Start a Discount Membership Club Business

1. You are your own boss.
2. A significant ROI on a small investment
3. The business is like an annuity with annual membership renewals.
4. Growth takes on a life of its own without your help
5. Its fun.

1. A place to work - home or office
2. A computer.
3. A web site with all the bells and whistles
4. An eMarketing capability
5. A Custom designed Membership Card
6. A Plastic Card Printer and Software
7. Business Cards
8. Marketing Brochures
9. A print directory to accompany your membership cards.
10. A membership in a few business organizations

Start with the population you are going to serve. In my case it was the Coachella Valley (Palm Springs Desert Area) 7 cities with a total population of about 350,000

Now, compare the start up cost of the 10 points of investment to your potential annual income.

Let's say you sell memberships to a mere 5% of your population at a profit of $10 per membership.

Then you sell bulk memberships to the schools, colleges, charities and big business employers and get another ten or twenty thousand members at a profit of $3.00 per membership.

Then you sell advertising in your first directory when you reach the goal of having at least 150 merchant partners.

Then you sell advertising space in each of the bi-weekly new merchant listings in the eBroadcast you make to your members and other databases in your war chest.

Then you add the number of memberships that will be sold each time you make a new eBroadcast by putting a "Membership Purchase" button on the page and adding the "forward to a friend" viral marketing tool in each email sent.

Then you market to real estate companies, mortgage brokers, banks, newspapers, radio and television stations and other service industries who would like to give a membership as an incentive gift or reward to valued customers.

That's the basic idea. You do the math. Then take it the bank.

When your membership business is off the ground and humming sweetly, you may start saying to yourself - as I did, "Should I be expanding this operation beyond the Coachella Valley?"

For me, it's too much work. (I've retired twice, remember?) But it's a good idea, so good in fact that there's a guy here in the valley that made me an offer I couldn't refuse. In our case he saw another potential.

The Coachella Valley - in addition to a static population of about 350,000 - brings in another 3,000,000 visitor's per year. The guy who purchased my discount card operation is now marketing a visitor's card. And, since our Valley is a visitor destination he sees real expansion possibilities to other destination cities. When - and if - he goes over the hill to San Diego his membership club automatically has a discount destination with over 250 merchant partners already in place in Palm Springs. If he does this, it won't be long before the San Diego operation becomes a destination for the Palm Springs membership. Then if he took it to Phoenix? Las Vegas?

The word is "Exponential Growth." All you need is energy and desire. Right now, I am just pleased as punch to be offering our web hosted software to entrepreneurs who want to get into the Discount Membership Club business.

You can keep your day job and build the business at the same time. (I still play quite a bit of golf) or you can go full tilt starting day one. Your choice.

If you have the funds to keep the groceries on the table for six to nine months, then go for it. If you don't, then take it a step at a time.

You can choose to keep the business local or expand it across the entire country - your choice. It's just a matter of how hard you want to work and how big you want to be.

The Discount Membership Club business is perfect for a one man operation. Even better for a husband wife team. Or you can start big with a full blown sales and marketing department. Which ever way you choose to start, the up side is that you won't need a computer code genius to do it if you use SonicMemberSystem.

What ever way you choose to open the doors to your membership discount business, if you build it, they will come - especially if it's free.

All you have to do is let your future merchant partners know it's there. And that's not hard to do if you put your hands on the right tools.

Five Steps to Startup

1. Get your website and eMarketing tools in place.
2. Get your business card printed.
3. Join your local chambers of commerce and a business networking group or two.

Get to know the merchants in town, if you don't already, and talk up your business, which at this time is only a very nice web site waiting for some merchant signups. When you print your business cards, add a little something on the back that says what you do for the merchant. In short, drive them to your web site.

4. (This is the biggy): Now that you are a member of several business organizations, you are entitled to purchase their email lists. (No SPAM here folks)

5. Now, you import all the data from those business cards you've collected and the email lists into your eMarketing system and send all of your new acquaintances and fellow business members your first eAnnouncement. You have begun in earnest!

Start your eAnnouncement off with a short introduction and then lay it out:

"I will advertise your business - full page - on a very dynamic web site with a very powerful search engine that reaches out to Google and Yahoo and all the other funny named places on the world wide web that brings in millions of people - FREE!

While the merchant is reading this he's saying to himself, "Free? What's the catch?"

In the next paragraph you tell him the catch. "All you have to do is offer a discount to the members of my membership discount club.

Now, he's saying. That's all? The merchant now quickly figures out that with the local newspapers or coupon magazines he PAYS to advertise a discount coupon - And then he PAYS AGAIN when it's redeemed! He's startled, "You mean, you...."

"That's right," your email says, "You only pay once. When the customer comes in, shows the membership card and asks for the discount you offered."

He say's, "well, I'll be." He's right. What better advertising leverage can a merchant get?

But wait! There's more.

Once the merchant signs up, you tell him "we'll also announce your new listing in a special eBroadcast to all of our members and everyone else on our email lists. AND we'll keep the name of your business in a special merchant's column in every new listing eBroadcast we put out in the future. And guess what? That link connects to your web page on our web site. It's full circle advertising!

By now, he's saying, "Man!" And you still haven't got to the finale.

He scrolls a little further down your fancy html email to see a picture of a beautiful glossy colored print directory that you tell him will be full of merchant listings and beautiful print ads and that he gets his listing in that directory, FREE and it goes to every single member in your discount card club. And if he wants even more exposure, he can purchase a big display ad in the directory when the time comes, and if he does, he gets a discount on that, because he's a merchant partner!

Now he's ready to ready to sign up (or not) and your email has the place for him to CLICK.

That's when your (our) web hosted software takes over. He types (or you do it for him) and SonicMemberSystem takes in all the data, automatically creates his designer perfect web page, hosts his logo, links any other web site he might have, sends a piece of his data to the search engine summaries, stores other critical data - like his contractual agreement - and sends him an auto response thank you email with a username and password to access his web page so that he may make any changes - or to add a printable coupon - in the future.

SonicMemberSystem also sends you an email telling you he signed up. You take a look at the page your software created and when you approve you CLICK once and the software debuts your new merchant partner to the World Wide Web. That simple.

SonicMemberSystem is user developed, user tested, user debugged and user proud. We started with the business idea and created the software to make it sing. It was field tested, re-written several dozen times and then polished like the dialogue in an Oscar nominated screenplay.

I built the business, while my partner, Jason, built the software. We had a routine. At the end of each week, I'd call Jason and tell him what I thought he could do to make the software more effective, simpler to use, quicker to implement and more and more user friendly. A few days later, he'd deliver a new round of magic. This went on for three years. (During which time Jason kept his day job and built another web hosted business known as MySpace.com).

At the end of year three we turned SonicMemberSystem over to a hired code guy (by now Jason is too busy - and too successful - with his day job) to package for the business opportunities market. All the new code guy could say was "Wow, have you ever got something here!"

Jason, shy as ever, said: "Thanks."
I smiled like everybody who uses the system smiles every time they boot it up.

SonicMemberSystem was born and raised to support our discount card membership business. Now she's come of age, graduated and has made her debut in the business opportunities world. And with all humility, I must say that we are very proud of her