Membership Riches
(You can view this newsletter online at http://www.clarifywithben.com )
I am sorry that I haven’t written for a while. I have a very big launch coming up on Tuesday out of the internet marketing arena and I have really had my head down doing that. Sharon and Eddie who work with me say that it is the first time that I haven’t spoken constantly about my daughter since she was born! I guess that is the power of concentration 
You have probably also noticed that I have not been promoting the high-ticket items this week which you have undoubtably received hundreds of emails about. Some of them being Xybercode and InfoProduct Blueprint. I was offered to promote one of them, but when I reviewed the product I felt that it would not benefit you. Contrary to an aggressive email that I received last week, I only promote products which I feel are in the best interest of you and will benefit you both in the short-term and in the long-term. As I am sure that you realize it is in my best interest to help you succeed and I make it my mission to do everything possible to do so.
If you have ever written to me, you will know that I respond in a timely manner. Fortunately or unfortunately, I now receive hundreds of emails a day commenting on my newsletter or asking for advice. Although I am still reading every one, I do need a method to keep track and am therefore introducing a help-desk. I reviewed a number of different helpdesks and found that the main fault with many of them was the complexity of use. I have therefore chosen one where you do not need to register, confirm your email or anything else. You just simply post a ticket and I receive an immediate notification of your query. I then answer and you are notified of my response. So far this has saved me many hours, which is to your benefit as it means that I can spend more time on producing other products for you.
http://www.clarifywithben.com/recommends/membershipriches
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My Most Successful Endeavour
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By far, my most successful endeavour has been adsenseadwords.com . This is a membership site and like clockwork, every single month this brings me a 4 figure income. Not only is it a success from a literal financial point of view, but it also brings other benefits:
a. The members of this site some whom have been a member right from the beginning know that I deliver what I promise and therefore trust me.
b. In order to even see the sales letter, you have to sign up for a newsletter. This means that I am constantly building a list of potential members who I can email with information and special offers.
c. Because it is one of the oldest Adsense membership sites, it receives a lot of organic traffic. If you do a search on Google, you will see that there are over a thousand incoming links to this site.
The greatest thing about this site, is that everything is automated. I have someone to do the research and update the site, I have a programmer on standby, I even have someone that sends out the regular updates to the members. So whether I am in the office, at home, on holiday or watching NCIS (Don’t you love it?) I know that I am going to be earning a certain amount month after month.
That is one of the great benefits about owning a membership site.
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Building Your List
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Another great benefit as I hinted at before is that you have a list of people who you know are interested in your niche. As the expert you are able to advise them on how to improve the results and which products are going to benefit them. This is often a lot of work, but can also be profitable if you build up credibility and offer quality unbiased information.
One of the biggest challenges of AdsenseAdwords.com is that I had to do everything from scratch. If you have read some of my previous newsletters, you will know that less than two years ago I didn’t even know how to spell Interent Marekting (Pun Intended). In fact if you are an original member of AdsenseAdwords.com you will know that it started as a fixed payment site. My first member bought lifetime membership for $3.50 (Franz, if you are still reading this, then you got a bargain!). To give you an idea, membership is now $49 a month and there are several hundred active members. So you can see that things have changed for this site over the last couple of years.
I want you to know that it has not always been this way. I have spent hundreds if not thousands of hours making changes on the site to the programming, the design, mechanisms and the such. I have tried different copy, colors, graphics….in fact virtually every combination in order to try and crack the formula of how to recruit members and keep them. What I have now is an asset. As my mentor Richard Scheffren would say, I have built a business which I can leave and more or less it will function on its own.
Anyway, I am not trying to sell you membership here to the site. In fact, there are only a few places left and then I will be closing membership until there are places open again. What I do want to give over to you though is the importance and profitability of a membership site because of its automation and the fact that you get a recurring income.
http://www.clarifywithben.com/recommends/membershipriches
I have earnt many thousands of dollars from this site. Admittedly a large chunk of that has been spent on both my own time and employing others to run and moderate the site. Over time that chunk has become smaller and I am at the point now where I only reinvest about 20-30% of the revenue back into the site.
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Mistakes I Have Made
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Looking back now, I wonder just how much I could have made and where I would be now had I done certain things right at the beginning instead of throughout the last two years.
For example, some changes that I have made:
1. A recurring membership fee as opposed to a life-time fee
2. Offering the gold membership to new members as opposed to having an upgrade
3. Having a weekly update email
4. Using aweber to deliver emails as opposed to doing it from my email client (Yes really…)
5. Having a newsletter signup on the main page of the site
and the list goes on and on…
One thing that I really want to implement is an affiliate scheme and that is very much in the pipeline. I am sure that this implementation will make a serious difference to the income level.
Apart from telling you some of my own experiences with a membership site and giving you some specific tips, I also want to give you some reasons why membership sites are great:
1. They give you a recurring income
2. They give you credibility
3. They can often be left to live and grow
However, it can be a long learning curve and a curve which I have had to suffer at times. As a speculation, I would suggest that the learning curve has cost me over $20,000 which is a LOT of money to waste.
If you are thinking about having a membership site and I would strongly suggest that you do, then I would strongly advise you to cut that learning curve.
If you are seriously thinking about owning a membership site either now or in the future, then making a small investment now could save you many thousands of dollars as it would have done for me.
http://www.clarifywithben.com/recommends/membershipriches
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Jason James
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Jason James is the man behind Uncut Marketing which in the first month following the launch grossed a whopping
$214,352.14.
Jason James’ Auction Resource Network eBay member site made him nearly $250,000 in 2005.
Jason has taken everything he learned from his experiences and packaged it up so that anyone can start their own Membership web site, and profit like mad.
In his brand new Membership Riches Jason shares every bit of his formula for building, and more importantly, filling membership sites, that will send floods of cash headed your way.
Do me a favor and please take a look at:
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http://www.clarifywithben.com/recommends/membershipriches
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if you have thoughts of ever creating a membership site.
Please let me know what you think.
Best Wishes,
Ben Shaffer
http://www.replytoben.com
PS. There have been several very high-ticket launches this week. This product is different because not only is it totally affordable, but also because it gives you the whole A-Z and leaves nothing out in order to get you running with your own membership site.
