Actually it’s my second month running a membership website but the first month I didn’t have a payment option set up yet because I wanted to test everything to make sure there were no bugs, security issues etc. On May 1st was when I launched the Premium part of my website Mixtapes.tv. The business model I used for my membership site is the Fremium model aka the “try it before you buy it” model. In this day and age plus the type of audience I’m selling to, this model works great. I believe my product was good enough so I didn’t have any issues with offering it for free and then later offering a upgrade to unlock more features.

A little bit about my membership site.

It’s called Mixtapes.tv, it’s a site where DJs, Artists, and A&Rs can upload and share there mixtapes for free. Users are able to sign up and download these mixtapes for free as well. The key to this site is knowing what parts should be free and what parts shouldn’t be. For example users can sign up and download 5 mixtapes a month as zip files but  a premium member can download unlimited mixtapes, another feature is premium members can download individual tracks but free users can’t. The method here is that you have to make the free service good enough for them to want to upgrade to the premium service. For example a user can use the site forever as free member to listen and download unlimited mixtapes. This creates user retention and will eventually lead to upgrades.

The money is in the re bill.

Don’t know how many affiliate marketers are reading reading my blog but if you’ve ever promoted ringtone offers, you must have wondered how some of these companies are able to pay affiliates $16 to $30 per lead on a $9.90 offer, that’s because within 3 months they’ve regained 100% return on there investment. Most users will not cancel there subscription because it automatically gets added to there cell phone bill and they forget about it, and since it’s only $9.90 they don’t really pay attention to the charge. This is why low subscription pricing is so valuable. Jeremy from ShoeMoney.com touched on something similar when talking about Gym memberships and how it’s the perfect business.

My First Month Running A Membership Website

The Premium part of my site went live on May 1st, and the first 7 days no one upgraded, LOL. I was like oh shit no one likes the site but then on May 8th my first premium membership came in. I was so excited even though it was only $5.99, it feels really good when someone wants to buy something you are selling. After that first sale the upgrades started coming in with a average of 2 sign ups per day. So far I’ve had one disgruntle customer which was not my fault but as a result of a server side issue between PayPal and Wishlist Member.

Results after 30 days

I know it’s not Yacht money but that’s not my aim at this point, right now all I’m doing is focusing on making the service the best it can be. If I achieve that then I won’t have to worry about making money because the product will sell itself. Now remember these members are now in a billing cycle and this month an estimated 30 more Premium upgrades will occur which will double the earnings the following month, the real money will be made months down the line with the compounded revenue generated through subscribers singing up month after month. So far over 8,000 members have signed up 32 of which are premium members, keep in mind that 60% of those members signed up the 1st month before the premium option was available.

Not to mention I really haven’t dialed this thing in yet, I’m still testing. I haven’t implemented follow up via email marketing,  special offers, advertising, affiliate program or anything else for that matter. 90% of the traffic going to the site right now is coming from my other websites HipHopMusicDotCom.com. and a little from ComeWatchMe.com, once the traffic from search engines starts to really pick up in a couple months I’ll start to look more like the competition, who has a whopping 20,000 premium members, so I know the market is very healthy.

In conclusion.

Don’t treat a membership website like a regular eccommerce website, it’s not a sprint it’s a marathon.You think of it that way and you’ll see the real profits in the long run, I’m going to be writing a post soon about how to set up a membership site and the right tools to use to get it done.

I’m out……Chozen

Since the year started I’ve been doing my internet business full time, and it’s been pretty good, I’ve launched two new sites one is a video site and the other is a membership website both of which I can say had successful launches. Below is run down of how my sites have been doing.

First of all let me address my original site HipHopMusicDotCom.com, this site has sure become quite the blog going from a ugly blogspot blog to now averaging over 2,000,000 page views monthly. Yesterday I did 33,000 unique visitors and almost broke 100,000 pageviews and the traffic isn’t showing any sign of slowing down. Even though the traffic is crazy that really isn’t where the success is with the website. The real success is the two new revenue streams I’ve able to create for the website, originally most of my earnings came from Google Adsense, InfoLinks and Adbrite but now I’ve been making money with selling direct ads and video ads.

