It is a common strategy amongst commercial websites: users sign up, gain access to a large library of content or services, all supported by advertising. The membership website has seen many revisions since its introduction to the consumer internet, but it still remains one of the most popular and enduring website types around.

Encouraging passer-by’s to join your Free Membership site

What’s one of my favorite features of using a premium Wordpress plugin like WishList Member? The ability to show teaser content of a protected post, so part of the post is protected and part of it is not.  Grab the interest of readers in the first paragraph. Pull them into your posts with enough information where they feel compelled to join just so they can finish reading what you have to say. Non-protected content also has the added benefit of being indexed by search engines, so have enough keyword content in the non-protected part of the post for SEO purposes. Utilize categories and tags, always.

Speaking of SEO and keywords, one new tool I’m really enjoying that helps me to optimize each and every post for the search engines is Scribe SEO. Created by the brilliant folks at Copyblogger and the Thesis Wordpress theme, Scribe SEO is like having your own team of seo copywriter elves sitting in your Wordpress blog. Available for most any web page, “creating search optimized web pages, blog posts, and press releases used to be time consuming at best and mystifying at worst. Not Anymore”. I just LUV it.

Nuts and Bolts

Of course, it is more than just a method for organizing users and data. Most membership-based websites use their member system as a selling point in itself — Facebook’s immense size and completeness draws in users from all around the world; PlentyofFish’s homely design and friendly atmosphere brings in thousands of new users every day, and Twitter’s fast-paced style results in rapid growth.

While these companies share a common design and user management style, they differ in one major aspect: their profitability. Facebook is a privately traded company, and thus does not share their earnings with the public. PlentyofFish is highly profitable, a fact well known amongst internet marketers. Finally, Twitter has yet to make a cent, but stands to potentially become one of the most profitable online companies around.

This profitability divide raises an interesting question: how can you make money from a free membership website? These four methods range from intense to hands-off, highly profitable to a slight trickle of income, and long-term to ultra-quick. If you have a free membership website, by all means experiment with one.

CPC Advertising

Using a cost-per-click advertising platform like Google Adsense can bring in some very easy income to your membership website. With single clicks paying anywhere form a cent to several dollars, a good user presence can turn a no-dollar website into a highly valuable online property in a matter of days.

Most membership website owners will want to experiment with a range of different advertising services, and with different on-page placements. Try placing your Google Adsense advertisements next to a body of page content or user data, causing raised click-through rates and boosted revenue. For best results, do not be afraid to experiment, split-test, and selectively place advertisements. Wondering where you should place Google ads on your pages? There really are certain locations that perform better than others.

There are other search-targeted click advertising sites you should check into, such as Chitika, a favorite of Darren Rowse at Problogger. “For advertisers and media buyers, Chitika is a proven channel for targeting on-line consumers and qualified buyers. For all publishers, Chitika is an easy-to-use platform for earning daily ad revenue.”

Affiliate Advertising

I think of affiliate marketing as a way to share great products or services with visitors to my site. It’s a great way to promote something you love AND make some money at the same time.

When I find products or services that I enjoy immensly, I like to see if they have an affiliate program. This allows me, as a happy and satisfied customer, to be able to refer new clients to them…and I do so without a question in my mind that the product is of superior quality.

You can also find products to become an affiliate for by joining affiliate marketplaces, such as ClickBank, Click2Sell, Commission Junction, PayDotCom, even Amazon.com.

Big Brand Advertisers

When it comes to big brand advertisers, numbers speak louder than words. That is to say, if your website has masses of traffic pointed towards it, you will have very little trouble attracting commercial advertisers and large companies. Brand-based advertisers love the huge amount of inventory available on large membership websites, and website owners love the potential income available from major companies and advertising networks.

Most brand advertisers will want banner space, so ensure that your website is geared towards banner-style advertisements. Create a top advertising spot, small sidebar advertisements, and if necessary, room for a custom commercial background skin.

