Lately I’ve been doing a lot of research into starting a membership site, which is why you haven’t heard from me for weeks now.
I know that over the past year or so, as people are becoming more used to the idea of paying for online content, membership sites have become one of the trendy things to do, but I’ve never really been a follower of fashion – if I was I’d have jumped in long ago.
Look, I don’t know whether this is going to sound like a load of rubbish but it’s really how I’m feeling: I’ve started feeling guilty about my high income and laid-back lifestyle, while so many others online are struggling to earn anything at all. And I want to give something back.
Sounds like something you’d read in a hyped up empty your wallet sales letter doesn’t it, but this isn’t a sales letter and I mean it.
In the past couple of weeks I’ve talked to 3 people I know well who really hate their jobs. They hate them with a capital H. Two of them are teachers and all they talk about is how disruptive and aggressive many teens are today, and about the stress of dealing with students who just don’t seem interesting in learning.
They tell me that more than anything they’d like to quit their jobs and live my easy-going, stress free life, by working from home
running an online business.
But it’s just not that easy. Especially when all three of them want to be ‘internet marketers’ and are information junkies.
Against my advice they seem to be buying something new every week. But because (like many of us) they’re sucked in by well written sales letters that promise the earth, they’re never sticking with one method long enough to see any success with it.
This is the way with so many people. They jump from one hyped thing to the next hyped thing and never take enough action to get anywhere.
This failure to take action, to actually do something that generates an income, is the main reason why most people fail.
It’s not a lack of brain power. Not a lack of desire. It’s a lack of continual, ongoing, action.
Note: I might not work all that hard these days, but that’s because I’ve been doing this for 10 years now and worked really hard to get to the situation I’m now in with many residual streams of income.
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Cor, I get distracted easily don’t I?
I’m trying to write about membership sites here 
What I started out to say was that I came across these amazing figures a membership site is doing:
The dating site eHarmony, which offers free and paid options, is pulling in an average of 10,000 new subscribers a day, and after 5 years has reached 4.5 million registered users.
I guess the majority are free subscribers, because they have just over 900,000 ‘active’ subscribers which I’m assuming are the paying members.
With membership costs running at up to $50 a month that’s a lot of dough coming in. The cheapest membership is $21 a month if people sign up for a year. So working on that 21 figure, with 900,000 active members they’re pulling in amazing $18.9 million a month.
And that’s taking the lowest figure. How to do they get so many subscribers?
Well it’s a combination of 2 things.
1.There’s a huge demand. The dating niche is huge, and there can’t be many, if any, hotter businesses to be in. There are millions of lonely people out there.
2. They – eHarmony – spend very heavily on radio and TV advertising.
read more here http://www.smallbusinesswebsite.com/public/389.cfm
and http://etl-forums.stanford.edu/viewtopic.php?pid=756
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How would you like to own eHarmony?
Well unfortunately, it’s well beyond the reach of all but a few of the wealthiest people on earth.
But you can, of course, start your own membership site which might – after a few months of really hard work – make you a great living.
If you’re quick my online ‘guru’ friend Ryan Deiss will help you get there fast. At 3pm EST today he’s opening the doors to an online training course where he’ll take you by the hand and personally guide you through all the steps of starting and running a membership site.
It’s known as the “30 Days to $10K” project. (no longer available)
This obviously isn’t for everyone. In fact its limited to 25 people, who he will take by the hand and help them build a business that earns $10K a month – so obviously he’s only looking for motivated individuals who are willing to put some “sweat equity” into their businesses.
With that said, the 25 available spots will get taken very quickly.
If you’re at all interested stop reading this and get there now.
Here’s the link: http:// philwiley.com/ recommends/30days30k
And enter your name and email into the form near the bottom of the page.
That will give you a 2 minute head-start before the order button goes live. Two minutes might sounds like nothing, but when he last offered this hands-on training to 25 people a few months ago he sold out in 5 minutes.
I’ve viewed all the material from the last course – watched the videos, read the pdf’s, listened to the conference calls.
And it’s excellent, quality training.
So drop your address into the form first, then go back and read through the sales letter and make your mind up.
(I’ve got no idea whether he’s got any plans of offering it again).
Later, after 3, come back here and read the rest of this
NOTE: Ryan sold out in just 4 minutes. However, it’s possible he’ll offer it again so if you’re interested you should sign up at that page to be notified of the re-opening. He’s one of the good guys and won’t abuse your email address or send your heaps of follow-ups.
