Many people teaching membership site marketing have lied to you. They’ve told you it’s only possible to sell a membership site on the back end, meaning as a bonus offer, as an upsell. But you need to know better. And that said, membership sites can be sold on the front end – meaning they can be sold directly, as long as you use the right terminology and the right positioning, so that a membership site looks even more attractive than a one-time payment deal.
So how do you position a membership site correctly? Well, a few things for you to think about. First of all, how do you think people buy cars, homes, things like that? The next thing is to sell them not on the total payment but on the individual payments themselves, what will it cost to get their foot in the door. And finally, instead of selling them a membership site, talk about it like a payment plan, like financing which it is because you’re giving them a fixed-term membership option.
So, the way the whole entire world works, if someone is buying a car, if they’re buying a house, if they’re getting a loan, if they’re paying off their credit card, they have a certain balance and they make payments against that balance until it’s done. And if they stop making payments at any point, then they just simply don’t get it. If you buy a house and you make all the payments except for the final one, then you lose your house. But if you make all the payments for your house, then you own it, it is yours forever.
So, that’s how you have to think about the way you are selling your membership site, they make certain payments. Once they make all the payments, it’s theirs. In the meantime, you are doing them a favor by giving them basically an interest-free loan to go and use your membership site.
That brings me to my next point. If you have a $1000 course and people are making $97 payments for 10 months so it’s all paid off, then they’re not paying $1000 dollars, they’re paying $97 now and then $97 every month for the next 10 months. It seems a lot easier to swallow that they only have to pay a small chunk at a time until they have the whole entire thing.
Now, are some of your customers going to totally step up in their head and think, “okay, well that’s $1000?” Sure. But it’s an easier way of presenting it and they don’t have to make all the payments. They can quit it anytime and just for when they first joined, you’re giving them a much easier way of getting in, a much lower point of entry because they only have to put less than $100 down to get started with your $1000 training course. And of course, the vocabulary, the terminology, the words you use are very important.
So, I like to tell people something like this. You make a payment every month for six months and after that, it’s free. After that, if I add in an extra month, you get that for free. You can get come back to it forever. At any point, you can come back to the site after all the payments are made. Present it as a payment plan. So, even though there’s over $1000 worth of value and people pay $1000 to get in, you’re giving them a plan. They can make smaller payments over time and go at a slower pace and only pay for things as they use it. So, if they need to get $1000 back to pave back their investments, they only have to worry about making more than 100 bucks back ever month.
And above all, it’s financing. It’s if you buy a house, you have to pay a mortgage but a bulk of that payment goes towards interest. You’re being a nice guy, you are not charging interest at 0% interest, and you’re financing their way in.
So, is it possible to sell a membership site on the front end? Yes if you position it in the right way, if you’re a good marketer, and you explain it as a payment plan, as financing, instead of all these extra payments or a total lump sum.
Now that you know how to present your membership site, let’s focus on creating the site, on keeping members, and on writing copy, getting traffic, and doing all the things you should be doing yesterday to market your site. Join right now.