Premium Membership Models

A variety of free membership websites have experimented with premium models, with PlentyofFish again standing out as the most well-known example, in the online dating world. Their idea of a premium service was a one-time “premium” badge applied to users’ profiles, and it proved to be massively successful. Paid membership numbers increased, overall revenues went through the roof, and PlentyofFish enjoyed rapid growth.

Mixing free and paid content in a single site is very common and a great way to get people interested in the type of content or services that you offer. They come in a wide range of topics. Just look at SEOmoz, Geocaching, Allrecipes, WebShots, and the International Social Media Association.

If you are feeling experimental, perhaps this is something you want to try.

Mix em up!

You might notice that this site is based on providing an ad-free Premium membership level, but ads are visible for free content viewers. I’m using a combination of Google Adsense, global Affiliate advertising, and category specific Affiliate advertising. By utilizing the Widget Logic Wordpress plugin I’m easily able to specifiy when ads are to be displayed and when they aren’t, even down to showing very specific product affiliate banners only to the appropriate post categories. Way kewl.

Andrea is a Certified WishList Member Site Developer.

Contact her at 866-854-9550 for more information.

Obviously, you’ll want to handle some of the more sensitive work like client email and anything containing financial or personal information yourself; at the very least, you’ll want to keep this work to yourself until you’ve learned that you can trust your subcontractors implicitly.

The kind of work you’ll want to outsource to begin with are jobs which don’t require access to sensitive information or much, if any client contact. You’ll also want to keep these tasks smaller in scope until you know that your subcontractors are capable of producing quality work within your schedule. However, jobs like writing articles, reports and content for newsletters, putting together presentations and doing research for you are all good candidates for outsourcing.

Before assigning any of your subcontractors work for your clients, it’s very important to [Not to worry, my friend. Although the rest of this article is protected for Club Member - Free Content members only. You can easily join the Productivity Club or login to read the remaining content. Club Member level is always FREE.]

SEO can be easy or hard – it’s your choice, really; here, we’ll focus on doing things the easy way. Search engine optimization is a term which covers various strategies for making your website more visible in the search engines and maintaining this visibility.

There are paid methods of search engine optimization like Google AdWords and other pay per click advertisements, but what we’re going to talk about here are free SEO methods to drive traffic to your site through the search engines.

To make things very simple, there are two things which you need to focus on here: you need to make sure that your website tells the search engines exactly what its content is about and try to get other people spreading the word about your website to the search engines.

Getting your site noticed by the search engines and making sure that they know what your site is about is done through on-site SEO. This includes filling your website with high quality content which is relevant to the topic of your site and including headings, subtitles and image alt tags which use words which make it easy for Google and other search engines to determine what the topic of your site happens to be. There’s obviously a lot more to it than just this, but this is a good start towards letting Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines understand what your site is all about. If you don’t make it clear through your content and other onsite factors, the search engines won’t be able to tell and people will have a difficult time finding your site through search queries.

Getting other sites to spread the word about your site consists of what is known as offsite SEO. This largely has to do with building links to your site from other sites; this is by far the most important part of offsite SEO, so this is where you should dedicate the majority of your energy. If it can get you links, it should be a priority for you.

Some examples of link building strategies include writing articles and submitting them to directories, commenting on other people’s blogs, contributing to blogs as a guest writer, building and maintaining a Squidoo lens or other secondary website, using Facebook and Twitter, writing and submitting press releases, creating online videos, using social bookmarking services like Digg and Stumble Upon, leaving comments on forums and anything and everything else that can help create more links to your site from relevant sites.

You could easily write an entire book on building backlinks alone, but since we’re just going over some of the basics here, you’ll have to keep reading to learn more about link building and other traffic generating SEO strategies.

Enjoy these 14 free Photoshop video tutorials.

• 1) Opening and Closing Files in Photoshop
• 2) Zooming in Photoshop

[Not to worry, my friend. Although the rest of this article is protected for Club Member - Free Content members only. You can easily join the Productivity Club or login to read the remaining content. Club Member level is always FREE.]

