Home Business Ideas and Opportunities

Start a 6-Figure Newsletter Member Site

A hot online business model is to build a membership site and sell those memberships for $27 to $97 a month or more. It sounds like a great idea – theoretically just 100 members paying you $97 a month will gross $9,700 per month and $116,400 per year.

Start a 6-Figure Newsletter Member Site

But it’s not as easy as it used to be to get someone to sign up for a hefty monthly payment. And if you do, a majority of members tend to cancel after 1-4 months.

So why do they cancel? Because in their minds you are not delivering enough value for the money. They see that their finances are tight and they look for ways to save some money. “I’ll cancel that monthly membership because I wasn’t really using it anyway.”

The only way to prevent this from happening is to be indispensable to their business or their lives. If, for example, your membership gives them the software or the content that enables them to run their business, they’re not going to cancel. Same way if you provide them with something they can immediately turn into profit, such as high quality PLR. But these things tend to take more time and resources than the average marketer has, at least in the beginning.

So how can you start a continuity program that people readily join and don’t quickly cancel? By offering an inexpensive newsletter on a topic they’re passionate about. If your newsletter is in the $5 to $12 a month range and if it’s providing value, they’re not likely to cancel. After all, what’s a few bucks to read something they really enjoy? It’s less than a pizza and it provides value. And it’s almost too much effort to bother to cancel – it’s easier to just let it continue.

But you might be wondering how it can be worth it to sell a newsletter for, say, a $9 a month subscription. After all, 100 subscribers is only $900 – is it worth your time? And how long will it take to get those 100 subscribers?

Frankly, it generally doesn’t happen overnight. You may only get a handful of subscribers the first month, and another handful the second. But if your subscribers are sticking around, then your income is steadily building month after month.

Better still, whether you have one subscriber or 10,000 subscribers, your work stays the same. This means you can continue to add subscribers to infinity and your workload never goes up but your income does.

Plus, it doesn’t have to take a tremendous amount of effort. If you’re already knowledgeable about your topic you can write about it in your spare time. If you’re not, you can interview others and transcribe the interviews, or get other experts to write articles for you. In fact, if you’re smart you won’t spend the majority of your time creating content because you’ll spend it growing your subscriber base. This way every month you’ll earn more than the month before and that’s a great feeling.

Plus, you can market additional related products and services to your newsletter subscribers, thereby further increasing your income. Remember, your newsletter is far more likely to be read than ordinary emails, articles and blog posts because people are paying to receive it. This means you can build a tremendous amount of rapport and power with your readers. And so long as you never steer them wrong, they are more likely to follow your suggestions.

Here are 16 tips to get your newsletter up and running and make it as successful as possible.

1. Choose a topic with a high perceived value for the market. Making or saving money is always good. So is any niche with fanatical followers, many health niches, hobbies and even dating and relationships. If you can find something that people are obsessed with you’ve got a winner. For example, bodybuilders are obsessed with finding better/faster ways to gain muscle and they’ll subscribe to numerous magazines and websites to find the latest techniques.

2. Write a bullet rich sales page with tons of teasers on what they’ll discover in the newsletter.

3. Write one monthly newsletter or break your newsletters up into weekly editions. To begin with, the monthly newsletter format is easier and feels less overwhelming to produce. Plus it can be more impressive looking when subscribers see one big newsletter instead of several small ones each month. However, if there’s a lot of news in your niche then you might want to go with 2 or more smaller newsletters, since you’ll be able to put the news out in a much more timely manner before it gets old.

4. The amount of content you put into each newsletter is going to depend on your preferences, the niche and what your readers want. Remember that quality is much more important than quantity. For example, if you write a newsletter about making money from home, one detailed method they can implement each month is worth more than 100 pages of generic information they can get anywhere.

5. You don’t have to limit yourself just to written content – you can also do podcasts and videos.

6. Use experts in your field to help you generate the content. If you rely just on yourself you’ll run out of info. But with a steady stream of experts you’ll always have something fresh to say. Do interviews, use guest authors and even hire people to write articles for you.

7. In addition to information, negotiate discounts on products and services they might need. Getting these “inside deals” can be an added benefit of being a subscriber to your newsletter. For example, if your newsletter is about how to best use WordPress, you might negotiate discounts on popular themes, plugins or hosting. If you’re good at negotiating these deals they could even pay for members’ subscriptions.

