To earn long-term residual income from your membership site, you must enlist members who will remain with you for the long-haul.  It is then necessary to convince people that your membership site is worth joining.  The means for doing this, is a convincing sales letter that lays out the benefits of joining your site.

When selling a product or enlisting members offline people can see one another face-to-face and ask direct questions, online selling involves a sales letter that grabs the readers attention, then presents the benefits (remember, BENEFITS, not features!) of your offer.  You will probably never see the faces of your potential customers, so your sales letter needs to be compelling enough that they will be anxiuos to purchase access and set up a subscription.

Writing sales copy is not always easy, even for people who are skilled at it, it may often take many hours to come up with certain parts of a really good sales letter, especially the headline and captions.  Sales letter copywriting takes much practice and experience with your target market. There are some well-established techniques available through ebooks and other online and offline sources, read and practice, rinse and repeat, and you will become proficient.  This does sound like a lot of time and effort is necessary. Well, it is, however, the alternative is paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars for an experienced copywriter to write your sales page.

Consider this when writing your next sales letter:  You should summarize the main points of your sales letter using your headline, subheads, and P.S.’s.  The reason for this? Many people will not read websites word-for-word; are too busy or whatever to get all the way through a lengthy sales letter.  But if you are able to summarize the main points, they may  be able to scan through the sales letter and still grasp the offer you are making and the value you are offering to them.

With that being said, I guess it begs the next question: “Should my sales letter be long or short?”

This debate, on how long the sales copy should be has raged for decades.  There are almost as many answers as there are Internet marketers.  One school of thought suggests that the copy should be longer because it will provide more information and clarify the benefits of your offer.  Others suggest keeping it as short as possible to avoid boring or overwhelming your visitors.

However, many experts seem to agree that the length of the sales copy should have some correlation to the price of your offer.  For example, a low-cost offer would call for a shorter sales letter, and would be more effective than a long sales letter.  Conversely, a higher-priced item would require a longer sales letter to be effective, since it would provide more information and explaination of benefits.

When preparing for membership sites, many, though not all, charge a modest amount for access – usually $19-$39/month.  The tricky part with membership sites is the recurring fee, which is not the case for most digital products like ebooks, software products, and scripts.

It is very likely that your membership site will offer much value and numerous benefits to your prospective members, therefore,it would be best to write a longer sales letter to clarify exactly what benefits and what value your prospects will receive when they sign up for your site.  This letter does not have to be a novel, however, you will need to give a detailed description of how the features of your membership site are going to benefit the person when they join your site.  Don’t forget to include things like:

* Learning information that will raise their business’ bottom line
* Providing new products that can be used to add additional income to their business
* Gaining valuable knowledge from others in their niche, etc.

For more information on writing convincing sales copy for your membership sites, check out “Membership Sites Made Easy: How to Cash In On Your Own Membership Site.”