The Real Deal on Membership Sites vs. Micro Continuity

There’s a lot of hype in internet marketing communities about membership sites, so I thought I’d give my perspective, now that I’ve been running a membership site for a bit over 6 months now.

The Hype:

• membership sites are easy to run
• membership sites are solid money
• membership sites can bring you unlimited income

The real deal:

• membership software can be a HUGE pain in the a$$ to install and maintin
• the money is good ~ but you have to keep recruiting new members
• the time involved in maintaining a membership site is way more than people let on
• how you set up your membership site makes a HUGE difference in your workload
• you have to have consistent new content or another option is to provide yourself as the content
• When you choose to make yourself available ~ it makes living life outside of your membership site difficult
• mastering all the pieces of a traditional membership site can be tough
• you need a good handle on html and other coding stuff to get it set up and maintain ~ or else money to outsource

There’s another way, and easier way.

I first heard of fixed term membership sites from Jimmy D. Brown. His whole course Membernaire teaches the process over a year’s time. He sends his membership content through email, and only for a set amount of time. This solves two problems.

1. Your autoresponder can take care of the content delivery ~ taking you out of the picture.

2. Your members feel better about joining because they know they will only have to pay for a certain amount of time ~ it takes the “forever” element out of it.

I had concerns about whether the perceived value of a membership site sent through email would be as high as one done on a website ~ so I didn’t really pursue it.

Then comes micro continuity.

Then last week I saw a video by Russell Brunson ~ one of the couple internet marketers I believe is really a good person and out to really help people.

This video is over 60 minutes long ~ if you know me at all, you know I’m a reader not a video watcher. I hate that everything has gone to video. I sat down and started watching the video and couldn’t take my eyes off of it!!

Russell is so engaging and knowledgable I had to get up and leave half way through to go do something and I was upset I had to leave lol. It’s ok, it was waiting right there on my screen when I got back and I finished watching it.

The video outlines the entire process of creating a micro continuity site. A membership site that is delivered through email, and starts off with giving things away for free.

The concept is genius ~ you create a free cd or dvd (don’t worry he tells you where you can do this) then you simply give it away.  You create a couple videos where you give away secrets pertaining to your niche, and then as a bonus they get a free trial to your membership site when they order the free dvd. This is where you make your money ~ from the continuity program. However, you can also create an upsell of the product you really thought you were going to create ~ the ebook, or course etc, and sell it as well.

Look, just watch the video ~ it really is worth an hour of your life. If you don’t buy micro continuity you can still gleen more than enough information from the free video to get started.

Click here to watch Russell’s video

It gets even better though. Russell had one of his students create a video how she went about creating her first micro continuity product. She also whipped out a 34 page step by step blueprint of the process she used.

This is amazing content ~ and yes, it is FREE too!!

Grab the Joy Report and watch her video ~ it was what got me really amped up about this whole thing.

The fact that it is so simple to get set up, the maintenance on these sites is next to nothing since it will all be preloaded in your autoresponder and will go out automatically when someone joins. It’s all set it and forget it.

I wish I could say that about my membership site lol ~ although I love interacting with everyone it would be nice to know without a doubt I could go on a two week vacation and everyone would still get their money’s worth for the month.

Micro continuity ~ the product launches today. I think there will be a pretty good chance you can get a free mp3 player that comes preloaded with 6 hours of micro continuity content ~ that is a huge deal. I suggest you get there early for the launch as micro continuity sold out in less than 2 minutes last time it was offered.  I know I’ll be there standing in line to get mine.

Once you’ve read the report and watched the videos please come on back and let’s talk about it. I’m pretty excited about this idea, and would love to get together with some excited people to do some brainstorming.