Willie Crawford Teaches REAL Internet Marketing  

Several times in recent years, I've watched big names release products talking about what a great money-maker running your own membership sites is.

Being as skeptical as the next person in internet marketing, I usually stepped back and asked what are they really teaching, how are they making THEIR money, and are they doing what they teach.

As often as not, they made MORE money from selling you a package on how to set up lucrative membership sites than they did from running their own.

Often, they made BIG bucks from selling you some over-priced membership site package. With these expensive packages they often used scripts that are available for free, and that may even be pre-installed on your hosting account!

They may spend $100 to get their tech guy to configure the script and pocket the other $2000!

So, I wisely, didn't bite :-)

Besides... the hardest part is NOT setting up the site, it's getting and keeping members!

I did slowly build a number of membership sites over the year, and some of them did quite well, and continue to do so. I learned the business in both "the school of hard knocks" and sitting down and talking to those operating membership sites over a beer at a seminar.

I stopped drinking, so I bought them beers, and when sufficiently lubricated, they shared their juiciest membership site secrets with me. I made notes, and wisely used the things that they freely taught me :-)

Fast-forward to today and I have a fairly simple formula for new membership sites. It's using Joomla for content management and aMember for billing and subscription management.

Let me break that down for you...

Content management is just organizing everything. Having a place to upload, store and grant access to videos, audios, ebooks, software, forums, chat rooms, training sessions, etc. A good CMS also lets your users interact... which is one of the BIG things that keeps members around!

The biggest headache in operating many of my earlier membership sites was actually managing access to the site. I used systems where I'd set up Paypal as my payment processor, and then after they'd pay, Paypal would deliver members to a page where they completed registration.

Then month-after-month, they'd pay, and things would chug along smoothly UNTIL their payment didn't go through for some reason. At that point, Paypal kicked out an email saying a payment failed and I had to manually log-in to my membership site control panel and decide whether or not this was a temporary condition and whether or not to lock this person out.

Then I discovered a really nice 105-video tutorial by my long-time friend James Maduk. In his videos course, James explains how to integrate aMember with Joomla.

James explained that with the aMember integration, when the payment doesn't go through, Paypal (or any of 60+ other payment processors) talks to aMember and updates the database. At the appropriate time, the script automatically locks out the former member.

Doing it manually, I had to either make a note of the exact date when the person should no longer have access, or just lock them out when the payment failed. Amember is smart enough to keep track of that and allow your members access UNTIL the appropriate date.

You can check out James' tutorials at: http://WillieCrawford.com/MembershipSites/

I have actually wanted all 105 videos:-)

I saw the benefit in mastering the topic and simply set aside the time to do it!

If you already have a membership site up and running, and want to maybe just switch over to an automated solution for managing billing and controlling access, then you may want to just grab a copy of aMember.

Get aMember at: http://WillieCrawford.com/aMember/

I now know aMember inside-out. I could map out how it works in my sleep. I gained this total mastery of the script from watching James' video tutorials.

I also digested another tutorial series - exclusively on aMember.

That tutorial told how to integrate aMember with Paypal, 2CheckOut, Clickbank, 1ShoppingCart, your own merchant account, and 60+ other payment management systems seamlessly.

You can get the aMember tutorial at: http://WillieCrawford.com/aMemberTutorial/

Back to how I now set up membership sites...

In my "old age," I've grown lazy and risk averse. So, most of the memberships sites that I now set up are actually partnerships. I partner with online marketers and even local business people.

I provide the technical know-how in how to get a membership site set up in just a few hours that will run flawlessly for YEARS. I also provide the marketing know-how that will be necessary to get the flow of members started.

My partners typically provide ALL of the content. They also funnel a lot of their contacts, clients, and list members to the new site (as early members).

I typically turn members into affiliates, so my sites grow themselves once they get started!

James' tutorials provide a lot of the business know-how in getting and keeping members.

James also teaches you how to configure your membership sites so that your MEMBERS generate the majority of the content... and your members also bring in new members and keep old members around.

The TRUTH is that for most poorly managed membership sites, the average member might stick around for three months. With a properly managed membership site, members will stick around for years.

So, yes, running a successful membership site IS all that it's cracked up to be. Just imagine having a site with only 1000 members paying just $20 per month. If you only have to spend an hour or two per week on that site, wouldn't you consider that a great money-maker.

You could even outsource the management of your site, and after paying your helpers, you'd still be doing "OK."

Anyway, I've just shared with you my system for building and operating lucrative membership sites. I've also shared where I learned what I know, so that if you prefer going to the source, that's an option too.

Willie