
I then turned to Lance & Robert, who don’t hype everything under the sun. They SHOW you (and me) how to get more down with the tools we have. They break down the skills needed so you can make progress.
Here’s proof you can get results…that what you have is more important than how “pretty” it is. I want you to look at one of my membership sites at http://www.fixmyuglycredit.com (it’s an ugly squeeze page converting at 32%). I make a weak offer to get people to opt in where they go to a sales letter. I make an offer to get a CD or DVD I’ve created (using the Russell Brunson model of free CD in exchange for paying s&h — I don’t like this model). Those who don’t buy go in to a drip system where I push content from my blog at http://www.fixmyuglycredit.com/blog (great content but simple design).
**I need get rid of the “free” offer & sell the value of the CD/DVD.
**I need to make a LOT of changes, but this site continues making good money each month.
You see, you can do it, even if you don’t know everything you *think* you need to know. If there’s one secret of success online, it’s to be yourself and not hide behind cute monikers or avatars.
Be the guy/lady in front of the camera or doing the voice over on your powerpoint presentations. Respond to people who comment & email you. Hold local classes to get involvement and testimonials.
Hope this helps you,
Mike
Hey Lance,I just love the video format.As far as memberships go,I figured out how to have a membership site-make sales-get traffic all at the same time!
I purchased 3 Text ad Exchanges.
For 27 a month, I have 3 memberships and all of the free traffic I can handle. I can offer anything that I am involved in at any time to the entire membership with Special offers-Login ads-Text and Banner ads… the potential is endless.
I realize this is not exactly what you were referring to but I like to think outside the box. I look forward to your webinar if you will allow me to participate.lol
Have a Wonderful Day!
Timothy Millar
The Leprechaun of Traffic
Great blog!
I’m registered for the webinar. Will it be recorded for those of us that maybe fast asleep in another time zone?…Sure hope so!
Cheers.
Tony.
Great Video Lance,
Membership sites are the rage at the moment, with many people attempting to go down this path. Most are unsuccessful because they go about it the wrong way.
Spending a fortune, buying the wrong stuff, taking forever struggling to get it done, and grappling with mainly the technical content and retention issues, having no clue how to make it all come together. Or getting burnt by attempting to outsource, having no idea whats involved in the whole process.
And even if they do make it to the launch pad and get liftoff, the retention rate of the journey to the stars is short lived, with most if not all the subscribers jumping ship in a short space of time.
Having been through a number of trainings with both you and Robert, I can attest that how you guys show, how to get it right, because you are actually doing it, and it works.
The secret is to do a task once, and get paid over and over again, without any further input required.
The membership model provides both leverage and scalability, and the four biggest challenges are the technical, the content, retention and getting the traffic.
You guys address all four during your trainings in a manner that is not fluff or theory, but actually delivers results.
The reality is that the trainings from the vast majority of so called gurus/mentors (with very few exceptions)is that they don’t actually do the stuff themselves, but just show a bunch of prerecorded videos based on theory and not actionable steps that deliver the desired results easily.
So you guys are the real deal period.
Doing stuff that’s not difficult and that is simple and actually works.
In a much broader sense, the application of using the membership site concept, has many forms, most of which have probably not even been considered by most people reading this thread.
Membership concepts can be applied to any situation where one wants control access to content in business, and the possibilities are only limited by one’s imagination.
So throw away those narrow minded membership site ideas that you may currently have and pay attention.
These guys have some kick a.se strategies and tools, that you will not find anywhere else, that will both change your perspective completely, and show you how!
Whether you are a newbie or a veteran to this membership stuff, you will leave armed with the know how, and tool belt you need to get this all done!
Wal
Hey Lance… Your video on Meembership sites ROCKED! Can’t wait to see what nugggets you share in your webinar!
Izzy
BTW: What did you do to get yourself in the video itself?
Lance, I love the post! Just in time for me because Im launching my first membership site within the next couple days.
I feel so much more powerful now.
I am in the IM niche, and with a membership site I now have advanced past 99.9% of the IMers out there.
Nothing is more attractive to affiliates then if you have a reoccuring commission, and now that I have that, I am poised to really make a killing this year.
Hey Lance, I know you have the MRR membership club which I am currently a member of.
Do you have any other membership models floating around out there?
Thanks!
Dan
Membership sites are great but I would recommend buying amember or jrox if you are serious. I have had several wordpress crashes and lost a lot of data using member plugins.
Word press is GREAT I love it and have about 300 sites using WP but now use more robust membership scripts for membership sites that are charging money.
Good food for thought on membership sites Lance and love the green screen video.