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Ok, if you haven’t gone, I guess you’re you’re just not interested in running a membership site. Or, more likely, you can’t afford it. (personal hands-on training doesn’t come cheap).
There’s a much more affordable site launch today, which includes a free membersite script, and hosting, and just about everything else you need to get up and running.
It’s called The Newbie Network, and it’s being launched by my good friend (I mean that, we’ve been out to lunch several times and sat next to each other at seminars) Kim Standerline.
Here’s something Kim wrote about her new site:
“One of the problems Newbie Marketers have is the amount of money they spend on the “tools” they need for their trade.
This includes anything from hosting, web building software, blogging tools, to the articles (or other content) they want to put on their sites. It soon adds up, especially when you factor in the cost of
the various membership sites they belong to.
So I decided to create a new membership site (together with an online friend), and literally put as much as possible under one roof (or membership) for everyone and help keep the cost of running your online business as low as possible.
If you don’t know me, I run two very successful membership sites over at Niche Health Products and Niche Health Articles, so I guess you could say I know a thing or two about membership sites.
Here’s some of what you get as a member:
* Your own reseller account to put up as many domains as you wish (Hosted on our own dedicated server)
* A Soho Launch Pro Web-Based Portal Builder so easy to use, my three year old grandson could use it.
* A copy of the EasyMemberPro membership script (A brilliant membership option if you don’t know any html yet want to start your own membership site)
* Membership to Niche Health Products.
* Membership to Niche Health Articles.
* 25 Internet related articles every month (Themed)
* A monthly teleconferencing call on a specific topic
* 2 Xsite Pro templates every month (relating to our theme of the month)
* And a host of bonus goodies too numerous to mention.
To be honest, we are adding so much to the Newbie Network, its probably best to read the rest for yourself. (And we are in the process of adding more)
Check it out here http:// www. philwiley.com/recommends/newbie-network
Note: sorry, it’s no longer available. Five years have passed since I wrote about it.
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I wrote this next piece on Memorial Day last week, but decided not to publish it until now because of the subject matter.
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Memorial Day, like Remembrance Day in England and Anzac Day in Australia do, touched at my heart.
As a child my grandfather often told me of the battlefield horrors he lived through in 1st World War France, seeing his comrades fall alongside him. My father, at 79, still leads the Remembrance Day march through the streets of the Yorkshire village he’s always lived in, and when I was young I walked by his side. Later I walked alone among the long rows of white cross battlefield graveyards of France; and a couple of years ago, skipping a session or two at Yanik’s Underground Seminar in Washington, I visited Arlington Cemetery and thought about growing old and all those who never will.
Quite a few readers of my newsletter will never grow old either, because over the years I’ve been writing it they’ve died. Nothing to do with my writing I hope, though possibly I could have bored, or frustrated, a few of them to death.
I’ve only learnt that they’ve unsubscribed from life (and not just this newsletter) when they’ve been well known and their passing has been publicized. Though on two occasions I’ve received emails from family members of subscribers, saying something like “although my husband really enjoyed reading your letters he is no longer with us…”
Which leads me, in a round-about way, to the whole business built around people not living for ever.
I know that a lot of people don’t want to think about death and dying, but it’s just a fact of life. An unpleasant one, but that doesn’t make it any less real. None of us live forever.
As the Chinese saying goes (when talking about tyrants and politicians abusing their power) “only one thing certain, every 100 years all new people”
This is the kind of thing you start to think about when you get to my ripe old age. Heck, I most be almost as old as Paul Myers, and that’s saying something.
But at least we’re still alive.
Death, and the business of death, is a bit of a taboo subject. But, if you’re willing to, the fact that people have finite lives is something you can base, you can benefit from. To speak in Internet marketing speak – this is one big niche.
Do you know that there are a staggering 10,000 funerals in tiny little England every week. And an estimated 46,000 a week in the USA (based on 2003/04 statistics).
To me that’s an amazing number. No wonder that, away from public eye, all the funeral directors I’ve met over the years have been happy smiling people.
Here are a few search engine figures.
