SPEAKER_01 0:34

Have you ever considered a membership site? Now you're probably thinking of a lot of things when I even say the word membership site. They've been around for a while and there's different types. So it's hard to really dial in what is a membership site? Is it right for me? What are the pros and cons? Well, that's what we're going to talk about today on the Resilient Faith Online Show, the pros and cons of starting a membership site.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Welcome. I'm Arissa Shadwick, host of the Resilient Faith Online Show. I'm an online marketing coach and certified copywriter. In this podcast, you'll find a different perspective to the external and internal challenges we face as online content creators. Join me for some inspiration and practical tips as we create positive change online. To connect with me and my private Facebook group, go to MarissaShadrick.com forward slash community. Hello, hello everyone.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

How are you doing? Marissa here, and we're going to be talking about membership sites. I've had that on my mind because I have been researching, talking to people, really digging deep on membership sites of different types, and actually starting one myself. In fact, I'm going to be launching one real soon, in the next day or two, and another in the beginning of the year, right toward the end of this year into the new year. My goal today is simply for you to be a little bit more informed and to see if a membership site is right for you. A membership site is an option that helps you build community and gives people access to you and exclusive content. And it's usually related around a topic. Of course, there are pros and cons, and we're going to talk about that today, toward the end of this broadcast. And that way you'll be able to see and make an informed decision if it's something that's right for you. So, what is a membership site? We think of different things. If you think subscription, you're going to think of things like Amazon and Netflix and you know, all the various things that we can subscribe to, right? I've been a member of various groups, like types of writer groups and speaker groups. That is a form of membership. When I moved here to Santa Rosa, we moved to wine country. So my husband and my daughter, they love wine. I'm not that much of a wine drinker, but we went around town just looking at different places, and there was a membership for a local winery where you're able to select a different type of wine every quarter, and you were able to get it at a discount, and it's a way to support the local winery. But what does it look like for an everyday entrepreneur like you and I? Well, first we would have to consider why do you want to start a membership? It's a way to be able to build community. So I think a better word for a membership site would be community. You want to build a community and it's some topic that needs ongoing support or information. Like in the case of the wine, it's something that would be consumed and you would want to try something new or different next quarter. And so it lends itself for being a membership. So let's start with the basics. So if we look at membership as a community, it's a better term for it because when you think of community first, you're thinking of people first. We're in the people business, right? We're thinking about people, the people that we want to serve. And we're not thinking about creating content, content, content, content that hasn't been tested yet. But we're thinking of community. We're thinking about the people. And as we bring people together, we build the content around people. So when you think of the people and you think of what would be helpful for them, then you can create the content. So we don't build content to try to grow community. You build community and provide valuable content, exclusive content. It's all about the interaction as opposed to trying to get the next transaction. It's the opposite of what we normally see because people want to be seen and they want to be heard and they want to be understood. So it's a great place to begin with the people, right? Anytime you're writing a sales page, you have to think of who is this for? Who's the person, the problem, the pain that they're going through? So there can be various topics that would fall very nicely for a membership. Anything that has an ongoing challenge. For example, it could be sports related, it could be something related to runners or hikers, or people that are trying to not only lose weight or maintain a certain type of weight and wellness. It could be something that would resemble clubs, like people that love to write and authors, they could have some type of membership. It could be for maybe faith-minded people that would like having inspirational content dripped out. It could be on mindset, it could be on copywriting, it could be on so many different things because it's an ongoing challenge. And as you provide this content, they want to stay in, they want to stay with you because they need that extra bit of support and resources to keep moving forward. The outcome with a community group like this or a membership is transformation. So you want to have a clear success path, a clear outcome for them. So they understand if they're in this particular type of membership, there's a clear outcome. A great example of this was back in 2013 when Michael Hyatt launched Platform University. If you recall, he published a book, Platform, and then shortly after he had this wonderful membership site. Now, this membership site, I mean, for regular folks like you and I would intimidate us to think that we could launch something like that because it was so comprehensive. It had special guest speakers, the videos were stellar, everything was great. And so for me, when I saw that, I thought it was wonderful. And I was a part of that membership for a while. But I thought I could never create a membership because I it would never be anything compared to that. You're playing the comparison card, right? And so I