Welcome back to the Membership Site Podcast. This is the online radio program where we talk about you creating a passive income and the life you want and deserve using this powerful tool called membership site no matter what niche you’re in. We said before that a membership site does not mean monthly recurring button. A membership site is a site where one of your subscribers or prospects can become a member. That means that Google and Gmail and YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, those are all membership sites even though they might not necessarily charge something.
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A membership site can be free, it can be single payment, it can be multiple payments like a payment plan. What we are going to focus on today is the stereotype, it’s that stereotype of having some kind of a monthly offer. There are a few things that don’t work. I think that a lot of people have the idea that, well they do the math, they get too hung up on the calculator and they fall in love with a number and they say, “What I’m going to do is, I could easily get 1000 people to join something monthly so I’m just going to charge 20 bucks a month and I’ll just get 1000 people to come into my site easily.”
They don’t give much thought to what they’re actually going to charge for 20 bucks a month. The problems is that most things won’t sell or if they will sell, they only will sell to a very very small percentage of people out there. The idea that maybe the lie you’ve been sold is that well you can just kind of throw in some tip. You can just have one piece of content that your members can consume once a month and they’ll just pay 20 bucks and they’ll just get a couple of things to download. I ask, “Well what?”
If I’m in the self-improvement niche, then the answer is, well just go and look up one article per week or per day and post one little tidbit about self-improvement. Or if we are talking about webinars, and you say just have a monthly membership site about webinars and every day or every few days give them a new tip about webinars. What could go wrong? Or they say make a membership site about online businesses and how about make this one 10 bucks a month? Because it’s price is so low, that no one is even going to notice the charge on their credit card go.
Well yeah they will and why would I pay something, why would I pay $10 for a bunch of garbage? They say, “Well make a membership site about building an online business and get a new guest in your membership site every few days and just interview them and get some really high profiled people and ask them a couple of questions and let them talk and record and there you go.” That is your monthly site. Or they say, “Go to a site like Fiverr F-I-V-E-R-R dot com and every few days’ pay somebody $5 to write you up a quick ad something about online business.” The idea here or the misconception is they think they can make the online equivalent of a magazine. That’s a really outdated model.
What we’ve talked about on the past with membership sites, I mean remember what works really well with membership sites is if there is a need out there and someone pays you money and then whatever you put inside that membership site like videos or software actually solves needs. If you’re giving people tips, interviews and articles every month that they didn’t ask for, you’re not really solving a need. That really doesn’t make sense to me. Does that mean that we can never charge a monthly fee for our membership sites?
Well of course not. I charge a bunch of different monthly fees and I do see $100 per month membership sites out there. We charge in some cases $2000 per month for a membership site. What the heck can you charge for on a monthly basis? Well first of all let me just say that if your goal right there is to have a 20,000-dollar a month income, you don’t want to have a show, right? You don’t want to have something where you have to keep scrambling and thinking up some new made up tip every single month or every few days. People aren’t really good at join your site just because you’re sending them a CD in the mail every month. You need to actually solve something.
What you can solve is basically you can give somebody some one-on-one advertise, have what’s called a coaching program. Now this way, instead of just piling on more knowledge, more stuff and more articles they go and find for free by doing a search anyway, now you’re actually giving a little bit of one-on-one advice. I have three models for you that we are going to unpack today. One is the weekly critique, one is the weekly platinum coaching program and one is the directory or certification model. None of these are made up, these are actual ways that people make money.
The first one is the critique model. This one is in the golf niche. A friend of mine joins a membership site, he plays golf and he’s actually my business partner. My business partner plays golf, I’m not very good at it at all. My understanding is, and I’ve seen inside of the site and my understanding is that it’s a 97-dollar per month membership site about golf. Now what’s really great about the golf niche in particular, I mean there is some competition but most of the buyers are guaranteed to be people with lots of disposable income. They have no problem paying the country club memberships, getting the golf lessons, the expensive golf clubs, all that stuff. Great people to market to.
This person is a golf coach and I think he’s some kind of like PGA champion or something like that. The long story long, he critiques the golf stands and swing and posture and everything of his members. What people do is they pay $97 a month to join the site and once a week they can send in a video that they’ve recorded on their smart phones so someone else held the camera and then filmed the buyer of the site swinging the golf club.