Enjoy the free training videos! Over 8 hours of fully narrated training videos for Microsoft Outlook 2007 covering basic and intermediate topics, including topics for using Outlook with Exchange Server 2003.

Spread the word about this free resource for learning Outlook 2007. Blog about it, Tweet it, do a Facebook post, include a link in your next newsletter…whatever you use as a way to communicate those extra special findings on the net!

• Starting Outlook [1:59]
• What is Outlook and what is the PST file? [6:34]
• The various windows in Outlook [1:46]
• The Advanced Toolbar [2:25]
• All about Archiving [15:17]
• Using Drag and Drop to create Outlook items [5:30]

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[Not to worry, my friend. Although the rest of this article is protected for Club Member - Free Content members only. You can easily join the Productivity Club or login to read the remaining content. Club Member level is always FREE.]

For experienced internet marketers, the value of SEO is well-known and almost unquestionable. Most marketers know how valuable a top search spot can be, and many invest thousands of hours into trying to rank their websites right at the top for their desired search terms.

However, while webmasters and internet marketers know how valuable a well-ranked website can be, most local business owners do not. Lead generation and customer acquisition for most local businesses is focused on short-term offline solutions, and the idea that search results could bring any valuable leads is almost completely foreign.

Small businesses, online or offline, can benefit from SEO. If you are an SEO consultant looking to contact small businesses for a campaign, or just a small business owner looking to increase your client or customer count, these search engine strategies could be the best way for you to expand your business, market yourself, and increase your income.

1) Appear in local search listings.

Local search is becoming the next big search marketing movement, with a range of companies picking up millions of dollars worth of extra business simply through appearing in local search results. By targeting the right search terms, your business could be able to increase client or customer count without directly increasing marketing efforts.

2) Become a lead generator for your area.

If you control the local search rankings, you also control the potential for other businesses to expand. Once you have built a favorable search position, get in touch with local businesses and offer them the chance to have leads driven directly to them, all for a small monthly fee. Then, fire up your local websites and aim promotional materials straight at them, generating huge amounts of instant business.

3) Create a local information and marketing network.

Most communities are dying for an inspiring local business network, and with some basic SEO that wish could become a reality. Rather than charging for leads, offer businesses a presence on your top-ranked local information and directory website.

4) Control your reputation.

If you desire an inexpensive and powerful PR asset, a well-ranked website can be one of the best tools available to you. By controlling the search engine rankings, you also control your searchable PR and marketing efforts, and can use that power to create positive buzz about your business.

5) Sell directly online.

Why sell from an outlet when you can do so directly online? If your business is product-based, setting up an eCommerce website and offering your products online can save you time and money, all the while increasing your total revenue. A range of free, SEO-friendly online shopping systems are available, giving even the most technically inept business owner the ability to create an online store.

6) Expand within your city.

If your business wants to grow, SEO can be the best way to bring it up to size. By ranking high for more search terms, you dramatically increase your visibility to clients and customers. Generate enough buzz and business online and your company could gain enough cash-flow, power, and online influence to expand within your city.

Content marketing is a well-established way to market products, particularly in the world of online commerce. While direct sales advertising and long-term content marketing have been a mainstay of business for decades — remember those article-style advertisements? — online content marketing is on the up-and-up, and is quickly becoming one of the most effective and efficient ways to bring in buyers, move products, and turn the wheels of the online economy.

However, for all the content successes, there are thousands of failures. From writers that simply do not know how to sell, to businesses that are oblivious to the potential marketing opportunities that are out there, a severe shortage of real winners seem to be appearing in content marketing. One reason for the success drought is the lack of any real advice for improving marketing content’s ability to sell.

These five tips are designed to bridge that gap and provide you with a way to make your content more sales-driven. From beginner marketers to experienced online entrepreneurs, these five tips will help you minimize lost sales, boost your conversion rate, and dramatically increase your per-article ROI.

