Membership Geeks Podcast with Mike Morrison

With so many moving parts involved in building and running a membership site, the costs can quickly add up.

And while constantly trying to penny-pinch and always going with the cheap option isn't the best approach, it's also prudent to ensure you're not unnecessarily wasting money.

In this episode of The Membership Guys Podcast, I share 9 ways to cut your day to day costs when running a membership business.

• The simple step to avoiding the temptation to buy lots of tools and software that you'll end up never using!
• How thinking long term with subscriptions and licenses will save you money
• The importance of regularly reviewing your expenses and stopping any expenditure that's wasted
• How developing better processes can have an impact on your bottom line

While in a lot of cases people will have joined your membership to get the benefit of your particular expertise; bringing in experts in complimentary topics can add a lot to your offering.

Not only does inviting guest contributors increase the value and variety you provide to your members; but it's also a smart strategy for minimizing the workload involved in creating all membership content yourself.

In this episode I talk more about ways to make best use of guest contributors for your membership, as well as how to approach experts and get them to agree to be involved.

• The benefits of inviting other experts to contribute to your membership
• How best to approach your guests and convince them to get involved
• Examples of the types of membership content you might ask a guest to contribute
• How to make it easier for your potential guest to say "yes!"

During the course of running your membership site, there will inevitably come a point where you want to increase your pricing.

Maybe your offering has changed, perhaps you're responding to increased demand or maybe you just want to earn a little more for your efforts.

Rather than simply raising your prices overnight, check out this latest episode of The Membership Guys Podcast for my tips and strategies to help you to get the best results from increasing your membership pricing...

• Should you increase the price for existing members or just new ones?
• How a pending price increase gives you a huge promotional opportunity that can bring in an influx of new signups.
• Timing your price increase to ensure maximum impact
• Alternatives to raising your membership pricing that you might want to consider

Membership websites come in all shapes and sizes; but the type we primarily deal with here on The Membership Guys consist primarily of content and community.

Given that content marketing is, without doubt, one of the best ways to promote your membership site; then it can be a real challenge trying to figure out which content should be free - via blogs, podcasts and the like - and which content should comprise your paid membership.

In this episode of The Membership Guys Podcast, I tackle this subject and look at some of the things to consider when deciding whether your content should be free or paid...

• The truth behind the notion that membership site owners are selling content (spoiler: that's NOT what you're selling!)
• Some of the obvious differences between free and paid content
• 5 questions to ask yourself to help determine whether a piece of content should be free or should be paid
• Why membership owners often overlook the importance of c________e (listen in to fill the blank!)

The typical membership site owner creates a LOT of content.

Not just for their paying members, but as part of their marketing strategy too.

It's a lot of work - so anything you can do to increase the impact and the reach of the content you create is a big win.

Content repurposing can help you squeeze every drop of value from your courses, tutorials, blogs, videos and podcasts; and in today's episode of The Membership Guys Podcast, I'm joined by the queen of content repurposing - Amy Woods from Content10x - to discuss ways that you can repurpose your membership content.

• The right way to approach repurposing your content to ensure you stand out, not just making more noise
• Should you try to "be everywhere" when it comes to content platforms and social media?
• Specific things you can do to repurpose both your paid membership content as well as your free content
• The 2-3 steps you can take - starting with your next piece of content - to get to grips with repurposing

Wow, time flies when you're rocking the membership world!

In what has become an annual tradition - we're celebrating the 3rd anniversary of Member Site Academy with a very special episode looking back at the past 12 months of our business.

And of course I'm joined once again by the other (and arguably better) half of The Membership Guys, the one and only Callie Willows, to discuss year three of running the Academy.

• Picking up where we left off at the end of our 2nd year and discussing where we went from there.
• Changes we've made to our strategy and the reasons and circumstances behind those decisions
• Our highlights from the past 12 months, what's worked, what hasn't and what challenges we've faced
• A sneak peek at our future plans for the Member Site Academy and the business in general

As your membership grows, so too does the likelihood that you'll encounter negative feedback from your members.

You can't please everyone, it's a fools errand to even try. But what do you do if one of your members says something you don't like about your membership?

How you react to and process negative feedback can have real implications on the way you run your membership.

In this episode of The Membership Guys Podcast, I share my advice on handling negativity the right way, and give my tips for turning it around and using this sort of feedback for the betterment of your business.

• Why you shouldn't immediately react to negative comments and feedback
• How to figure out whether it's actual negative feedback or just something you don't want to hear
• The importance of finding context for the feedback you receive
• Do you even need to respond if someone says something negative?

Podcasting can be an extremely effective outlet for experts and influencers to expand their reach, grow their audience and demonstrate their credibility.

And for membership owners, a podcast can be a great source of new members too.

In fact our podcast is perhaps one of the most important pieces of our marketing puzzle, and helps generate hundreds of thousands of dollars in membership sales each and every year.

In this week's episode of that very podcast, I share 6 ways that you can use podcasting to promote and grow your membership website.

• Why holding out for sponsorships is a dumb move for anyone who runs a membership website
• How to organically talk about your membership on every single episode without being salesy and annoying your listeners
• Ways to leverage your existing membership content as part of your podcast
• Running a promotion just for podcast listeners - and what you need to avoid

"The average length of time someone will stay subscribed to your membership is just 3 months."

You’ve heard that before, right?

You’ve no doubt seen "experts" throwing this statistic around. Heck, if you dig hard enough I wouldn't be surprised if we've repeated it ourselves once upon a time!

Well here’s the truth - that 3 month average subscription length? It’s nonsense. Utter nonsense.

In today’s episode I look at where the whole 3 month myth came from and why it’s persisted - but more importantly I talk about what the actual average subscription length for membership sites is.

• Where the "3 month average" member retention myth came from, and why it's stuck around so long.
• Why it's impossible to determine an exact industry average for online memberships.
• A more accurate ballpark average subscription length, backed up by data.
• Why it really doesn't matter what the industry average is, and what you should focus on instead.

On June 20th, Facebook officially announced that they are trialling the option for Group admins to charge a recurring subscription fee to their members.

This is definitely a huge move, and one that capitalises on the fact that there are already many membership owners using Facebook Groups "unofficially" for their paid community.

So what does this mean for the membership industry? Should we all pack up our things and move our memberships over to Facebook?

If you've been following us for a while, you probably know the answer to that one...

In this episode, I dissect this announcement as well as some other recent developments with Facebook groups and revisit the contentious topic of using them for your membership community.

• What we know about the Facebook paid group subscriptions so far (and what we can assume)
• The implications of running your entire membership through the Facebook ecosystem
• How this and other recent changes have made Facebook a serious player when it comes to choosing a membership platform
• What Facebook's track record tells us, and why it's best to tread carefully...