What I’ve seen of this particular site is this person, I mean first of all he is a golf coach so he loves what he does. Then when a video comes in, he will open up his screen recorder. To record your screen, a very helpful tool is called Camtasia recorder. It’s a screen capture program, I can’t even calculate the hundreds or thousands of hours of videos I’ve recorded with it and I can’t even calculate or begin to calculate how much money that’s made me.
This is a tool, screen capture recording and it has a 30-day free trial and after that I believe it is $300 or so. If you’re short on a budget, you can get a student discount. Either way write it off as a dang business expense. He records his screen and on his screen he starts playing the video that was sent to him. Then he plays the video and they kind of see how the swing goes and pauses it and takes a little marker out, not a real marker but Camtasia allows you to basically use your mouse cursor and doodle on the screen and then he’ll be like, well hold your elbow here and your arm here and it will only takes a few minutes.
In this few minutes, he sends back advice that for these golfers, it really really improves their golf game. Just think that model first of all $100 a month, people can send in one video per week and then he just records his screen, watches the video and then kind of tweaks it. I mean you could apply this to other niches. Like one thing I’ve always wanted to do that I might be too late, this might be too outdated but I sell a copywriting course. It’s in the membership site at speedcopy.com and still sells but it’s a 497-dollar offer, 497 bucks, 500 bucks.
This is a four modules so about a 6-hour course on how to write sales letters, how to write landing pages that convert. In this, one of the bonuses first of all is that I recorded about the past 30 or so sales letters that I’ve written for myself, for my own business. What I do is I record myself and I say, “Okay, we are about to write a sales letter that are for this offer for this offer webinar crusher, webinar crusher, income machine, whatever it is that I sell. I start from scratch and I just open a word document and list some bullet points and I type out and I explain my thought process.
Now this is stuff I was going to do anyway and it probably would have taken me a lot longer if I was just sitting there and trying to hummer it out. Because I’m recording my screen and talking about what I’m doing, I could have done a lot faster. Another bonus of the speed copy courses is that people can submit their website for a critique. They join this site for 500 bucks, it includes videos, it includes my various headlines, white files and things like that, all the sales letters that I write. Then they can submit their own site. What do I do there?
I open up my Camtasia screen recording software and I record my screen and I just load their site and I do a couple of things. I first will say, “Well here’s my first impression of the site.” Then there are a couple of things that I look for. Like I look for well is it makes sense, do I want to stay on this page once I get there? Does everything make sense? I go to the bottom, I say, “Is it clear what I’m supposed to do? Which is usually to buy something.”
Then in many cases, I’ll just read part of the sales that are allowed. I’ll look at the headline, I’ll look at the first bit of text and I’ll do my best to put myself in the mind of the prospect and apply all of the little copywriting techniques and things. Many times what people have in the sales letter is that they have it out of order, like things that should go before other elements in that landing page or they use words that discourage me from buying. Like they shoot themselves in the foot and say learn or work or there’s too much of the problem explained not enough of the offer. Or there’s ways to kind of jazz it up, make the offer more exciting.
Or even if they have all that, then I can say well, what I would do is I would split test, I would try out seeing what happens if this sales letter doesn’t have a video. Or you have a video, I would see what happens if it automatically plays. Even if it’s a perfectly good and done sales letter, I still give them ideas. Even if the sales letter sucks, I can still look at the basic elements, skeleton and I can say, “Well basically you could break the sales letter down, these five steps. I would still say these five things but not in this badly worded language. Or I’d focus on the design or whatever.
This is a critique model and what I could do if I had more of a copywriting kind of list, is I would have some kind of a monthly site where again for 100 bucks a month, people could just submit one sales letter per week and I could critique it and record and post it for everyone to see. Or maybe double that for it to remain confidential. There we go, that’s the critique model.
Now next, let’s move on to the platinum coaching program model. This is now something and we make some good money from this. This is a real thing that I do. What we do is, every now and then, every few years we host live physical events, live seminars at hotels and things. We have an offer where we pass out a piece of paper and we say, “Well for the first it was 800 bucks a month then it’s 1000 bucks a month and then it was 2000 bucks a month, now is 2400 bucks a month. The offer is that we will meet with whoever signs up, we’ll meet with you once per week for an hour. We will meet with you, we’ll throw you screen, a thing called a webinar. We’ll throw you the screen and will work on any aspect of your business.”
