It isn’t hard to organize a teleseminar or a webinar. Both events can be organized and executed without a lot of expense. There is, of course, time and effort involved in organizing them.

Teleseminars are less expensive and easier to do than a webinar. The only thing you really need for a teleseminar is an interesting subject, a well-known speaker and a bridge line. You may want to include a recording and then you might want to have that recording transcribed so that you can sell it as another product.

A webinar requires a bridge line as well as some kind of demonstration such as power point and a way for participants to access the demonstration so they are a bit more expensive to do but you can usually charge a little more for participation in them.

For those who don’t know…this is referred to as ‘Affiliate Marketing’. You can go to either of the above listed sites and sign up as an affiliate marketer for products and services that would be of interest to your list. You profit by making a percentage of the sales made through your website or newsletter.

Products or services for which you are an affiliate marketer can be promoted directly on the blog or forum on your free membership site, in a newsletter or E-zine that you regularly send to the members of your free membership site or through a specific marketing email that you send out.

If you own the product or service that is being offered in a joint venture, you, of course, have a greater opportunity for profit but even if you don’t own the product or service, you still have a very long list of prospective buyers and you are an attractive joint venture partner so you will have more opportunities to sell products and services that are owned by others.

Having a large group of customers who know and trust you creates many new opportunities for your business. You can market your own products and services to the members. You can make recommendations for affiliate products and earn commissions, and you can sell access to your members through advertising on the site ans sponsored mailings.

Another wonderful bonus will occur when you membership site reaches a mature size - opportunities will find you. You will be growing as an expert in your market and your members and other marketers will approach you with new business opportunities.

So, keep your members happy and provide lots of value for them.

For example: you can have an E-Book written by a ghostwriter that, once you pay for it, will be your E-Book. You can list yourself as the author and even get a copyright on the work. It’s yours! You can have an E-Book written for about $10 per page. The most normal pricing structure is selling it for $1 per 2 pages. So…if you have an E-Book written that is 100 pages long, you will have paid $1000 for the E-Book and you can charge $50 for it. Remember that you have a very long list. The first 20 sales covers your investment and everything beyond that is pure profit.

*You can actually have a 100 page E-Book written for less than a thousand dollars but not a lot less.

There are services available on the Internet that will help you create audio and video products, as well. There will always be an initial investment, however, when you have others create products for you.

Here are the basic steps to creating a membership website:

1. Choose a topic for your free membership site.
   This topic should be one that will attract the specific group of people to whom you want to market your products or services. In most cases you are advised to narrow your topic but in the case of building a free membership website, it is better to make your topic a bit broader so you have room to grow.
2. The next step is to register a domain name that reflects the subject of your free member ship website.
   It is best to keep your domain under 20 characters if you can. Go to either Name Cheap or Godaddy. Many web hosting companies, like 1 and 1 Internet, Inc. , also offer domain registration as part of their services. This site is hosted with 1 and 1 Internet, Inc. and uses them to register domains. Find a domain name that is available and secure it for yourself.
3. Get a Web Hosting Account.
   Very often web hosting comes with a domain name but you need a web host that offers more services. Make sure your web host will allow you to have as many domains as you want on the same server. I suggest either HostGator or 1 and 1 Internet, Inc. This site is hosted with 1and 1 Internet, Inc. Sign up for one of their hosting packages which allows you to have multiple sites on the same account.
4. You will need a membership script for your free membership site.
   Go to one of these three sites and buy the script: Amember, LaunchFormulaMarketing, Butterflymarketing, or download Instant Membership Site Creator (an extremely simple and inexpensive option.)
5. Add Payment System for Recurring Monthly Payments (Paid Sites Only)
   PayPal and ClickBank are two of the most popular and trusted companies for processing recurring membership payments. Clickbank has a built-in affiliate system which will allow you to recruit others to promote your site to new members. It is also possible to use a 3rd party system like PayDotCom to manage an affiliate program.
6. You might also want to include a helpdesk option on your free membership website.
   This is strictly optional but the site to get the program is PerlDesk. http://www.perldesk.com/.
7. You need content for your free membership website.
   The name of the game for free membership websites, as for all websites, is content, content, content. There are many ways to obtain website content. You can download and reprint articles from article banks or you can join a PLR website and get articles that are much better. In either of these cases, you will need to do some rewrite on the articles to avoid the duplicate content problem.If you have the ability you can write your own articles or you can hire a ghost writer to write them for you. One good ghost writing service can be found at http://wwwlwritingandtransciptionservices.com

That’s it. Pretty simple, right? Now you either build your site or have someone build it for you. Your web host service will have features that will provide for you to set up a blog or forum on your website and you will need install those programs inside the members only area of your website. Additionally, there are other features that will likely be included in your web hosting service such as polls or complex content management systems that you might also want to include in your website. For your first site, keep it simple and focus on quality content – you are building your reputation as an expert and not a web programmer.

To get started on building your membership website you are going to need some basic tools. You will need web hosting services, a domain name, software to run the content area of the site, software to manage the membership functions of your site, content to fill your members area, and a payment processor - if you are creating a paid site.