never even considered a membership. But more and more as I talk to people and I'm realizing that there is a possibility of ongoing problems that could be resolved very easily by just gathering a community together, I started revisiting this topic. So you want to have some type of success path or transformation, and you become the expert. And just know a lot of people are a little hesitant to say they're an expert, but if you focus on one topic and you've gone deep on it and you've researched it and you know a lot of it simply from not only maybe the research you've done, but the experience and the life lessons, right? You were an expert. And so you can build a solid community around that topic that is your expertise and share your knowledge with them, and you're able to turn your knowledge into revenue. So there's various ways that you can show up in a membership. There's obviously pre-recorded videos that you can have. You could have uh group calls, live group calls. You could show up in a form of a live stream or a training, you could also interact with your community. So you would have the social aspect that you would see on social media without social media. Wouldn't that be great? Nowadays, most people, when they launch a product or a course, the bonus is usually a private Facebook group. Yeah, that that can be good. However, there's so many groups, and I've discovered that people that join a group usually have joined 12, 15, or more other groups, and it's getting really noisy out there with all those Facebook groups, and it's distracting. And I think some of these new platforms that we have now and the functionality that we have now and the features that we have now just really helps us to be able to take the concept of social media and bring it into a private community where you can have that interaction without the other noise that goes with it. And so that's one of the things that I like about it that you can DM someone or you can broadcast a post to the community members in this private community, and there's less distraction, and there's I think a better quality of responses because these people have paid into this group. And so I think the the interaction is going to have a higher value. You can also have um various types of calendar events, and those can also live on your membership platform as well as resources. You could theme the content if you want and create a different theme every month if you want to do that. You could have certain benchmarks for people to try to reach. It all depends on what the topic is. So let's just talk briefly about the pros and cons of a membership site. So the pros would be obviously monthly recurring revenue. And this is something that a friend of mine, John Meese, was really drilling into my head. He was the dean of Platform University and worked with Michael Hyatt. And he was saying, every month, the first of the month, you start with revenue. You don't have to go out and find clients and then create revenue. You start with a certain amount of revenue, which is so true, right? I knew that, but just hearing him say that and the conviction he had, because he really believes in memberships. And so I was thinking, yeah, every month to start with a certain amount of revenue that you have. Granted, retention is the challenge, but statistically, there's only like 10% that will unsubscribe from your from your group. And if you have a clear message, a clear vision of what the group's about, and there's a lot of clarity and great onboarding in the beginning, it it eliminates a lot of the confusion that would cause someone to decide to not continue in the membership. So the pro is that you can have that monthly recurring revenue. Plus, another great benefit is the fact that you build some real relationships with people because you could have training calls where it's a Zoom call and it's face-to-face. The platform that I use, and I'll talk about platforms in just a second, but it has a way for you to be able to put your title or what it is that you do right underneath your name. And it's under what they call profession. And so that way every time you post something, people see what it is that you do. So if someone is looking for a graphic designer and they see Jane Doe that posts and they see her beautiful face, her image, and they see she's a graphic designer. Guess what? If you need a graphic designer, they're gonna go to her, right? So it's a great way to build relationships. It has typically a low barrier of entry. So it's not as hard to convert, and the range can be anywhere from $7 to typically $97 or $99. Let's call it $100, typically anywhere in there. The sweet spot could be around $49. You know, this is all subjective. I I got information from various sources, but it sounds like $49, $47 is the mid-range. So you can see how this could create great revenue stream for you, but it's still a low barrier of entry because people budget monthly. And if you're creating a month-to-month subscription type membership, they're budgeting monthly and they see the 49 or the 75 or even the 97, and they're thinking, well, shoot, you know, I can fit that in my monthly budget. Plus, they become warm clients, and these could be the people that would be interested in your future products that you could promote right within your community, and you don't have to go outside of your platform to promote it. And I think the the best part of this is that you become well informed about your market because of the interaction, because of the way it's set up so you minimize distraction. And because of the calls that you have, or whatever type of activity or something they can look forward to, whether it's a training or getting on a Zoom call or a QA or office hours, whatever you want to call it, you become more informed about your market. You begin to really dial into what it is that is keeping them from moving forward and reaching that success that they want. And that is so valuable. I mean, the copywriter in me is just glowing right now because that is what we covet. We want to know what's happening with the market. What are