1) Write back-to-front.

Your introduction tells your audience about a problem. Your body content confirms their suspicions and helps them relate to you. Finally, your conclusion closes the sale. One part of that equation is, from a financial perspective, much more important than the others. Prioritize your conclusion, craft it with dedicated effort, and then let the rest of your article follow suit.

2) Save adjectives for product descriptions, people, and actions.

Adjectives are annoying, and overused when it comes to sales copy. Why do the Mini Cooper and Hummer continue to sell more than other cars? Because they are different. Make your sales copy different from everyone else’s, and minimize the amount of adjectives that enter your content articles and sales pitches.

3) Plan your article before you let pen hit paper.

Improvisation can yield some amazing results, but most of the time it fails to deliver. Planning, however, can occasionally deliver terrible results. The difference is that most of the time, planning does not. Whenever you get the chance to sit down and plan your sales routine before you write, take it. A well performed sales pitch will always pale next to a powerful long-term sales routine.

4) Break grammatical rules (if it’s worth it).

The laws of grammar and sentence structure can bend for marketers. If your product or service can only be described outside of the laws of English, do not be afraid to go out there. It is short-sighted move to describe and sell your product in the ways that other people demand, so do not feel held to their standards. Use the descriptive terms and sales tactics that you value, and get your product out there on your own terms.

5) Write about an experience, not a product.

People do not shop at Walmart because they have the best products in the world – people shop at Walmart because they value the experience of saving money on their shopping. Ducati are able to sell motorcycles at a higher price than their rivals because their customers love the experience of riding a Ducati. Apple do not sell their products on technical specs, they sell them on the experience that they offer.

Whenever possible, do not just sell a product, sell an experience. Customers that buy products on their physical or component-based value alone are quick to run to the next manufacturer when a new model comes out. Customers that value experience stay with you long-term and do not run away.

Enjoy the free training videos. 10 hours and 38 minutes of full-motion, narrated video tutorials.

Click any link to launch the video in your browser. Must have a media player compatible with .wmv files, such as Windows Media Player.

Special Notice for SharePoint IT Administrators:

Even though our videos are geared toward the Power User of a SharePoint Services site, we recognized that some of you will also be responsible for the installation and configuration of the SharePoint Services site in your organization. May we recommend www.learnsharepoint.com for those types of video tutorials. Extremely reasonable prices and their tutorials lean more to the technical side of training. Perfect for network administrators, too.

Spread the word about this free resource for learning SharePoint Services. Blog about it, Tweet it, do a Facebook post, include a link in your next newsletter…whatever you use as a way to communicate those extra special findings on the net!

Lesson One (total video time 1 hour):

• Welcome to Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 user training
• The Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 environment
• Site Settings 1
• Site Settings 2
• SharePoint permissions 1
• SharePoint permissions 2
• Using Help in SharePoint

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We have seen brands and businesses succeed on social media. From Nike to AirAsia, Comcast to Netflix, thousands of worldwide companies and major brands have embraced social media and used it as a force to improve their business and boost returns. Even small businesses have seen the effects of a positive social media presence first hand, with some of Los Angeles’ mobile food services using Twitter and Facebook as a means to gather audiences and boost sales.

However, there is one thing that all of these businesses had in common before they stepped aboard the social media success train: a well-built, thought out business model. For every social media success story, there are several failures, primarily businesses that simply have not thought through their business models or marketing strategies.

Thousands of them bet it all on social media, somehow expecting it to work, and most of the time, it does not. If your new business is heavily invested in social media, especially to the point where it makes up the bulk of your marketing model, it might be best to examine just what social media can’t do before you get started.

1. Social media can’t create income out of nowhere.

Sorry, but it just does not happen. While social media marketing can benefit businesses with an already established business and income model, it certainly can’t turn a business with no cash flow model into a big earner. While it may seem slick and worthwhile to invest in social media before all else, it is much more important to stop and look at the vital parts of your business: cash flow, income sources, and long-term plans.

