Case Study: $15,000 Cash for Content not Yet Created

Okay, this case study is a little strange because I’m basically going to combine two case studies into one.

That is, I’m going to take the best of each of the two case studies, throw out what didn’t work well and show you how you can maximize your own earnings with your own PLR site.

I don’t mean a site that you build using PLR materials – this is a site that sells a monthly membership to online marketers that allows them to access and use the PLR materials you supply.

In our first case study, Mark hired someone to create internet marketing type PLR packages each month. Then he sold exactly 100 memberships to get this PLR. The beauty of his plan was that only 100 members would have the PLR materials and they wouldn’t have to worry about saturation. Because of this, those initial 100 memberships at $29 each sold out within a couple of hours.

But here was the problem… it was capped at 100 members. The very thing that made it easy to sell was also the thing that limited how much Mark would earn each month.

When someone dropped out of the membership, he alerted his wait list to see if someone else wanted to join. But again, he could never have more than 100 members at any one time.

That’s when Mark got creative: He started building small websites that consisted of a landing page, a lead magnet and a main website that promoted ClickBank affiliate links.

Each month he would build five of these, all different but all using the same PLR materials from that month.

Some of the materials were used for the lead magnet, some for the main website, and the ClickBank promotions were for related products.

Then he sold each of these five websites, each on its own unique URL.

This little step more than doubled his income, earning him about $5000 a month after the expense of getting his PLR materials written.

Enter Susan. She, too, built a PLR membership site, but her niche was self-improvement. And rather than limit the number of memberships she sold, she instead made her members “qualify”. She did this by having them do one of two things: They could provide the URL of their self-improvement or coaching website or social media page. If they didn’t yet have a site, they could provide their plan for building their self-improvement or coaching business (20-50 words) and certify they would be using the materials to help others.

The idea was that you had to be a self-improvement or coaching professional to qualify, but the fact was almost anyone could pass the test.

Now Susan could sell as many memberships as she liked. And in fact she provided a private Facebook Page for members-only where they could meet, strategize and work together on their own projects. A lot of joint ventures came out of that FB Page. And the best part was, the more people who joined, the more potential JV partners there were.

Susan charges $47 a month for her membership. And because people must qualify, they stay for longer and seem to appreciate the membership more.

Both Mark and Susan promote other products inside their membership area. These are products that are extremely helpful as well as being timeless. No junk is promoted inside the memberships because neither marketer wants to ruin their reputation with their members.

Susan has a unique twist on this: Every six months she has an extra PLR package created. This package is given for free to everyone who has made a purchase from inside the membership site, or they can buy it for $47. This encourages members to buy something in addition to the membership every six months.

Susan also sells this package on its own as a stand-alone PLR package. Her upsell? Of course, it’s the self-improvement PLR membership.

Mark and Susan also sell past packages to new members. When someone new joins the membership, they are offered the chance to purchase previous months’ PLR packages. Susan offers every package ever created for the membership, either sold separately or as one big discounted package. Mark, on the other hand, only sells packages that are at least six months old because of his rule of limiting the number of members he can have. It wouldn’t seem right to him to sell last month’s package to the 100 active members last month AND to 10 new members this month.

By now you’re coming to the same conclusion I reached… limiting the number of members is a BAD idea. A possible exception might be if you charge a LOT of money. But at $27 a month, you really don’t want to have membership limits, even if it does make it easier to sell out.

One more thing… Susan does not allow members to leave and then come back again at a later date. She makes it perfectly clear that if someone resigns a membership, they are gone forever. If you think about it, this makes good sense. Very few people in a membership will leave and then later want to come back. By telling them they don’t have this option, it makes members want to stay rather than permanently losing out.

If someone is having financial difficulty, rather than make them leave she will give them a free month or two to tide them over. This might sound counter-intuitive but it makes for incredibly strong good will. She’s had members who asked to be comped for a month or two who subsequently stayed with her for another year or two after that period. And she’s even had a few pay her for the months she comped because they were grateful for her generosity.

You could say she treats her members like family and it really pays off.

Now here’s what Mark did one day when he was desperate for money: He was in the middle of buying a house and realized things would go a lot smoother if he had another $10,000 for his down payment. The problem was, he needed this money right away.

So he mailed out to every single past member of his membership site and offered them a full year of membership for just $99. A surprisingly large percentage of those past members said yes to the offer.

Then he mailed to his list and gave them the same offer, resulting in even more sales and close to $15,000 in his pocket.

Yes, I know what you’re thinking… what about his limit of 100 members? He worked so hard not to violate that rule, and then he went and more than doubled his members by offering the annual option.

I’m not going to judge – I just report. Again, maybe it’s not the best thing long term to say you’re going to limit the number of members you have for your membership.

If you’re wondering what sort of PLR you would need to create or have someone else create for your site, here’s my advice on that point:

Watch what is selling right now in your niche. What’s hot? What is it that everyone is talking about? Then have a complete package built around that topic including product, promotional emails and ads, sales letter and so forth. Make the quality such that you would have no trouble selling it to the end user.

In fact, a great secret to selling any PLR is to first sell it to the end user to PROVE that its good enough to sell.

Imagine if you can promote your PLR membership site by stating that you sold the very products in the site and here’s your conversion rate and here’s your profit and here’s when you sold it.

You could update your sales letter each month with the new PLR product and stats for that month. And yes, selling your PLR to end users is just one more stream of income from your PLR membership site.

Here one more trick that Mark used to add another income stream and better retain his members: He offered STEEP discounts on products to his members. He simply contacted product owners of relevant, high priced products and asked if he could negotiate a deal for 20 of his members. These are products that originally sold for $200 to $3000.

He offered a discount of 50% to 90% off, but only for the first 20 buyers. Believe it or not, this scarcity technique was highly effective and he usually sold all 20 copies to his membership of 100.

Here’s an example of something he sold recently: It was a $1000 product that he offered to his members at an 80% discount, bringing it down to $200. 50% commission meant he earned $100 per sale, times 20 sales and that’s an extra $2000.

PLR is alive and well and selling like gangbusters. And with a little planning you too can have your own PLR membership site with potentially several streams of income.