When you’re thinking of creating a membership site, or trying to get more members for your site, you might consider buying a course on creating and marketing an overnight membership site to learn how to do this. There’s nothing wrong with this approach.

But why not sign up as a member to an actual membership site and see how it is marketed to you (usually via email follow-ups). So this is more of a ‘do as I do not as I say’ approach where you can learn how the master’s do it. Sign up at least for their email list so you can observe the follow up emails. Do they offer sales? How often do they email? What do they put in the email title? Do they use plain text emails, or html emails? Do they use images in the email? You can also look at the sales pages and blog posts to get ideas.

I’ve recently noticed that Jeff Johnson not only does great marketing to his email list (with frequent emailing) but for his affiliates as well. He offers links with affiliate ids right in the emails, and also emails frequently. Not only that he allows affiliate to send traffic to regular blog posts instead of the sales pages which requires some software magic. I also noticed he gives away a free software plugin as a means to gain leads. Yet another great idea that most of us won’t do (hire and pay someone to develop a small software product).

You might want to join his training program to see how he does it all, or at least sign up for the email list. This is a great way to learn as well besides just strictly absorbing the content.

Hopefully you are collecting email addresses in order to build a relationship with your list over time. You can send them useful tips and other info, as well as make offers on new products you create or other people’s affiliate products that you recommend. That’s great, but have you thought through the entire process?

Check out this article on how to create a lead magnet.

According to Ryan Deiss, you need to:

• Create an offer that is sexy
• Deliver on that promise
• Leads towards the product you want them to buy

Many of us who read up on internet marketing focus on the type of squeeze page, the graphics to use for the button, the copy (how to word your headlines, etc) but we don’t often think enough about the free offer and how that leads towards the ultimate sale. The free content you provide should be related to the product you are selling, and should be ‘useful but incomplete’. This will naturally lead prospects to buy your products.

So go give this a try and let me know how it works for you!