My wife Veena and I spent the last 3 days at one of the biggest internet marketing conferences in North America, called Traffic & Conversion, put on by Ryan Deiss and Perry Belcher and the awesome team at Digital Marketer.
It was really good. 3 days of non-stop sessions and talks. Of course, Veena and I, because we live in San Diego, just had to drive like 1/2 hour to get to the hotel where the seminar was being held. And on the 2nd day, we even took off early, came back home, watched most of a basketball game between Lebron James's Cleveland Cavaliers, and Kobe Bryant's LA Lakers. And then we went back to an awesome party later in the evening, which I'll tell you all about in a minute here.
So here are some of my thoughts and ideas about the event itself, as well as my spiel on how to do an internet marketing conference well.
#1) It was very telling that a room with seating for 500 was jam packed for a session about how someone is killing it with Periscope. And in the very next rook, it was mostly crickets where someone was talking about Podcast monetization. Now, I know for a fact that most people with podcasts aren't making money. In fact, out of the few thousand shows that are launched each month, most of them will not get past episode 10, most won't ever grow their audience, they won't get traction, the host will eventually lose interest or get discouraged that no one's listening or just find the next shiny new thing, and they will all eventually "podfade" - that's the term used to describe podcasts that just fade slowly over time. So why were there more people in the Periscope session than a Podcast session? Isn't that amazing? That just tells me that most people still don't get it, that Podcasts are the single greatest medium for establishing authority, proving your expertise, building really deep connections with your audience, because you are literally inside their head while they're listening to you, they cannot fast forward, they are the most attentive because they're probably multi-tasking as they walking the dog or do the dishes or laundry or clean the house or going out on a run - by the way, those are the times I listen to podcasts as well. Recently I was at the dentist, for a cleaning session that lasted more than an hour. And I had to do that twice in a week. And my dentist has a very posh set up - they have a TV screen on the ceiling, so you can be lying down, getting your teeth drilled into, and watch Ellen Degenres at the same time. But guess what I did instead? I asked them to turn off the TV, I put on my behind-the-ear bluetooth headphones and listened to podcasts the entire time. Alex Blumberg from Startup and Sarah Keonig from Serial were inside my head the whole time. Some of the people whose fan I've become lately, are all podcasters whose shows I regularly listen to - like James Schramko from superfastbusiness, or Dave Jackson from school of podcasting, or Daniel J Lewis from theaudacitytopodcast.
Podcasting is such an intimate, personal platform, that it just blew my mind to see just a fraction of the audience for a podcasting session compared to a session about Periscope. You know why? Periscope is the shiny new thing that everyone's and their dog is creating content with. And at the end of the day, do you know what is the same ol same ol problem that everyone's going to have on Periscope? It's building an audience. Doesn't matter what platform you are on. The platform can only go so far in helping you get some free traffic. Whether it is blogging on Medium, or getting your show on New & Noteworthy on iTunes (Dave Jackson, if you're listening, I just threw up in my mouth just a little bit). Whether is is creating videos on youtube or scoping on Periscope or Blabbing on blab, the age-old problem that will haunt 99% of the content creators, is that they will not find an audience, they won't be able to grow an audience, they won't be able to get traction, they won't be able to monetize it. And then they'll simply move on to the next new shiny thing.
And those who stay, pick maybe just a couple of platforms, and go really really deep into it, and figure out how to reach more people, keep more people, provide tons of value and also figure out how to influence that audience to go do whatever it is that you want them to do - whether it is to inspire people or educate or entertain or sell books or sell ads, those are the people who will go on to win, regardless of the platform. And whichever platform you go to, it's the same case - it's the 1%ers versus the 99%ers.
