If you have a website that sells something online, whether it’s a product or service, then making money by selling your items is the main objective of your site. However, if you want to remain competitive in your niche and see long term growth, then providing good support for your customers and potential customers is important for your online business, just like it would be in any other type of business.

Unfortunately, this is something that is often overlooked by many online business operators, especially those that provide services such as web hosting resellers. Here are some great tips which will help you provide a very good customer service experience for your website visitors:

• Provide good information on your website

The issue with contacts to a website‘s service staff is that many of these contacts could have been avoided if the necessary information was included on the site and featured in a prominent way. Therefore, you should provide clear information about how your products work, as well as help files about how to use them if this would be relevant to your products. Creating video tutorials on how to accomplish certain things with your products would also be a great idea. On your contact page, you should include a link to the relevant help section of your website, which will encourage your customers and potential buyers alike to first check out the information to see if the answer to their question can actually be found there before they contact you.

• Offer good self service features

This is a move that has been well understood by many large businesses operating in plenty of different industries everywhere. It’s less costly in terms of money and resources to let your customers do certain transactions and see some information by themselves rather than having them contact you. If you run an e-commerce site that ships products, for example, you could include a section on your site that keeps track of your customers previous orders. You can then update it with shipping and tracking information, which would cut down on the “when will my order get there” type of inquiries. This also applies to service based sites as well. Try to implement features that would let your customers make their own changes to their account, such as changing their service plans, adding a new subscription under their main account, changing their billing information, canceling or suspending a service they have with you, etc. By doing all of this, you will reduce contacts to your customer service, sometimes even in a significant way.

• Send a follow up/confirmation email on every new order

With the email, provide the relevant information, such as order number, tracking number for any shipments, as well as a link to the help section or the account management section of your website. Doing so will encourage your customers to use them to see if they can find the answer to any question they have there before they get into contact with you.

We’ve seen all the good design elements which make a blog useful and likely to be profitable for you. But now there’s one important thing that you need to figure out: the content of your new blog. Your visitors will come to your blog to read something that is interesting and informative in their eyes. Therefore, you will need to ensure that what you have on your blog will keep your readers happy and make them want to come back to it for more. Here is some good advice on how you can accomplish this:

Make Regular Posts

If you want your readers to stay interested in your blog, then you would need to make new posts on a regular basis. This doesn’t mean you have to post every day if you’re just going to end up repeating what you’ve said in the past few days. But you shouldn’t leave your blog without any new updates for several weeks, as people may think that the blog is “dead” and that you’re no longer actively maintaining it. By making regular posts, readers will be more eager to know when you’ve added something to your blog.

Keep Your Posts Brief and to the Point

If you have a lot to say about a certain topic, then it would be better for you to break it up into several different posts that discuss the main points you would like to make. You could have a “series” of posts that focus on a certain aspect of your niche.

Format Your Posts Well

One good example of this would be just reading this post. As you can see, it is formatted in paragraphs with sub headers. Nobody wants to read a wall of text, as it’s simply hard to follow. If you’re going to make a post that is say 500 words long, then you will need to divide it into paragraphs that are structured according to the points that you’re making in your post. So if you’re reviewing a new digital camera, one paragraph could deal with the performance and the other one about the price and availability.

Include Multimedia Content

While it’s true that blogs are mainly used for sharing text, it doesn’t mean you can’t include anything else. Adding a thumbnail image that is relevant to the topic at hand will make the blog post more attractive to readers. If you need to include a photo, graphic or diagram that will provide explanation or reinforce the point that you’re trying to make, then you can do so as well. Of course, it is possible to add video content to a blog post quite easily too. Some topics, especially if you’re showing the reader how to do something, such as installing a graphics card in a computer or navigating their way around a certain piece of software, could be much easier to understand for your blog visitors if you included a video in addition to text instructions. To save bandwidth, you can host the videos on an external video sharing service like YouTube.

