How to Launch a Membership Site

Day 3 of the “Safelist Marketing Tactics” Launch…

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It’s been 3 days since I launched my Safelist Marketing Tactics website and so far I have been very happy with the results.

Have you joined yet?

http://www.SafelistTactics.com

Since Monday I have had almost 800 people join and the site has generated close to $900 in sales.  Not epic numbers by an means but this was a pretty small launch.  Now that I am a little more confident that I know what I am doing I think I should be able to pull off something a little bit bigger next time.

I must admit that I was also a little hesitant to release something I had personally written to such a large audience.  I am not a professional writer.  I usually just write the way I speak.  Based on the feedback I have received it sounds like I at least did a pretty good job of offering some valuable content which is what I was shooting for anyways.

I was planning to get started on my next project right away but I think I am going to spend some time expanding the Safelist Marketing Tactics site.  I
have some great ideas to help make the site a little more valuable to free members and also help the upgraded members earn more money.

If you haven’t joined yet I would love to have you as a member.  Even if you are not really interested in safelist marketing the membership site is still an interesting business model that you can use to build your own business.

Check it out here:

http://www.SafelistTactics.com

Safelist Marketing Tactics

How to Launch a Membership Site – Part 6

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I have a product!

Well, at least the first draft.  I still need to spend some time reading it and re-reading it to make sure I crossed all my I’s and dotted my T’s but for the most part the hard stuff is done.

I sent out a few copies last night to some people hoping to get some feedback before I finalize it.  So far nobody has responded back.  I assume that is because they are speechless over how good it is.

Getting it done wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be.  The hardest part was getting myself motivated enough to start.  I started by making a list of all the chapters I wanted to include.  Then I opened my copy of Open Office and made the title page, the disclaimer, and the table of contents.  By the time I got to the introduction I was on a roll and just kept going.

I still need to do a little editing and get it turned into a rebrandable product but I feel like there isn’t too much more to do.

I have a tentative launch date picked out for Monday June 8th.  That may change between now and then so if you want to be alerted when you can sign-up you can subscribe to my newsletter at the top of this page.

How to Launch a Membership Site – Part 5

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Just a quick update.

Not too much has changed since my last post.  I did get all of the “little things” done that I mentioned in my last post.  All I have left now is to create the product and write some emails.

I did get fancy shmancy splash page made for me this week that affiliates will be able to use when promoting my site.  I usually try and make my own splash pages but this time I decided to hire Jamison Raymond from Black Hat Graphics.  Jamison is da man when it comes to splash pages because he understands that it takes more than just great graphics to create a high converting splash page.  I am very pleased with how well it turned out.

I had been putting off the product creation part of this project for awhile because I wasn’t sure how to properly format it in order to turn it into a rebrandable pdf file.  Thankfully Sunny Suggs got me into contact with Jay Hines from Quick Tab Change who came up with a great solution for me.  Thanks Sunny!  Now there is nothing holding me back!

Of course I still haven’t started.  I have been doing a lot of shows lately.  Tonight will be my 7th show in 6 days and I am feeling kinda drained.  The good news is that I have Saturday and Sunday off to work on my product… or I could watch the last 6 episodes of LOST that are sitting on my hard drive.

Next week.  Seriously!  I will have something done by next week.

How to Launch a Membership Site – Part 4

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My graphic desiger finally sent me the final images for my site on Tuesday morning.  I spent the last two days working on the homepage and other than needing to add some testimonials later on it’s pretty much done.

It’s amazing how much it helps having professionally designed graphics for your site.  I’m actually embarrased to show people my old site now that I know how easy it is to have something quality put together for you by someone who knows what they are doing.

2 days might seem like a long time to work on one webpage but based on the prices I received from professional copywriters I think I made the right choice.  It’s no masterpiece but I think it’s certainly above average when compared to other similar websites.

I have also almost completely configured all the internal site files.  That means the first 4 steps of my 7 step to do list are pretty much done.

I plan to work on step 5 today which is to create some marketing tools that I can put into the “affiliate toolbox”.

I also thought of a few other steps I need to do…

5.1 – Create a bonus page.  Pretty easy.  Just need to grab the html for some free programs and create a page inside the site for them.

5.2 – Add Products – Since I haven’t created my product yet I haven’t played around with adding products into LFM yet.  I do have some bonus products I am giving away so I should probably figure out how that works.

5.3 – Test the Support Room – Yep, I added a support room to the site by installing osTicket.  It was free and ridiculously easy to install.  I just haven’t tried it to see if it actually works.

5.4 – Test Member Emails – I should probably make sure the email is configured properly, make some custom welcome emails, and get everything linked to my Aweber account.

Step 6 is to work on my autoresponder emails and Step 7 is to create the product though I may need to do that sooner than I was planning.  When the product is done I am going to have to send it out to have it made into a rebrandable ebook and I have no idea how long that is going to take.  It would also be nice to get some testimonials from people before I launch and I probably need a product to do that.  Thankfully I think writing all the sales copy in advance has given me a pretty good idea of exactly what the product needs to be.  It’s just a matter of organizing all the information in my head into something that people will actually want to have.

I would say everything is going great so far.  My best guess is that I am about a month away from an actual launch but I have no problem pushing that back further to make sure everything runs perfectly.

How to Launch a Membership Site – Part 3

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The waiting is the hardest part.

I received an email from my graphic designer early Friday morning telling me he would send me my revised site graphics in about 12 hours.  I did a show that night and was looking forward to seeing them when I got home.  Sure enough, no graphics.  It’s now Monday morning and there is a message on the site saying “we’re currently on a very heavy workload, thus there might be delays replying to your emails.  Turnaround time 6-7 working days”.  D’oh!

I kept myself busy yesterday working on the inner workings of the membership site… mostly the OTOs.  Creating the pages wasn’t that hard, just very time consuming.  The real problem came with trying to link those pages to upgraded memberships via PayPal IPN.  I have never worked with IPN before and there was nothing in the LFM manual/videos explaining how to use it.  Thanks to PayPal Sandbox I finally figured it out after about 30 tries.  I just hope it works when I actually launch.

So the OTO pages are done.  I also did the “Upgrade” pages in the site.  Today I will do the members homepage and maybe work on some of the affiliate sales tools if I have time.

I just hope I get the graphics soon.  If I get stuck looking for something to do I suppose I could always start creating a product… nah.