#2) So I did start by going to the Podcast session first. But the speaker was such a deadbeat, he was from a podcast monetization company - I won't name any names here. But he just absolutely killed it - as in, not in a good way. He was actually killing the audience with boredome. He was speaking on a low, monotonous tone, had the abolutely worst slides I have ever seen, with horribly lazy images that looked like he probably spent no more than 1 minute finding the right image for each slide. No energy, no excitement, and the worst thing? He worked for the company that was doing the presentation that taught you how to monetize your content. See the blatant conflict of interest there? Yeah, it sucked. So Veena and I skipped out after 15 minutes, and that's how we ended up at the neighboring Periscope session. So, it's not just about getting the audience, but you have to be good enough to keep them. And this guy couldn't hold our attention because he sucked big time, and lost us very early. And it's going to happen to you too with your audience, whether you're doing a podcast, or a blab or a periscope. So focus on the hook, on the message, and delivering great content and delivering it in a really good way. The platform is secondary. And you'll be a fool if you ignored podcasting just because it's not as sexy and exciting as Periscope.
#3) If you are going to spend time, money and effort on going to a seminar, then don't waste it all on just going to the sessions. I mean, sure, pick and choose a few, like I did with the Gary Vaynerchuk session at the end of day 1. Gary Vee absolutely rocked the place. Check out his podcast ask gary vee, and he might be an acquired taste for some, but just stick with it for a few episodes, and there's a good chance you'll become a huge fan, like me. So feel free to handpick a couple of sessions, but don't waste all of your time just shuttling from session to session. The biggest gold is out there in the hallways, running into folks, crash conversations if you have to, just don't be a jerk and start handing out your cards. Join the conversation quietly, as long as it's a large enough group, wait for someone to talk to you, just invite yourself. Don't say "Hi, I'm Ravi Jayagopal, Co-Founder & Co-Developer of DigitalAccessPass.com, one of the leading membership plugins for WordPress". Don't do that. Say something like "Hi, my name is Ravi Jayagopal". And wait for someone to ask you what you do. Then say something low-key like "I own a software business. It's called digitalaccesspass". In my case, most people would say, "Oh, DAP, I know you guys" I use DAP or I used to use DAP. And some would say Oh, so what does digitalaccesspass do? And then you give them just a little bit more. You say "it's a membership plugin for WordPress". See how I'm giving it piece by piece, and only when asked. That's the way to enter a conversation with a group of strangers and not be shunned as a jerk. So hang out outside in the halls more than the sessions. You can always pay for the recording of all the sessions. You'll anyway not be able to go to all of the breakout sessions. So if you think you want the content, then order the recordings. And focus as much as you can on networking and making connections. So in our case, Veena and I were invited to a very exclusive party of who's who, so we went home early, got refreshed and drove back for the party. And I'm telling you, it was an incredible group of people that we rubbed shoulders with. Yes, I'm going to drop some names. So sue me. Chris Farrel, Andrew Lock, E Brian Rose from JVZoo, James Dyson and team from Optimize Press, John Lee Dumas from Entreprenuronfire, Jaime Tardy from eventual millionaire, Luria Petrucci, formerly known as Cali Lewis from Geek beat TV and the Leo Laporte show, wow, it was absolutely amazing. In facdt, if you go to the show notes for this show at subscribeme.fm/19, you'll see a cool selfie of me and John Lee Dumas outside the women's restroom. No, we weren't doing anything crazy. Just figured out outside the men's room as we were leaving, that I didn't have a selfie with John. He's such an incredibly down-to-earth guy for someone who's such a big name. In fact, every single one of them there were such movers and shakers, and they were all so incredibly human and humble, that it was just mind blowing. And by the way, John Lee Dumas has also given me an amazing testimonial for my book at SubscribeMeBook.com. Here's what he said about my book:
Ravi is one of the foremost authorities on membership sites & online courses. Every bit of his writing comes from years of selling online and helping others set up membership sites. If you want to learn from the best about recurring income and IGNITE your brand, this is THE book to read. - John Lee Dumas, EOFire.com
Check out my book at subscribemebook.com, also on amazon - just search for subscribe me - one words or two words, and both will bring up my book towards the top.
So that was my mini-soapbox rant about conferences and audience building and platforms.
