Some ideas burst into the air like a rocket.

Others quickly fizzle off into the night like a bottle rocket.

There’s a big difference between an “idea” and a “great idea”, right?

Fortunately, there’s also a simple process that you can follow to get great ideas for your membership site. If you’re unsure how to begin and are stuck for ideas, try out these tips. Your next membership site may not be that far away.

1. PERSONAL.

Begin by brainstorming your own life. Get personal! Creating your membership site is going to be much easier if you know a little bit about the market. That’s why it’s a great idea to start your ideas list with hobbies, interests and activities from your own life. Write down everything that you and your family members are passionate about or interested in. This list could be a goldmine for your membership site.

2. PRODUCTS.

Ebook and video course creators have done a lot of niche market research in order to create their products. You can piggyback on this research specifically by keeping an eye on “product launches”. For example, if you see a lot of products being produced on article marketing you can safely assume that a membership site on the same topic would do well. Subscribe to email lists in your potential market to watch for product launches and get ideas for your site.

3. PERUSE.

Persuse means “to examine in detail”. It also begins with “p” so it fits my outline.

If you want a comprehensive list of existing electronic products that are selling well, Clickbank.com/marketplace is the place to go. Search through the marketplace to find out what topics your market is interested in learning about. You’ll be able to find new market ideas, content to fill your site as well as affiliate offers to create some backend sales.

4. POPULARITY.

Visit Amazon.com’s best-seller list. Amazon is the top bookseller online so it makes sense to search their marketplace for membership site ideas. The bestseller lists in various categories will help you see what topics are popular. You can easily gather membership site ideas from these lists. Hint: Go with the topics that are popular.

5. PULSE.

Forums are the pulse of your market. You can be sure that a market has members that would be willing to pay if there is an active forum dedicated to that topic. Track down some popular forums in your potential market and spend some time browsing through the topics. See what the market is talking about. Pay close attention to the FAQs section and the threads that have a lot of activity. These are indicators of the kinds of topics which might serve as a topic for your next membership site.

6. PERIODICALS.

You gotta go to Magazines.com! This website is full of membership site ideas. If a market has a buying audience, there is probably a magazine out there dedicated to it. Magazines don’t get started without advertising dollars to back them up. If advertisers are paying to get to a market, it’s a safe bet that you can create a membership site for the same market. On Magazines.com you can search by category to find membership site ideas. I love this place!

7. PROBLEMS.

The final stop I want to mention is Yahoo groups. These free e-mail discussion lists cover a wide variety of topics. Subscribe to a few groups in your potential market to look for ideas. The benefit of using groups like these is that you’ll often be able to see problems in the market that aren’t currently being met by other products.

By going through these simple outlets you are sure to find a great idea for your next membership site.

If you’d like a shortcut for finding a great idea — and an even bigger shortcut to getting a membership site setup and taking orders, grab a copy of the Membership To Go package.

Membership To Go is a complete, one-year membership site that you can license for your own use. This has never been offered before and it includes EVERYTHING you need to get started, including private label rights to the membership content, its sales letter, presell report, articles and other marketing materials.

Set it up at your site, sell as many memberships as you want, keep 100% of every sale.

Get all the details at Membership To Go.

Plus, the topic is related to one of the most popular niches in the world. A market that has had multiple million dollar launches, countless sales every single day and a huge marketplace of potential buyers.

—————–
Jimmy D. Brown is the founder of the PLR industry and creator of Membership To Go, an “everything included” membership site package that you can setup at your site and keep 100% of every sale you make. Details at Membership To Go.

More Must Reads!

• 7 Membership Site Mistakes
• Repeat Revenue with Membership Sites
• The Benefits of a PLR Membership
• Writing for Yourself: Creating a Content Site Using Google’s Adsense
• Find a PLR Package That Over Delivers

Starting a membership site is a smart business move, but only if you do it right. Every month dozens of people start membership sites only to shut them down just a few months later. Often the failed site ruins their reputation because they didn’t deliver what they promised to members. In other cases, they didn’t pick the right topic to begin with. Here are the top seven mistakes that you can make with a membership site and how to avoid them.