If you have nothing and you need help planning out product, we’ll do that for one hour per week. If you have a sales letter that’s not selling, we’ll knock that out. If you need help with a book, we’ll walk you through the steps. If you want a membership site built, we’ll walk you through those steps. By the way, if you want to join a site like that, the place to go is a doubleagentmarketing.com/platinum. That’s our platinum coaching program but we might not let you in.
There’s application process but we want to make sure that you we’re a good fit first. Anyway the point of this, is that we meet once per week and knock it out. For a while, I would also still use this Camtasia program. We would meet with the person and we would record that meeting session. We don’t do that anymore, but when we were first getting it started, some people liked it. They could go back and review the things that we talked about. The other thing too as a bonus, is that they would get all of our other products for free.
We sell products like membershipcube.com is $1000, webinarcrusher.com is $97 a month, double agent marketing is 47-dollar a month site where we meet as a group. We have also different like how to get monthly programs and when they join platinum for $2400 per month, they get all in one plus we meet once a week. To handle the meeting, we is GoToWebinar for this. We also use Google calendar. When we use these two tools together, we can set a recurring meeting. We can say every Tuesday at 12:00 PM Eastern, we’re going to meet for one hour. You can set what’s called a recurring calendar appointment and a recurring webinar and just say, “Cool, every Tuesday at 12:00 PM, that’s when we’re going to meet.
That is the platinum coaching program model where we give all of our products for a few thousand bucks a month and we also meet once per week. I think the really important thing about this, is that we only sell this, well usually I guess I just mentioned the URL, we usually only offer this at our live events. That’s where we get a good class of people.
Then finally, there is the directory model. One of our platinum students, his name is Dr. Charles Runnels he had a way to explain this. He teaches a specific plastic surgery procedure and involve stuff like needles and things like that. He has trademarked the procedure. Basically so this procedure, they once called the O-shot and the Vampire Facelift and I think the vampire facial Kim Kardashian has undergone this procedure not from him but from one of the other licensed doctors.
He uses this thing called PRP or platelet rich plasma where they take blood out of the patient, put in a centrifuge, do something to separate some kind of yellow goo and then inject it back into that patient. He didn’t patent this. Anyone can do a thing called PRP but a thing called the O-shot or the vampire facelift, this is the term he has trademarked. Anyone can do PRP but to do the vampire facelift, this is his trademarked procedure.
He licenses this out and so people pay $97 a month to get the training first of all on how to do this. Then they can come to one of his workshops and get the hands-on training on how to do this. Then there are videos in the member’s area for him on how they can better market their practice and this new procedure. This is really cool because this is one of those procedures where it only takes a doctor 5, 10 minutes to do but then they can charge $900, $2000 even more just to do that. A way easier procedure for the time and effort and money as opposed to other things that a doctor of that nature can do. I’m not an expert doctor things or any like that but it’s a win-win for doctors.
There’s all these different things that they get in the members area, but the big draw is that there is a directory which I built using a plug-in called WP Kunaki which you can get in our membership cube course. Someone joins his site and they’re now listed in a directory and it just lists these doctors and their phone numbers and addresses and websites. People can locate the doctor closest to them by state or can even locate the doctors near them. They can say here’s a list of doctors within 100 miles of you.
When someone is looking for this procedure, when Dr. Charles is in the news, he shows up on local news stations a lot, if someone is watching somewhere, then they can find the doctor nearest to them. Here’s what’s really cool, is s said that many times the procedure cost $2000 and up. Think about this, if someone joins the O-shot membership or the vampire facelift membership, a doctor does and then they get just one or two new client’s patients per year from this, then that’s completely worthwhile, that’s completely worth the membership fee.
If they pay $97 per month that’s what $1200 per year. If they’ve if they just get one the patient’s per year than they’ve double their money. They can potentially get more than that because it gives them all this different training material. The biggest reason out of all the reasons why someone stays in this monthly membership site, is to have a listing in this directory. The tools for this are Word Press, WishList member and then our plug-in called WP Kunaki.
It’s weirdly named plug-in but it creates shows a directory of your members. In this case it’s doctors but you can imagine this will work for any kind of niche. Think about this, they get this extra traffic and this huge benefit just for staying a member and the big reason for not canceling is because if they do cancel, the will be automatically removed from that directory where they get new business.
