Membership Site Masterplan Free Report Review

Yaro Starak is re-opening his Membership Site Mastermind 6-week course next week for the last time this year and that prompted me to have another look at his free 72-page report, the Membership Site Masterplan. He originally produced this back in April but at the time I was still fumbling around with my software project. Now, the development is in full swing, I have a long-term plan in place and I even have a launch date in mind! No, I’m not brave enough to announce it yet!

Anyway, I thought it would be beneficial to have another read through the report to see how well it applies now. I’ve written a fairly in-depth review here of both how it applies to my own upcoming membership site and how I think it would apply to other membership site models.

Chapter 1 – Preeminence & Building Proof

What preeminence is, why you need it and how to build it. Basically this is about demonstrating to your audience that you are qualified to offer them the content of your site. Yaro’s course & report is very much geared towards teaching and although that’s a somewhat narrow focus in my opinion, you do still need to give people a reason to buy from you so this is an important chapter.

I must admit I feel a lot more comfortable about the idea of launching a membership site now, than I would have done 2 years ago when I was a complete unknown.

Chapter 2 – Marketing

This was a weak chapter in my opinion as I believe that marketing is just about the most important part of anything you ever want to sell. Without potential customers you cannot make any income! Yaro stresses the importance of an email list which I totally agree with but there is so much more he could have included in this chapter. I have a lot of marketing ideas for my own project and very few of them were mentioned here.

However he also discusses joint ventures and the use of affiliates which is very useful as I have not managed this particularly well in the past.

Chapter 3 – Technology

A membership site is probably one of the more technically demanding ways of making money online and the technology can scare people away. Even I, a true techie at heart, found all the technological options a bit overwhelming. This chapter talks about protecting resources, taking payments, adding content features such as forums, email list services and affiliate management.

There’s no waffle, Yaro clearly gives several options in each category, and discusses them all in detail. This chapter is amazingly useful and it applies to any kind of membership site that you might want to build.

Chapter 4 – Content and Pricing

As mentioned, Yaro’s work is quite strongly geared towards lesson based content and I personally believe that this is a flawed model in many cases because you’ll run out of content to deliver! Yaro himself has launched 3 membership sites and whilst they have all made him a lot of money, they are still on a fixed-term timeframe. I consider this to be a single sale spread out over multiple payments.

In my mind a TRUE membership site is one that can keep it’s members for YEARS, not just a few weeks or months. My own project is delivering software tools which of course most people can’t do because it requires programming knowledge but one of my favourite posts that I have written is 6 Models for Membership Sites and there are at least 4 there that fit in with more traditional forms of content that Yaro discusses, and can keep your members for as long as they remain interested.

This chapter also talks about pricing and it’s quite interesting as most people are frightened to charge money for their services!

Chapter 5 – Phychological Triggers

This stuff could have been put into the marketing section really as it’s in your marketing campaigns that you might want to use these triggers. It’s all about giving people a reason to buy from you and to buy right now. Most people who choose to buy later, simply don’t buy at all! Very interesting chapter, I enjoyed it a lot and intend to use some of these triggers in my own work. Indeed, I have already have  just last week with my Bloggers Bible birthday promotion which brought in a rather nice big payday :-)

Chapter 6 – Prelaunch and Launch

This chapter talks about the steps to take in order to actually launch your site and also the pre-launch process which aims to build buzz so that your launch goes well. This is really good stuff and a lot of it borrows from Jeff Walkers Product launch Formula. I paid $2,000 for a that course!

This chapter also talkes about sales letters and copywriting and I was a little disappointed with this section as it doesn’t really present any alternatives to the traditional long-form sales letter which is something that I personally loathe! Many products these days would do better with a short introductory video or something similar and he could have branched  out a bit here.

Chapter 7 – Dealing with Attrition

Attrition is the rate at which people drop out of your site and it’s a real problem! Many people (me included!) get very excited when crunching numbers based on an ever-growing membership base but if people are dropping out on a regular basis you’re wont really be growing your business. This chapter discusses solid ways of dealing with it and minimising it – very useful indeed.

Chapter 8 – Putting Your Membership Site on Autopilot

I’m a big fan of automation – my own software project is all about automation! This chapter discusses how to implement systems that allow you to automate and outsource as much of the work as possible so that once your site is stable, you don’t have to do very much work to keep it going. It then becomes more of a residual income.

Chapter 9 – Selling Your Membership Site

When I first looked at this my initial thoughts were, why on earth would you want to sell your site if it brings in a regular income for you? However, when done correctly, a site can sell for several years times it’s earnings which can lead to a massive cash injection and of course it also frees your time to work on your next big project with all that money behind you.

Yaro teaches how to prepare your site to sell, determine what it is worth and how to find buyers.

Conclusion

Many people think a membership site is just about delivering some content but there is SO much more to it than that and this comprehensive report really does a great job of giving you the big picture even though it’s weak in a couple of places. The report is free so be sure to download your copy and if you are serious about starting a membership site, consider joining Membership Site Mastermind when it opens for the last time this year, next week on the 27th October.

Tweet This Post Stumble This Post