Too Many Ideas? Drain the Website Swamp and Don’t Make Your Site Fancy Until Tomorrow

Can you relate to having "too many ideas" and you're not sure if any are any good?

Maybe you've done the legwork for this website or that website... registered some domain names, setup an empty WordPress blog that will "one day" hold your membership site... maybe you've bought some resale rights content...

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Maybe you've recorded some interviews, videos, audios, or written some sort of report down that you one day want to put into a membership site... a site where someone pays you to get access.

And then what happened? Life got in the way, right?

Something came across that was more urgent and you had to switch gears to make money now...

Or you came across something more exciting and you said... I'll put my current hopes and dreams on the "back burner" to try something else...

I'm not sure about your current situation, but many people that are currently struggling with making money and creating a profitable membership site have this problem:

-- not enough time, too distracted, too overwhelmed, too stressed out
-- confusion about what to do next or what to "click" and generally getting FRUSTRATED with websites in general

And even worse, the "sting" every time you check your internet marketing business on your phone or your computer. I'm sure you know what the sting is:

1. there's a little of bit of that sting or that anxiety when you check your email, stats and sales and the number is either at zero or you wish it was way higher
2. another bill for that web host, a quick charge for those handful of domain names you didn't use... should I continue renewing those domain names every year or cut some of them loose? And then what was I paying that yearly domain fee for?
3. thinking about or browsing through the massive clutter of half finished projects, ideas, websites, and files... just a huge mess... sting
4. wondering if this will all be worth it and feeling the "lifetime cost" of all the little e-books and things continues to pile up and sting...

Can I tell you what my personal opinion is (which you can say is either right or wrong) about you, your upcoming membership site, and the future of you and your online business?

You may have heard that you should narrow your focus down to just one website at a time, dedicate X days or X hours to getting it done...

Maybe you've also heard that you should make the simplest, ugliest, most no-frills site as possible that DOES have a buy button, so you can get just one member and go from there...

And... what is/was very reassuring to me is that after you FINISH that first money making site (FINISH meaning you get one single paying member) then not only does it become a lot easier to make your next site (because you've done it before), it's actually more fun because you now know this money making thing "works" and isn't just a hobby...

So can I tell you what I "think" you should do today?

Unsolicited Piece of Advice #1: Drain the Website Swamp

Your previous websites, business expenses, half finished sites, etc. don't matter. If you have a mess of a folder, a mess of 10 half finished sites and you aren't making progress on any of them, isn't it time to clean up the mess and drain that huge "swamp" of stuff? Get some simplicity, clarity, focus?

I'm no neat-freak, but if I sit down on the couch to relax and there's papers or "stuff" on the counter, I get huge amounts of anxiety... enough where I can't calm down and I can't think... not a good mental place to be. I'm the same way with any clutter on my desk OR if I have a ton of files on my desktop OR a ton of dangling unfinished projects...

Put it all away. You can bring "the mess" back to the forefront after completing just one membership site... so how do you do that?

Unsolicited Piece of Advice #2: Make it Pretty and Perfect "Tomorrow"

Priorities. What do you need in order to take payments online?

• a domain name (.com name such as membershipcube.com that people can type in to find your site)
• a website and landing page (a simple sales letter, we include Paper Template in our Membership Cube course)
• a way to take payments (we use PayPal and if you want something fanicer, switch out that piece later)
• a membership site to take payments, control access and provide content (PDFs, videos) -- we provide this in Membership Cube as well

What about... 1-click upsells? Downsells and OTO Fancy graphics? Professional videos? An affiliate contest on social media? Those are nice to haves and not must-haves...

Here's what I think... setup your membership site today with Membership Cube (we provide the 1-click template so it's done in seconds) and don't worry about that fancy stuff until "tomorrow"... just get that functioning membership site completed today.

Your membership site is done today in one click and by the time tomorrow rolls around, it will be "today" again and time to focus on the important stuff... filling up the membership site with content in a day (module two) -- and you can save the fancy graphics and everything until "tomorrow" (which is still a day away at that point)...

Day three... you could jump into module three of Membership Cube which is the one to beef up your sales letter and make it easy for others to join your site -- but guess what? Fancy graphics and procrastination land is still "tomorrow" at that point...

Unsolicited Piece of Advice #3: Don't Plan, Course Correct

Finally, many people think they need a master plan of some kind. They can't make membership site #1 because they want to know what membership site #10 is going to be...

If that has been your way of thinking up until now, how has that been working out for you?
Sure seems like a recipe for stress and being spread too thin, if you ask me.

The problem with mapping out your entire life is that the sales and feedback you get from the mini-launch of your next membership site will completely change the trajectory of your internet business moving forward.

For example, you might setup that quick golfing membership site and it leads to a couple high ticket coaching clients that wouldn't have paid you unless they find you through that single-payment training course they bought from you (membership site) first...

Or maybe you whip up a single-payment quick weight loss membership site and it leads to you setting up some sort of monthly auto-ship service where you mail your members a bottle of pills or a some sort of algae liquid through the mail. You wouldn't have scaled your business to that point unless you had that validation -- sales of the weight loss course to prove that your idea works. Stepping stones.

Perhaps you create a training course about drone flying and you realize that there is a huge demand for an additional membership course about drone racing. Your "first wave" of members actually ask you to create something for round two, and they buy it.

What Your (Attainable) Goal Needs to Be

It's good to have a goal, but if you don't have cashflow in your business, your goal is very simple: to just make one sale of ANYTHING, even something that's 10 or 100 bucks. Once you see how easy that is (and maybe you've been making it too complicated without even realizing it) you might say:

• that was fun, I want to do it again
• I want to scale my business so the next site makes even more money
• this small success gives me an idea for the next thing that I wouldn't have thought of otherwise
• I finally see the value in focusing and finishing what I start as opposed to being spread too thin or spinning my wheels

There definitely is value to trying out a couple of things (think of it as "career day" or that "starter income") and then look back and think... did I enjoy that? Did I make enough money and if not, what small steps will I take so that not only make more money, but I generate that doing the things I enjoy doing?

To make sure you're on the right track,
look BACK at your past mistakes
in addition to looking FORWARD
so that you don't continue making the same mistakes.

Setup a membership site quickly so that your thinking doesn't have time to get in the way of you taking action. Making money is more important than being 100% perfect and planned out, and this is the path you can jump on right now to flesh out your idea, click a button and set it up using our template, and have a site ready to take orders... not in three months from now, not in three weeks from now, TODAY:

Claim Your Access to "Membership Cube"
and Get All The Training, Tools and Templates
to Create a Membership Site All in One Place

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Filed in: Archive 1: 2012-2016 • Membership Sites • Mindset