Web Hosting:

Host Gator

http://www.hostgator.com/

You will see that there are several choices of servers ranging in price from a measly $6.95 per month to a whopping $174.95 per month. The service that will most likely serve your needs for a very long time can be found under the fist choice of ‘Personal Hosting’. When you click on the ‘learn more’ link, you will see that there are several choices beginning with a ‘hatchling’ account and all the way up to a Semi-dedicated account. The one that will most likely serve your needs is the ‘Swamp’ account. It costs only $14.95 per month and will serve your needs for a very long time.

Net Host

http://www.nethost.ws/

When you get to that site, click on the middle button that says ‘$14.95 more info’. You will see that you are being offered 500MB of disc space and a site builder for $14.95. Larger amounts of disc space are available for more money each month. I’d start with the $14.95 and then add additional disc space as needed. There is a Site Studio offered with all of the plans but it isn’t free with any of them.

Domain Names:

Now you must have a domain name. Domain names are very specific and completely unique. When you type in a domain name, your computer takes you to that website and ONLY to that website. To start with you should think up several possibilities for your domain name. Using your own name in the domain name will make it easier to find one that hasn’t already been taken. You aren’t very likely to find the simplest ones to be available so you are going to have to get a bit creative. There are others, of course, but here are two places that you can register your domain name.

Name Cheap

http://www.namecheap.com/

Here you will see that it will cost you only $8.88 to register your domain name. There will be many offers for additional names and products. What you really need here is a domain name for no less than two years. You do not need to pay for anything additional that is offered.

GoDaddy

http://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/default.asp

Here you will see that you can register your domain name for $8.95 per year. Again…you will be offered many extras but all you really need is to register your domain name for two years. The reason you need to register it for two years is that search engines really don’t like domains that are only registered for one year. Spammers tend to only register for one year at a time because they won’t be at the same location for anywhere near that long.

Membership Software:

If you are going to have a membership website, then you must have the software that will accomplish that. There are basically three sites that you should visit and look over the product offered on each site.

The first site is aMember at http://www.amember.com/. The package is $139.95.

The second site is Launch Formula Marketing at http://www.launchformulamarketing.com/. There is no price available without giving primary email address so check this one out for yourself.

The third site is Butterfly Marketing at http://www.butterflymarketing.com/. This software sells for $1497.00 plus shipping and handling.

Payment Processor:

If you are setting up a paid membership site, you will need someone to process your payments. Big sites will have their own merchant accounts for processing credit card transactions, but the fees involved in creating and operating a merchant account (not to mention the programmers needed to integrate them into your site) are to much for the newcomer. Plus, they are not really necessary. There are two primary options for processing your customer payments: Clickbank and PayPal.

Site Content:

As with every website, there must be a theme as well as content. There is a saying among Internet marketers that, “Content is King” and that’s pretty accurate. The only way that you can keep members visiting even a free membership site is to keep it constantly updated and loaded with fresh and relevant content that pertains to the theme of your site.

There are many ways to get good content. There are article banks where you can download free articles for reprint. There are sites where you can get PLR material that will provide good website content. You can also hire ghostwriters to write fresh content.

One such ghost writing site Writing and Transcription Services at: http://www.writingandtranscriptionservices.com

Blog and Forum Software:

Most hosting services (both of the ones mentioned above) have included a utility called Fantastico. This feature allows you to set up a blog or forum on your membership site. In addition you can install such things as customer support, content management systems, polls and a host of other things. You really need to poke around in your hosting service to see what all is available.

Help Desk:

Installing a help desk is entirely optional. It is, by no means, a required feature for a free membership site. The software can be found at the HelpDesk website at http://www.perldesk.com/. The cost of the HelpDesk software starts at $99.95. Although this is not required the HelpDesk software can be very beneficial. It will allow you to you to organize your companies customer relations to a database backed browser based help desk. This can save you a whole ton of headaches particularly if you have multiple businesses.

Okay, that’s about it. You need a hosting service, a domain name registered, membership software, a theme and website content, a blog or forum and maybe a Helpdesk. This will be enough to get your free membership website off of the launch pad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg8pVmg8Has

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z153Rqt7z0U

You accomplish that task while you are building your own credibility. One will not exist without the other. A membership website builds credibility and credibility builds a membership website. As more people join the site you have created and receive valuable information and personal attention, they will tell others. This provides social proof of your trustworthiness and expertise.

There are several very well established ways to promote a website on the Internet… and the first three listed here are free.

1. Write (or have written for you) short articles, 300 to 400 words, and put them into article banks for others to use.

Your resource box will include a link to your free membership website. The same is true for E-Book. Either write short 10 to 15 page E-Books or have them written for you. List these E-Books with E-Book repositories for others to use and be sure that there is a link to your free website on every page.

2. Post to blogs and forums on other related websites after you join them.

Don’t go in like gangbusters promoting your free membership site…that will get you kicked out. Simply include a link to your free membership site in your sig tag and post thoughtful and helpful information.

3. Find link exchange partners and exchange links with them.

Since you are not actually selling anything it should be very easy to find link exchange partners.

4. Buy advertising for your free membership website in related E-zines.

This is a very cost effective method of advertising. The cost of advertising in E-zines is usually less than $20 and the advertisement is sent directly to those people who are going to be your best prospects for your free membership sites as well as for the products and services that you will be marketing to them.