2. Social media can’t make up for bad PR.

Putting a bandage over a gunshot wound will do little to heal it. While companies are rushing to embrace social media as a PR model, most will find little benefit in it. If your company has experienced a streak of poor press and bad PR, social media can provide you with a platform to respond on. However, you certainly can’t generate public sympathy and positive attention just  by having a Twitter account or Facebook fan page. That takes dedicated PR work, on or off social media.

3. Social media can’t be used as a spam platform.

Why? Because social media is built on public participation, and spam simply doesn’t last when it’s put out in public. Spam emails and click-through links work because of the silent confidence and privacy that comes with email. When exposed to crowds of social media followers and public users, spam links don’t become a target for clicks, but a quick target for moderation and removal.

4. Social media won’t reward freeloaders.

There is a funny divide in perceptions that is very present in social media. Some users consider social media free media, giving them the power to broadcast any message for free, without participation or rehearsal. Others consider it earned media, media that requires participation and work in order to have effects.

The second camp is right — social media depends on participation and input, not optimization and freeloading. While the occasional low-effort tweet or status update might get out there, the most valuable and successful social media presences don’t just coast by on minimal effort — they put in the time to generate their marketing results.

Email marketing is not just for affiliates and product-based businesspeople. Service businesses, whether online or offline, can benefit from a strong email marketing presence just as much as any marketing guru can. From keeping in touch with clients to marketing special offers and discounted rates, email marketing can be a major work draw for service businesses.

These six tips will help your business develop and implement a scalable and effective email marketing strategy. Sometimes effective email marketing can be as simple as adding a new line to your email signature, while at other times it can demand complex special offer programs and newsletters. Either way, apply these email marketing tips to your service business and you will see boosted client orders, increased project selection, and a much more valuable future.

1) Offer current clients a commission for new business.

Your current clients are both your greatest income asset, and your greatest marketing asset. Even a slight connection to a client can be enough to get your foot in the door with larger providers and businesses, and asking for referrals can be a worthwhile marketing strategy. Offer incentives for your current clients to pass your details on to their industry friends and colleagues, including commissions and future order discounts.

2) Add “we love referrals” to your emails.

This simple addition can dramatically boost the amount of referral contracts that your service business starts. Clients are often very willing to offer extra business to you or refer your company to their friends, but few are certain that it would go appreciated. A simple addition to your email signature can be the go-to approval required to boost your client referrals and ongoing business relationships.

3) Always keep in touch with clients.

If you have built relationships with clients that provide ongoing business, be sure to keep in touch to keep those relationships alive. Sometimes, there will be times when orders come in slowly and contracts more at a glacial pace. Reach out to clients and let them know what you can do, and you will no doubt be rewarded with greater orders, or at least a confirmation of your ongoing business.

4) Distribute special offers via email.

Everyone loves a discount, especially a long-term client or special customer. Your email marketing list is more than just a client contact list – it is an obligation to provide constant value to your customers. If you want to provide more than just service, but incredible service, it is worth giving your customers access to special discounts, new services, or utilities through email.

5) Ask your clients to opt-in after you work with them.

There more to marketing than quantity. Client quality counts for a lot, especially in businesses that deal with hundreds, sometimes even thousands, of clients every month. Reach out to clients and offer them the option of subscribing to your ongoing email updates, but only after they have proven themselves worthy of your ongoing attention. Sometimes it is best to minimize work with ineffective and stressful clients, and pre-filtering your email list can help you achieve this.

6) If you are big enough, create a newsletter.

A simple newsletter is often enough to generate huge amounts of extra monthly leads and orders. It also gives you a platform for keeping your clients up to date – informing them of ongoing projects and business information, and letting them know exactly what you can do for them. If your business is interesting to the point where clients want to learn more about it, let them know with a newsletter.