8. Use a $1 trial to bring in more new subscribers.

9. Convert your newsletter to PDF and deliver via autoresponder or download link.

10. Ask your subscribers to submit their own tips and advice and offer them a link in your newsletter or some other reward if you publish what they write. Do this in every issue and over time you won’t have to produce as much content yourself.

11. Survey your subscribers to find out what they would like to see covered in your newsletter.

12. Once you know the value of your subscribers, you can purchase advertising to bring in new subscriptions. For example, if you know that your average subscriber stays for 6 months and you charge $9 a month for your newsletter, that’s $54. If it costs you $15 in advertising to get that subscriber, you’ve made (on average) $39 for every new subscriber that advertising brings in, not including other sales you might make to them.

13. Have a back end. It should be something more expensive than your newsletter and it needs to fit your niche perfectly, but it doesn’t have to be your own product. You can offer an affiliate product – just be sure it’s something you really, truly believe in yourself.

14. Depending on your niche, you might offer a “fixed term” membership. This is generally used when teaching specific skills that don’t change much over time, such as how to run a membership site or how to survive a disaster. You wouldn’t want to use this model if the information were constantly changing – for example, investing.

If the fixed term membership model is applicable to your niche, it offers a double benefit: First, you write the content once and continue to get paid on it for a long time. Second, members see the end in sight and are even less likely to cancel. Weekly publication tends to work well for a fixed term membership.

15. Rinse and repeat. Once you get one newsletter off the ground and successful, you might consider doing a second newsletter. This might be directly related to your first niche or in an entirely new niche.

For example, if your first newsletter is on Commodity trading, you might start a second newsletter on Forex trading. Then you can offer a discount to your commodity subscribers when they subscribe to your Forex newsletter. This will give your new newsletter a financial jump start and also enable you to immediately begin paying for content if you’re having it outsourced.

16. Cash out. If there comes a day when you’re ready to move on, sell your newsletter. Keep in mind that having built in recurring income along with a list of paying members makes your business VALUABLE, so you should get a very good price for it.

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Build Your Own Local Marketing Business

Let’s face it – it’s getting a little harder these days to do offline marketing. There’s more competition than ever before as more and more marketers break into the field. There are also more potential services to sell, which just tends to confuse the heck out of both the business owners and the new offline marketers. And as more and more marketers are offering more services to business owners, the owners are often saying “no” before they even know what they’re turning down.

Build Your Own Local Marketing Business

But it’s still true that offline marketing can be hugely lucrative for anyone who makes a serious attempt at it, especially if they find a way to stand apart from the crowd. Imagine the edge you could enjoy over every other offline marketer if you offered business owners just one thing – the thing they want the most – more customers.

Very few marketers are doing this, yet it’s probably the easiest service of all to sell to a business owner.

You could practically pick and choose which clients you work with, because what business owner is going to say ‘no’ to new customers? None in their right mind. Especially when they only pay you for leads or for actual customers. If you don’t deliver, they don’t get paid. Thus there is absolutely no risk to them. And with no risk, there is no reason for them to say no.

So how do you go about getting these leads and new customers for your clients? First, you’re going to think locally, not globally. You’re getting leads for a specific type of local business that serves a specific geographic area, such as a city or region.

Second, you’re going to build a website and then you’re going to drive traffic to that website. You do want to use good SEO, but you don’t want to rely just on search engine traffic. After all, your site could rise or fall on the whim of the search engines. That’s why you’ll want a paid traffic source you can rely on such as Google Ads.

You’ll be choosing niches that can pay you high referral fees so you can afford to spend money to get those leads and still pocket plenty of profit. For example, let’s say it takes you $50 in Google Ads to get a new patient for a dentist. If you’re charging the dentist $100 per new patient then you can do this all day long.

You’ll want to retain ownership of your websites for two reasons. First, if your client ever stops working with you, you’ll be able to sell your leads to a similar client in the same area. For example, if you’re getting leads for a contractor in Austin, Texas, and one day that contractor decides for whatever reason to stop using your leads, you can simply begin selling your leads to one of their competitors.

