If you need a lump sum cash injection, this might be the way to do it. You will need a few assets in place to make this work, but most online and even many offline marketers already have what it takes to do this.
You can only use this method once in awhile, but here’s the thing: You can make significant money teaching other marketers and business people to do this, too.
Imagine you’re talking to Joe the restaurant owner, and Joe mentions he needs a big lump sum of cash fast. You can set this entire thing up for him, and in about a week he can have the money in hand. Charge a 5 to 10% commission and you’ve just made $5000 to $10,000. Not bad.
I learned this technique from Vinnie. He just found the perfect house that he wanted to buy, but he needed a major cash injection for the down payment. Time was of the essence: Get the money or lose the house. Out of his desperation this plan was born, and it’s so drop dead simple it seems almost too easy.
Vinnie is an online marketer and he has a list of loyal customers, followers and subscribers.
Vinnie put together an exclusive VIP club with a one year membership limited to exactly 100 people. In this membership he placed access to every single one of his products, along with the promise that every product he created in the next year would also be given to his VIP members as part of the membership.
Then he added even more perks, like a personal monthly consultation by email. His VIP members could ask him anything privately by email once per month. (He knows that statistically speaking 80-90% of these monthly vouchers would never be redeemed.) He also set up Q and A’s twice per month where people could join the call and ask anything. He added a private room where the VIP members could meet each other, help each other, network and so forth. And he added a couple of other special bonuses, too.
In short, he made the VIP HIGHLY desirable. It was worth probably 10 or 20 times the admittance fee of $1000.
And he did a GREAT job of selling it. He set up a webpage detailing everything members would get. He made a quick 5 minute video walking them through the membership. And he was completely clear that the membership was limited to exactly 100 people and no more. In fact he posted everyone’s first name and their city inside the members area to prove there were only 100 memberships sold, which I thought was kind of clever because who believes these things are limited without some sort of solid proof, right?
Then he put the word out to his lists and on social media…
And he sold out in less than 5 hours.
Start to finish the entire thing took him 3 days.
Of course, he has some work to do over the coming year to fulfill his promises to his members.
But he also had the $100,000 he wanted for the down payment.
Well, actually he told me he just needed another $40,000 for the down payment, so he ended up $60,000 ahead, but that’s not really important.
What is important is that most anyone can do this.
Something to keep in mind is that the better your reputation, the easier it will be to sell the memberships and the more you can probably charge.
Imagine doing this for a restaurant owner. He needs a big influx of cash to make a balloon payment on his mortgage, so you help him put together a VIP club for customers.
This VIP members get free meals on their birthdays, anniversaries and holidays. Every couple of months they get private dinners with specialty dishes not available to the public (great way to test which foods should be added to the menu.) They get all kinds of VIP perks that add up to say, $2,000, and they only pay $1,000.
And better still for the restaurant owner, when a VIP member comes in for their free perks, they bring other people with them who are paying, so it results in more dinners, more drinks and desserts, and more profits.
But what if you don’t have a list? Or what if you’re approaching a businessperson with this idea who doesn’t have a list of customers? Odds are you can still make it work.
The first option is to hit the social media accounts to get the word out. If you (or the business owner) have a large following, then this can work.
The next option is to use affiliates. Yes, they will take their cut, but $50,000 in a week is still a nice payday.
If you’re working with a local business, then local publicity can work wonders. Have the business team up with a local charity and you should be able to get featured in the paper, on the local news and on any local social media accounts such as Facebook and Nextdoor.
Get creative. The more interesting or valuable the VIP package is perceived to be, the easier it will be to make the sales.
You might even offer a discount to the first people who join the membership by letting them refer their friends. For example, they pay $1000 for their own membership but they get $250 back for each friend they refer. Bring in 4 friends and their membership is free. Bring in 8 friends and they’ve made $1000 plus received a free membership.
Of course the $1,000 figure is arbitrary. You might be charging $200, $500, $799, $3,000 or whatever number works for you, your niche, your customers and is commiserate with the value of the membership.
And whether or not you cap memberships is up to you as well. It could be that you sell these VIP memberships on an ongoing basis, or you open up the VIP membership periodically, as you choose.
Then there are the renewals which we haven’t even touched on yet. Maybe in a year you decide to keep the membership going, so you let existing members stay for half price, and allow a whole new batch of new members to come in at full price. The options are endless.
Just imagine that you use this technique yourself and you raise $50,000 or $100,000 in less then a week. Then you approach others in your niche, in your community or anyplace you choose and offer to help them set up something similar for a commission.
And maybe you do this once a week for the next year. That’s going to be some pretty awesome money for something that won’t take you all that much time to do.