During the holiday shopping season, it is important that you make some additional promotions on your online merchandise for your website visitors. When shopping during the holidays, everyone wants to save money, so retailers often respond to that by giving discounts on some or all of their merchandise for sale. This applies both to e-commerce sites and brick and mortar businesses. But in addition to lowering the price of your items for sale, there are many other things that you can do to make your online shopping site more attractive to visitors during this upcoming holiday shopping season. Remember that creativity is always a good thing in the online world and if you have many competitors in your niche, making your site and your holiday promotions stand out from the rest will definitely put you at a strong advantage. Here are some examples of things you may offer to your buyers:

• Free Gift Wrapping

Many people who buy holiday gifts online have them shipped directly to the recipient. This is definitely a good idea if that recipient doesn’t live in the same area. Offering to gift wrap the items for free is a good service that you can give to the buyers on your website.

• Free Shipping

One of the things that turns people off from shopping online for the holidays is the shipping fees. But some e-commerce sites have responded to this by offering free shipping on some or all of their items. To do this, you would just need to calculate the cost of shipping certain items to see if it would be still profitable for you to sell the item and offer free shipping. Consider offering free shipping on certain orders, such as those over $100. Take a look at the rates offered by shipping carriers to see if you can get cheaper shipping rates based on the volume of packages that you send out every day.

• Loyalty Offers for Existing Customers

If a buyer purchases something from you, consider sending them a discount code in their email which is valid for a certain percentage off their next order. While this is more complicated to integrate into a site, you could also set up a points based rewards program, where shoppers could earn points and exchange them for discounts on your merchandise.

• Deeper Discounts for the First Buyers

You could offer an even better discount offer than what you currently have for, say, the first 10 buyers of an item. This can help you sell one of your items that is not too popular. If the price is low enough, it can also serve as promoting an impulse buy, especially if it is something small and relatively inexpensive.

These are all some great examples of offers that you can make for your website visitors during the busy shopping season. But of course, the key element is creativity. If you believe that something else will work well with your audience, then don’t hesitate to try it on your website!

Previously, we’ve seen some ways that you can start getting ready for the busy holiday shopping season as an e-commerce website owner. Getting good web hosting and payment processing services, as well as starting out well in advance of the holiday rush are crucial elements, of course, but they are not the only things that you need to do, obviously.

To get your website prepared for the holidays, there are some additional things to keep in mind. Here are some of them:

• Add some decorations to your site

Again, just take a look at big e-commerce sites, or the websites of many brick and mortar stores and you will see that they all get in the “Holiday Spirit” by adding some decorations to the design of your website. Small visual elements, such as pictures of Santa, gift boxes, Christmas tree ornaments, falling snow, etc. are great to add to your site. Of course, they are not mandatory, but they can make for a more pleasant holiday shopping experience and usually would not take more than an hour or so to update your templates, so why not?

• Prepare some sections for your holiday offers and specials

On your website, if you plan to have selected items on special during the holidays, then you would need to communicate this with your visitors so they can take advantage of it. You could add some details on your front page, as well as a section where you would put all of the merchandise that is discounted for the season.

• Prepare your landing pages

If you hope to get more sales during the holidays, then you will obviously need to advertise your website, just as you probably do now. Since you may have some special offers for the season, then you will also need to build some landing pages for them which will reflect your specials.

If you would like some ideas, you can simply take a look at what some of the competitors in your niche are doing. You will see that most of them have landing pages that feature some decorations, as well as prominently show the specials and savings to their customers. Since your visitors will mainly be looking for VALUE when they click on your website, it is definitely quite important that your promotions are featured visibly on your landing pages.

• Don’t forget your social media pages and e-mail newsletters!

Both social media marketing and email marketing are very useful tools to get traffic to an e-commerce site, especially during the busy holiday season. Therefore, you should think about the changes that you will be bringing to your social media pages, as well as to how you will design your e-mail newsletters so that it stands out from the others and attracts attention to your offers. Remember, you will not be the only business advertising holiday specials by email, so your newsletter needs to grab your readers attention quickly for it to be an effective tool.

