What I’m about to share with you here is real. It’s fairly easy to do. And, I have some proof to back up my “claims”, in case you’re still skeptical. My goal here is to provide you with information.
To show you what I did so you can do the same. It’s that simple. Lets get started…
Two Secrets to Success
There’s two important components that led to the success of my membership course (that’s what I call these types of offers)… my offer and the traffic method I used to get the offer seen. I’ll start with my offer. Here’s EXACTLY what I did…
I launched my offer as a WSO (Warrior Special Offer) on the Warrior Forum. This is basically a place to sell information products to people interested in internet marketing.
They know going in that they’re going to be sold something so it’s not a surprise to them. They’re looking for offers. So, just being there gave me 5 new paying members the first day I released it.
Other than that, I only used one other method to drive traffic to my offer, forum posting with my offer in my forum signature. I spent an hour or two per day on the Warrior Forum replying to posts, starting a few new threads and asking a few questions.
Day 2 I added 8 new paying members. I continued working the forum, making posts and contributing to discussions. By the end of the first week, I had 41 paying members. I had a total of 45 but 4 canceled their membership. But let me tell you my offer and why it worked so well.
The Magic Offer
The offer was simple… which is the main reason it worked so well (that’s HUGE… don’t miss it). Here’s what it was… “Start Your Own Membership Site and Go From Zero to 1,000 Paying Members in Six Months or Your Money Back!”
Sound good to you? It’s quick, simple and it included a guarantee. I kept the offer simple and included a strong benefit. I sold this as, well… a membership course, duh! I set it up as a 6-month course and charged $9.95 per month.
And, in just one week… I had generated over $400 of recurring monthly income using only one free traffic method (41 members x $9.95). I delivered the lessons weekly via an email autoresponder so there was very little upfront cost for me to set this up.
It’s really the fastest and easiest way to start a membership site. There’s really no site at all, except for the pages required to sell the course and the thank you page where people add themselves to the autoresponder to receive the lessons.
The Site-less Membership Site
The beauty of using a setup like this is, once you’ve created the lessons, it all runs on autopilot. You make a sale, the member is sent to the thank you page where they add themselves to the autoresponder list and the lessons are automatically sent to them.
So, I continued posting to the forum. I answered some questions that people posted, I started some new threads with some valuable information but more importantly, I never pitched my product.
It was sitting right in my forum signature for everyone to see after each post I made. It was their choice to click on it. I didn’t hard-sell the offer. I also bumped my WSO up in the special offers section.
What that means is, you pay $40 to post your WSO and another $40 each time you want to bump it up to the top of the forum again. Here’s how I decided when to bump it… since it cost $40 each time, I decided to wait until I got at least 4 more new members. Once I hit 4 new members, my initial cost was covered so I bumped it again.
Invest Upfront, Profit Long-term
What’s important to understand here is this… I not only covered my initial cost but each payment those members made in future months was all profit. This is what allowed me to put so many members into the course in only 30 days.
The snapshot below is proof that what I’ve said above is in fact true. It’s taken from inside my WarriorPlus account which I use to manage the WSO’s that I run.
You can see above, the product was called 60-Minute Memberships and the date range at the top right is set to show May 2012. There were 98 sales at $9.95 per sale totaling $975.10. So, technically I didn’t do $1k in 30 days… I did $975 in 30 days. Don’t pay attention to the visitors column here. I tested some stupid traffic site where you pay $35 for 10,000 visitors and not one of them converted. Waste of money to say the least.
All of the conversions came from people on the forum. Here’s the caveat… I only used one traffic method during this 30 day period of time. How much do you think I would’ve gotten if I used more than one traffic generation technique?
The truth is, I was just too busy to put any more time into it then and, I didn’t know if it was really gonna work. I’ve since discovered there’s many different traffic methods that will work with this and it’s proven to be a successful and profitable online business model in a number of different niches.
I hope this has sparked some ideas for you. The possibilities are really endless with these types of courses. There’s tons and tons of possible niches and markets to take this to.
10 Responses
Nice! I’m definitely taking this into consideration
Hello Duston:
This is simply great. Thanks a million.
Remind me to update you on my progress with this within the next 90 days!
Wishing you a prosperous 2014
“Archie”
Thanks Archie! Good luck!
sweet man this is amazing i can’t believe you got so much business just from posting on wf. im going to launch a product soon and i will definitely use this strategy
Thank you for sharing those really good tips.
Hey Duston!
Great Blog. I’ve bookmarked it to read more of your stuff. I’ve been looking for an easy solution to start a membership site. I’ll try this out. Thanks for sharing.
I’m also an introvert btw :)
~Dorian
Do you still offer this?
Yes I do, here:
https://dustonmcgroarty.com/10krecurring.html
I just signed up, very interested in the content of the program.
Great post Duston, the whole membership course thing seems pretty interesting too,
might have to look into it,
cheers.