If you have video content and haven’t incorporated video ads yet into your site, you need to because the payout is far more lucrative that contextual based ads. So far I’ve been working with LongTailVideo Adsolution and ScanScout, I’m going to be writing a post that covers video advertising, video ad networks and pretty much everything else you need to know regarding making money with video ads.

The second revenue stream I’ve unlocked on HipHopMusicDotCom.com is direct advertising, since this year started I’ve been getting quite a few advertising offers. With the help a little Ad Manager plugin called OIO Publisher which I use to manage all my direct ad sales, I don’t think I’d be able to handle direct ad sales efficiently without it and you can expect to see a post about that coming soon.

Between those two new revenue streams and my existing ones I’ve been able to double my monthly earnings and I needed it since I’m on more expensive servers now.

As far as Music Video Cast is concerned, I haven’t updated since the year started and will never update ever again not since I’ve launched ComeWatchMe.com in January of this year. Music Video Cast will be deprecated and all the posts will be moved to ComeWatchMe.com after running MusicVideoCast.com for almost 3 years I think it’s safe to say it’s reach it’s limit as far as growth potential. It had a few big moments in it’s life span but I just couldn’t take it to the next level the way I did with HipHopMusicDotCom.com one of the reasons being that it’s just about music videos which is a very small niche with allot of other sites people would rather go to. I did manage to get it to the top of the second page of Google for “Music Videos” which brought it allot a traffic and continues to but that’s the past and ComeWatchMe.com is the future.

ComeWatchMe.com was lunched on January 15th and since then it has been doing very well, in only 4 months it’s doubled the traffic that Music Video Cast receives. In about 3 years video ads will be everywhere this will be a multi billion dollar industry so I’m gearing up and preparing for that growth from now. Video ads will be in 2013 what Google Adsense was in 2003 and just like Adsense it’s the niche sites that are going to really benefit from this market, instead of trying to be the next YouTube people should focus on building niche on demand video sites. This is what I’m doing with ComeWatchMe.com at the moment, I’m focusing on video ads on the site currently but there is one contextual banner ad on the site but the focus is video ads and it’s already showing good numbers. I expect big this from this site in the future.

The other site I launched was MixTapes.TV at the end of March, this site has been something I wanted to start two years ago but didn’t have the tools or money to do it until now. The original name was MixtapeCast.com to match MusicVideoCast.com then I changed it to MixtapePlayer.com which was a great name until the end of last year I saw MixTapes.TV for sale on Sedo, I won it in a auction for $150.00 which is a steal for a top level domain, with this name combined with my SEO and Social Media skills I guarantee you I’ll be number one in Google for the search term “mixtapes” by September. It’s a subscription based (my first one) site built around the very popular niche of “mixtapes”. The launch was pretty crazy so crazy that I ended up moving to a new server because it just couldn’t handle the traffic. In one month I’ve already had 3,300 sign ups, I was on the second page of Yahoo for “mixtapes” in less than 2 weeks, 70,000 unique visitors, 160,000 pageviews and 200,000 media streams. Currently this site is my main priority and I’m working very hard to make it profitable before the summer is over.

I also officially have my company name now which is called “Covanant” not to mistaken with Covenant though they have a similar meaning, Covanant stands for a “Solemn Promise To Excel In Business”, yeah I invented (patent pending). I’m going to be launching that site soon. The logo is below..

That’s pretty much what I’ve been up yo since the year started, which is why I haven’t been able to update this site as much as I would like but I’ll promise that from this point I will try my best to do at least one post per day. After all I do plan one day to turn this site into big business as well.

That’s it for now, later………….

Chozen.

