Membership Geeks Podcast with Mike Morrison

If you’re thinking about starting a membership site, the very first decision you need to make is what it’s about.

Your choice of topic is fundamental to your success. A good choice is a strong foundation. A poor choice will lead to an uphill battle you really don’t want to tackle.

But how do you make the right choice?

Tune in to this episode to hear the crucial elements that make a good membership topic idea. We cover why you need some expertise and what to do if you aren’t an expert. We also discuss why you should pick an evergreen topic if you want to be in this for the long haul, and much more!

Essential Learning Points:   

• Why your choice of topic is essential
• Why you should chasing avoid any fads    
• The importance of picking a topic you have some expertise in
• How to pick a topic that’s evergreen
• Why you need to love your topic
• What to do if your membership idea doesn’t tick all the boxes

Important Links & Mentions:

• The Membership Guys
• Membership Academy

Key Quotes:

“If you make the wrong decision about your membership topic, then that pretty much means that anything else you do is built on a pretty unstable foundation.”

“Most online memberships will involve tapping into your knowledge, skills, experience, and expertise to help someone accomplish something to learn something to make progress towards a specific goal result or outcome.”

“If you've got a real passion and enthusiasm for your topic, then the idea that you get to eat, sleep and breathe this subject day in day out for years to come will be absolute perfection.”

“In an ideal world, your topic should really be something specific, something niche, as opposed to something generic.”

Is it time to finally increase the price of your membership?

It’s tricky to answer that because there are loads of different things to consider first. What are your costs? What value do you provide? How are the competition pricing? How can you stay competitive AND maintain a good profit margin?

These are some of the many questions we’re answering in this episode. Tune in to hear 11 signs that it’s finally time to give your pricing a bump and why increasing your price won’t make your customers run for the hills.

Essential Learning Points:

• Why it may be time to increase your price for the first time
• How to price based on the value
• How to maintain a healthy profit margin
• What potential members really think about low-priced memberships
• How to be competitive without competing on price

Important Links & Mentions:

• The Membership Guys
• Membership Academy
• Strategies for Increasing Your Membership Pricing

Key Quotes:

“If you have already gone through a price increase before, but it's been a couple of years, then maybe it's time to think about that next increase.”

“As your membership and as your business grows, you will see your expenses growing too.”

“Competing on price is the worst way to compete. It is a race to the bottom.”

How do you keep the peace in your membership community? As a community leader, it’s your job to make the space your members inhabit welcoming, friendly, and harmonious.

But managing a big group of members can be tough. Sometimes people are rude, break the rules, others feel left out, and this leaves people feeling uncomfortable.

No one wants to stick around in a toxic community.

So, how do you keep the peace and deal with members who break the rules? Having a plan in place will help limit the damage and keep everyone happier. In this episode, I dive into six simple ways to maintain the harmony in your online community.

Essential Learning Points:

• Why you need to keep the peace in your online community
• How to put clear rules in place and enforce them
• Why it’s important to lead by example
• Why you might want to appoint moderators
• The benefits of encouraging members to use real names and photos
• Why you shouldn’t only interact with the cliques

Important Links & Mentions:

• The Membership Guys
• Membership Academy
• How to Deal with Problem Members Inside Your Community

Key Quotes:

“There's no point in having guidelines on what is and isn't acceptable if you're not going to enforce them.”

“If you can get that accountability and that responsibility in there, then that can play a massive part in giving you a harmonious, positive community dynamic.”

“One of the worst things that you can do as a community leader is to get involved in a clique within your community because that is a guaranteed way of excluding the majority of your member base.”

Not sure whether to offer monthly or annual billing on your membership?

The way members sign up to your membership site can make all the difference in the buying decision.

You don’t want to turn people away at the first stage, so picking the right one is crucial.

In this episode, we go through all the pros and cons of monthly vs. annual subscriptions. You’ll learn which has the higher profit margin usually, which is the more stable option, and which is best for your members.

We also share an alternative way to bill and how you can upsell or down-sell your membership options.

Essential Learning Points:

• Why monthly memberships tend to offer more stability
• How monthly billing can improve engagement
• Why annual billing provides a better profit margin
• The effect annual billing has on your member base
• Why you don’t have to pick one or the other

Important Links & Mentions:

• The Membership Guys
• Membership Academy

Key Quotes:

“You can, of course, offer both. Unless you have a very compelling reason for going monthly-only or annual-only, then we do typically recommend having both options available.”

“One of the main reasons people set up a membership site is for the stability and the predictability that comes from having that sort of recurring revenue over time.

That stability goes out of the window to a degree if you're relying solely on annual billing.”

“With a higher buy-in, people are a little bit more invested…and they've given a bit more thought to their buying decision. Usually, that all adds up to a slightly higher caliber of members inside your community.”

Has the spark died down from your membership?

If you’re struggling with getting new members, old members are quitting, or engagement has dwindled, it’s time to reignite that spark.

The good news is that there are plenty of things you can try to turn your membership around. In this episode, we’re sharing some of the simple, quick fixes and longer-term strategies you can use to get your membership back on track.

Essential Learning Points:

• The first step in fixing the problem is to understand it
• Why you should start with the easy fixes first
• The tough questions you need to ask yourself
• Why sometimes the simplest way to identify the problem is to just ask
• How you can relaunch your membership
• Ways to grab your members’ attention

Important Links & Mentions:

• The Membership Guys
• Membership Academy

Key Quotes:

“If your membership site has slowed down or it’s starting to stagnate, then all is definitely not lost. It is very much possible to inject that bit of new life to reignite re-spark your membership.”

