MembershipSiteAdvisor.com

12/12: Boost membership site traffic using an “Authority Site”

There's a problem with membership sites – paid content can't be shared. Apart from paying members, no one gets to read your great content. Now that's the purpose of a paid membership site, charging people to read your content. However, that doesn't help when you craft a brilliant article that should go viral.

Even if a member wants to pass on your content to a friend, he can't – the information is protected. But there is a simple solution to this problem. And the solution isn't about putting a few free sample articles on your public pages. That helps, but it's not exactly a streamlined viral vehicle. We'll give you the solution in a minute. But first...

More and more companies will need to rely on viral marketing, in some form or another. Social media sites are becoming the new way to find out information about products and other sites. In fact, some have suggested they will supercede search engines as the preferred method of finding content. I disagree, but social sites, including niche blogs have become major sources of traffic.

Most of you will be familiar with viral marketing – we've even preached it in the past. But there are some new rules to add to the mix, and these rules will make your viral marketing content even more viral.

Back to our first problem – paid content can't be shared. There is a solution to this problem. Some of it (summaries) can be shared. In order to do this, the right vehicle has to be set up. That vehicle is called an “Authority Site.” You may have heard of this term before, however many people don't know how to set one up for the purpose of generating viral traffic. Secondly, they're not sure how to direct this traffic to another site or product (for example, a membership site.).

What is an Authority Site?

Ask different people and you'll get different answers. But in our example we've termed an “authority site” as a site that provides frequent high quality content within a specific niche or industry. Sounds a lot like a membership site, except this is a free site.

Why set up an Authority Site?

Below are the main reasons why it's so important to start using authority sites as part of your traffic generating strategy.

1. Make your authority site a blog: You'll want bloggers to link to your authority site. Bloggers are a powerful force... and guess what, they normally don't like to send their readers to a paid membership site (unless you've struck up a joint venture deal – even then it normally needs to be something free and not directly to your membership site). However, blog owners like to send their readers to other blogs. So step 1, make your authority site a blog/news site.


2. Create a following on other blogs and lead them back to your blog: You can create a following from other blogs and social sites and it's easier to get them onto your blog than it is a paid membership site. Having a blog isn't considered as “trying to sell” to other readers. However, you still need to use caution – you can't just advertise your blog on another blog. You have to participate and provide information of value on other blogs.


3. Content is more likely to go viral if it's not on a commerced based site: Why have a separate domain and not just make the authority site part of your membership site? Because people are less likely to pass something onto a friend if there is a sales pitch included (Entertainment products such as movies and video games are the exception to the rule). However, if a reader considers a site to be “sales pitch free” then the content is far more likely to go viral, which is why bloggers are happy to recommend other blogs. Thereby creating more dynamic traffic.


4. Higher search engine rankings and page ranks: Due to having a content rich site and other sites linking to your content, your authority site also has a high chance of ranking well in the search engines.


5. Create a community: Membership sites should have their own community, but once again – this is only open to paid members. What about non-members. Setting up your authority site allows you to create a community environment that's open to the public.

Will an authority site reduce your number of paid subscribers?

The above question is a common concern for many. But the interesting thing is, the reverse of this is true. When readers have the chance to sample your free content, and they're impressed by it, they're far more likely to perceive your paid content as even more valuable. As mentioned in one of our video podcasts “let your content do the selling – not you”

What kind of content should you provide on your authority site?

Obviously you can't provide the exact same content on your free site as you do in your paid members area. That wouldn't be fair to your paying subscribers and they probably wouldn't stay long once they find out they can get it for free on your other site. So what exactly should you provide? We've broken it down into 3 sections:

1. Provide summary content (or less in depth) information taken from your members area. Similar to what we provide on our blog at www.MembershipSiteAdvisor.com/blog


2. Every now and then give some of your paid content away for free. We've done this with some of our videos and it's worked very well in bringing new traffic and paid subscribers. New visitors see the video, they like what they see and decide to sign up for our paid content.


3. Get personal. Your authority site allows you to be a little more casual. For example you can add “off track” (unrelated information) on your authority site. On our blog we added some of our vacation photos and it received more hits than some of our top articles. When you have a blog style authority site, it gives you much more freedom to play, and your audience usually loves it.

Finally, if you don't create an authority site, someone else is likely to do the job for you.

How to set up an authority site

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Best regards,
Ansel Gough
www.MembershipSiteAdvisor.com