When you create a monthly membership site, people are always going to be able to cancel it. That’s just a simple fact. They are not your prisoner when they join your site. That’s part of the appeal of a membership site that people who join don’t necessarily have to stay in for a year or even to the completion of your course. They’re always going to be able to drop out of that membership site and not have access any longer but also not have to pay you any longer.
So how easy or hard should it be for your members to cancel? My philosophy is to make it easy for them to cancel, encourage them to stay but be upfront and be honest with what happens if they cancel.
So why should you make it easy for somebody to cancel your membership site?
The simple answer is you don’t want chargebacks over complaints. Even if somebody asks you to cancel or asks for a refund, they can always go over your head to your payment processor such as PayPal and leave a complaint with you. If that doesn’t work, they can even go over PayPal’s head and go over their bank or credit card company and do what’s called a chargeback and forcefully cancel this subscription and get their money back. So make it easy for somebody to get out of your membership site because it’s better for you in a long run; it’s not worth hanging on to that $20 just to get one bad mention.
So what do you do instead? Be a normal person. Encourage people to stay. Give them a reason to stay and show why it’s more valuable for them to stay. Have a list of stuff that’s coming up in the next week and the next month so that they don’t have to think about years or months in the future; they only have to think about a few days or weeks ahead of time.
Finally, be upfront about what people are going to lose if they cancel or even better, what they gain when they stay and finish. My favorite for this is if they cancel their membership, they no longer have access to any of the content—that’s fair. But if they stay until the completion of the course, if they graduate, they get access to all the videos for lifetime with no further payments.
I even have some courses where if they finish the whole course, they get a bonus call just for staying in. And it seems like not a lot of extra stuff on your ends but many people who are in your membership site want to get the complete experience—the complete package. They want to graduate so why not make it appealing to them.
And that’s how easy it should be for members to cancel. Make it a simple process if you don’t want complaints, chargebacks or bad publicity but give them a reason to stay; tell them what’s coming up and tell them what they stand to lose if they drop out. I think if you combine those three things, you’ll be able to keep many more people in your membership site than you have right now.
Create a membership site, fill it with content, and market it. Find out everything you need to know right now at www.membershipcube.com.