We have all seen mentions about how video marketing could be useful in terms of making money online. But the issue with it is that few business owners use it, and many of them don’t really do it well. Can you use video sharing sites like YouTube and Daily Motion to attract some customers to your website? Definitely. Here are some tips that you will find helpful for this:

• Use public video sharing sites and not your own server

The obvious advantage of this is that you will be saving bandwidth, as the videos will be hosted on a site such as YouTube and not your own server. Another advantage of this is that more people will be able to see your videos if they search for their related keywords. If you host your videos on your own server, they can only be seen on the places where you put them, such as websites, blogs or social media pages.

• Put your website and business logo at the beginning and end of your video

Even though YouTube allows you to put links in the description (which you should do as well), you are better off putting your website in your video as well. This is because some people may see your video and choose to embed it on their own website or blog, or share it with social media. If your video goes viral and is seen by a lot of people, chances are it will be embedded on a lot of sites, so to get the most traffic from this effect, your website must be present in the video itself.

• Give useful content to your viewers

It is said time and time again, nobody comes online to watch commercials, there are enough of them on TV. The content of your videos therefore needs to be relevant to your products and niche, without looking like you are only promoting your website or goods. Instructional or informational videos are the best. For example, if your company sells replacement iPhone screens, then having a video which demonstrates how to open up the iPhone and change its screen without messing up the phone would be quite useful. It can also be used for intangible products such as guides and learning materials. So if you sell language courses, you can create a video which teaches some important phrases, pronunciation, words, in another language, then at the end refer the viewers to your website so they can check out the product and see if it is good for them.

• Don’t give up if you don’t get many views

It is a fact that most videos will not achieve millions of views, especially if your niche is very specific. The issue is quality and not quantity. You can make sales with just a handful of viewers that are truly interested in the content of your video and the product behind it, while uploading a video that gets thousands of views because it is “cute” or “funny” may not bring you any serious site visitors.

After you have decided on a niche and found some reliable and high quality suppliers for your e-commerce website, then it is time to take things one step further and actually get your website off the ground. There are two basic ways that you can do this, either you can get a website built for you by another company or person, or you could always build the site by yourself.

Many people who are not experienced in web development will probably want to have their website built by another provider. In itself, this is not such a bad idea. After all, it can save you time and frustration in getting your website started. But there could also be some potential disadvantages to all of this. If you would like to get your website done by a 3^rd party, there are some things that you would need to keep in consideration to avoid problems and get started as soon as you can.

Here are some tips:

• Get quotes from multiple providers

In the online world, there are thousands of web development companies that can create a professional web store for you. As such, you should compare the prices between different providers to see which one would offer the most competitive rates. Don’t hesitate to compare a dozen or so providers before making your decision and don’t feel pressured to go with one provider over the other if you haven’t made your selection just yet.

• Check the reputation of the web developer in question

Besides getting a good price, you will want to work with a web developer that will deliver on what they promised and do so on time. You can find out a lot about a company by simply Googling their name or the name of their owner. This will often allow you to find any complaints that have been posted about them in discussion groups or web forums. Also, ask to see their portfolio of websites that they have designed in the past. Links to active websites are the best. Many web designers will have this right on their website, allowing you to easily see their previous work.

• Work with a provider that is experienced with e-commerce sites

Building an e-commerce site involves a lot more than simple web design and graphic design skills. The website developer will also need to put together a customized back end or engine which will power your site and allow you to make changes to your site, such as add or remove products, etc. Since this is the software that will be powering your entire site, you will need to make sure that it is well configured and does its job properly. Therefore, it is best to go with a provider that is experienced with building web stores and e-commerce sites, as there will be a higher chance that they will know what they are doing.

