Mini report #1
from www.lifestyleclubhouse.com

How will supporting a NEW online lifestyle community benefit our established swingers club? 

This is an important question. Many swingers club owners assume that it’s better to support established Online Lifestyle Communities. After all, we don’t have hundreds or thousands of members in your area to promote your club to. However, supporting the right new Online Lifestyle Community (OLC) offers strategic benefits that you can’t get from an established OLC and provides a rare opportunity to protect yourself from new Lifestyle clubs.

Believe it or not, every established high-quality OLC originally relied on local swingers clubs for their initial members. The club we founded single-handedly boosted one of the OLCs to the top position in our area when it was still new. OLCs need Lifestyle clubs because mass marketing mostly attracts single guys and not the caliber of members needed for a site that’s beneficial to most couples.

In fact, OLCs need swingers clubs more than clubs need OLCs. Don’t believe me? Check out your incoming traffic from the OLCs you’re currently promoting compared to the traffic you’re bringing them! Some of you won’t be able to because many OLCs have removed their statistics pages for this very reason. When we analyzed our club, we were providing four times more traffic than we were getting!

Now why would we bother telling you this when we run an OLC? Because it’s only by understanding where OLCs fit with your club’s strategy that you can make a decision about whom to promote and how to promote them that maximizes your swingers club’s success in the long run.

Online Lifestyle Communities are a double-edged sword.

Let’s start by admitting the obvious – OLCs compete with local Lifestyle clubs. That doesn’t mean they mean to or even want to, but they do. OLCs offer a way for like-minded people to meet one another in a safe and non-threatening situation – maybe to hook up in person and maybe not. Years ago, this type of scenario could only be accomplished by a local swingers club.

However, OLCs can also help promote your club. One of the best ways they do this is by building a sense of community for your club. It’s what we call the “party between parties.” But let’s get beyond the basic idea of your regulars chatting in the chat room. Take a good look at your email list. If you’re like most swingers clubs, you have a good-sized list, but only a small portion of those people show up regularly. The reasons are many, but a good portion of those people fall into two categories of opportunity: those that never made it to one of your parties and those who went to one or two, but didn’t come back.

Many people will sign up, but not show up because they’re afraid of what’s behind the door. Visions of key parties fill their heads and that’s often not a comforting thought to newbies. This is where an OLC can help. By meeting online, these nervous newbies can ask other members what it’s really like at your club. Soon, they’ll feel like they actually know a few people and the fear of meeting other swingers in person won’t seem so scary.

In other cases, some couples have shown up at your club, but didn’t come back. If you had the opportunity to ask them, they’d probably say they felt disappointed that they didn’t meet the right couple, or that hardly anyone talked to them, or that people seem to move in untouchable cliques. Of course, we know that many of these people acted like wallflowers, but you’ll still get blamed for their poor experience. An OLC gives these newbies the chance to meet a few people online before meeting them in person at your club.

We know that these types of scenarios go on all the time because we see them happening on our forums and chat rooms. What’s more, there’s always a club member around to convince them that going to the swingers club in question is a good idea, and their word-of-mouth means more than all of the advertising you can pay for.

It’s dangerous to promote an Online Lifestyle Community.

Do you realize that when you actively promote most OLCs that you’re opening the door for competition? You’re sending your hard-earned database of members to one place where they can find out about your competition. “But wait,” you might say, “we don’t have any real competition.” Not yet, but how easy is it for someone to open up a club, contact your OLC and say they want to promote their events on the OLC site. Voila! An instant audience for your new competitor that you helped create.

That’s why the Lifestyle Clubhouse offers exclusive territories to qualifying swingers clubs. We want to give you the benefits of an OLC without the worry of promoting your site to competitors.

It’s dangerous NOT to promote an Online Lifestyle Community.

By now, you might begin to think that its makes the most sense to not even promote an OLC, or only “passively” promote them (i.e., just put banners from all of them on your links page). This strategy can hurt you, also. Here’s why:

Members will find OLCs anyway, but they won’t all find the same ones and most members will only join one or two. This can split your community up into four or more segments. While some OLC segments might think that going to your club is a great idea, others might convince each other that house parties are the better idea, or maybe going to a vanilla club. Over time, your attendance may dwindle because of a loss of community.

Your best bet is to pick one or two OLCs and promote them heavily. Pick OLCs that help you protect your interests and keep your finger on the pulse of what your members and need. This is why Lifestyle Clubhouse offers you your own forum area and makes you the forum monitor.

So what’s the best strategy regarding selecting and promoting OLCs?

It depends. If you’re a brand new club under one year of age, we’d recommend NOT actively promoting ANY OLC. Instead, passively promote them (i.e., the minimum requirements to get to promote yourself on their sites – usually just a banner ad). This will gain you access to the established OLCs members and advertising opportunities.

However, if you have an established club over one year old with a decent-sized database, we’d recommend passively promoting established OLCs (might as well get any traffic you can from them) and actively promote a new OLC. But not just any OLC. After all, why convince all of your members to move over to a new site one day, just to have your competitors advertising on the same site and trying to swipe them away the next day? Pick an OLC and will protect your hard-earned membership base, such as the Lifestyle Clubhouse.

This strategy has a long-term reward. Over time, both your club and our site will be known as “the place to go to meet attractive couples.” Your swingers club probably already has that distinction, but by working together and feeding off each other we can continue to grow your club while protecting your position in your area. Plus, we’ll be able to attract new club guests from around the country.

Thank you for your time and consideration,

John & Jennifer
Lifestyle Clubhouse management
www.lifestyleclubhouse.com