they thinking? What are they feeling? What are they struggling with? So that is very, very helpful. Now, those are the pros, right? I'll repeat them: the monthly recurring revenue, you're building relationships, it's a low barrier of entry, you have warm clients that you could bring into a higher ticket product, and you become more informed about your market. So here are the cons. First, you have to consider the platform. Like what platform are you going to use? Consider whether it integrates with your email service provider, consider you know the features of it, the cost, the time, all of that. Because you want it to be very seamless. You want as much automated as possible. And so you want to take a look at the various platforms. I'm going to give you some recommendations and just tell you about some of them that are out there in the one that I'm using, and that will give you at least a starting point. The other thing you need to consider is that on your first launch of your membership, you're not going to make $30,000, $40,000 in that launch. Your revenue is going to be low in the beginning because you're not charging as much. There's a low barrier of entry, but it builds. And as you continue to promote it and as your members promote it, some platforms have built-in incentives so that your members can promote it as it grows. And because it's a low barrier of entry, more people are likely to join your membership, and it could be a very, very lucrative stream of revenue. The other thing to consider is the cancellations. Now, some people think, oh boy, retention cancellations, I'm going to be doing so much bookkeeping on the back end. There are platforms that do just about everything for you automatically without having to have a VA. So yes, there will be some that cancel, and statistically they say about 10% cancel. But when you think of the amount of work it takes for a launch, all of it, the webinars, the challenges, the Facebook ads, all the money that is spent on a launch and the time and the energy, right? When I do one of those launches, I'm exhausted because there's so much. There's months and months of planning. I would rather have something like a membership that's a low barrier of entry. And if there's a small amount that cancel, that's okay because I've already have built in emails to be able to remind them in case there's, you know, in case a debit card expires or something, there's something already automatically embedded into the system where I don't have to track all that. I can just visit it and look at all the analytics once a month. The other thing that might discourage you is the fact that you think you have to build all this content, all these videos, all these trainings ahead of time. You don't have to. For example, if you were a teacher and you decided to provide something for teachers, like some type of class worksheet, you could provide a class worksheet, a template of some sort every month for teachers. And as you interact with those teachers, they might say, Oh, this is a struggle I have in the classroom, or somebody else might say, Yeah, my students are really not turning in their homework. And you hear what the pain points are, then that person that has a membership site can think, oh, I should create a training on this that would really help the teachers. And so now you're not just providing a template or a resource. Now you can offer some type of digital course that would help them, and that would also be something that you can offer within your community that's going to bring more revenue. So there are pros and cons. You just have to look and see, you know, what feels good to you. There are various platforms that have an aspect of membership. I think Kajabi has an aspect of it. There's um Searchy now has a platform for this type of membership. Some people do memberships on Slack, some do it on Circle. Um, some even do it on Facebook. They try to first start in a Facebook group. Um, I'm trying to remove it from Facebook groups simply because I just had some bad experiences this year with Facebook getting hacked and getting it shut down and back up and shut down again. And so it felt very unstable for me. And so I decided to go with Mighty Networks. And I love Mighty Networks, it has a great built-in system for onboarding and also when people cancel or if something goes wrong with the debit card, the events are all in there, the calendar is inside of there, the social aspect is already built in. There's a built-in reward system for members where they can earn different badges like bronze, silver, and gold. And based on those tiers, they unlock some special goodies for them. So there's lots of built-in things in Mighty Networks, and I absolutely love it. I think it's just so user-friendly, and it is the answer I was looking for. And so those are some things to consider. I know I'm excited about launching my membership. I'm going to provide live streams, I'm going to provide resources, it's going to have more of an inspirational aspect to it. Much like this podcast where I call it Resilient Faith Online, it is called Resilient Creator, and it will help people turn their knowledge into revenue. And so there's going to be topics about passive income and topics about how to generate traffic and how to be able to grow their platform. So there'll be opportunities for them also to join some of my other programs, my intensive programs, and down the road, another mastermind that I'm going to launch next year. But it's a way really to connect a little better and in a deeper way. So hopefully that's given you some ideas. And I'll put a link to my membership. I have a little video animation. It's less than three minutes long. It's about two and a half minutes, I think. And um, there's the little characters in this story. My granddaughter, um Audrey, who's nine, she named them and she added the dog Max in it. So I encourage you to watch it. It was really fun creating it with her. She was very much uh supervising the whole thing. I guess she figured I needed help. So I hope that helped. And so until next time, take care. Bye bye.