The second reason to retain ownership of your lead generating websites is so that you can make changes on the fly. Let’s say your site is ranking high but one day it falls to page 3. You can immediately make changes in your SEO without having to get them approved by the business.

As you can see, this business model is fairly simple and the competition is still relatively low. The field is wide open and getting clients can be as easy as asking if they can handle more business.

Here are a few questions you might have:

Q. What type of website should I build?

A. A small WordPress site targeting the best buyer keywords works well. Figure 5 to 10 pages, 10 to 25 keywords to start if you’re optimizing for SEO. Each website should target one niche in one town. For example, dentists in Tacoma or chiropractors in Atlanta.

Q. How do I find the keywords? Can you give keyword examples?

A. Use the Google Keyword Planner to find out which terms are commonly searched for in a particular industry. Then add those keywords to the location to form your keyword phrases. For example, Tacoma Washington dentist. Use singular and plural, and also add appropriate “buying” keywords, such as buy, rent, lease, hire, etc. Lastly, add descriptive keywords such as best, cheap, fast, etc.

Q. What domain should I use for my site?

A. First, don’t buy a domain that uses the actual business name. For example, if your client is Bob Smith, dentist, Tacoma Washington, don’t buy BobSmithTacomaDentist.com because if he ever stops using your services you won’t be able to use that domain. Second, choose something generic with your best keywords in a .com, .org or .net. For example, TacomaWashingtonDentist.com or DentistTacomaWashington.com. (These may or may not already be real sites.)

Q. What should I have on my website?

A. – A toll-free number prominently displayed.

– A contact form above the fold. (70-80% of people will call, 20-30% of people will fill out the contact form.)

– Images – either use images from your client or buy your own images.

– Lots of headings and paragraphs to break up the content.

– Great content with a clear call to action. Don’t use PLR for this – either write your content yourself or outsource it. If you need ideas, check similar websites but do not copy. Above all, make your copy engaging.

– Proof – real customer testimonials are good for this, as well as industry backed facts quoted with sources (IE: “People using a lawyer for their personal injury claim receive on average $42,000 more per claim than those going through the process without legal representation.” – The American Bar Assoc.) btw, I just made that up – DO NOT use it.

Q. What shouldn’t I have on my website?

A. Anything that is on the client’s own website. Assuming they have their own site, you’ll want to use all fresh and unique content. If you need to post their address, do so as an image so Google doesn’t see it as duplicating. And don’t use PLR. Ever.

Q. How do I charge?

A. It’s up to you and the client, but here are some suggestions:

Get paid for the leads you generate, rather than the sales you make. You’ll get paid less per lead of course, but you’ll get paid for every lead regardless of whether or not they become a customer. It’s important to note that clients may be more reluctant to do it this way if they are not confident in their ability to close leads. You can overcome their resistance by giving the first leads to them for free so that they can test the quality of the leads before agreeing to pay for your services.

Establish a flat rate for each sale you generate. Your client might offer many different services at different prices, in which case you can establish a different flat rate for each service. With a flat rate you typically get paid right away.

Take a certain percentage of each sale. If your client bills far into the future rather than upfront, you might not get paid for a while using this method. Commissions over the lifetime of the client/customer relationship. For example, if your client is a landscaper and they service the client weekly for months or years, you could get paid a small amount of money for a long time, which adds up.

Q. Are there any clients I should avoid?

A. Yes. Any business in direct competition with one of your existing clients. For example, you can work with one dentist in each geographical area, but not two dentists in the same small to mid-sized town (2 dentists in a large city would almost certainly be alright, but after that look for other locations or other professions.)

Also avoid any business that does not either make a large sale up front or offer a long term ongoing service. For example, a bakery wouldn’t be a good business since each sale is probably $5 to $20. But a doctor, lawyer, accountant, contractor, swimming pool sales, realtor, insurance agent, mortgage broker, etc., would all make for good clients. So would someone who provides an ongoing service such as the landscaping and lawn care we mentioned earlier, or a maid service, high paid personal trainer, etc.

Q. How do I know which businesses to approach?

A. Look for those that are already spending money on trying to get business. This might be in the Yellow Pages, Google Ads, newspaper advertising, etc. These are businesses looking for more customers and ready to spend money to get those customers.

