Discover The Website Business Model That Practically Guarantees Your Website Will Be Profitable (Even HUGELY Profitable...)

There is a website business model that almost guarantees success.

Now, that may sound like a very bold claim, but I've seen it first hand. It's a deceptively effective model that can be applied to many different types of businesses.

In this article, I will show you what the model is and you'll get an overview showing you how to implement it into your own business.

I've seen this simple website model applied to a network of over 20 sites, all owned by one person. Of these 20+ sites, every single one is a success. Not a single one has lost money. (Naturally, different sites are less or more successful than others; success is never spread equally over projects. But that is true of all businesses!).

The Website Business Model

At the simplest level, this website model is the "Free Membership Site" model. You capture audience information by providing something for free.

While a lot of sites offer something in return for getting an email address from the visitor (an eBook for example), this model takes the concept much further: Rather than just asking for an email address, the free membership site model uses a more sophisticated opt-in process that creates a higher sense of attachment between the visitor and the site.

Visitors are asked for their email address but they're also asked to set up a unique username and password. Once they've done this, and verified their email address, they become a free member of the site, with access to a private area.

You can probably see the one immediate benefit of this model over simply asking for the email opt-in: This process helps the visitor form an attachment to the site. There is greater buy-in because they are "members".

Put yourself in the audience's shoes for a moment -- which type of site would you feel more attached to and be more likely to visit again: One you're just an "email subscriber" to? Or one that you're a "member" of? They're both very similar, but psychologically there's an important difference.

Turning Visitors into Engaged Members

If your site is a content site (where much if not most of the content is publicly viewable), you can use a "floating pop up" which asks the visitor if they want to become a free member. This is a good model if you have an existing business to which you'd like to add a private membership area.
Alternatively, if you are taking the direct response approach, you can promote your free membership offer through a "Squeeze Page". This is a page designed specifically to get the visitor to opt-in and become a free member.

On a Squeeze Page there are no distractions; the page generally just contains sales copy to "sell" the free membership, and there's a form where the visitor can sign up. Their options are limited to: sign-up or leave. (Adding more options to the page beyond that will dilute the effectiveness of the page and results in a lower percentage of visitors becoming free members.)

Benefits of the Free Membership Model:

	You'll build a list of people who have expressed an interest in your site; and you'll follow up with them through email. These emails might include offers or useful content. And, you have a "built-in" reason to keep in touch. For example, you might email them to say "I've just added a new report to the private area of the site. Grab it now! Log in here:"
	By having a reason to keep in touch with members, and by keeping in touch with them regularly (once a week at least is recommended), they will remember you and may even start looking forward to your next email. (If you're sending out offers from time to time, your response will be far better if people actually enjoy hearing from you and appreciate what you have to say!)

Those are just a couple of benefits of this model. There are many more which I'll come to later. I've personally seen the free membership model build email lists into hundreds of thousands of members.

Bonus Tip: This model depends on website traffic. Without traffic, there won't be any members!

Also: Your member sign up percentage is something you will want to keep optimizing. Google Website Optimizer is a very good tool for this. If your Squeeze Page converts 15% of visitors into members, and over time you optimize that up to 30%, that means you'll build your list twice as fast from the same traffic!

Taking Your Free Membership Site to the Next Level

In addition to the free membership, you can set up multiple levels of membership. For example:

Free - no cost to the member.

Silver - a low-priced membership where members receive more than free members. Silver members receive everything contained in the Silver area of the site as well as everything in the free member area.

Gold - more expensive than Silver membership, with more offered to Gold members than is offered to Silver members. Gold members receive everything that is contained in the Gold area of the site as well as everything that is contained in the Silver and Free areas of the site.

Platinum - this level of membership gives members everything from Free, Silver and Gold, plus a lot more, but at a higher price.

Of course it's not necessary to have so many levels of membership. You may choose to have just two levels, a Free membership and a paid membership (which you might call "Gold" or "Premium", etc.)

A Critical Addition to Your Membership Site

A technique that consistently works very well is offering a paid membership upgrade (or other special offer) at a lower price than is available anywhere else on your site, but only to brand new members. Here's how the process often works...

To access the rest of this article, sign up as a free member here.