Content For Your Membership Site

The content that is provided on your membership site can come from a variety of sources. It can be freshly written by you, freshly written by a ghostwriter, rewritten from private label rights products, or it can come from free resources and not be rewritten.

 

You must be careful here, however. Remember that if someone can get something for free, and it is easy to find, they have no reason to pay you for it. Really consider using fresh content that is not available from other sources, if possible.

 

Hiring a ghostwriter is much easier and affordable than one might imagine. Surf over to Rent-A-Coder and place a bid request for ghostwriting services. Be specific about the number and length of articles that you need. State the topic as well. You will be amazed at the bids that you receive. The average cost of an article at a site like this is under $10 per article.

 

Also note that content does not have to be written/printed content. Content comes in a variety of forms. For example, a database is content. Audios and videos are content also. Tools could be considered content. Content can be created and in place for your members – or your members could create the content, as is the case with a subscription based forum.

 

Sit down with a pen and paper – or open up a text document – and start planning the content that is needed for your site. Make a list of the topics that should be covered. For example, for medicinal herb gardening, you might want to include a database of herbs, what those herbs cure or alleviate, and how the herbs are to be used.

 

You might want a database of dangerous herbs that are not to be used. You would of course want to include information for selecting seeds or young plants, preparing the soil, etc. Again, you can go in numerous different directions with just about any topic. Just remember that your site is going to grow over time, so while you do need a good collection of content for your members to start, you don’t have to have the whole ball of wax to open for business.

 

One of the biggest mistakes that Internet Marketers can make is to not ask their future customers or members what they want. The surest way to sell anything is to ask the market what they want, and then to provide that very thing to them.

 

Hopefully, you’ve tested your niche market, and you’ve built an opt-in list in the process. If you have, you can put that list to use, and determine the content of your website in one free shot.

 

Make another freebie that is related to your niche. Set up an opt-in list, and a survey question. Not all autoresponders will allow this, so it may have to be done on two separate pages. If so, put the survey question on one page and the autoresponder opt-in box on the next page. The page after that should offer the download for the free gift.

 

The question you ask is up to you, but you will want to do a little research first to find out what that question can be. Visit forums, and pay special attention to the questions that are being asked, or the problems that people seem to be having concerning this niche, over and over again.

 

You can, of course, ask more than one question. Just remember that people don’t like to give information out. Try to limit it to no more than five questions. Three questions seem to be the most acceptable. Also, make the questions simple yes or no questions, but provide a text box for your visitors to give more details, should they choose to. Multiple choices also work – just include the text box option as well.

 

When you are ready, send an email out to your list and invite them to answer the survey question, in exchange for a free gift. You can also choose to run another Google AdWords campaign to get even more responses.

 

As the survey reports come in, start organizing them and analyzing them. You might be surprised to find that your market doesn’t want what you thought they wanted. In fact, they most likely want something that you didn’t even think about. It happens fairly often – and had you gone with what you thought they wanted, instead of asking, your site probably would not have done very well.

 

With this information from your potential members, you are ready to start creating or acquiring the content that they want. Sometimes this can take less than a day – and sometimes it can take several weeks, depending on the scope of the topic and the content that is needed.

 

The important thing to remember is that the content must be quality content. This is not an article that you are giving away for free. This is information that you are charging for. If the information is top-notch, you will have fewer cancellations and fewer requests for refunds.

 

Again, the idea is to give your members something that they can’t get elsewhere easily. It does take some thought and planning on your part to produce or provide such content.