We’ve seen that you can sell plenty of different physical products in your own online store. In fact, most e-commerce websites specialize in selling products that can be shipped to the consumer. But what about digital products which can be downloaded instead? Obviously, e-books and online courses come to mind. The majority of such digital products are actually sold on a website that is dedicated to one specific product, however it is possible to build a web store around digital products as well, offering a wide range of products such as e-books for download.

But this can be just as hard, if not in many cases harder than selling physical products. However, here are some tips for you if you would like to sell digital items.

• Focus on a specific, well researched niche

Unless you have a very good marketing plan or already have a bunch of people that would be interested in buying your products (i.e. you have an email list or some past customers), choosing a niche that is too broad will simply lead to trouble. You will have a hard time attractive decent traffic that will convert well. For these reasons, you should avoid niches like “Make Money Online”. This is too broad. But you could, for example, do some products about “Making Money Online from Twitter”.

There are plenty of different niches when it comes to info products. These could be: learn to do magic tricks, how to maintain your car, teach your dog to do tricks, how to make money from real estate, etc. The more specific you are, the better.

• E-Books are not the only product you can sell

While they are definitely the most popular when it comes to digital products to sell, you should know that e-books are not your online available choice. For example, you can sell things such as web scripts, website templates, software, etc. Basically, anything that can be digitally delivered to your customer will do the trick here. There is a lot of money to be made in e-commerce when selling virtual products and you need to go beyond simply thinking about e-books.

• Combine physical products and digital ones

While some people may not recommend it, you should know that it is possible to successfully combine selling digital products together with physical ones. But your success will depend on just how you do it. Your digital products will need to be in the same niche than your physical ones. So if for example, your web store is in the business of selling pet products, then you can include guides about training your dog, or plans to build a recreational area for your dog in your back yard, etc. Basically, anything that is related to your original niche. You can sell these e-books, but they can also be used to add value to your merchandise. If a customer makes an order over a certain amount, for example, you can include a free digital product for them. This is a great way to make your site more competitive.

If you are going to build an e-commerce site, then there are many different things that you would need to think about. We have seen that you need an idea as to what to sell, a website, as well as ways to get traffic to your site.

But the most important element of creating an e-commerce site would be the first idea: what you will be selling on your website. This will determine the overall niche that your business will be in and will also play a big role in determining how much money you will be making from your site. This is simply due to the fact that there is more demand for certain items online then for others.

However, the point here is not to dive into every possible item that can be sold online and then try to analyze whether it is good or bad. The fact is, any item can be sold online, however some items are easier to sell than others. Here are a few ideas as to what you could sell online. Of course, this is just to give you examples and inspiration, you could sell practically anything that you want.

Items That You Create Yourself

These are items that you have designed, created and in some cases, actually built. This distinguishes them from items that have already been created and manufactured by another business, that you are simply distributing at a profit. Here are some examples of items you can make yourself and sell online:

• Toy cars, trains and aircraft

These are some of the most popular things that you can build yourself and sell online. Many people have a hobby in which they collect and use remote controlled model cars, train sets, as well as aircraft like helicopters and airplanes. All that you would need to do is to buy the parts needed and then assemble them. You can then sell them online. This can be quite a lucrative business, depending on the quality of the parts used and the construction. On the low end of the spectrum, these items can sell for just a few dollars. But there are also models that are bought by serious hobbyists which can be sold for several thousands of dollars.

• T Shirts and other clothing items

It is relatively easy these days to design your own clothing. There are plenty of companies that can print a t-shirt, hoodie, or other clothing item with your own designs. If you are thinking of starting your own fashion line, then this is definitely a good opportunity. Some websites well clothing items with funny designs, pictures and logos, while some others are more “classic”. The success that you experience will largely depend on how your customers like the clothes that you are selling. If you become really popular, then you definitely have the potential of getting hundreds or thousands of orders per month.