Q. How do I track leads?

A. The opt-in form makes tracking of those leads easy. You can even offer an incentive such as a relevant report to encourage their opt-ins, and then follow up to encourage them to use your client’s services.

For the phone number, you can use a virtual reception service to take down the name and number of each caller before forwarding them to the business.

Local affiliate marketing can be extremely lucrative if you’re willing to put some time into it. You’ll need to build websites, optimize them and run Google Ads campaigns. But once you get everything set up, you can continue to make money for months or years to come with very little additional effort.

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5 Mistakes You’re Making In Your Business

Hopefully you are the exception to these mistakes. If you’re not, take heart: 9 out of 10 online marketers make these very same mistakes. Here’s how to rise above your competition and increase your bottom line simply by NOT making these 5 mistakes…

5 Mistakes You're Making In Your Business

Spamming on social media. You opened your X account with the best of intentions to Tweet valuable content and answer questions, but now nearly every tweet you send out is a link promoting a product. If this is you, then it’s time for a change. Promotion is fine as long as it makes up only 20-30% of your tweets at MOST. The rest should be content rich and helpful to your followers. And this goes for every social media network, not just X.

Not testing. You create a new squeeze page but you don’t test one headline against another. Result? Every day that goes by, you are losing money. Test everything and eventually the exact same effort will yield 1.5, 2 or even 3 times the results.

Not asking for the sale. Whether you’re looking for an opt-in, a share or a sale, tell them exactly what you want them to do. If you don’t make your call-to-action clear, you will get less than stellar results every time.

Ignoring your current customers. Are you so busy looking for new business that you forget to pay attention to your most important asset – your current customers? These are the people who already trust you enough to have purchased at least one of your products. That’s why your current customers are actually your best future prospects in the world – treat them like gold.

Talking about you, you and YOU. Do you know who your customers care about? Themselves. They don’t care about you, only about what you can do for them. This sounds harsh, but it’s true. Yes, you can tell them an anecdote about what happened to you last weekend, but it better have something in it for them. Your customers don’t want you or your products. They want solutions to their problems. Remember this and you can’t go wrong.

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You’re Doing Affiliate Marketing All Wrong

What’s the easiest way to make money online, without having to create a product or a sales page? Affiliate marketing, of course. 🙂

So, why is it that most affiliate marketers never make nearly what they could make? Anyone has the potential to make HUGE money in affiliate marketing, yet 90% or more of affiliates make a pittance (I’ll wager the number is closer to 98%, in fact.)

You’re Doing Affiliate Marketing All Wrong

Think about this: If you earn an average of $50 on each sale in a sales funnel you promote, and you make 6 sales, you’ve made $300. Sounds good, right?

But guaranteed, there is someone else who made 600 sales and walked away with $30,000.

Why did they make 600 sales when you made just 6?

There are reasons why a handful of affiliate marketers do amazingly well, and everyone else barely makes a profit.

And marketers who understand this will always have a tremendous advantage over marketers who don’t.

1: Build a Relationship

I know you’ve heard it before, but are you doing it? People buy people, not products.

If you want them to open your email and click your link, or visit your Facebook Group and click a link, you’ve got to have a RELATIONSHIP with your people.

This is so simple to do, yet few marketers take the time.

Start with a blog post that is all about you, and then send new opt-ins to the post so they can get to know you. Make the post silly, funny and most of all REAL. Talk about the stupid stuff you’ve done, the mistakes you’ve made, where you live and so forth.

Do you have a strange hobby or unusual taste in food? Include that. Do you have 17 pets? Talk about them. Do you work until 3 in the morning and sleep until noon? Mention that.

Reveal the real you. Not the details people don’t want, but the ones that amuse and interest. You’re looking to make a real connection, not give a resume.

And above all else, don’t make your life seem like a series of magnificent accomplishments. No one is going to relate to someone who turns everything they touch into gold.

But they are going to relate to the time you bought Bitcoin when it was worthless and sold it just before it took off, or the time you thought you could fly and jumped off your uncle’s barn into the manure pile.

And don’t stop with your ‘about me’ page, either. Use this relationship building in your lead magnet, your emails, your other blog posts and so forth.

Always inject a little bit about yourself. Not so much that you bore people, of course, or make everything seem about you. But just enough to keep it real.