If you take away just one thing from this episode, then make sure to go deep, then wide. As in, go really deep into your niche, or your marketing platform, before you go wide and move to the next big shiny thing. If you get into podcasting, stick with it. If you write a Kindle book, go deep and don't just launch your book and forget about it. Promote it, get the message out. Go as a guest on other people's shows. Do your "book tour" before you fall for the shiny object syndrome. There's going to be something new everyday. Videos, youtube, kindle, podasting, blab, periscope, and snapchat - man, Gary Vee is so into snapchat, it's just crazy. There's facebook, pinterest, instagram, on and on and on. Don't get caught up with trying to be everywhere all at the same time. You can't. Nobody can. So pick one or two platforms where most of your target audience hangs out, and just go deep into it, and crush it till the cows come home.
Thank you so much for listening to the SubscribeMe show at SubscribeMe.fm.
And if you want to offer me any kind of feedback, or check out the John Lee Dumas selfie with me in front of the ladies room, or for to contact me, go to http://subscribeme.fm/19/
Cheers and talk to you on the next episode.
In this episode, I'm going to talk about why, when it comes to finding a joint venture partner or an influencer or an affiliate to help you promote your product, you would be making a big mistake if all you did was try to go after just the biggest names in your market.
And I'm calling this the "Don't go for the blonde" technique. Now, I mean no disrespect to brunettes, or blondes, or whatever color your hair may be. This is an equal-hair-color opportunity show. But what I'm referring to here, is a scene from the movie "A Beautiful Mind" where Russel Crowe plays famous mathematician John Nash, widely regarded as one of the great mathematicians of the 20th century, who won a shared Nobel Prize in 1994. So let me set up this clip for you...
In this scene, Russell Crowe is setting in a coffee shop with his friends. And in walks a stunning blonde, with 4 brunette friends. And that's where Russel's character John Nash, comes up with his Nobel Prize winning theory...
Now listen to this clip (listen to the episode)
The idea is that if everyone went for the blonde, she would ignore all of them, because she's feeling way too important. And AFTER the rejection, if they now approached her friends, they would now be insulted that they weren't approached first, and would shun the guys as well. So he says, ignore the blonde, and go straight for the brunettes, and that way everyone goes home with a date.
Basically, this is what tends to happen in the real world as well. I've seen a lot of newbies and inexperienced marketers, looking at the big-name marketers in their industry, and lusting after their big lists, and thinking "All I have to do is do a JV with Mr Big-name-marketer" and I'll have them blast my product to hundreds of thousands of people on their list, and I'll hit big time soon thereafter.
Well, that's a very flawed way to look at it. And there are a number of issues with that approach...
1) The biggest names, they might have tens or even hundreds of thousands of emails on their lists. Now, remember, in most cases, they have worked very hard to build this list, probably over many years. And most of them don't endlessly spam their lists - well, some of them certainly do, but they usually lose subscribers pretty fast. So spam karma is usually quick to take effect.
So they have to be judicious in emailing their list with offers, as these marketers usually have their own products to promote. And then there are usually favors that they have to return - maybe a friend of theirs might have mailed their list for this person's launch, and now they have to email their list for that friend's next promotion. And then every so often, comes an insanely great product - like dropbox when it first came out, or some new shopping cart or ecommerce system or plugin - like DigitalAccessPass.com - and they are compelled to participate in it because the product itself is so new and noteworthy.
So by the time they're done with their own products, and their returning-the-favor mailings and the occasional new kid-on-the-block mailings, they're already at risk of burning out their email lists. And they're not going to mail out for your product launch. Not unless you're launching something spectacular. It's got to be spectacular in other people's minds, not yours, because I'm sure you will always think your new book or plugin or product is always going to be spectacular.
So if you're thinking people will email their lists on your behalf just because you came out with a new product, or just because you joined their mastermind group, or because you bought this marketer's products, or because you joined their facebook group, or because they appeared as a guest on your show, then stop. Stop right now, and don't even go there, because it's not happening.