Previously, we’ve touched on some ways to keep your visitors loyal by providing content that will be relevant and useful to them, in addition to keeping your website updated on a regular basis. But there are also a few ways to not only attract website visitors to your site, but to keep them coming back for more, thus increasing the profit that you can make from your visitors. Here are some more methods that you can use as a webmaster:

• Use Social Media Buttons

Social media is all about staying in touch. While the primary purpose is obviously staying in touch with people, social media can also be a very good tool for businesses that want to stay in touch with their customers or visitors. Take a look at any website for a large company. You will often see a “Follow Us On Twitter” or “Check us out on Facebook” type of link and a social media button. If the top companies in the industry are doing this, why shouldn’t you? It doesn’t take much. Simply create a social media page on the networks you want to use and then place the buttons on your site. Interested visitors will then follow you on these social networks if they want to.

• Maintain a Blog on Your Site

It may not always be easy to highlight new updates, depending on the configuration and layout of your website. But a blog is perfectly designed for that. Simply including a blog on your website will allow visitors to see recent updates, as well as get information on things that are relevant to your niche. It also has some great benefits for SEO. People see blogs as a more “personal” way of communicating, so they are more likely to read them than the content of a “commercial” website.

• Add a Forum to Your Site if You Can

Of course, this will not be a solution for everyone, but it will work for many webmasters. Create a forum and add it to your site. There are plenty of free forum scripts available and many webhosts already include a few in their web hosting packages. Set up a discussion forum on your site which will contain categories such as FAQ’s, new announcements, industry discussions, etc. You can populate the forum with stickies containing tutorials on how to use your products or services, frequently asked questions about your business, etc. Your website users can then create threads if they have questions or if there is something that they do not like about your website or business. This gives you an insight of what your visitors think about your site and also opens up another avenue of communication with them.

These are all excellent methods if you want to make your visitors come back to your site often. But the main element that you must remember is this: give your visitors what they want. If they like your content, they will naturally want to come back.

Previously, we’ve seen quite a few ways to improve the overall conversion rates on your website. If you have an e-commerce site which sells something online, then conversions are obviously something that you want to have. Here are some more ways to increase your website‘s conversion rates in addition to what we’ve covered before:

• Optimize your website for mobile visitors

Depending on the geographical location of the visitors that you are targeting, as well as your niche, anywhere from 10% to 25% of website visitors will be using mobile devices such as smart phones. What does this mean to you? Quite simply, you need to make sure that your website will work well to someone who is using a mobile device to access it. All parts of your site should be functional on mobile browsers, especially the checkout process. If a visitor that is using a smart phone notices that your website is not loading as it should, then they will obviously go somewhere else, which is definitely not what you want when it comes to your sales.

• Find ways to capture visitors contact information

In most cases, this will be limited to just their e-mail address. It is also a good idea to give visitors a certain incentives in exchange for getting their e-mail. For example, you could have a contest where one of your subscribers will win a free product. Or if you offer intangible products, such as e-books or software, you could give a free trial of your software, or a free guide in exchange for the user signing up for your mailing list.

Some of you may think: how does this increase conversions? The user is not buying anything right now… Well, even though they are not making a purchase at the moment, they may very well return to buy something later on. By getting their e-mail address, you will obviously be able to send them a newsletter which contains information about your business, updates on your products and current promotions.

• Include videos on your site

Including videos on your website can increase conversions by giving your website a look of authority on your niche. These can include instructional videos, a presentation of what your business is, as well as customer testimonials. Whether the video should play automatically when your page is opened is still the topic of debate. Some believe that it simply annoys users to have to hear your video if they didn’t want to, while others say that it will focus the customers attention to the video. In any case, you can put up a video on your site and simply put in a call to action for the visitors to watch it if they want to.

If you follow the tips that were presented in this series, you should definitely see at least some improvements in your conversion rates. But of course, there are many other things that you can do, which are left only to your own creativity.