Think about relating an event to a friend. Aren’t you going to give your own perceptions of what happened, as well as tell about how you got out of your car and stepped in the mud puddle just before your big presentation?

Use this same method of personal, one-on-one friend communication with your readers as well.

Post on your blog as often as possible, and we’re talking every day or two. Encourage your list to subscribe to Feedburner or the equivalent so they know when you add a new post.

Your readers will realize you’re a real person who isn’t out to pitch them a new product every 5 minutes. And they’ll gladly read your sales emails much more readily when they know there is a real live human being who is sending them these messages.

2: Use Your Own Voice

How many emails do you receive that say something along the lines of, “Buy this product – this product is the greatest product ever – you will be sorry if you miss this – so rush right over and buy it now.”

Yeah. Same old stuff, over and over again.

There is a marketer (or maybe several, but I’m thinking of one in particular) who sells MASSIVE quantities of this exact type of emails as a swipe file to new marketers.

Like a brand-new marketer couldn’t write their own 25 word email that basically says, “GO BUY THIS NOW!”

People are TIRED of getting these emails. You’re tired of getting these emails. I’m tired of getting these emails.

Same phrases, same message, same B.S.

If you’re not going to stand apart from the crowd, then you’re going to have to share the same crumbs they’re getting.

Instead, take 30 minutes and write your own promotional email in your own voice.

Forget hype. Be sincere. Be honest. “Hey, this product isn’t for everyone. I don’t even know if it’s for you. But if you have this problem, then maybe this is your solution. Check it out and decide if it’s right for you, because I know it’s worked like crazy for some people. And it’s on sale right now, too.”

I’ve written emails where I basically tell people not to buy something unless they really really want it or need it. “Don’t buy this if you already know how to do xyz.” “Don’t buy this if you’re not going to be doing this type of marketing.” This is only for people who want (fill in the blank.) It’s like I’m trying to talk them out of it, which paradoxically often results in more sales, not fewer.

But the point isn’t tricking them into buying; it’s to be honest. Because you know what? That latest, greatest product you’re promoting ISN’T what everyone on your list needs. Some of them, sure. The rest of them, no.

Do you have any idea how refreshing it is to open an email that says, “Here’s a new product, thought you might want to know, but please don’t buy it if you’re not going to use it.”

The first time I got an email like that, I bought the product without even reading the sales letter. True story. I was just so happy that someone wasn’t ramming a sale down my throat, that I jumped at the chance to buy it.

Weird but true.

My point is, be you. Be honest. Talk to your readers as though they are your best friends and you don’t want to lose your best friends by acting like a carnival barker who is here today and pulled up stakes (vanished) tomorrow with their money.

3: Email a LOT

This is the one where people like to argue with me, and I understand that.

You’ve heard over and over again that you shouldn’t email too often, or you’ll upset your subscribers, right?

After all, every time you email, there is the potential that a subscriber will hit the unsubscribe button.

Do you know what the potential is when you DON’T email? Nothing. No opens, no clicks, no sales… not even any relationship building.

Do you want people to open and read your emails? Then send out those emails EVERY DAY.

Here’s why:

First, almost no one will see every email you send out. Let’s say you’ve got a sale on one of your products. Don’t you think your readers might like to know about it? But if they miss the one and only email you send that lets them know, then they’ve missed out on the discount and you LOST a sale.

Second, send emails at different times. I opened someone’s email just yesterday, decided I was VERY interested in the new membership he was selling, clicked the link and discovered it was no longer available.

What happened? This particular marketer only sends out emails at 1:00 a.m. my time, so I don’t even see most of his emails in the avalanche of mail I get before I wake up.

Third, if you’re sending email once a week or once a month, your readers are forgetting who the heck you are. And when you finally do send an email, they think it’s spam.

Fourth, if you mail more often, you will make more money. Don’t take my word on this, just do it for one month. Send out one email per day, every day, for 30 days. Put a promotion in each one. See if you haven’t made more – a LOT more – money during that time period than during the previous month.

And by the way, I’m not saying JUST send out a promotion in each email. Make sure you have some content in there as well, even if it’s just an amusing anecdote.

4: Think of affiliate marketing as a BUSINESS

This isn’t a hobby, nor is it an add-on for an additional income stream.