Funeral
Max Adwords Bid: $0.89
Estimated Daily Search Volume: 139539
Estimated Monthly Search Volume: 4186182
Burial
Max Bid: $1.41
Estimated Daily Search Volume: 9696
Estimated Monthly Search Volume: 290899
Cremation
Max Bid: $2.31
Estimated Daily Search Volume: 10156
Estimated Monthly Search Volume: 304700
Casket
Max Adwords Bid: $1.44
Estimated Daily Search Volume: 6061
Estimated Monthly Search Volume: 181847
Coffin
Max Adwords Bid: $0.89
Estimated Daily Search Volume: 5649
Estimated Monthly Search Volume: 169498
Funeral Wreath
Max Bid: $3.11
Estimated Daily Search Volume: 118
Estimated Monthly Search Volume: 3559
Funeral flowers
Max Bid: $4.28
Estimated Daily Search Volume: 3190
Estimated Monthly Search Volume: 95704
There’s no doubt that death, even though it’s the end for the individual concerned, is a booming business.
But the very end of life as we know it, is only part of the long tail of marketing.
Think about the build up.
Start building lists and marketing to the fifty plus population and you could go with them all the way.
There’s anti-aging for starters.
The anti-aging market would be a good one to get into. We’ve got an aging population with money to spend, and a lot of it is spent on trying to stay younger (well look younger) and to live longer.
Imagine getting people in their fifties (or even younger) locked into some sort of membership/continuity program where they buy anti aging products month after month, or/and you get a cut from plastic surgeons or lasik eye surgery places for referrals.
Later you can sell them retirement type insurance, refer them to nursing homes/retirement homes, get a cut from funerals.
I know a man who already does part of this, though not online. Actually he worked backwards – starting off with a funeral company, he moved into buying old folk nursing homes to ensure a steady supply of customers, and bought into a coffin making company. He’s now moved into buying/investing retirement
villages so that he’s got a ready supply of people to move into the nursing homes when they get too old to care for themselves.
In his book Age Power, Ken Dychtwald gives some figures regarding the buying power of consumers in the 50+ market.
# 79% of them own their own homes.
# There are 40 million credit card users among them.
# They buy 41% of new cars and 48% of all luxury cars.
# They account for $610 BILLION in healthcare spending.
Yet they are the target of only 5% of advertising dollars.
In other words they have enormous spending power but they’re not, in the main, targeted by internet marketers.
Why?
Could it be that because we’re so youth obsessed? Aging, like death itself, is almost a taboo subject.
If you still need persuading that this is a target market worth pursuing look at these stats:
face lift
Max Bid: $3.37
Estimated Daily Search Volume: 7030
Estimated Monthly Search Volume: 210919
Over 7000 people A DAY interested in face lifts.
What about clothes for older people?
Women, 65 years and older spent $14.7 billion on apparel in 1999 (the latest figures I could find) which is almost as much as that spent by 24 to 34 year olds. But how many people in the fashion industry are pursing this target market? Very few, and even less online.
Mind you, that’s slowly starting to change. Many mainstream advertisers are coming to the conclusion that pursuing the spending power of the fickle youth market isn’t worth the effort. So the chase could be on for the older demographic.
I could go on and on and on here. But I don’t want to bore you. So let me wrap this up.
Just think about this.
There are 90 million U.S. residents over the age of 50 today, and someone turning age 50 every 7 seconds.
The 50+ market is clearly a powerful force. You should look at getting into it.
You can find Ken’s book on Amazon, or read more about him on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Dychtwald
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Oh, something else to consider before I finish with this oldie talk, is that not everyone over 50 is well off.
Far from it.
People in the 50+ age bracket are often the first to be made redundant or ‘let go’ when companies merge or make job cuts for another reason.
This happens to many, many, thousands of people every year.
In the UK around 145,000 people were made redundant between Jan and March this year. That’s a staggering figure. See:
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/statbase/Product.asp?vlnk=13308
And you you can find the official USA figures here
http://www.bls.gov/bdm/home.htm
These people often get redundancy payments that won’t keep them going for long, and many of the older people know they will struggle to find employment and are keen to invest in starting their own business. Unfortunately many of them will have no prior business experience and struggle.
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And finally, to lighten the mood, here are a few entertaining links for you to check out.
Amazing Whiteboard
This certainly beats Powerpoint for presentations
Eyetracking.
An interesting video about eyetracking and website optimization. You should definitely see this video about students who use eyetracking.
And best of all watch The Zimmers.
They’re making big news in England and roaring up the singles charts with their rendition of My Generation
Note: thanks to Jon Anderson for sending me that link.
Jon, did the PLR interview with me that I wrote about in the previous edition of my newsletter.
It’s still available if you missed it.
