With a membership site, you’re usually relying on volume in order to scale. And the more members you have, the less able you may feel to actually connect and engage with all of them.
The truth is, there may often be a large percentage of your members that you don’t really know, and that’s okay. But more so than ever, a little extra personal touch can go a long way.
In this article we’re looking at one way to add that personal touch to your membership site, making your members feel welcome and valued, and increasing the likelihood that they will engage with you and your community, and remain members for longer.
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John Tuggle from Learning Guitar Now joins Callie on this weeks episode of Behind the Membership.
Learning Guitar Now has been around for over 10 years, starting out selling books, DVDs and standalone courses before adding a membership offering into the mix. John’s membership now accounts for around 75% of his monthly income, with one-off product sales making up the rest and he has a lot of great experience to share with us!
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Just like that, another year is over. As we reach the 2nd anniversary of Membership Academy, we have some insights and lessons to share from the past 12 months.
In what is sure to become a tradition, I’m joined on this very special episode of the podcast by the real brains behind The Membership Guys, the one and only Callie Willows, to discuss year two of running the Academy.
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Restrict Content Pro is a light weight, well developed option that is easy to setup and ideal for simple, single level memberships.
It’s extensions also make it an excellent choice for magazine style memberships, group memberships and as a base for custom development.
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In this episode of Behind the Membership Callie talks with Avalon Yarnes from Avalon Cakes School. What makes Avalon and her membership so different is just how creative she is, in both her marketing and her retention tactics.
Here we talk leaving her job to start the membership, thinking outside the box to create a great retention hook and gamify her site, creative marketing, the challenge of trying to do all the things, and much more!
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Colin Gray from The Podcast Host Academy is joining Callie on this episode of Behind the Membership. Colin actually had a false start with his membership site, something many of us fear, but is now starting to thrive after pivoting his approach and brand.
Here we talk creating ongoing value, the flow between free and paid content, the part live support plays in his membership, how he went from a member a week to a member a day, why he’s not sure about having a community and where to look for marketing and retention inspiration.
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In the first episode of Behind the Membership, Callie is joined by Stacey Harris from Hit the Mic Backstage.
Stacey has been running her membership for 2 years now and we discuss the running of her site, including how she managed to launch in just 2 weeks, the sales funnel she uses to attract new members and how a $1 trial has effected sales, how her membership has evolved over the last 2 years and her challenges and highlights.
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Retention is king when it comes to membership sites. After all, for recurring revenue to be impactful, it needs to actually recur!
We’ve talked several times on the blog and podcast before about ways to increase retention, and it’s definitely a topic that we could easily spend hours on!
But it’s one thing to talk about improving retention and another thing to actually implement, so in this article we’re taking a look not at why retention is important, but at some tools you can use to up your retention game and reduce your membership churn (and no, you don’t need to be using all of them!)
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One of the most effective ways to position yourself as an authority in your industry is through public speaking, and done right it can be a great way to grow your membership business.
However for many the idea of standing up and speaking in front of a room full of strangers is the stuff that nightmares are made of!
And even if you’re comfortable with public speaking, then there’s the question of how you actually get booked, how do you make sure your presentation is good and – importantly – how do you make it a worthwhile activity for you and your business.
In this episode of The Membership Guys Podcast, we speak to Grant Baldwin from The Speaker Lab about how to get started with public speaking and use it as a platform to grow your business.
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With our community of thousands of membership owners, we see the same patterns emerging when it comes to wrestling with membership site tech.
People starting their site build and then 6 months later they’re still stuck, spinning their wheels, trying to get everything perfect and making no progress!
Often they’ll blame this on the technology being too tough, but more often than not it’s because of their own unrealistic expectations.
In this episode of The Membership Guys Podcast, I give a kick up the backside to anyone stuck with the tech side of building their membership site.
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We’ve all come across the concept of the “starving artist” – the notion that to pursue creativity and artistry is to sacrifice any hope of making money. Jeff Goins is on a mission to dispel this myth.
Many successful memberships are built around the skills and passions of their founder; however we’ve seen time and time again in our community that in more traditionally “creative” industries there can be a little resistance to the idea of monetization – almost as if to do so would be “selling out.”
In this episode of The Membership Guys Podcast, Jeff Goins breaks down where this whole idea came from and how you can shake this mindset and effectively monetize your skills and creativity.
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As a membership site owner it’s really important to know the numbers behind your membership. And it’s something a lot of membership site owners don’t really do, or don’t do fully.
In this article we’re taking a look at some of the metrics you should be tracking each month, as well as different ways that you can do this, and how that may change as your membership grows.
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Chris Ducker is the founder of the YouPreneur membership community and the man behind popular events such Tropical Think Tank and the upcoming YouPreneur Summit.
It’s through these live events that Chris has been able to help his community to build connections and develop relationships way beyond what’s possible online; and this has been a key factor in the success of his membership.
In this episode of The Membership Guys Podcast, Chris shares his insights into the benefits of running live events as a membership site owner; plus his advice on how you can orchestrate your own events.
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Podcasts have made a significant resurgence in recent years, having never quite hit their full potential back when they first became “a thing” in the mid-2000’s.
This growing popularity, coupled with it being easier than ever to start your own podcast, makes for a great opportunity for membership site owners to really get ahead by incorporating podcasting into the content marketing strategy.
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We made it! 100 episodes!
To celebrate our centennial, I invited 16 fellow membership site owners to share insights, experience and advice from their journey so far.
I asked my guests to answer 3 questions:
– What’s the one piece of advice you’d give anyone starting a new membership?
– What impact has having a membership site had on your life or your business?
– What would you do differently if you were starting your own site again from scratch?
The answers they shared are packed with golden nuggets for anyone planning or running a membership website.
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Content is the lifeblood of most membership websites.
However creating a successful membership requires more than just throwing together any old content and haphazardly dumping it behind a paywall.
You need a content strategy that works for you and for your members.
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