When you first thought about opening a membership site, you probably spent at least a little time crunching the numbers.
Example: You did calculations like this: If you have 200 members each paying you $50 a month, that’s $10,000 per month. Or if you open multiple membership sites, charge $27, and get 500 members, that’s $13,500 per month. Or maybe your goal was 1000 members across one or more sites each paying $19 per month, which puts $19,000 in your pocket.
Chances are, however, you stopped calculating when you figured out that final front-end figure. But here’s the thing: That “final” figure only tells half the story. If you’re only taking into consideration your front end profits, you’re leaving a lot of money on the table.
You see, some of the easiest money you’ll ever make is by selling more products and even more expensive products to your existing customers on the backend.
Consider this: If you put up a good sales letter for your membership site, you may convert anywhere from 2% to 5% of your visitors. So if 100 people walk through your virtual door, two to five of them will become members.
Now let’s say you have 100 members paying you $20 per month (that’s $2000 per month). These 100 members are going to be open to your other offers, meaning you’ll likely convert in the double digits. So perhaps you offer these 1000 members a $50 ebook – you may find 20% (20 members) taking advantage of the offer, which puts an extra $1000 in your pocket.
With just one offer you boosted your income by 50%, simply by selling a product to your existing customers! Now imagine if you did this with 500 customers… 1000 customers… or more. You can see the possibilities!
Now in order to tap into these backend profits, you need to offer something that complements but does not compete with your membership site. One of the best ways to do this is to recommend related products from within each lesson. That is, you tell your members where to get more information on a topic that you’re not covering in depth.
Examples:
- Let’s suppose your membership site teaches people how to create and market their own products. And let’s suppose you get to the topic of search engine marketing. You may go into depth on the topic of SEO, but refer your members to another product in order to learn more about PPC marketing.
- Your general “how to adopt a child” site might refer members to specific sites or products if they want to adopt children from specific countries, such as Guatemala or China.
- You might refer your dog obedience and training members to a “trick training” book (since you’re not covering that topic in the site).
- Your weight-loss site might refer people to an ebook that covers weight loss supplements, herbs and vitamins in depth.
Another way to make money on the backend is by recommending that your members buy a specific tool in order to complete a task.
Examples:
- During the lesson on SEO (search engine optimization), you may recommend that your readers purchase a WordTracker.com subscription.
- You’re teaching people how to do build and profit from a mailing list. You recommend Aweber.com.
- You’re teaching people how to repaint a classic muscle car. You recommend a specific store (using your affiliate link) where people can pick up the sanding and painting supplies.
- Your golf site might point people towards buying a specific set of clubs.
There’s a fortune that lays hidden in the backend of your membership site.
You can tap into this fortune by regularly making related, complimentary offers to your existing members!