If you’ve been online for a while you have probably been a member of several internet marketing membership sites.

And you likely have also canceled your membership with some, if not all of them, within a short time after joining.

This constant turnover, known as the churn rate, is an ongoing problem for many membership site owners.

Although it is still profitable for the owner if people “churn” at the average three-month mark, it’s not nearly as profitable as them staying on board for six, eight or even twelve months.

The process of acquiring new members to replace the ones who cancel costs the owner both time and money – which cuts into their bottom line profits.

Why Do People Quit Membership Sites?

There are a bunch of reasons why people join and then subsequently quit such memberships.

But I believe it all comes down to a simple, yet complex word – VALUE.

More to the point, a disconnect in value.

What I mean is, either one of two things is happening when people cancel:

A. The site owner isn’t providing enough value (real or perceived) to the member for the monthly fee.

OR

B. The member is not at a point in their marketing career that they can fully utilize or appreciate the value that is being delivered.

This sort of disconnect happens all the time, which is one of the reasons why there are so many disgruntled junior marketers out there.

I would guess that about 80% of the time, it’s reason B.

But in those cases, the site owner isn’t completely blameless. Far from it.

Much of the problem lies in a disconnect between the marketing message or sales-pitch and the perception it creates in the mind of the prospect.

In other words, clever copywriting – heavily infused with hyperbole and promises of little work and much money – stimulates a strong emotional response on the part of the reader.

In a nutshell, here’s what happens:

They read the salesletter, it pushes all the right buttons and sounds like the very thing they’ve been looking for, they join, only to quickly find out that what WASN’T said in the salesletter was that there was a lot of work involved (that they were not prepared or equipped for), then fear and overwhelm set in and they cut their losses and quit.

And unfortunately, some membership site owners continue to create and promote salesletters that promise something just short of “one-click-wealth”, which results in a huge churn rate and an ever-growing population of unhappy junior marketers.

In Part 2 of this article, I’ll dig deeper into this issue and in Part 3 I’ll propose a few ways unwary junior marketers might avoid being caught up in the whole “burn and churn” process.

Stay tuned…

Russ Guthrie