This year we embark on our biggest and most daunting challenge to date - running our very own live conference: Retain 2019

It's something we've wanted to do for years, and we're beyond excited to bring together hundreds of membership site owners from around the world for 2 days of amazing speakers and high-level networking.

But the journey has not all been smooth sailing...

In this episode of The Membership Guys Podcast, I take you behind the scenes of the story so far, revealing our thought process, strategy and sharing the highs and lows of orchestrating this kind of event.

• Why we've waited until now to run our first conference of this scale
• What happened that almost made us throw in the towel and cancel the entire event
• The specific steps we took to validate our idea for this event, including our pre-sale strategy
• Insights into choosing speakers, picking a location, approaching sponsors and more

Your membership sales page is perhaps the single most important piece of the puzzle for attracting member signups.

Whether it's a cold lead or someone who has been following you for years - it's your sales page that needs to seal the deal and help them to make the final decision to join your membership.

So it's crucial that you get it right!

In this episode I walk through the key elements that every membership sales page should have in order to maximise new member sales.

• Why you need to zero in on the problems and pain points your potential members have, and how to use that info on your sales page
• The importance of transparency, particularly when it comes to your membership pricing
• What "risk reversal" is and why it plays such a big part in crafting an effective sales page
• Pre-empting your customers questions and overcoming objections that might stop them from joining

Most online memberships involve content.

A lot of content.

Not only are you creating content for your membership, but often you're blogging, podcasting or creating videos as part of your marketing strategy too. It can be a lot to handle!

That's why it's crucial to have a solid plan for your content production, so you know well in advance what you need to create in order to schedule accordingly and avoid constantly doing everything at the last minute.

In this episode I'm joined by Janet Murray to discuss how to plan an entire year's worth of content, and the tips and tools you need to help you stay on track.

Considering starting a membership website in 2019?

Perhaps you should be...

In this episode I look at 6 types of people who are especially well suited to starting a membership site, and discuss some of the various strategies they could consider.

And so another year draws to a close...

How was 2018 for you and your membership?

Rather than lament the passage of time, once again we're wrapping up the year by taking a look back at the most loved episodes of The Membership Guys Podcast, counting down the top 10 most downloaded episodes of the past 12 months.

Thanks to each and every one of you for your continued support of the show - here's to even more membership awesomeness in 2019!

Lead generation is a critical part of the sales process for membership owners.

For most membership businesses, this means getting people to subscribe to your email marketing list, where you can engage with them further on a more direct basis and guide them towards joining your membership site.

In this episode of The Membership Guys Podcast, I talk about how to convert website visitors into email leads, and give my top tips for increasing both the quantity and the quality of the leads that you generate.

It's easy to get carried away when creating a membership website.

We often turn to other memberships for inspiration, and as a result end up with a wishlist of shiny bells and whistles that we absolutely MUST have for our own website.

And the end result of cramming all of those features into your membership is a convoluted frankenstein's monster of a website that's a pain to manage and an even bigger nightmare for members to use.

It's not just the tech side of things that people tend to over-complicate; we see the same thing happening with marketing, sales and overall business strategy too.

In this episode of The Membership Guys Podcast, I warn against adding too much complexity to your membership business and discuss the benefits of embracing simplicity.

As the year draws to a close and many inside your membership and your wider audience will be in a festive mood, what sort of things should you be doing as a membership owner?

Whether you're a Christmas fanatic or a modern day Scrooge - the festive season brings with it a few unique opportunities for your membership business.

In this episode of The Membership Guys Podcast, I talk about 6 things you should do in your membership over the holiday period.

• Creating "year end review" content - what we do at The Membership Guys, and some ideas you can try
• The importance of taking time away from your membership over the holidays
• Reviewing your achievements in the past year and setting goals for the next 12 months
• How the festive season affords you more opportunities for promotional campaigns

Membership websites have a whole mess of moving parts - plugins, themes, integrations, payment processors - they all add up to make memberships one of the most complicated types of sites that you can build.

And even if you have help getting everything up and running, chances are there'll be numerous times you'll need a bit of tech support in the day to day running of your membership.

But finding reliable help with the technical side of building and maintaining a membership can be a crap-shoot.

In this episode of The Membership Guys Podcast, I run through some of the most viable options for finding tech support that you can rely on for different stages of your membership.

• The number one resource for learning how to build your membership site yourself (Spoiler alert: it's Member Site Academy - because of course it is!)
• How to distinguish between a legit web developer and someone who has just learned how to configure a handful of plugins and themes
• Why it's not essential that your chosen web developer has specific experience with membership sites
• Where to get help with ad hoc tech issues and day to day maintenance

The "one to many" aspect of a membership site is what makes it such an attractive business model.

The ability to leverage your time, skills, experience and expertise in order to serve hundreds or even thousands, without having to deal with issues of increased expensive, strained resources or limited capacity that can come when trying to grow other types of businesses make memberships one of the most scalable models there is.

However sometimes in order to get to the next level, you need to do a few things that don't scale too well...

• How to add a personal touch to your membership without spreading yourself too thin
• Times where offering a "done for you" or "done with you" service may actually benefit your membership as a whole
• The value of taking your community offline and organising real world meetups
• The biggest challenge in selling a membership, and the specific tactic that works best for overcoming it