Many small business owners have one main website which contains information about their company and their products. Sometimes it is an e-commerce site where customers can make purchases directly through the site. Obviously, having a website is useful, but what about a blog? Including a blog has many benefits. In fact, some online marketing studies have shown that sites which incorporate a blog get more traffic than a site without one. After all, who doesn’t want to attract more visitors to their website?

Besides the increased traffic, blogs can have many additional benefits for your site. Here are some of them:

• They can increase your search engine ranking

Search engines such as Google love high quality blogs and having one on your site can do wonders to increase your search engine ranking. It can also provide you with useful backlinks back to your main site as well as relevant parts of it, such as product descriptions.

• They can establish you as an authority in your niche

The purpose of a blog for a business is not really to sell anything, but rather to show you as an authority in your niche by providing content which your readers will find useful. You can give information about how to best use your products, news about your industry, as well as any advice or tips that your readers will appreciate.

• Blogs give you another place to interact with your visitors

When you post articles on your blog, you can allow readers to leave comments. This is a great way to get feedback about your blog and your business. It is also an excellent way to answer questions that a customer might have about a certain product. Blog comments give your visitor an easy way to get in touch with you should they be interested in something that you offer, but might not be ready to buy it just yet. Of course, with blog comments there is always the issue of comment spam. However, there are various WordPress plugins that you can use to limit the amount of spam comments that you get. Of course, you can always approve each comment manually, thus eliminating most of the spam. Putting a notice that comments are moderated and approved manually will also serve to deter spammers.

Getting the Most out of Your Blog

To get the most out of a blog, it needs to be updated on a regular basis with fresh new content. This will not only help you when it comes to SEO, but will also be very useful at keeping your readers interested. After all, nobody wants to read a blog that seems “dead” and hasn’t had an update in several months. A good thing about blogs is that you can now include multimedia content such as video on them as well, so if you have a video that you would like to share with your readers, you can put it up on your blog as well.

Previous, we’ve talked about using a content locker to make some money from CPA offers. Basically a content locker is an application which lets you require that users fill out a CPA offer before they can access your content, hence the name “content locker”. However, many webmasters wonder as to exactly what kind of site this type of set up would be appropriate for. Those who want to build a website may also want some ideas as to what kind of content you can put on a website to make it work well with this CPA tool.

Obviously, if you have an e-commerce site or a site, using a content locker would be quite dumb, since you want to make buyers jump through as few hoops as possible before they could buy something from you. However, if you have a site that provides content for free, then using one might be a good choice. Here are some examples of sites where such a tool would work quite well:

• Free video game / arcade sites

These are websites where people can come to play free online video games, usually games made in flash.

• News portals

Sites where visitors come to read some news, which can be general or which can be specific to a certain niche. It is much better if the news focuses on a specific niche or industry, as this will increase the number of visitors that actually fill out the offer rather than just click out and go get what they want somewhere else. Remember, there are plenty of general news sites, in fact there are hundreds of them. However sites that offer updates on a specific niche are fewer in number.

• Templates / graphics sites

There are a lot of people who search the web looking for free images they can put on their site, or some free website templates that they can use on it. This is a great way to monetize such a site.

• Ebook download sites

If you created an e-book and want to monetize it without actually selling it, you can use a content locker to require the visitor to fill out a CPA offer, and make a few dollars for you, before they can access the download link to get their e-book.

Some Other Considerations

Of course, these are just some examples of websites where such a tool can be used. There are plenty of other things that you can offer on your site as well. The key element here is that all sites that are suitable to use a CPA gateway with provide some kind of free content to the user.

There is also something else that you can do to monetize your site and that is require a small PayPal donation of $1 or $2 to access all the content without having to complete an offer. Some users may not want to fill out an offer over fears that they will get spammed, etc. However many of them wouldn’t mind paying $1 or $2, especially if they think that what you have to offer will be useful to them.

