A friend of mine has been doing this for years, yet he’s the only one I’ve heard of doing it.
Frankly, I think there is a ton of room here for more people to do the same thing, and maybe even in different niches, too.
In my friend’s case, he noticed a lot of these online memberships in the IM niche all had one thing in common: Regardless of what they were teaching, they all had to teach the basics, as well.
So if they were teaching how to do newsletters, or set up sales funnels, or how to blog, or whatever… they also had to teach how to setup a website, get hosting, use an autoresponder and so forth.
And it’s a real pain for these membership site owners to do this.
Not only do they have to make a big set of videos, but then they have to keep them updated as well.
Each time something changed – like Aweber added more features, or Hostgator changed things – the videos need to be updated. If they’re not, the members will flood the help desk with questions and frankly be unhappy.
My friend thought, ‘Why not help all of these membership site owners?’ So he created a membership FOR membership sites.
Yeah, pretty ingenious, I thought.
He creates all of these videos on how to do the basics of online marketing, and he keeps them up to date, too.
Then he sells access to his site to IM membership site owners. He charges a flat fee based on the number of subscribers, but he could also charge per member.
I think the flat fee might be easier to calculate each month, though, since it won’t always be radically changing.
He charges one price for 50 members or less, a bigger price for 50 to 100 members, a bigger price for 100 to 200 members, and the largest price for any amount of members over 200.
Of course, you can charge whatever you like, or make it flat fee for every membership site owner.
Now when someone joins any of those sites, they also get access to my friend’s site, too.
From the first month on, my friend was pulling in over $5,000 a month doing this. And once it’s set up, it’s simply a matter of updating videos when needed.
I think this model could work in a lot of other areas, as well.
For example, in the online marketing niche, memberships sites for social media, driving traffic and building funnels could all work.
You could also build sites in the health and self-improvements arenas, as well.
The membership site owners feature this extra membership they give to their members as a bonus, and it really helps with their sales, too.
Imagine someone is selling a diet program, and as a bonus they give a free membership to a comprehensive health site or exercise site or recipe site.
Or imagine someone is selling a meditation program, and as a bonus they give a free membership to a self-improvement site.
The possibilities are huge.
The membership site owners LOVE this because they don’t need to create nearly as much content, and they get higher conversion rates.
Their customers love this, because they get 2 memberships for the price of one.
And I haven’t even covered the best part yet… to access my friend’s basic online marketing site, every member has to register their email address to get the passcode.
This means my friend is automatically building a list of BUYERS for free. This alone is probably making him MORE money than selling the memberships to membership site owners.
Of course, my friend is very careful not to abuse the trust of his main customers, the membership site owners.
That’s why he sends out only great info to his lists, as well as promoting his customers other products to his lists, too.
For example, he gets new subscribers from Alex’s membership program, and then promotes Bob’s product to Alex’s customers, and Alex’s product to Bob’s customers. Not the membership sites, but related products.
He’s very up front about this, and his membership site owners love it because they get more sales, too.
This is a truly win, win, win idea that can be used in many different niches. And as far as I know, very few people are doing it yet.