1. LACK OF COMMUNITY.

If you pick the wrong topic, you’re doomed from the beginning. A membership site needs a wide customer base. Your topic should be specialized but not so narrow that you can’t attract new members on a consistent basis. Unlike a short report or niche site, your membership site topic has to be large enough that you can produce fresh content month after month. Pick a topic that a lot of people are interested in but that also has the potential for evergreen content.

2. LACK OF CONTENT.

Members of your site are looking for fresh content every month. You need to give this to them or they’ll unsubscribe in droves. You should develop an editorial schedule so you know exactly what you’ll deliver each month. This will help you stay on track. Base your editorial schedule on the benefits that you promised in your sales letter and you’ll have happy, satisfied customers that will stick around for month after month.

3. LACK OF CONVERSION.

Your sales letter is your 24/7 sales person. It doesn’t matter how much traffic you drive to your membership site if your sales letter isn’t doing its job. If you don’t trust your own copywriting skills, hire a professional writer. The investment will be well worth it as you see higher conversions and more members in your site.

4. LACK OF CIRCULATION.

You should always have new members coming into your membership site, but the only way you can do that is to market your site continually. You should be conducting pay per click campaigns, distributing article marketing articles and doing social networking to drive more traffic to your site. Work this into your weekly plans so that you can keep the flow of new members consistent.

5. LACK OF CONNECTION.

When you start a membership site, your members are looking for a lot of attention and care. They want to connect with you. Most of this will come in the form of an easy to use site with quality content. But you should also make it a point to be accessible through e-mail or a help desk function. There’s a high level of trust involved in a membership site, so make sure you’re there for your members.

6. LACK OF CREATIVITY.

If you’re not looking for opportunity for backend sales, you’re leaving money on the table. Opportunities for backend sales exist in many different places in your membership site. You can sell advertising space within the site or create a platinum level of membership with special coaching. Just because the members are paying a monthly fee doesn’t mean they won’t be willing to pay for extra information on the site’s topic.

7. LACK OF COMMITMENT.

If you’re concentrating on getting members but aren’t worried about keeping them, you have a recipe for disaster on your hands. Retention is critical. It takes much more effort to get a new member than it does to keep one that you’ve already got. By posting consistent content, offering polls, running contests and getting involved the community in your membership site, you’ll be able to hold onto the members you’ve got.

These 7 mistakes could be dooming your membership site. Correct them and see your sales soar.

If you’d like to eliminate these mistakes in one simple step, then consider grabbing a Membership To Go package.

Membership To Go is a complete, one-year membership site that you can license for your own use. This has never been offered before and it includes EVERYTHING you need to get started, including private label rights to the membership content, its sales letter, presell report, articles and other marketing materials.

Set it up at your site, sell as many memberships as you want, keep 100% of every sale.

Get all the details at Membership To Go.

I think you’ll find that using the Membership To Go package for your own membership will eliminate these costly mistakes and keep you on the fast track to membership site profitability.

—————–
Jimmy D. Brown is the founder of the PLR industry and creator of Membership To Go, an “everything included” membership site package that you can setup at your site and keep 100% of every sale you make. Details at Membership To Go.

More Must Reads!

• The Benefits of a PLR Membership
• Repeat Revenue with Membership Sites
• Great! So Now Your Web Site *Sounds* Like Crap
• Writing for Yourself: Creating a Content Site Using Google’s Adsense
• How to Profit with a Direct Sales Web Site

Most fictions writers know that the chance of becoming a multi-millionaire from publishing a book has about as much likelihood of happening as winning the lottery. The success of writers such as Tom Clancy rarely happens.

It’s becoming more and more difficult to realize true monetary success from having a work of fiction published by a major publishing house. That’s why self-publishing endeavors (such as print-on-demand) have become so appealing to authors.

