Community Zen

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The moral of the story is: Use your connections wisely. If you are running an online membership website, you have truly an endless supply of resources right at your fingertips. All of these members have the potential to recruit other new members, as well as help you keep your current members, and even encourage those current members to upgrade membership or simply become more active in their current membership capacities. This is such a simple concept, but one that many owners of membership websites overlook, which may cost them big money in the long run.

Your current members can be worth their weight in gold, if you use these resources wisely. Active and lively members stimulate interesting discussions in forums, inspire you to make adjustments and changes in your membership site, and provide you with invaluable advertising. Keeping those members happy can be a make-or-break difference for your business. They are paying you, after all!! Try to not overlook that little tidbit…

There’s always more than meets the eye when you are running an online business. Finding successful mentors, gurus, or whatever you want to call the people you choose to trust and turn to for advice, is critically important to your success. Jason James outlines his own personal rags-to-riches story on his blog and he offers some practical tips on how he attracts and retains his members. Using simple math, he shows you how much money you can make, but it will depend on your membership!

Inspire your members with friendly competitions (offer simple little prizes to keep them interested), begin lively discussions in your forums, provide a personal “tell-all” that (supposedly) exposes all of your secrets to success, and provide real, accessible, and practical advice and relevant links or pointers to help your members be more successful. Don’t compete directly with your members—remember, it’s already pretty likely that you are more way successful than they are, otherwise they wouldn’t be coming to you for advice. There is more than enough business on the Internet to support all of us…..

Do you have tips or tricks for using your membership to recruit and retain your members?

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