What can we learn about our discover or have fun with or play with in the lessons from today’s training about recurring monthly continuity? Is that you don’t want to pile in a bunch of stuff because I mean what’s the point of that? People won’t necessarily buy from you just because you’re selling something that’s so cold cheap. Just because something has a dollar trial and then a monthly fee. They’re not just going to buy just because it’s $9 a month. They buy because it’s going to solve their problems.
An easy way to answer that question on how to solve people’s problems, is how do you deliver more value than what they pay. You might’ve heard that before, that might be a cliché but it’s true. I mean I think about the, okay there’s two types of monthly things I pay for, right? The ones that I absolutely need like electricity bill, water bill, cell phone bill, insurance, things like that. Then the things I voluntarily pay for monthly e where I get more out of it every single month.
There is an 80-dollar SE, search engine tool that we pay for that allows us to track our websites and see how they’re climbing and the rankings. That is worth $80 for me because that’s a software that runs over and over again. I pay monthly for things like website backups. I bought a monthly service years and years ago called the traffic geyser which was a tool where I could upload a bunch my videos and it would drip, schedule them out to various video sites like YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion and more.
A better alternative if you can’t figure out how to add in either like a coaching elements or a must-have component so that they’re going to be really upset if they cancel, or something with software, or something automated where they get more out of it every month. If you can’t figure that out, then a fixed term membership site where it’s just like a payment plan, a 5-plan payments and it’s done for selling information, that might be right for you. I mean I pay monthly to make Skype calls, to make phone calls over the Internet. I pay monthly for the ability to automatically schedule office hours.
There is a calendar and this is called time trade. There’s a system where someone can see spots where I have three meeting dates in a calendar. They can choose one of those and that sets a meeting with me. There’s a service called eClincher that automates posting of social media and that is worth paying whatever the monthly fee is for that. There’s another service called Zapier if I post on my Facebook fan page, it copies that post on to other Facebook accounts of mine.
Those are all software that I’m happy to pay for monthly. If you only have information, a fixed membership site might be better for you to avoid the monthly tips, interviews and articles trap. Give them a good reason for staying in not just more stuff to download. Although one exception that I would say could work, is a thing called resell rights. As I’m winding down this call, we don’t have a lot of time to unpack this.
Resell rights means someone, let’s say if someone pays you $37 a month. In exchange for that, they get 20 new businesses in a box, 20 new info products where they can put up done for you sales page, done for you download page and a PDF or videos or something like that; where their buyers can then download that thing, right? You say, “Okay well this month we have a book, like a digital book that you can sell for weight loss, a digital book you can sell for overcoming anxiety.
There let’s think this. If someone’s paying $37 a month for this and they can easily justify that setting up these done for you businesses in a box, get some $500 a month or an extra $1000 a month even, then that’s by far worth the $37 per month. Then for you, let’s say you have even a handful of members, let’s say you have 100 members in that site, to use small numbers, that’s $3700 per month. Maybe out of that, maybe you use half of that, right? Maybe you use $1400 that’s your budget to go and get those businesses in a box made, right?
You can hire someone to make a sales letter, to make a product to package together. Or you can even use that $1400 and buy other people’s resell rights. Maybe you go and whatever $1400 is divided by 20, you go and buy up different other resell rights or master resell rights materials and then now you’re basically buying up a couple thousand dollars’ worth every month of businesses in a box. Then the end-user is only paying 37.
Think about it in terms of those kinds of mindsets in delivering way way more value than what they paid whether that is a critique membership site, a coaching program, a directory site or even some kind of a business in a box like we said. In order to get your membership site set up, you need to have a couple things. You need to have the tools to do it and the guide in the video formats to get you there. The course for that is membershipcube.com M-E-M-B-E-R-S-H-I-P-C-U-B-E dot com.
I want to give you the training on how to make a membership site, I want to give you the WishList member software and I want to give you all of our plug-ins on how to drip content and gamify your sites and even make a directory like we said using the WP Kunaki plug-in. You can get it all at membershipcube.com. I’m Robert Plank from the Membership Site Podcast, thanks for tuning in. we’ll talk to you again very soon.
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