That sounds reasonable, but in practice it’s hard to imagine that buyers aren’t already aware of affiliate connections. Affiliate links don’t look like standard HTML links: They contain the affiliate code, which is a bit of a giveaway. I doubt that anyone who receives my marketing e-mails isn’t fully aware that, in addition to these products being carefully chosen and recommended by me, I have an affiliate relationship with the seller. If I think a product is good, of course I’ll want to cash in on it. And if I don’t think a product is good, I won’t want to go near it.
A number of publishers go even further by adding “(aff),” short for “affiliate” after the link, to let everyone know that they earn from a purchase. That’s been common practice for years, and it might well be something we’ll all have to get used to doing, even if it might put off the odd buyer whose eyes wander to the term in brackets instead of focusing on the link.
It’s important to remember that the FTC’s rules are guidelines and difficult to enforce. The best strategy is to show that you’re doing everything you can to be in compliance and to market fairly.
Affiliate selling has now become a traditional part of Internet marketing. It can earn giant amounts of cash for you, or it can add nothing more than a pleasant extra KaChing to a site that brings in money in a number of other ways. Used carefully, on a site with plenty of traffic and a close connection with readers, and it can be a hugely valuable and simple way to deliver income.
6
Membership Sites—Turning Your Internet Business into a Passive Revenue Machine
One of the biggest challenges in marketing is the fact that it’s never-ending. Making profits means making lots of sales, but at the end of every sale, you have to return to the marketplace and find another buyer.
There are things that you can do of course to bring your old buyers back. Newsletters, e-mail marketing, and a constant flow of good content will all keep attracting those buyers and ad clickers. But each time you send out one of those e-mails or put up a new post, you still have to persuade users to buy a product or click on an ad. Internet marketing is a constant process of attracting, selling, and converting.
Wouldn’t it be great if every time you converted a lead into a customer, those customers agreed to pay again and again, without fail, every single month?
Instead of wondering how much you’re going to earn each month, you’d know that your subscribers will give you a set amount of money. Your business would have a firm financial foundation, allowing you to focus your efforts on creating new products that can bring in large, immediate bursts of cash to supplement that steady flow. Create a system in which the products your subscribers buy are created and distributed by staff or freelancers, and you’ll even have a high-paying passive revenue stream.
That’s what this chapter teaches you to do. It explains what membership sites are, what they should offer, how to price your subscriptions, what you have to do to keep your subscribers, and how to set the whole thing up without giving yourself a migraine.
What Is a Membership Site?
Continuity programs are as old as newspaper subscriptions—probably older. Members sign up for a product or a service and are billed on a regular schedule as long as they want to enjoy the benefits of that product or service. It’s the model that’s allowed the print media to become an established business. It keeps TV programs flowing through your cable box, ensures that you remain connected to the Internet through your Internet service provider, lets you talk on your mobile phone, and has even allowed Reader’s Digest and others to create book clubs to deliver novels you never read to your doorstep every month.
Programs like these have proven their success on the Internet, too. Although newspapers and other content sites have struggled to persuade readers to pay to read their products, sites that offer services have become a multi-million-dollar industry. The online dating industry, for example, is predicted to be worth $932 million by 2011 in the United States alone. In Europe, where growth has been more consistent, dating sites are predicted to be worth about 549 million euros by 2011. That’s an incredible amount of money, and almost all of it is coming in month after month on a regular basis.
Members of these sites sign up, enter their credit card details, agree to pay their monthly retainer, and in return are granted access to parts of the site that nonmembers can’t reach. While those nonmembers are confronted with a pay wall when they try to access the site, members are waved through after entering their username and password. Once inside, they can view complete profiles, send and receive messages, and chat online with potential dates. Their membership makes them feel like part of an exclusive club and lets them enjoy all of the benefits and features that come with club membership.
The sites, for their part, work hard to ensure that as few people as possible cancel (at least not until they’ve found the love of their life) and that their members get the benefits they’re paying for.
The principle itself isn’t complex, and it’s likely to be one that you benefit from every day. As long as the benefits keep flowing toward the customer—whether that’s in the form of information, entertainment, or networking—the funds will continue flowing toward the seller. The key is to understand which benefits Internet users are willing to pay for.
What Do Online Membership Sites Have to Offer?
It might seem surprising that sites like Match.com and eHarmony are doing so well. While those sites have millions of members, there are also plenty of free dating sites on the Web that make their money through advertising. Anyone can join