First of all I’m not big on Joomla, WordPress is my weapon of choice when it comes to building websites not because WordPress is better but it’s just the tool I started with on the web and I’ve always been satisfied with it so I have no reason to change it. Since I run a website called Site Builder Tips I can’t make it all about WordPress, Though I don’t use Joomla for any of my projects I do use some there theme designs, meaning I’ve seen some great CMS themes for Joomla that I then convert to WordPress themes, I have a membership at Joomlart which is a Joomla premium themes site that has some really great themes that I convert to WordPress themes.

It’s on Joomlart where I discovered a site called JomSocial which is a Joomla social network website builder plugin, I have to say this is the first time I ran into a tool that I couldn’t find for WordPress, I mean there is BuddyPress but JomSocial is a whole other level. The cool thing about JomSocial is that the site it self is a social network that allows you to see the extension in action, a couple months back I joined the site and I completely forgot that I was trying out a demo because It was a real social network where I was interacting with other members. I think that’s a great way to sell a tool, the look, feel and functionality of JomSocial reminds me of being on Facebook.

JomSocial does a good job with this tool and they’re quite a few successful sites powered by JomSocial, 3 of which are GibLink.com that has 113,380 + members, OnlineRadioStations.com with 49,500 + members and KenyaHub.com with 120,583 + members just to name a few.

A few features and Specs that stood out for me.

Facebook Connect

Facebook has now eclipsed MySpace as the #1 most popular social network on the planet. With over 350 millions active users worldwide, chances are someone registering at your community will already be a member of Facebook.

To make the registration process hassle-free, JomSocial even included our new Facebook-Connect login-module in JomSocial, so your members can log-in to your JomSocial-powered community using their Facebook account details.

Profile pics, status updates & more are “pulled” in safely & securely from Facebook, making it easy for new and existing users to sign up and stay logged into your community.

Twitter Integration

If Facebook Is the king of social networks then Twitter is the prince, I’ve watch the service bloom from the very beginning (I was one of the first to use it back in 2006) when it was just a side service to Odeo to now being one of the most talked about services on the web, I mean you can’t even go a day on the internet without seeing something regarding Twitter.

JomSocial allows you to integrate your community with Twitter allowing your members to show there Twitter updates as well as there friends updates on your JomSocial community profile pages, also members of your community also have the option of automatically updating there Twitter account with status updates they make on your JomSocial community.

External Applications Support (Apps)

This is a really important feature for tools like this because it allows you to integrate your community with pretty much any third party service out there, thus giving you more flexibility with your community.

I’m really considering building WordPress plugin that does exactly what JomSocial does for Joomla because there is nothing out currently for WordPress that does this and I think a tool like this would be great for WordPress.

Anyways check out JomSocial, sign up to there community to get a real life demo of JomSocial in action.

Check em out, JomSocial.

BigCommerce is a new comer (well sort of new) to the list of ecommerce solutions BigCommerce is a hosted, fully managed version of Interspire Shopping Cart that was launched by Interspire in June 2009. With the Interspire Shopping Cart software being so highly popular and successful they the decided to launch a full blown hosted version of it, it’s a hosted solution meaning they take care of the servers, security, upgrades and backups for your online store so you don’t have to, this is great for small and large size businesses that looking to run there business and no worry about managing a server. Not I know I said ProStores was the The Best Ecommerce Website Builder, but I think BigCommerce could give them a run for their money and here is why.

BigCommerce does a pretty good job of describing all the features that are included in there service so I won’t do their job for them but instead I’ll touch on only a few of the key features and why they’re important in today’s web environment.

Reporting and Analytics

One thing you should always remember when running a website, whether it’s an affiliate site, blog, ecommerce site, or a subscription based site is that “the money is in the stats”, this will be where you spend most of your time after you’ve finished setting up your online store. Stats will tell you exactly what works and what doesn’t as well as what’s making you money and more importantly what’s costing you money. Of course if you don’t have a stats system with enough features to help you know how each and every part of your website is performing then you’ll just be wasting time. Big Commerce has 20+ performance reports some of which include daily conversion rates, inventory report, best and worst performing keywords, order location (Google Maps) just to name a few. You can also integrate your store with Google Analytics which is one of the best site tracking services available on the web not to mention it’s FREE!.