I'll give you a small example of my own. At DAP, we have almost 28,000 DAP users. And we have so many other lists outside of DAP. If you came to us and said that, you have, say, a new WordPress plugin launching, and you want us to promote it to our lists of tens of thousands of users, mostly buyers, which we have built with lots of hard work over the years, then guess what? It's not going to happen.
So don't waste your time following a marketer, buying their products, their books, joining their expensive mastermind or coaching program, just BECAUSE you think they will one-day turn around and promote your product to their lists. You are in for a big disappointment if you do that. Because it just doesn't work that way, and you may not even understand the full extent of it, until you've built your own list, and only then will you realize the true value of having that list, using it more to deliver value than to sell products. And on the occasions that you do wish to promote something, you want to save that for your own products, or to return the favor of someone who has helped you, or to gain the favor of someone who might soon help you. Well, you will know that value even if you have just 100 people, know what I mean?
And the crazy thing, do you want to know of a guaranteed way to get the attention of a big-name marketer? It is to promote THEIR product as an affiliate, sell lots of product for them, and get a big commission check. And if you sell tons and tons for them, then that's when you can expect them to reciprocate. Well, if you had that big of a list already, and had the brand and respect to get people on your list to buy stuff, why sell them other people's products? Why not save that to promote your own book, or podcast, or do a JV with someone who has an up-and-coming product and split the profits as an owner?
Always buy, don't rent. Build YOUR business. Not someone else's.
In the last episode, towards the end, I was talking about the reasons why you should NOT make a 3rd party platform like Udemy your main course delivery platform. I talked about the first 3 reasons. Now here's reason #4 why you should NOT make a 3rd party marketplace your main course delivery platform.
They have restrictions on what kind of emails you can send to your buyers. From what I've read, most of these marketplace platforms will not allow you to send your buyers links via email that lead back to your site. You cannot send out other offers of your own or affiliate links. Your access to your buyer's list is very restricted, and your email list that you build on such a platform cannot be downloaded, imported into another system, it cannot be sold as part of your company if you end up selling your company. So this rented list is not a true asset for your business.
Reason #5: Instead of building your own business, you are essentially building THEIR business. They are the ones really getting a paying customer. They're just paying you a small commission, for all practical purposes. They are the ones who can continue to market other courses to your buyer. For LIFE. They are building an asset off of YOUR back. It's their lifetime customer value that keeps going up, not yours.
#6 why you should NOT make a 3rd party platform like Udemy your main course delivery platform: A lot of the stuff on Udemy is coupon-driven. Udemy frequently offers up 100 or 200 or even 300 dollar courses, for just 10 dollars. And it feels like this "buy any course for 10 bucks" promo happens like almost once every couple of weeks. Of course, as a seller, you would need to opt in for this promotion. So you basically have to tell Udemy that it's ok for them to promote your 300 dollar course for 10 dollars. And then they practically spam the heck out of all their buyers - which, remember, includes your buyers as well. I won't lie to you - I myself have purchased a couple of courses on Udemy after they dropped from a few hundred bucks to just 10 bucks. And as a seller, it's tempting to opt in to this promo, because you know Udemy is marketing the heck out of these 10 dollar courses, and you certainly don't want to be left out. But guess what? If the course sells for 10 bucks, then you're probably going to get paid 1/2 of that, because remember, it's not your promotional effort - the 10 dollar promo is their promotion. And you can't maximize the transaction by upselling them or add them to your list and market them other stuff. Guess who gets to do all of that? Udemy, of course!
Finally, reason #7 to not use a marketplace platform to build your long-term business: They don't allow you to sell recurring subscription products. Not as far as I can tell. Just 1-time products.
So this whole miniseries is not really about picking on Udemy. In fact, if were to ever use a third-party marketplace, I would pick udemy over all other solutions out there.
What I'm talking about is strictly about not focusing on a third-party marketplace to build your entire membership business. Basically, I'm telling you to stop renting and buy a house. That's all. So you could technically replace everything I said about Udemy and replace it with any of the other 50 course-creation web sites that are out there. I just use Udemy in my examples beacause it is the most popular one.
