The holy grail of an online business is a continuity program. According to Wikipedia, a continuity program is a company’s sales offer where a buyer/consumer is agreeing to receive merchandise or services automatically at regular intervals (often monthly), without advance notice, until they cancel.
A similar form of this is a subscription site like Third Tribe Marketing (affiliate link). I pay a monthly fee to access the myriad of resources within the password-protected website. A recent WebWire article, Membership Sites: A Growing Buzz in Internet Marketing, calls subscription sites like this the “final frontier of online marketing”:
Every month, a few leading online marketers have been pulling in a substantial and consistent income from online membership sites…There has been a slow yet steady buzz developing in the Internet marketing community recently about membership sites. These websites range from how-to sites, to dating sites, to professional networking sites that charge a fee…One similarity that these membership sites have in common is their ability to produce for their owners a relatively passive stream of income.
So you have two options: build a continuity program or a subscription site. The continuity program really only requires a simple web presence; that online shingle that says you’re open for business. If you opt to create a membership site, but don’t have the skills to build it yourself, it may be easier than you think to make it happen.
Regardless of which way you go, you can create a reliable, steady stream of income using this strategy. The caveat here is that once you’ve built it, you have to know how to market it. That’s why I recommend Third Tribe Marketing. Between the online seminars, Q&A calls and discussion forums, you’ll learn from other experts in the field how to effectively market your online business or program.
What am I going to build? I’m working on a plan for a continuity program, and as this website evolves you’ll find details here. I also have an idea for a membership site, but like many of you, I don’t have the skills to build such a complex site. So I’ll be looking for someone to partner with.
What about you?
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