Lately I have seen some close friends start to make a lot of money running monthly membership sites. It has really opened my eyes as to whether or not this may be the new way to make consistent income online in 2011.
The obvious advantage to having a monthly membership site is that you know how much you will be making every month. Also, if done right this can be the epitome of an automated business. Not every membership site is automated, in fact my friends site that is doing very well is one where they have to keep adding new content to keep subscribers happy.
So my goal has become to create a more automated monthly membership site. That way I can pursue my film making goals and know exactly how much income I will have each month. It seems to create a much more stress free environment.
My New Monthly Membership Site
I have decided to take the plunge on one of my oldest websites Lawn Care Directory and turn it into a monthly membership site. This is a site that I have run for almost 10 years and have made a lot of money with during that time but I have always felt like the amount I was making had peaked and I wanted a way to make more.
So I have completely transformed the site from selling information on how to start a lawn care business to a more legitimate directory where companies pay a monthly fee to have their company featured in their area.
My goal is to get 500 members paying $19 a month. I know there are thousands of lawn care and landscaping companies out there and 500 is definitely not out of the question. Having just made this transition I have already acquired a good number of subscribers and this is the slow season for that industry.
Will this backfire on me? It is possible that I could end up making less money per month with this site but if I achieve my goal of 500 members then it will be a huge success.
NOTE: Incidentally, if you ever need lawn maintenance or landscaping visit the site. You’ll most likely find a qualified company in your city.
A couple of months ago I decided to explore my farming roots and raise some chickens. I bought 6 chicks and built them a nice home complete with fenced in yard and chicken coop. I spent the next couple of months feeding them and watering them and eventually I started letting them out in the yard to walk around and develop their natural hunting instincts.
I have spent several hundred dollars raising these chickens, waiting for them to finally pay off and start laying good quality eggs. Well a couple of days ago I finally got my first egg. Several more have come since then and soon I will be getting 4-6 eggs a day. It was hard being patient waiting for these chickens to start laying eggs especially since all they were doing up until then was costing me money.
As I thought about this process I realized that it is very similar to starting an internet business. You first start your site and you have to put money into it either to buy it or have it developed. Then you care for it building up its rankings and adding content to it waiting for the big payoff. You wait and work patiently for the “eggs” to come. Then you get your first sale and your excited. Then you get a couple more sales. Pretty soon your making money every day.
The key to this process is active patience. You work hard while you wait. If you are doing the right things to your website the eggs will come.
Having the right mindset for making a living online is crucial. I remember many years ago I said to myself, “If I could just make $300 a month online that would be so great because it would pay my car payment…” Does that sound familiar to anyone?
Now I don’t have car payments anymore but knowing what I know now I would instead say if I were just beginning, “If I made $300 a month online that would be perfect because I will have $300 a month to help me get to $2000 a month.” Right now $300 a month probably sounds like a lot of money but once you get there you will be surprised how little it is.
Don’t start using the money for your own personal use until you are consistently making $1000 a month. And then only take out $500 and use the rest for buying links, getting programming work done, advertising on relevant sites, paying copywriters and making your site better. Don’t be satisfied with mediocrity (although I think mediocrity doesn’t come until you are making $2000-$3000 a month).
Keep setting new goals for yourself and build the business up. If I would have stopped and only worked on the first website that ever made me money, I would make a respectable income every year, but I wouldn’t have been able to quit my job and I wouldn’t have the lifestyle and freedom that I enjoy now.
Yesterday I decided not to come into work so I could work on editing a movie I shot with my two boys (Adding over 70 laser gun effects takes a long time). As I was home working on it I realized again how lucky I am and how grateful I am to have the freedom to do those kinds of things. It never would have happened if I didn’t build my online business to where it is.
Set your sights high. Take time to learn the things you need to be more successful. And NEVER give up!
One of the most common questions that our readers ask us is how to increase traffic to their website. To make this as simple as possible I would tell you that there are 2 things you should always be doing: Adding unique useful content and building your link popularity.
Adding Content – When I say you should add unique useful content to your site I really mean the content needs to be 100% original and useful to other people. Writing content just for content sake is a big waste of time, especially if you are the one writing all of the content. When you write useful content people will have a reason to come and read it. People will show it to other people, and people will link to it.
Let me give you a great example of how by writing one good post I increased the traffic to my website by 1000%. I came across a new product a couple of months ago and saw that the product was in my same industry so I looked at the site for a minute or two and then went on with my day. The next day I found a site that was almost exactly the same making the same claims and showing the same pictures of checks and sportscars.
I quickly realized that this new product was a scam. I decided to write an very in depth post about this scam and warning people what to look out for. Little did I realize that this scam was so widespread that thousands of people a month were searching for the name of this new product to find out if it was legit or not.
Because I took the time to write a very detailed post about the product we jumped to the top of the rankings for the product name. The result of this one post was going from a couple of thousand visitors a month to over 20,000 visitors a month. Imagine what your business could do with 10 times the amount of traffic it gets now.
Building Links – Because this is such a hard thing to do people will try to tell you that this is not that important in getting more traffic to your site. In reality, link building has proven to be the most influential factor in the rankings and traffic I have achieved with the internet. Nothing sways rankings more powerfully than good quality one way links that point to your website. (Read more about how to link build here) I achieved #1 rankings in Google with my old SEO website for the term “SEO services” when my site had much less content and far fewer pages than all of my competitors. How did I do it? A consistent flow of good links.
If you want to know my secret to success I just gave it to you. Good quality content and relevent quality links. If it sounds too simple then try it another more complicated way. All I can give you is what has helped me become successful online.
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Don’t forget to check out my guide to buying and selling websites online here.
Since we have posted on the internet scam “Posting links on Google” and other money making schemes like Clickety Split many of you have asked about other similar services. One that was recently brought to my attention was iNetGlobal. They are an internet company that claims they will help you get a “piece of the internet pie”.
Based on the information on their website it looks like you download their software and then you have to visit certain websites for at least 20 seconds or so in order to earn credits. They then allow website owners to pay to have their website put into the software so other members have to look at the website in the rotation.
The major problem with this model is that people that are using this software only care about one thing, earning credits for visiting the required sites. They are not going to engage with the websites they are required to view (1) because it is a complete shot in the dark if it is relevant to something they want to see and (2) because that would eat into the time they can visit more sites and earn more credits.
This is a model that has been circulating around the internet for many years. If people like looking at sites that they have no interest in then more power to them. I just don’t think this is the answer to the question how do I make money online?
My big question is, why is this company using an MLM model? If they have the know how to teach people how to make money online, why don’t they just do that? I have to admit that they do a fantastic job getting people excited about these “opportunities” but in reality your time is much better spent building your own internet empire.
Here is what you need to understand: If you want to make money online, you need to start your own internet business. Don’t join an MLM and try to make money that way. All you will do is make money for the people who started the MLM. A common marketing tactic for companies like iNetGlobal is to show you the founders of Google, or Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg (founder of Facebook) in order to try to get you excited about the prospect of making millions online. The point they don’t make is that the thing all of these people have in common is they started their own internet business, they didn’t join an MLM.
Decide what you are good at, think about what the internet world needs and start looking into internet businesses you can start from there.
