Home | Business | Small Business
Every human being on this planet has the potential to be wealthy. Bar none! That's a pretty bold statement, but it's true. You can create your own financially independent lifestyle in a multitude of ways. Today, we'll look at recurring income as your wealth creation vehicle. Recurring income is money that flows into your bank account on a regular basis. Some of the common business models that take advantage of recurring income include subscriptions and membership fees. The most common recurring online plans pay out on a monthly basis. Some pay out on an annual or bi-annual schedule, depending on the payment plan. Many independently wealthy people have developed their empires using these business models. Subscriptions and Membership Fees Subscriptions and membership fees work in a similar fashion. The subscriber or member is granted access to a product or service in exchange for a regular recurring payment. This business model guarantees the subscriber/member continued service and guarantees the provider a locked in, guaranteed income. But there are pitfalls. If you're thinking about creating a recurring billing product, you could be in for a wild ride. The following case study is the real life journey that I took, while creating The Business Professional Private Members' Site. CASE STUDY: The Business Professional Private Membership Website President and CEO: Terry Telford Vice President: Edwin Ryan Development Start Date: December 15, 2003 Website Launch Date: May, 1, 2004 In the research phase, I decided to keep everything in-house except for the payment processing. This gave me greater control over the entire process, but created a lot more work in the beginning. The basic modules that needed to snap together and make the membership area run, were: 1. Membership software to create logins and passwords 2. Affiliate software to track affiliate sales and commissions 3. Autoresponder 4. Payment Processor Discovering what software to use was a matter of trial and error, but I finally ended up choosing: 1. Membership Manager from GroundBreak 2. Ultimate Affiliate Manager to handle the affiliate functions 3. Autoreponse Plus for the autoresponder software 4. PayPal / 2CheckOut to process recurring payments The next step was to have a programmer connect the dots and make all three programs play nicely together. This was the step where I realized I'd done everything backwards. Instead of finding the software and then the programmer, I should have found the programmer and let him decide how to create the system. I was now at a fork in the road. Do I scrap the software that I already purchased and start from ground zero, or do I invest in a programmer to attempt to make all the software play together. To make a long story short, I decided on option two and paid a programmer a small fortune to attempt the impossible. In the end, The Business Professional works 90% on autopilot and 10% on manual. It was a long and costly process, but a fantastic learning experience. And the adventure was far from over. Now I had a cool Private Membership site, with a $5,762 price tag. Next, I had to fill it with content. It took another two months to top up the content and get things rolling. Fast forward to today. Challenge: Both Edwin and I are spending 80% of our time marketing The Business Professional and don't have enough time to build solid content into the member's area. Solution: Outsource the marketing to a handful of skilled entrepreneurs, so we can focus on upgrading the member's area. The marketers collect and keep 100% of the membership fees, and we get a continual stream of new members who order our products and services. This cooperative business model builds a stronger, more profitable business for everyone. Summary: Generating a monthly recurring income by building a membership website is a great concept. In practical terms, it's a costly way to learn the ropes. My recommendation to anyone who is considering a recurring monthly income is, start out promoting an existing product or service. You'll save a lot of time and energy and can start generating a profit, your first month in business. Without expenses, it's all profit :)
Information and Articles: http://www.mastersmba.com
Providing Information on various topics, please browse our other Articles for more informative resources, we house information on every topic imaginable so regardless of your needs you can be assured to find the answer here. If you wish to reprint this on your own website, simply click the "Web Version" in the right menu, and you are presented with a pre-formatted document to use.
A lot of the information is written by the Master Article team, and published exclusively on the MastersMBA.com website, and we do our best to research all information to ensure it's as accurate as possible. However at times we also publish documents given to us by other sources, we do examine these documents to ensure they are as accurate and correct as possible however at times they discuss highly specialized fields making it hard to authenticate the validity of every fact in the document. These are written by specialists in their respective fields, and we do trust their integrity and judgment however it's always a good idea when doing any research to consult a number of sources and form your own conclusion based on a number of view points.
