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Online Mentorship Programs: Cash in on Your Expertise
by Marcia
Yudkin
Whether you're a former retail store owner known for
your
creativity, a championship bridge player, or a psychotherapist with a
long current waiting list for openings, if you possess expertise that makes
colleagues and aficionados want your pearls of wisdom, you can create a
new income stream with an online mentorship program.
Such a program
charges a fee for people to sit at your feet and learn from you. The program
would have a special focus (not for everyone) and offer information,
resources, advice, insider tips and problem solving. While a mentorship
program could take place in the "real world," it is especially easy to set it
up, promote and run it online.
Before I created my online mentorship
program, MarketingforMore.com, in the fall of 2003, I did
extensive
research on fees and features of other programs. I looked most
closely at seven examples whose fees ranged from $30 a month to just less
than $600 a month.
At the lower end of this spectrum, $30 a month
didn't give
members very much personal access to the expert around
whom
the program revolved, while at nearly $600 a month, a member received
just about unlimited private access to the expert. Likewise, the program
with the lowest fee accepted anyone who applied, while the higher fees
required application, with no guarantee of acceptance.
Features in the
online mentorship programs I looked at
included some or all of these:
*
Topical teleclasses or conference calls
* Member newsletter
* Member-only
articles
* Feedback and advice from the designated expert
* Discounts on
products and services
* Free books, tapes or reports
* Free in-person
meetings
* Group discussion board
You should do this research yourself
to see who has a
program similar to yours, what they charge and what
they offer. Join a couple of mentorship programs and learn from what you
like and don't like in what they do.
When you decide to go ahead, you can
either buy a readymade
software program for running such an online program
or create your own web site. Membergate (www.membergate.com)
is the best
and most reliable such tool, with a one-time licensing fee of $3,500 and up.
Since my husband is a programmer, we built our own site with a
password-protected area and an online application for prospective members
to fill out.
However much or little you decide to charge, it's
essential
for members to feel they're getting their money's worth, and
that means that you must offer quite a lot of member-only content, with fresh
material added often. I not only quit one mentorship site but also asked for
my money back because it didn't live up to the promise of listings that
were updated daily and the site owner appeared to be nowhere in
evidence.
Be flexible in what you're willing to offer members.
I started off thinking that a member-only discussion board was the best
way for members to get feedback and advice from me, but I learned that while
some members loved that, others preferred the exchange of ideas in a live
conference call. So I added those to my program.
Because I thoroughly
researched and planned before launching my online mentorship program and have
remained determined to have members think they're getting an unbelievable
deal, MarketingforMore.com got off to a successful start and has continued to
grow. Good luck cashing in on your expertise!
Marcia Yudkin
<marcia@yudkin.com> is the author of 6 Steps to Free Publicity and 10
other books. She runs an online mentorship site, MarketingforMore.com, which
supports business owners who are growing their businesses. Download her
free report, "Charge More & Get It," at http://www.marketingformore.com/survey.htm
. Or find out about her upcoming Marketing for More seminars at http://www.marketingformore.com/seminars.htm
.
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