I agree with Wal, you and Robert are definitely the ones to take a course on membership sites from. You give us the tools and info we need and then really encourage us to Take Action! Not just accumulate knowledge.
Dr. Debra
Looking forward to more training on a membership because I love the idea of NOT trading time for money. Recurring income is the way to go!
i’ve known a fair amount about one subject over maybe 10 years now, and would love to turn it into a membership site. up to now i have had an u nderlying fear that because i’m not a world class authority i wouldbe in some way “found out”. Your comment that one needs only to be one step ahead was quite an eye opener. Thanks Lance
Rgds
John
Lance, is it crazy to run a membership site simply with Aweber? I’ve launched three separate “classes” of the same course, all with just AWeber, GoToWebinar, and an members-only forum.
Each week, members get an email with a download link for that week’s material (tutorial videos).
Is there a reason why this might be a bad idea?
I am on one of your membership sites. http://listcopywriting.com. I love how it is laid out. Look forward to learning from you and Robert on how I can do that too.
Sheila
do you use DAP or wishlist or neither?
suspense!?
love your posts
thanks for sharing
Jeremy
I’m almost to completion of my membership site that I started 5 yrs ago.
If I had it to do over I won’t have built this massive site and would have went with something much simpler like you suggest.
Keep up the good tips!
-Ken
Yikes! 5 years? How do you even know you have a market?
How do you know that the average subscriber will stay that long?
Make sure you join us for this webinar, you’ll get some awesome tips so you can launch that thing ASAP!
Lance
Lance
Thanks for the great tips and ideas on things I am doing wrong. I look forward to the webinar. If it is anything like the other classes you have give I am sure it is well worth it.
Robert
I signed up for the meeting on Monday at 3:30Mst, so looking forward to it, sounds easy and I know that is what I know. Frank
I’m anxious to see the webinar. I hope information is given on other niches other than IM. I’ve been wondering if there are particular niches that are more accepting to membership sites than others.
My idea for a website is a traffic exchange. For the moment the only two things I see holding me back are, lack of money and lack of knowledge. But, this post definitely changes what I think about #2. When is the webinar where I can learn more from you?
Hi Lance,
Firstly, I think I’ve got to introduce myself.
I’m Gregory a 24 years old french blind man.
There are six years that I study the internet business, domain in which i’m working in at the moment.
I decided to launch a blog in November 2009, http://www.gregoryleplumey.com, in which I work a lot.
Then I launched a web site that I created especially for a french Give Away.
At this time, I didn’t write any ebooks.
I’m thinking about memberships website the thing is that I’ve got to find content to put in it.
As I’m blind, videos, photos, design are hard for me to do, so I try to ask to people to help.
In technics, I’m a bit better.
I started to watch what the English Speaking Market is doing, because you are like six years more advanced than us.
I was thinking about a partnership for my first membership to be more in confidence.
Actually, I look very well all I do for committing no mistakes.
I loved the way you put the video on this blog. How did you do?
Thanks for the post,
Greg
Great article, lots of great information and the replies are just as good.
I will be working on a way to change my sites to membership.
Back ground music is way to LOUD.
Turned me off.
always a critic in the crowd…
So you don’t like music… Can you not read the article right underneath it?
There is no music in that… Or is the font not to your liking either?
Good luck with your membership site.
I have content ready to go, just looking at my WordPRess pluggin and membership model optins.
Awesome Robby,
That means you are ahead of 90% of your competition or more. The technical end is the easy part.
See you on the webinar!
Hi Tom…
I do not have a website now…But I did just what I should not have done. I found a way to paint online without buying the $300 painting programs…It took me about a month of practice with the mouse to learn to do very nice landscapes online for free. I thought others might like to learn how too and I spent 3 months painting a home study course in ebook form. Each painting was done in a step-by-step process with explainations in text of how I did each step. It took 72 pages to explain how to do 7 paintings. Including a simple lesson on how to draw seagulls with the mouse.
Then I found that there is not much market for someone wanting to paint online…so My Magic Mouse Painting course is still sitting on my harddrive. I have thought about using camtassio to do it in screen capture video…but without much of a market…I haven’t had the motivation to do it.
Yes…so I will have to find another niche to earn my money…
I have a very unique perspective on God and thought that it might be a good market…but now I feel that teaching the principles that Jesus revealed for guaranteed success in any business…might be very good for the Christian market. For success and religious growth is rampant with the downturn of the economy.
This deep passion for that is very possible for a membership site. Although I will have to write most if not all the ebooks and reports that I plan to cover and sell on the site.
Well, that’s my big idea.
Thanks for the video…
Harry