“You need to decide honestly whether you're giving enough value to justify people continuing their subscription.”

“To reignite the momentum in your membership, you could do a soft relaunch. This might involve doing a whole bunch of podcasts, interviews, guest blogs, maybe doing some event-based marketing.”

Do you have an online course you’re thinking of taking to the next level? Wondering if an online membership would make the perfect pairing?

A combination of courses and memberships can work well, but only if you get the strategy right.

If you’re considering an online membership alongside your course, this is the episode for you! We cover the benefits of blending the two content models together and all the different ways you can do this effectively.

In this episode, you’ll learn about the different considerations you need to make before choosing any particular model, including where on the journey your audience is and what they need from your content.

Essential Learning Points:

• The benefits of combining a membership with an online course
• How to sell your membership as a standalone product
• The two main ways to combine your course and membership
• How to decide what strategy to use

Important Links & Mentions:

• The Membership Guys
• Membership Academy
• Using the ‘Splinter’ Strategy to Sell More Memberships

Key Quotes:

“A combination of courses and memberships can work extremely well if you get the strategy right.”

“It's all about that bigger picture and figuring out where your course fits in the journey of an average student.”

“With this kind of approach of courses and memberships intertwined, you can actually have some of your cake and eat it too. And you can play around with different combinations of enrolment models.”

Wow... 6 years of Membership Academy!

It's been a crazy year as we adjusted to running a membership during a pandemic and refocused our efforts and attentions on new areas of growth.

Listen in as Callie and I recap the highs and lows of the past 12 months of Membership Academy, and look ahead to what's in store in the next year and beyond.

How do you choose the perfect price for your membership?

What’s the number one thing to think about? The truth is, there are lots of different factors at play. But one thing people overlook is the idea of perceived value.

Perceived value is something that isn’t concrete or easy to assess. It’s all about personal opinion, circumstances, the market itself, and everything in between.

Tune in to this episode, where we go through all the different elements that make up a good pricing decision for your membership. We cover everything from perceived value to weighing up the practicalities, member affordability, and of course, the competition.

Essential Learning Points:

• How perceived value affects pricing
• How to price according to the market
• Why you should look closely at the competition
• Pricing based on practical considerations
• Why the customer’s affordability is worth considering

Important Links & Mentions:

• The Membership Guys
• Membership Academy
• How Much Should I Charge For My Membership Website?

Key Quotes:

“Membership pricing, or pricing in general, is not logical.”

“Optimizing for the absolute perfect price is kind of a fool's errand because so much of it comes down to perception.”

“It should be the easiest thing in the world. Just pick a number. But once you dive into it, there's just so much at play.”

“Every buying decision is an individual one. Every buying decision is a personal one. What will your membership do for them?”

Can a membership business ever really provide passive income?

Lots of so-called internet marketing gurus out there will point you in the direction of the membership model and claim it’s the “ultimate way to make passive income.”

We’re here to tell you that’s false…sort of. Memberships are not a way to make 100% passive income, but can they make any passive income?

In this episode, we discuss what passive income really is, why memberships can never be 100% passive, and why it’s up to you to decide how passive you want your business to be.

Essential Learning Points:   

• Why you should be wary of the term “passive income”
• Why memberships are never 100% passive     
• What does passive income really mean?  
• Ways a membership can be partially passive

Important Links & Mentions:       

• The Membership Guys        
• The Membership Academy

Key Quotes:

“An online membership is a business…and every business requires you to work and take it seriously. It's not a gimmick. It's not a cheat. It's not something you do if you're just looking for a quick shortcut to make an easy buck.”

“There's an old adage in the internet marketing world, that internet marketers work 18 hours a day, so they can make money in their sleep. Being able to say, ‘I make money in my sleep,’ so many people like to use that as a badge of honor…And of course, you never see the full story.”

“We've always railed against the tendency of internet marketers to promote memberships as a path to passive income because in doing so that really does sell the lie, that this is an easy route to untold riches for minimal effort.”

Are you ready to finally hire your first employee?

It’s an exciting yet daunting experience because there’s a lot to cover and plan for. But don’t worry, this episode takes you through all the steps you need to know about.

In this episode, we cover the early stages of hiring an employee, how to design a smooth and seamless application and interview stage, why you need to have the finer details worked out before hiring, and how to onboard your new employee.

If you’re unsure where to start, this is a great starting point that takes you through the pre-hiring, hiring, and onboarding stages.

Essential Learning Points:    

• Why good timing is so important when hiring your first employee
• How to determine the logistics of hiring  
• How to design a seamless application and interview process  
• Why you can’t ignore the boring admin part
• How to onboard your new employee without leaving them in the dark

Important Links & Mentions:

• The Membership Guys
• Membership Academy
• Behind the Membership      
• 6 Tasks You Should Outsource To Make Your Membership More Manageable

Key Quotes:

“I'd much rather you hold off on recruiting someone and bringing someone permanent full-time into your business, until you have more than enough financial means to actually do it.”

“Don't just hire someone to perform the task, at its current standard, hire someone to be better than you to level your business up.”

“Make sure you're realistic in your expectations and consistent in the type of work that you would expect people in the roles you're hiring for to complete.”