How to Keep Them Coming Back

In my first article in the Content into Consistent Income series, you’ll notice that I gave an example of a 12 week course. That was no accident.

You see, most people who think of “membership sites” think of content that’s delivered weekly or monthly… indefinitely. Members pay month after month and the owners deliver month after month.

This works fairly well if you’re running a PLR (Private Label Rights) membership site or something similar. Many of you will not even know what I’m talking about here so it’s not the type of site that writers and authors would create. The majority of you will want to create some sort of training site. Your members are going to drift away if you just give them tips and tricks indefinitely. And they might even bail out a couple months after joining, simply because there’s no end in sight.

So here’s what you do instead…

Create a fixed-term membership site. This is a site that runs for a specific period of time, such as three months, six months, twelve months… or any length of your choosing.

Tip: For best results, create a step-by-step series as described in Part 1 of this article.

Here’s why this works…

Imagine if your site went on indefinitely. Someone might join and after a couple months quit. That’s pretty normal. But if the course only stretches out for six months, psychologically the customers will feel better if they just remain a member for the entire six months. They want to see through to the end.

This is actually a Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) trick. Simply put, people don’t like unfinished business. That’s why they’ll even read books they don’t like or watch boring movies – once they’ve invested some time into the activity, they want to see it through to the end.

While just creating a fixed term site created this psychological commitment to your course, you can make the commitment even stronger by building anticipation for the upcoming lessons. That is, from the very first lesson you work on “selling” the other lessons. Like this:

• Build anticipation for the whole course in lesson #1. Your first lesson should include an overview of all the lessons. But don’t just write it out like a table of contents. Instead, write it like bullet points to a sales letter.

Example: “In Lesson #3 you’ll discover a simple trick that will triple your conversion rate!” In other words, arouse curiosity whenever possible.

• Build anticipation for the next lesson at the end of each lesson. At the end of each lesson you’ll want to include something like, “Stay tuned for next week’s lesson, where you’ll find out the secrets of creating cash-pulling headlines!”

• Build anticipation for future lessons and bonuses periodically. Finally, from time to time you should remind members of upcoming lessons. For example, in lesson #5 you might remind members of a particularly valuable lesson or bonus that you’re offering in lesson #9. Again, write it like a sales letter bullet, where you arouse curiosity and put forth a benefit.

The biggest challenge in running a membership site is retaining members.

With a typical membership site, your members may only stick around for two or three months. But you can quickly and easily ensure that more of your members stay around for six months, twelve months or even longer by creating a fixed-term membership site!

I’ve got complete information about how you can launch your own membership course in my Simple Membership System. Check it out today and think about how you can use your own content for such a system.

Finally watch for my next article in this Content into Consistent Income series, I’m going to show you how you can set up your membership site and forget it.

The Value of Repurposed Content

Yesterday during The Talking Book Show with Stacy Hawkins Adams, I spent almost an hour and a half talking about different aspects of book proposals. If you missed the live program, you can still download the entire interview and listen to it on your own schedule. Just follow the link.

I know the replay is available because after the program, I went to the site, checked on it, then downloaded the program. Why? In situations like this in the past, I would have pressed on to the next writing project or my next radio interview. I'm grateful for the opportunity to help would-be writers to understand more about the book publishing world and to promote my Book Proposals That Sell. Over the last 20 years, I've spent the majority of that time writing original content. I've learned a great deal about how to write for various magazines and how to write different types of books for different ages and styles. I've moved from project to project. Yet in recent years, I've tried to be wiser about the value of repurposed content. If you don't know what I'm talking about, stay with me because I'm going to explain it.

Probably about 15 years ago, I attended a workshop at a writer’s conference with the topic of reselling reprints. While I can't recall the specific author, she was a master at reselling her magazine work and normally had about 1,000 of her reprints in circulation at any given time. When one of her submissions came back rejected, she had a system to send it to another magazine and get it into the consideration process. That effort on her part was adding considerable income and exposure to her work in the marketplace. At the time, I was writing for a number of magazines. I tried to remarket the reprints and did place a number of them and earn some more income from it. But in general, I found it to be a bothersome experience which didn't bear as much fruit as writing original material. I chalked it up to experience and returned to my bent of crafting original content for another magazine or another book project. To me at that time, it seemed more productive. I didn't understand the value of repurposed content.

I downloaded The Talking Book Show interview because I can use that material for something else related to marketing my book proposal material. I can do some minor edits and even rebrand the program with music at the beginning and the end or a new introduction using Sound Forge. The process isn't complicated or time-consuming. I can use this interview in a promotional effort or as a bonus when someone purchases another product or any number of other ways. I can only use it if I'm taking advantage of this content and intentionally repurposing it. If I press on to another project where I am creating original material, I leave behind a potentially valuable asset.

One of the best examples of how I've repurposed content is with my Book Proposals That Sell. When I signed my contract on the trade paperback, I kept the exclusive electronic rights to the material. In other words, I can sell the ebook version for whatever price and do whatever I want with it. I turned the book into an ebook which is a part of my affiliate program and continues to sell. It takes a bit of planning for the writer to take this step. First you have to protect your rights and make sure you control whatever you need to control in order to repurpose the content. Next you need to proactively move that repurposed material into the marketplace.

I continue to write original material and I'm not pretending to have all the answers about how to repurpose my content into other forms such as an audio or an ebook or a home study course. The possibilities are endless if you are open to the concept.