In this blog post, I’m going to share my answer to the following question:
“If you were to start from scratch with NO list, NO JV partners in your niche, and all you have is $100 capital, what would you do to start making sales for your niche membership site within just 15 days?”
Before I answer this question, let me state my assumption.
I’m assuming that you already have a niche membership site and you can make some modifications to your website to accommodate the marketing plan that I’m going to tell you.
Ready? Here we go……
If I have a niche membership site, with no list, no JV partner and only a hundred bucks……
1) I’ll go to Clickbank and see what kind of ebooks people are buying in my niche.
2) I’ll think of a topic that complements (not competes with) the popular niche ebooks sold in Clickbank.
What I’m going to do is to turn that topic into a special report that people are willing to buy.
It is important that you don’t write something that compete with the popular ebooks sold in Clickbank. You will see why later.
3) Since I only have $100, I’ll have no enough budget to outsource but to write the report myself. So I’ll spend 2 solid days to write a report on the topic that I’ve researched.
I am planning to sell the report for just $7.
4) On day 3, I’ll spend 1 day writing a powerful sales letter to sell my new report.
In the sales letter, I’ll include my niche membership site as a free bonus, i.e. those who purchase the report will get 1 month free membership to my niche site.
5) Day 4 is a technical day. I’ll have to spend the whole day to integrate the sale of the report and the one month membership trial together. (If you are not a technical person, you can outsource this job to a freelancer at GetAFreelancer.com for $60. This was what I used to pay before I figured out how to do it myself.)
6) Day 5 onwards is all about marketing.
First, I will go to Clickbank and find all the best selling authors in my niche. I will then contact them with my JV offer.
My JV offer is that I will give them 100% commission for the $7 report that they sell. I will also give them 50% commission on all the future sales generated from my membership site if their leads stay on my membership site after the one month trial.
Since my report actually complement the ebooks they are selling, there is a high chance that they will be interested to promote the report to their customers and lists.
Next, I’ll go to the top bloggers in my niche and contact them with the same JV offer.
With 100% upfront commission and 50% recurring commission in the future, I’m pretty sure that a handful of the bloggers in my niche will take up the offer.
7) Finally, my job is to overdeliver to my members so that they will stay on my membership site for as long as they can.
The entire plan actually costs me $0. But if you have $100, you can spend it on outsourcing certain tasks such as system integration.
Nice Post Kenneth, good work mate. I agree this would be one way to go
That’s a great plan Kenneth!
I like how you didn’t have to spend any of your budget. The important thing is to develop enough technical skill to do the work yourself.
Thanks for the updates. There are plenty of ways to get yourself noticed out there with no out of the pocket money what so ever, and no list!
Hey Kenneth,
That is a good plan (better than any of the lame ideas I came up with) but what if you don’t have the copywriting and tech skills? I figure you’d blow past $100 pretty fast outsourcing those 2 items alone.
Best regards,
Jason Lamure
You are right. $100 budget is seriously not a lot if one refuses to learn to do things on his own. While many things can be oursourced, I personally believe that you can have better control and be more innovative when you know how to do things on your own.
Thanks for your reply to my comment Kenneth! It’s cool that you actually read and reply to your blog visitors comments. I have to agree with your reply, the more you can learn to do yourself the more $ you save….and being able to control your webspace truly is “priceless”
Jason Lamure
This is a great strategy. I will definitely give it a try! Thanks.
Your strategy seems well worth a try. Maybe you can detail how one goes about figuring out top bloggers in a niche and give an idea of a complementary report? Also, can you suggest membership software that actually works, comes with some support AND doesn’t cost an arma and a leg? I’ve tried 3 so far and ran into roadblocks even though I followed the coding instructions meticulously. Can you tell I don’t have too much experience at this?
As usual, I appreciate your newsletter and the great ideas you share. Thanks so much.
Google is your best friend. Just google for ‘your niche blog’ such as ‘weight loss blog’ and you’ll find lots of good blogs. Check the alexa ranking of the blog. Anything less than 100k is worth contacting.