Even if you go on vacation, be prepared to send out an email every day. Schedule them in advance or write them on vacation. Either way, affiliate marketing to your list is a business that you can’t just jump into when you need cash and forget about the rest of the time.

You don’t have many support issues, since the product owners handle this. You don’t have to worry about creating products, sales pages and so forth. You don’t have to drive traffic, unless it’s to build your list bigger.

With so much you don’t have to do, there’s no reason not to focus your time and energy into building relationships with your list and promoting to them every single day.

Affiliate marketing can be some of the easiest money you’ve ever made, if you put in the time and effort to make it a real business.

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Hello world!

Hi, it’s Stephen and this is my new website. Stay tuned… I’ll have great things to share!

For starters, here’s an article I think you’ll enjoy…

It’s called: “Make the Leap to Home Business Success

Make the Leap to Home Business Success

If you are going to build a successful home business, you need 3 “intangibles.” These are things that must come from WITHIN you.

===> Intangible 1 <===

First, you must have a strong WHY.

Why must you make a home business work? What’s driving you? What is it that you CAN’T have in your life anymore and/or what is it that you absolutely MUST HAVE now?

For me, I couldn’t stand working 12+ hours a day anymore and missing the experience of my children growing up. I also absolutely HAD TO HAVE the freedom of being able to control my life and finances through a little box that I could carry with me anywhere in the world and not be tied to anyone’s time pressures or demands but my own. That was my carrot and my stick. I felt a great pain deep in my gut of missing out on my children’s lives and the incredible freedom that succeeding in this business would provide for me. I found my why. You MUST find yours.

===> Intangible 2 <===

You must BELIEVE that it is possible.

If you don’t believe that it’s POSSIBLE for you to succeed in a home business or make your living on the Internet, you won’t. It’s that simple.

For me, figuring out that it was possible was just a matter of realizing that many other people were ALREADY making great money with a home business online. If they could do it, I could too. It would just be a matter of figuring out what those people were doing and then adapting it to my situation.

There is no shortage of undeniable PROOF that people (millions of them) are making money online in many different ways. Just get online and do some research and you’ll find countless testimonials and stories of REAL PEOPLE making real money on the Internet. Or head to your local bookstore and you’ll find the same documented evidence of this fact. Truth is, it’s getting easier and easier to start and succeed in a home based business. This is primarily because of the Internet and affiliate marketing.

I’ve always said that “affiliate marketing” is the job of the future. In the “old” days, you had to go to a potential employer, apply for the position and hope for the best. Now you can simply go to any company you want, fill out their affiliate application and start work immediately. Affiliates are the new working class. Believe me, making money with affiliate programs or making your living on the Internet is WAY MORE than possible. It is pretty much (or will be soon enough) unavoidable now. Affiliate marketing is the “job” of the future that’s here TODAY.

===> Intangible 3 <===

You must be willing to MAKE THE LEAP.

Ready, FIRE, then aim… This is the operating philosophy you MUST adopt to succeed with an Internet home business.

That’s backwards for most people who like to aim before they fire. The fact is the Internet is a moving target… The only thing constant about it is change. You need to stop analyzing the game and simply jump into it. You can’t learn from the outside… You have to be IN THE RING to truly understand it.

The lesson here is that you will never really be READY to start a home based business. You simply have to start one. This is what I call “Making the Leap.”

The good news is that the cost of failure on the Internet is very small. In the “brick and mortar” world you need to evaluate things very carefully before you decide to open up a business. It’s almost always necessary to invest thousands of dollars to get an offline business off the ground. However, on the Internet you can often start a successful business for less than $100. In fact, Plug-In Profit Site is a really good example of this.

You simply need get IN THE GAME… Each moment that you stay “out there,” you’re wasting valuable time that you could be learning and skills necessary to become a successful affiliate marketer. In fact, if you’re not in the game yet, you’re ALREADY behind the times. Come on… You can do it! Make the leap to becoming a successful home based business owner today!

About the author: Stone Evans was a washed up restaurant worker desperately searching for a way to save his family when he discovered the internet and affiliate marketing… 24 months later he finally cracked the code and started earning over $10,000 per month. Now the same system that saved him is available to you here >>

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