If a book of fiction is published through the traditional publishing house, an author can expect an advance in payment based on what the “experts” anticipate the earnings of the book will be. Advances can vary from a few thousand dollars to into the millions of dollars if you’re the caliber of a Tom Clancy.

When the check is issued, it’s the author’s to keep, no matter how many sales of the book may occur. The publisher then subtracts the monetary advance issued to the writer from the royalties the book earns.

Royalties are based on a percentage (usually between 4% and 8%). After the advance is subtracted from future royalties, the author will begin to receive a royalty percentage on every sale of the book.

Most writers are happy if they receive a total of $50,000 on their first book. Depending on how the first book sells, it may be easier to negotiate your next one with a publisher.

If a book of fiction is published using the POD method, the author will receive profits based on a per sale basis. A larger amount of profits occurs if the sales are generated from the POD service’s web site. The author can also purchase a number of the books from the web site and market them himself.

Another way to profit from publishing fiction is to sell it as an ebook online. The profit received is 100%, but the author must have knowledge about how to generate sales for the book online.

There are several downloadable programs that you can access to learn about the ebook business. Selling books online is becoming an increasingly popular way to self-publish all types of writing.

Research all methods of self-publishing and then decide which would be the best way for you to see your fiction in print. There is no lack of information both online and in informative books that can help you in your venture.

More Must Reads!

• Entering the World of Online Fiction Book Publishing
• Self-Publishing Your Fiction
• How to Market Your Work of Fiction
• Non-Fiction Information Products Are Hot Commodities Online
• Become a Book Editor

When starting out at Squidoo, you should make a stop over at SquidU, which is short for Squid University. You’ll find a wealth of information about building lenses and getting the most from your efforts. One of the hallmarks of SquidU is the friendly and helpful nature of the staff and overall community.

The first thing you’ll probably notice is the Squid University site is laid out to clearly show what’s available. SquidU is on its own site, located at SquidU.com for easy reference. From the home page, you can easily spot where you need to go if you have questions regarding lens creation, promotion or even to get a critique of your latest lens creation.

SquidU has a very active and supportive forum community. If you have questions or would like to just hang out with other lensmasters, you can do it within the forum. There are sub forums that cover every major aspect of lens creation and also a place to list your lens for sale, should you wish to part with one. The forum is very active, so if you have a need, you’re likely to get an answer fairly quickly.

The Answer Deck houses all of the most frequently asked questions about Squidoo and lens creation. This should be your first stop if you have a question – you may be able to get an instant answer because so many before you have had the same burning question.

The questions cover such topics as how the royalties earned are split and received, common newbie mistakes, using certain modules correctly and general how to questions which everyone seems to have at one time or another.

The Learning Library brings frequently updated articles about lens publication, charities, moderating groups and more. Here, you’ll learn how to max out your lens and make a good impression when your visitors start arriving to your lens.

You’ll find a helpful glossary to enlighten yourself to the entire new verbiage Squidoo has introduced along with its lens building process. This glossary is invaluable to the newbie!

The Lensmaster Lounge allows lensmasters to come and show off their latest lenses and ask for feedback. It’s a great place to see what areas you may need to strengthen in your lens.

Overall, if you’re into building Squidoo lenses, you won’t find a better place to go kick back and learn, while making a few extra friends. The community there is close knit, but very welcoming to newcomers.

There are moderators who visit and hang out with the regulars, and you’ll find them to be courteous and helpful. Even if you’ve been building lenses from the beginning of Squidoo’s days on the ‘net, you’ll benefit greatly from becoming a regular at SquidU.

More Must Reads!

• How Profitable Is Squidoo to Online Sellers?
• What Is Squidoo?
• Marketing to a Niche Market on Squidoo
• Can I Market My Business on Squidoo?
• Social Networking on Squidoo

We at Paid Surveys at Home want our visitors to making legitimate money by taking genuine online surveys. That’s why we are presenting our top 7 tips on how to get paid for taking surveys below. Read and follow them if you want to really get paid for taking surveys.

