Enough fence sitting. .

Rupert

Rupert

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Nov 9, 2010
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I've got a site done up at 360Health | Fitness Programs & Strategies for a Healthy Body & Healthy Lifestyle.

It is setup as a membership site - and been sitting for approx a year now. (ton of stuff happened last year so i couldn't spend the time necessary to help it grow)

I have a shit-ton of content behind the scenes (after you sign up)

Have not had a paying member sign up yet - and I am unsure whether my content is not interesting - not enough value to sign up - or if I haven't adequately marketed the site. (I've had approx 30 people sign up, to drop off when they see you had to pay - average 4 uniques per day)

My question is - what would you do?

Get traffic to the site to really get a better gauge on conversions - and push the membership aspect?

Open up the site - remove paid membership (still have to sign-up as a member, but membership would be free) and post all my content. (would help my search ranking - and could monetize the site later - ads/affiliates. . etc)

Not really sure where to go from here. . .

Thanks for lookin and providing feedback.
 


Sorry my bad - I work as a project manager full time 45 hours a week standard jawb for an online firm - been doing that for 4 years (different companies - all online) - I had another profile on Wicked Fire - which was my full name - recently opened this account as I didn't want to use that uname anymore (wasn't banned or anything).

Been trying different things to setup some passive online income - affiliate marketing, niche marketing.

Then focused on this site.

Any advice would be hugely appreciated.
 
If you click on the forums it looks like every area has zero posts. Is there actual content, can you not see the post counts until you pay for a membership? Why would I pay money to join an empty forum?

$3 bucks a month may seem to you like it's cheap enough to get people to try it with little risk but to me it just tells me that you don't value your content and community very much, I wouldn't expect to get much benefit out of joining. Raise your prices, or at the very least split test different membership amounts.
 
Build it and they will come, does not apply online.

Your focus should be on marketing, not good content, that can come later.
 
justo-thanks man - I actually just lowered the costs to see if conversions would change - i had it higher ($15/m & $30 for 3/m) - Also - paying for the membership isn't just for the forum - there is a ton of similar to the main pages of content:
360Health | Member Benefits: Access to Fitness Information, Health Forums, Nutrition & Circuit Training.

LittleMike - thanks for the advice - sort of what I was thinking. Do you think I should take away the membership fee all together and get some conversations going in the forum? - Could then give all existing members a lifetime membership . . and charge a fee to new members. . .
 
Arrrite Rupert,

My advice.........your home page is cluttered, cant understand what the site is about and dont wana read it either coz the font color does not appeal to me. For some reason the green hurts my eyes. The content has to be unique. Check into that. make sure you have image alt references showing your members what the site is about. As I see it, you have a lot banking on the forums, so you need to divert people from your home page to your forums by showing them what they can do here. have a section on your home showcasing the forum. if you are using vbullletin a widget will be perfect. the forum in bland and does not appeal to me again. the green and blue does not go well at all. To top it off, the blue is pale. Hope you can fidget with stylevars or something to get the colors to compliment each other.

you forum needs to get populated. Buy a database from someone and when you do tell me from who you got it from. I need one myself. once the database is populated with a small sized counts, start posting and talking to yourself. If you have cash to spend, pay someone to make forum posts.

Make circuits your blog so that you can keep updating your workout regimes. diet and nutri is ok. But then again, if you are looking to update it, i would advise you to put it under the blog. the howto section is so screwed up. Either you put that under a blog or you really need to customize the fonts and image placing.

There are a plethora of health forums around the web. So what makes yours unique? It's your Members Services section right? So make sure you showcase the benefits well.
My two cents; spruce up the design. Add db entires, customize the forums and showcase the services. Also, since its about health and stuff, best bet would be to make up a Dr. KnowItAll and put him up under a tab called professional advice. People love getting free health advice. Give it to them from a nice doc that you an conjure up in your imagination. showcase him with a scrub or something and it would not hurt to add some nice slim looking girls and guys to get people motivated. Again, do not forget, your home page needs to be tip top. I am myself overweight and if I cant like the appeal i get, theres no chance i am getting into the forums. I like the footer for newsletters and more.
 
Thanks guys.

Justo - I had the membership at 15/m and 30/3m and nothin moved - so I reduced it to see what would happen.

Little Mike - thanks that is what I was thinkin . . .

Thanks Austin - all really great advice. Probably should look for a designer to critique the pages - and make some suggestions in what colors would work. I think I'm going to remove the "how-to" all together.

What I'm hearing is that you all think the forums page is the most important aspect - and that is where I should be driving people. (As well as populate it so there seems to be some action)
 
*Conversions.

Priority #1 is money right? Objective? Money. Before you make money you need a sequence and you need hardcore testing. Your first draft(s) will rarely if ever be winners, heck you don't even know if you 'can' convert this yet. It might NEVER make a sale tbh as it's a retardedly hard niche, where paying for memberships/monthly is not going to happen until you have momentum going.

I'd drop the price to FREE for now to build good rep, get users to generate content on the forum, build some brand awareness.

When ready, introduce a one time fee at a tiny low cost and do some adwords for targeted uniques to see if you can convert it on a one time fee. If you can, raise the price a bit until you go too high and need to bring it back down. Now you'll know your one time fee value (and you tweaked/split tested your page some more so you're maximized too).

Once you're conversion mastered on a one time - consider your monthly or a few tiers for discounts for the year/semi-annual etc.

Consider most membership retention online is low (I'll guess 2-4months tops for your site), so figure out that value, your margins for affiliates if that applies, and monetize the customers worth without going way over and missing your whole mark.

My honest advice: Use it as practice, drop the price to a one time fee of $7 for life, get 100 or so sales fast with paid traffic, and list it on flippa to take back your investment +profit so you can start over with an easier niche/more direct sales approach vs. waiting on a brand/forum to be matured.
 
Thank you so much for all of your advice. I'm going to stick with it. Just need to clean it up - and start getting more traffic to monitor conversions.

Really appreciate it - any more advice is very much valued.
 
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