I note that amember went from supporting a one-tier affiliate program to a two-tier affiliate program. This suggests to me that paid referrals are a not insignificant tool for developing traffic on membership sites. I would be interested with comments on people's experience with it. Also, has anyone used other advertising methods (google, print display ads, etc) to good effect?
I suspect that aMember development team added the 2nd tier in response to customer requests, so you can't just take that as an indication of the effectiveness of affiliate marketing. For most of the 6.5 years I've run my online business, the majority of my traffic has come from affiliates, although I have to say that this has been my primary focus for that time period. I've played with PPC advertising, and while it CAN work, I haven't had much luck converting the traffic to sales. Another method that seems to work well for me is submitting articles to various websites. Article directory sites are okay, but better results occur when submitting directly to sites that would actually publish the articles to an active readership. With this, no affiliate marketing is needed, although some sites do want affiliate links. The effectiveness of any type of marketing depends heavily on your particular niche and what your market responds to.
Theres many ways to get members, and you should be testing them all! Article marketing, PPC, PPA, JV's, affiliate programs, SEO, Video marketing, social media marketing, and many more. Like powerkeys says, it may depend on your niche which performs best. David
Thanks Alan, I have looked at your new site. Since you have been in business for 6.5 years, I assume that your business model works. I do not see an affiliate link, but I like your last paragraph, which I assume is a "post my stuff places and I will reward you with a free membership deal." Since, you, like me, have almost no variable costs, its a classic win-win. When my second wife arrived from Russia seven years ago, she did not speak English well enough and her degrees were not certified in the U.S to practice here profession here. So I set up a little business for her advising wealthy men who either wanted to meet a Russian woman or already had. I marketed her services through a Google display ad. It worked well enough, but I paid for a whole lot of clicks for every client she got. The trick, of course, is to figure out, in 25 words or less, how to get your future clients to click while discouraging the people who will not be your clients. Its tough. Five years ago she got certified and spoke English well enough to quit that business and practice her profession. I haven't been involved in an Internet business since. Now she and I want to start an online business together. We have a target demographic, a service and I just need to choose my software and marketing vehicles. I've never worked with affiliate programs before, but I like the idea of paying for results rather than clicks. Search Engine Optimization never worked for me on my wife's business. Perhaps I will have better luck with our new ones. Our business is perfectly suited for marketing through published articles. However, I'm not sure how to do that. You seem to have found some outlets. I'll try googling it. Again thanks, David, Thanks for the idea of social media marketing. Its probably well known among Internet marketers, but I'm just trying to get back up to speed. When last I was involved, even loading pictures was often slow. Audio and video was unheard of. I plan on trying to use them, though. Michael Ferguson
Your service David, I am inclined to have you get my amember + wordpress + Revolution Theme up and running. Question, the Revolution theme is good, but it lacks color to me. Can I do revisions to the theme? Or can I retain your services to do it? Or is it something I should get locally from a webmaster in my locality? Also, in your webpage on the amember + wordpress service, it isn't clear whether the monthly membership after the first month is $19.97 and, if so, how long I will need to be a member on the off chance that I don't find it worth the price? Michael Ferguson
Michael, Although being in business for a number of years usually means that a person has had enough experience to know a few things, you can't always assume that what they're doing at any moment in time is working. In my case, I tend to test a lot of different things, and while some things work out great, other things don't. The "work for a membership" option you referred to is one of the things that didn't really work out all that well. I had many more people asking about it than actually followed through, so it took more time to manage than it saved. In relative terms, I'm pretty new to membership sites. For the most part, I've used aMember merely to protect my downloads and process payments. I've only recently branched out into building an actual "members area" for my customers to provide "after the sale" services. Regarding article placement, the main thing is to find media sites that cater to a compatible audience. Media sites generally publish regular content to attract an audience, to which they serve paid ads. For these sites, getting articles that haven't been posted all over the Internet is a blessing. As long as they allow you to include a resource box pointing back to your website, you can get a fair amount of traffic for each posted article.
Thanks Alan Alan, Thanks for your input. Since my affiliate program will pay 15%, I am pointing out in several places on the website that if you put my banner on your website, forward articles, etc. and you get seven referrals per year, your Membership is free. I googled the article sites. Thanks for the tip. I would have assumed that they would be relatively ineffective. As I roll out my site, I will try posting articles to them. Since forwarding articles is a primary marketing strategy for me, this is a way of jump starting it. Perhaps. Well, this is going to be an adventure. Thanks again, Michael Ferguson
Great discussion about marketing your membership site. As noted above, article directory marketing does not work very well with all of the latest Google changes. However, guest blogging has worked great for me. In fact, it worked so well, I created a an amember membership site that facilitates guest blogging. You can check it out here: http://ultimateguestblogger.com/ It's a great way to market your web content through quality articles. We also provide a great solution to allow "blog owner" members to easily accept guest posts on their site to keep the fresh, quality content rolling in. Come on by for a visit! Cheers, Richard
Another method that seems to work well for any one and that is posting links and URL's at High PR business listings, articles promotion to various websites. Article listing websites are okay, but better results happen when posting straight to websites that would actually post the content to an active audience. With this, no on-line marketing is needed, although some websites do want on-line hyper-links.
Re-targeting is the way to go in 2015, actually if you are not re-targeting then you are losing on a lot of money. Also you seem to have chosen a good affiliate program since passive income is the way to go.