1. Make sure the research company or directory is a reputable business. Check out the website’s online reputation. In the United States, you can check the local business bureau. If the website does not provide contact information, terms of use or a privacy policy, they probably are a scam site.

2. Make sure the research company actually conducts research for real manufacturing companies. Check their about page to see if they list some of their clients. If not, they may be affiliates for a legitimate research company or they may only be signing you up with another company. It is safer to deal with a legitimate marketing research company.

3. Protect your privacy. Check out the company’s privacy policy to see if they share your information with anyone else. Look for wording like: “share” your information with “partners” or “associates”.

4. Avoid websites that require you to download any type of software to use their service. The software is usually spyware that will track your internet usage and purchasing habits that the company will sell to advertisers. However, their software could also collect user ids and passwords for your bank and other financial information.

5. Do not fill out a profile until you are certain that the website you select is legitimate. You must fill out the profile before they will send you any survey invitations. Sometimes you will need to answer a few screening questions before you are offered the longer survey to be certain you belong to the proper demographic. Some sites will pay you for the screening survey; others will not.

6. Check out the payment method. Some sites pay in cash, some in points that can be turned in for gifts or cash, some offer gift cards, products, sweepstakes entries, etc. If your website offers several different methods of payment (and many do), make sure you know which one applies to the survey you are being offered.

7. Keep records of your earnings and set up an email address strictly for surveys so you don’t get a lot of spam in your regular email account.

More Must Reads!

• Earning More than the Regular Paid Surveys Through Product Research
• Can I Make Money Doing Paid Survey Taking?
• How to Tell a Legitimate Paid Survey from a Paid Surveys Scam?
• Get Paid for Taking a Survey
• Are Paid Surveys for Cash for Real?

Start Your Very Own Weight Loss Center or Clinic.

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Plan, Start, Operate and Manage Your Own Sporting Goods Store.

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On the top of any Internet marketer’s wish list is the perfect information product, all shiny and “ready to drive off the lot fully loaded,” like a quality written PLR eBook with all the trimmings such as graphics, articles and autoresponders.

Does this seem like a dream? Actually, there are some great PLR packages out there, but you have to look around and do some detective work. You might start your search in the Warrior Forum and look in the classifieds section or even ask who has this kind of offer.

While you will have to poke around and maybe even get on a waiting list, there are PLR membership websites that offer very nice PLR packages that are like a one stop shop. Some membership sites will even take suggestions from members for topics that haven’t been covered yet.

What does a perfect PLR package look like? First off, you will look for one that is in a hot, evergreen niche like one that has to do with health, weight loss, relationships, hobbies and sports and the ever popular “how to make money” and Internet marketing niches.

For the actual PLR package, it’s great to get a 30+ page eBook which has basic formatting and a cover graphic, a smaller report to offer as a freebie on the squeeze page, a nice looking sales page with header graphics, 10+ article pack for use on blog or as auto responder follow ups, and a nice looking squeeze page template.

What can you expect to pay for such an over the top product? Let’s first see how much you would expect to pay if you hired someone to do it for you. If you had to pay a ghostwriter you can expect to put out $10 to $30 a page for the eBooks and articles. That’s $500 and up. The graphics for the cover and header for the sales page goes for $500 or so.

The sales letter would go for a minimum of $1,000 for a decent one. All totaled, that’s $2,000 for a one of a kind product on a budget. You could easily pay 10 times that for top billed writers and designers.

If you come across a site that you pay $199 a month for the PLR kit, then you’re doing very well. Even though there may be 200 licenses being sold, statistically only 20 will ever be used.

More Must Reads!

