Many entrepreneurs try to sell memberships directly to customers. If you are having trouble getting sales this way, a suggestion is to try and sell an inexpensive product which would be a small impulse purchase. Then try to upsell them on the membership as an add on, and also in future emails using an autoresponder.

So for the cheap instant access product (say $5) you can pull out content from your site and test different individual products to see what is selling better and that leads to more upsells. Try a wide range of products in your niche.

Here’s a great video from Stu McLaren on 10 Membership Site Business Models.

I use Model #1 the Publisher Model and use Wordpress (free) and Wishlist Member plugin to protect my content.

I’ve recently revamped my guitar lesson membership site and thought I would post some learning experiences.

1. Getting all ‘Internet Markety’ with my site. After studying internet marketing I added a bunch of free bonuses, testimonials, salesy copy and still didn’t get any more sales. And it didn’t really fit my gut instinct. I prefer a much more subtle approach, links to products in my blog posts, providing useful content, etc.

2. Adding content that nobody wants. I’ve created a bunch of content based on what I thought people want. So ask more questions (what are you struggling with, what do you want to learn most, etc) and get a conversation going. Scan the forums and Yahoo answers for common questions in your niche. Set up a facebook fan page and an ask campaign to get feedback from your users.

3. Not having a top menu. Again from the internet marketing knowledge I want to have ’squeeze pages’ with as little distraction as possible. But this meant a harder to navigate site, putting menus in sidebars on certain pages which took up a lot of space.

4. Giving up on free trial. I was having trouble getting free trail subscribers to become paying members. I just gave a sample of lessons but they were tough to find within all the courses. Now I have a 3-day full access trial and make sure you follow up with emails (put a series in your autoresponder and post links to new specific teaser lessons over time to get them to sign up).

5. Too many membership levels. Often too many choices can paralyze potential customers. Offer a basic membership and expand once you get members.

6. Not setting up email properly. When someone signs up for your membership make sure they are added to an email list. If they get upsold to other levels, make sure you move them to another email list (called segmentation). Send emails to your subscribers on a regular basis – at least weekly.

7. Not engaging in forums and other groups on a regular basis. After a few flame wars I gave up on helping people in forums. I’m back to daily engagement in these forums to help people, build links to my site and hopefully get people to click on my link (most forums allow links in your signature).

8. Not using Wishlist Member Plugin for Wordpress. While I avoided the usual installs and headaches of many custom solutions I was paying a hosting provider $99/month which not only adds up but their site was down twice for many many hours at a time. The plugin is so easy to use and works with my existing website.