Selling Your Content Through Information Products And Membership Sites

Welcome back!

Hopefully, you’re already blogging. I’ve includes plenty of tutorials that will give you a jumpstart toward launching your own blog, attracting readers, and making money from your effort. As I’ve mentioned before, the linchpin to thriving as a blogger is to provide your readers with a continuous stream of high-value content. But, what if you could recycle, repackage, and update that content, and sell it through information products and membership sites?

While they don’t actively promote the fact, this is exactly what many of the top marketers do to build their information empires.

Building an online business that generates income through info-products and membership sites involves a lot of different skills. Writing, video production, marketing, search engine optimization, affiliate promotions, payment processing, upsells and cross-sells… there’s a lot to consider. Today, we’ll focus on two small areas: price points and affiliates. You’re about to discover why the top online marketers gravitate toward selling information.

Low Versus High Price Points

Here’s a rule of thumb that is seldom proven wrong: you’ll make more money by charging higher prices for your information. You’ll also experience fewer customer service issues.

For example, suppose you create a membership site for dog owners and charge $5 a month. Further suppose that you build a relatively stable base of 600 members. You’re grossing $3,000 a month from a single site. Not bad. The problem is, at that revenue level, you’re likely running the site (i.e. creating content, handling customer service issues, etc.) on your own. You’re not netting enough to hire a staff. That’s a lot of effort with very slim margins.

Let’s take a look at a model that uses a higher price point.

Suppose you charge $27 a month for access to your membership site. At that price point, you would only need 111 members to generate $3,000 each month. And it wouldn’t take much effort to double that revenue base and hire others to handle the daily operations. Moreover, you’ll find that higher prices tend to attract customers and members who require less support.

But, there’s something else to think about…

It is extremely difficult to establish yourself as an authority in your field when you’re only charging $5 a month. And if you can’t establish your “preeminence,” (a concept Jay Abraham uses), you’ll have a hard time cross-selling information products and consulting services.

To sum it up, the more you charge for your info-products and access to your membership sites…

1. the more money you’ll make

2. the fewer support issues you’ll have

3. the easier you’ll find it to establish your authority in your field.

Affiliates: The Key To Growing Your Information Business

Affiliates are the key to nearly all types of online businesses, but they’re indispensable when you’re promoting your info-products and membership sites. A lot of online info-marketers are loath to give up commissions because they’re afraid that doing so will lower their profits.

In reality, the reverse is true.

Imagine the traction you would gain if the top dog-related sites and bloggers regularly promoted your information products and membership sites. You would enjoy a continuous stream of traffic. That means more customers and members (not to mention opt-ins). The only way that will happen is if you cultivate an affiliate base and offer a healthy commission.

The alternative is to promote your information business on your own. That not only limits your profit, but it exposes you to volatility. While your search engine optimization efforts will bear fruit, a single change in the ranking algorithm can cut off your traffic. What’s more, if you’re using PPC to drive people to your sales pages, an increase in bid prices can likewise affect your traffic.

There will always be an insatiable appetite for high-value content. That lays the foundation for building an information empire with info-products and membership sites. The two things you should take away from today’s post are…

1. charge higher prices

2. attract affiliates

If you do both of the above, you’ll find there are few limits to the amount of money you can make with your content. And that gives you the freedom that makes being an internet marketer so rewarding.

P.S. Dont forget to check out Jimmys Report here on to make money with small reports for maximum profit!

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 12th, 2010 at 9:22 pm and is filed under Internet Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.