For complementary report, it’s hard for me to give an example. You need to know your niche well in order to see what is good for your niche. But I can give you 2 tips:
1) Reports on ‘how to’ can usually do well.
2) The report should eventually be linked to your membership site.
For software, maybe Randy Smith (member in the post below) can share his software. I don’t have a recommendation because I’m a very hands-on marketer. I typically like to buy script with just enough features for my needs and customize it further. Not a good advice for newbie though.
Interesting article and very timely.
I finally got a membership site up and running after a year of trying to figure out which scripts would just work…lol
(You wouldn’t believe how many I bought before I found one that didn’t require a techy genius to operate it…lol)
So far – I’ve got around 60 members since June, but getting JV’s to promote has been a stumbling block due to my membership fee being kept extremely low!
Wanting to price it at a rate that people could genuinely afford and get value from – also means that most big list owners don’t make fortunes from promoting it…. (and their policy ‘seems’ to be to ignore the genuine value – and focus on how much they can make!)
So your article has certainly given me ideas of how to get it promoted more by incorporating it into a report in future…..
Thanks
Warm Regards
Randy Smith
http://www.MoreMonthly.com
In this email Calvin has put the question, “If you were to start from scratch with NO list, NO JV partners in your niche, and all you have is $100 capital, what would you do to start making sales for your niche membership site within just 15 days?”
Boy this is doing the rounds isnt it? There is another 30 day challenge going on over at Ed Dale
Marillion Partnership
http://www.thirtydaychallenge.com/
Maximise Your Income with MaxHomeBits
This is indeed an innovative approach. You really don’t have to spend a lot of money doing online business. Be creative.
Great ideas, thanks Kenneth.
Can you also post an article on how to set up a Membership site from scratch.
Michael
Your article required a lot of thought. I agree with you, that is a way to get started on a low budget.
Hi Kenneth,
You make it sound so easy. How to establish good selling products and niche blogs is not that easy.
Please give us a bit more detail concerning these methods. You have just made me hungry for more. Gimme more and more.
Regards.
Albert.
Save up to 50% on fuel consumption.
http://www.super-miling.com
Hi
Great stuff. One problem I have found is that many potentially profitable niche markets are no where near so advanced as this. What I mean is that there is a hungry market with needs, itches, pains and desires and money to spend solving those … but as yet there are not eBooks on Clickbank and the concept of a JV is totally out of their experience.
So there is a huge learning curve via education to get any momentum. It IS worth it in the long term but not such an instant success as, say, the IM world or other hot markets.
I’d like to see more discussion and solutions for these situations.
John Gordon
The Infotainer
http://www.TheInfotainer.com
http://www.MagicWorks.co.uk
John,
If you found such niche, it’s your luck. Usually, there isn’t much competition in such area and if so, you can easily get the traffic from Search Engine.
Kenneth
I know this is a stupid question, but what is “niche” membership site?
A niche site is a website that focus on a specific area in an industry. For example, LeadsLeap website is an advertising niche in the broad topic of internet marketing.
Thanks for the quick info on memberships sites. I did not think of offering a $7 report and then offer a trial for the membership website. I will start to work on this as well. I also like the fact that you can start with doing JV’s if your short on caital
http://www.plentymarketing.com
I don’t know how I ended up at this site, but it must of been
ment to be, because I do have a memership site that I need to promote. Excellent promotion strategy. Glad I accidently landed here. I will likely be back.
How come you don’t have a rss feed button. oh well, I guess I will just bookmark it and add it to my favorites.
Thanks bro, I have about 100$ now and want to promote, also a set up a membership site on wordpress for free, with s2there, studying now, i need to make cash soon too. Thanks again.
Happy holidays from kobe, japan.
I think it is an important thing to keep the images under copyright protection. If it is like that then anybody can’t use the image without the permission of the owner of that particular image. Otherwise it is an illegal activity.