• How to Find Keywords to Make Your PPC Campaign a Success
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As with any kind of market trading, the first thing you should do is make sure you know your bottom line — where your stop signs are. Have a limit set firmly in place and as the saying goes, ‘know when to fold ‘em.’ When you’ve hit your goal profit or loss limit, walk away.

Forex trading, because of the high probability to earn a great amount of profit in a short amount of time, can be addicting to anyone, so put up safeguards to keep yourself from falling into a ‘can’t stop no matter what’ category.

Make sure you have money you’re capable of risking in case something goes wrong. Am I saying you’ll lose money if you engage in Forex trading? Not at all and the odds are actually more in favor of you making a profit as long as you know what you’re doing. Just make sure the money you’re using isn’t money you have to have to live on.

If you’re still a relative beginner, the first move you should make is to read Forex tutorials that show you the ropes from day one. When setting in place a Forex trading strategy, you want to pay attention to something called channels.

Remembering learning about charts and graphs in high school and thinking they would be useless information? Well they’re not. Here’s where they come in handy. On a graph, channels are lines that go up and down and can help you learn and gauge what’s been going on with the currency.

In other words, what’s the range? The graph looks like squiggly mountain peaks (which represent when the currency is up) and valleys (which represent when the currency is down). Like playing connect the dots, you draw lines from mountain peak to mountain peak. You can see at a glance how the currency fared.

If you’re brand new to Forex trading and you understand all of the buzzwords, but you’re not completely sure how it works, consider searching for a Forex site that will allow you to take a free demo in Forex trading. You can take your time, learn how it’s done without having to worry about any monetary risk to you.

You can also talk to others who understand the ins and outs of Forex trading. There are forums, web seminars and groups that will take you under their wing and teach you the ropes.

• Foreign Exchange on the ClickBank Marketplace
• Forex on Amazon

More Must Reads!

• Forex Currency Trading
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• Forex Trading – The Basics
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There is one powerful article marketing website that will allow you to put in affiliate links when you’re submitting an article. That site is GoArticles. Some of you may have tried to submit articles there only to have them rejected.

A rejection usually comes because the terms of service weren’t followed to the letter. When you’re submitting articles to any website, always read the rules first. Some sites take shorter articles and a 250 word article would pass muster but most are at least 300 words or longer. Don’t use blatant promotion. In GoArticles, authors have to put links to their products or services in the bio area rather than the article.

EzineArticles doesn’t allow affiliate links, but they do allow you to purchase a dot info domain for about $0.89 that you can use in your articles to redirect to an affiliate website, which is a good way to get traffic.

But there are also other highly visible directories that allow affiliate links as long as you put them in the right place and you don’t go over the limited number of links allowed. Don’t shy away from using the resource box at the bottom of your article for your affiliate links.

When an article marketing website such as Ubscure.com lets you place links in your resource box, make sure you know how to use that privilege to your advantage. Submit a high quality, helpful article and check it for spelling and grammar.

The reason that many sites don’t let authors put affiliate links directly in the article is that directories let other websites use the content you post. They personally don’t care if you’re promoting stuff – but other sites might.

Now if you’re wondering why this rule of ‘affiliate links in resource box only’ is important, it’s because it makes the content more desirable for other sites to share your valuable information.

You want your information shared because it helps build both your reputation and the amount of traffic that you get. These sites are there for you to use, but only as far as you’ll use them wisely. Don’t just take – give something to the site as well. Make sure your article is worthy.

You can also put together a good quality article and submit them on a document sharing site. While they’re not technically an article marketing website, they serve the same purpose and you’re allowed to use affiliate links. The only drawback is that if your article is clearly self promoting and the article offers no real value, it will be deleted from the site and you won’t be allowed to post anymore.

More Must Reads!

• How to Make Affiliate Links
• Affiliate Programs: NO More ‘Leaky’ Links!
• Launch Your Own Article Marketing Blog
• Choosing and Fleshing Out a 3 Point Article for Article Marketing
• Keywords and Article Marketing: Tap into the Traffic of Article Directories