Using article marketing is a good way to drive some traffic to your sites, as it works in two different ways. First, you can receive traffic from people who are viewing your article and then decide to click through to continue on to your site. You also have some SEO benefits from it, as every time you include a link to your site, it counts as a one way backlink which can be very useful in boosting your search engine ranking. But are there some things you should do to increase the efficiency of your article marketing efforts? Definitely. Here are some of them:

• Use Only Unique Content

In most cases, article directories only accept content that is unique and has never been posted anywhere before. It doesn’t matter if you wrote it, or if it has been posted on a site that you own. Your content needs to be unique. Search engines frown on duplicate content and so do visitors. If someone starts reading the article and notices that they have already seen the exact same information some where else, they will probably just move on to something else and not bother continuing.

• Avoid Making too Many “Salesy” Articles

There are way too many fake “reviews” of online products being posted all over the place and this is something that seems to be especially popular when promoting internet marketing related stuff such as e-books, membership sites and courses. The articles usually go like this: “Product X is a SCAM!! Arrghh!!! Oops… Actually, It’s Not, Buy It!!!!!” See, the thing is these might have been effective 6 years ago or so… but not anymore. The problem is that there are simply too many of them and the reader will automatically see that your “review” is completely bogus and you are just trying to make money by selling your own, or an affiliate product.

Articles that you post should always include useful information about your niche. For example, if you are promoting an “alternative energy” guide, you could post something about the different kinds of ways you can generate alternative energy and their pros and cons. Or, you could go into detail about how a certain method works and then explain why you think that it would be suitable as a solution for someone looking for an alternative energy generator for their home. Believe me, this is much, much more likely to result in someone visiting your site and buying the product you are promoting, as opposed to simply going on and on about how great the ‘ACME Green Energy Super Guide’ is and why everyone on the planet should drop everything that they’re doing and rush to buy it. Keep the sales pitch for your website. If a user has clicked through to it, then it means they are seeking more information about what you just told them in the article and now would be a good time to propose some products to buy.

Finally Some Other Ways to Promote Your Membership Site

We have seen that you can use forums, email, social media, as well as your own members to promote your membership site. But there are still a few other ways that you can attract members. Here they are:

• Create an affiliate program

In the online marketing world, many products have affiliate programs which pay a commission to the affiliate for each new sale. If you would like your site to be more successful, you could create an affiliate program for it and pay your affiliates around 50% of the monthly fee that you would make from members. You can promote this affiliate program on online marketing forums, just like you would promote the site itself. It is also possible for you to join an affiliate network. ClickBank is the most popular one out there, as they deal with digital products such as ebooks and membership sites.

• Use offline marketing

Even though your product is based on the internet and deals with internet marketing, it doesn’t mean that you can’t use any offline methods to promote it. Some ideas of offline methods include distributing fliers promoting your site or putting up ads in print media like newspapers and magazines. Some membership site owners have even created TV and radio commercials, but obviously these are quite expensive when compared to other advertising methods.

• Use pay per click ads

Pay per click ad networks such as the ones on the Google and Bing search engines are an excellent marketing tool and can be used to promote IM products. However, you would need to carefulyl plan, manage and optimize your campaigns in order to be successful. You would also need to have a decent budget, as the whole internet marketing niche is very competitive.

• Use media buying

Media buying simply means buying advertising space on another site. You can sometimes buy text ads, banner ads or even video ads. The payment model depends on the site where you buy the ad space from and could by a flat rate per week or month, a CPC (cost per click) or a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) model. You could deal either with an advertising network or make a private deal with a webmaster to advertise your membership site on their website.

All of these are excellent methods that you can make use of to promote your site and get some new members. However, the best way to generate revenue from your membership site is to keep your existing members, rather than constantly try to sign up new ones. This is actually much easier as you don’t need to do any advertising to retain your current members. All you need to do is to keep them interested in your site by adding new content on a regular basis, as well as listen to any feedback that they may have regarding the content of your site or how it runs.