Built In SEO

SEO is important but it’s not something you should spend all your time on, most services out there coming with basic SEO features included while others completely ignore them, stay away from website building services that don’t have SEO features built in. BigCommerce web pages are optimized by experts and make proper use of title tags and search engine friendly SEO links, of course there a tons of other things to know about SEO but most of them are not worth the time to learn, trust me the search engines are smart enough to rank your site for accurate search terms.

Google Merchant Center (Formerly known as Google Base)

If there was ever a source for getting free traffic to your store this would be it, if your not familiar with Google Merchant Center it’s where you can upload your store’s product feeds and make them easy to find on Google Product Search. The thing is most store owners or people looking to start a online store don’t even know what a store feed is or how to create one, basically a store feed is a XML file (don’t need to know what it means) that is automatically generated for your site that allows you to automatically syndicate all your products across product search engines and comparison shopping sites like PriceGrabber.com, BizRate .com, Shopping.com, Yahoo Shopping and much more. This is a untapped way of driving traffic to your website because most store owners are not using this free source traffic simply because they are not aware of it or their site isn’t equipped to create store feeds. BigCommerce automatically generates store feeds for your site that can be submitted to Google Merchant Center as well as other product search engines and comparison shopping sites.

The best thing about the features is that Product results show up above natural search results, so you don’t have to worry about ranking for search terms in the search engines just list your products in the product search section and your good to go. (Example Image below)

Affiliate Tracking System (Affiliate Marketing)

Apart from Reporting and Analytics, this is by far the most important part of your business at least in my business, for those not familiar with Affiliate Marketing it’s an Internet-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliates marketing efforts, usually that affiliate is paid a commission when a sale is made, or if a lead is generated. It is also known a performance based marketing in other words you only pay for results. Imagine if you launched a website and you had a thousand people advertising your site for you for free and the only time you would have to pay those people is when they refer a paying customer, that’s power of affiliate marketing and if you don’t offer  affiliate programs for your store in this day and age then your definitely at a huge disadvantage. The problem here is that most website building solutions do not come with affiliate marketing built in, BigCommerce however comes with a built in affiliate tracking system that allows you to track, manage and pay your affiliates. 75% of my sales come from affiliate referrals, this is not a feature that should be overlooked.

There are a bunch of other great features such as drag and drop layout design, support for 50 plus payment gateways, Google Awords and Yahoo Search Marketing export, Single page checkout and the list goes on, but I’ll leave that up to BigCommerce to list all the features.

Here are A few live sites…..
YuBo
Christine & Taylor
Pro Golfer Gear
Report Collection
Baby and Me Gifts

In Conclusion

Apart from ProStores this is by far one of the best online store builders that I’ve seen on the market, they both have pretty much all of the same feature sets with a few differences, it all depends on what your looking for.

Visit:BigCommerce

The ability to automatically calculate shipping and tax information for various states and carriers such as FedEx and UPS. An easy way to mange your customers, inventory and orders as well as keeping track of your profit and expenses.

To achieve all this you would need a variety of tools and services that could possibly cost you thousands of dollars, and you haven’t even gotten to marketing and promoting your business. These are the obstacles that ecommerce business owners face and the reason why 90 percent of them fail within there first year. This dilemma created a demand for more efficient, less time consuming and a more cost effective ways of getting and online store up and running.

ProStores is one of the the few tools that has attempted to solve this a problem and has succeeded at doing so. ProStores an eBay company is a all in one online store solution that combines all the fundamental tools required to operate an online store and then kicks it into overdrive by offering many more features and add-ons that makes running a online store as simple as writing a email.

So what’s some of the benefits of using a solution like ProStores?

Easy Store Design

lets face most individuals looking to start there own store are not web designers, with ProStores you can choose from more than 150 professionally designed eCommerce templates, easily upload your logo or create one with ProStores built in logo creator. If you do have some design skills you can custom design your store with 3rd party HTML editing tools. You can also have a custom store designed by one ofProStores certified web designers.

Sell on eBay Automatically

Obviously ProStores being an eBay company gives you the ability to sell your products to over 250 million potential customers on the web’s number one marketplace. You can automatically list to eBay fromProStores, everything such as your inventory, shipping and tax cost will be synced with eBay.

Accept Payments

Easily take payments online with web’s leading payment processors such as PayPal (Also a eBay company), Authorize.net, Quick Books, Link Point and more.

Automatic Search Engine Optimization

By using ProStores you can rank higher in search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN with the use of search engine friendly URLs that are automatically tuned for the best search engine performance. Automatic site map creation and customizable product keywords.

Quick Listings on Shopping Sites

ProStores will automatcially submit your products to Google Base which is a free service that can quickly drive drive targeted consumers to your website. They also provide tools for you to submit your products to the three major shopping comparison search engines Shopping.com^®, Yahoo! Shopping^®, and Shopzilla^®.

Who is ProStores Mostly Suited For?

ProStores is suitable for both small to mid sized busniesses whether your selling a few hundred products or a hundred thousand products, ProStores can scale to meet your needs.

Screenshot of few different stores powered by ProStores.

[View with PicLens]

In Conclusion

Now more than ever business owners are looking for the most cost effective ways to build an online business and get the biggest bang for there buck,ProStores breaks down most of the walls you will run into when running your online business and provides the service at a fraction of the cost if you were to do it by other means. Of course there is no truly end all be all solution for running a business but you definitely benefit from starting out down the path with the least amount of resistance.

Check out the service at ProStores

Sooner or later, someone’s going to type your name into a search engine. What do you want them to find? Nothing? These are people who want to find you, and if you don’t have a website then you’re letting them down – they expect you to be online. For many people, you might as well not exist if you can’t be found with a search engine. Not having a website is like not bothering to get listed in the phone book. Whether it’s customers or old school friends you’re hoping for, very few people are going to find you if you aren’t online.

2. Websites Cost Next to Nothing.

Once, it cost a lot to run a website – but those days are long gone. There are ‘pay as you go’ services out there now charging as little as $1 per gigabyte of bandwidth. If you’re sensible about the size of your pages, that dollar could last you a whole month, or even longer! If you don’t want to pay for design, it’s never been simpler to do it yourself, or find free software to do it for you. Really, it’s never been cheaper to have a website than it is today.

3. Websites are Great Advertising.

Whatever you’re advertising – your services, your products, or just yourself – a website is a great way to do it. Every other kind of advertising going costs a premium, especially if you want to target a specific kind of person, and there’s no guarantee that they’re paying attention. Websites are like brochures that are free to reproduce, interactive, and quickly distributed to people who are already looking for them. No advertising medium even comes close to the ease-of-use and effectiveness of a website.

4. A Website is a Worldwide Presence.

On the web, it doesn’t matter whether someone is next door to you or on the other side of the world – they can see your website just the same as anyone else can, at no extra cost to you or to them. Phone and post both cost enormous amounts long-distance, but a website lets you send information anywhere without any extra effort or expense. You can make friends and contacts in places you’ve never been and will never go – suddenly, working globally is no more effort than working locally.

5. Your Website Can Make You Money.

There’s a lot of money on the web, and it’s not hard to get some – the longer you’re online for, the bigger your share can get. If you have something to sell, you can sell it worldwide, thanks to credit cards. Doing business online eliminates almost every overhead there is: all you need to do is have the goods. If you’ve written something useful, you can put it out there with a few ads. You won’t get rich overnight, but you can set up a steady trickle of income… and there’s no limit to the number of trickles you can set up.

6. Your Website Can Save You Time.

Giving out information takes time, whether it’s on the phone, or in brochures, or even if it’s just emailing your family. Websites are designed to save you time. All your family and friends can read your online diary (known as a weblogs), but you only had to write it once. Customers can see your whole product catalogue without ever needing to talk to you or visit you. This is the power of the web: things on it are written only once, but can be downloaded endlessly – a good website runs itself, and keeps being useful to people for much longer than you’d expect.