There are so many out there, that I found an article online that lists all of them. And I will link to it in my show notes.
Some of the names are: Ruzuku, Teachable, Skillshare, Digital Chalk, Mindbites, Mindflash, WizIq and on and on and on.
Now, let's flip the coin and see what's on the other side...
You can use Udemy and other such online course creation platforms as a marketing tool - maybe repurpose some old content, old videos, and see if you can leverage that massive organic traffic that you can get from them. And you can try to fly under the radar and using bonus lessons and other tricks, see if you can get them over to your web site.
If you have to tiptoe around too much, then I don't know if it's worth it. Because for all that time and effort, you would be better off creating maybe a podcast, or creating any number of courses within your own content library, where even if you sell it for 5 bucks, you get to keep the entire 5 bucks. And if you used a membership plugin like DAP, then you can make each buyer into your own affiliate, and you can offer THEM commissions to help you promote your product. Every member becomes an affiliate, they promote it, bring in more buyers, then each one of THOSE people becomes an affiliate and brings in more members, and so on. A massively viral marketing opportunity using an affiliate program. And you can use all of that to build YOUR own business, and not the business of somebody else.
So before I conclude, let me talk about WHEN and WHY it is a great thing to use Udemy.com
#1) Marketplaces like Udemy are great if you're just getting started, don't have an established name or brand. And you're trying to build a name for yourself. And you want maximum exposure for your brand. In that case, create a free course. And then create a more expensive course, make it worth a lot - like 100 or 300 bucks. And then participate in all of their promotions, because at this point, making money or building a successful business should not be your goal. Your goal is to get your name and your brand out there in front of as many people as you can.
#2) Getting that kind of exposure will help you get noticed, help you build authority, if your course gets thousands of students, you can leverage that exposure into becoming a mini celebrity. Use that as a testimonial - 5,000 students on Udemy with high ratings - and you can go as a guest on other podcasts, write a book about how you created it, create an online course about how you did all of this, then use that in order to help others with their marketing, and so on. So if you don't have your own web site, then marketplaces like Udemy can be a great starting point to go where there's already traffic, and create your presence. Just like renting a store at the mall, where there are already so many buyers. Like selling on Amazon. Like putting you podcast on iTunes. Like writing a blog post on Medium.com, rather than on your own blog. So to leverage a large, built-in audience, that's where Udemy and other marketplaces are priceless. But you have to know where to draw the line when it comes to renting versus owning. And unless you bring it all back to your web site, you don't have a successful, long-term business. And you sure as heck cannot sell recurring subscriptions on most of these marketplaces.
So remember, out of the 3 ways to host your membership site...
1) A Self-Hosted WordPress Site
2) A fully-hosted membership site, and
3) A third-party marketplace like Skillshare and Udemy
The absolute best option, in my humble yet spectacularly wise and intelligent opinion, is to have your own WordPress-based site running on your own hosting account, running a membership plugin like DAP, where you OWN and have full control over your content, your members, your affiliates, your emails, the payments... basically everything. And THAT is how you build a successful, long-term profitable online business.
Hosting your membership site on a third-party marketplace - like Udemy.com and SkillShare.com
On Udemy, it is free to create a course. And whatever price you end up charging for it, if you do the marketing and send buyers to your own course page on Udemy.com, and the visitor buys your course using a coupon that YOU have provided them with, then you keep 100% of the revenue from the sales. Of course, they deduct about 3% for processing fees, but still, that's 100% of the actual revenue.
If Udemy sends you customers via their own marketing efforts, then they get 50% of the sale. They have other service add-ons to help you with marketing, and opting in to those would net you less on each sale, but you can reach a wider audience because of the increased exposure your course would get from Udemy’s marketing efforts.
There are a number of other course-creation platforms, and each one has its own place in the industry. But probably the most popular one, that I myself have purchased a course from in the past, is Udemy.
Digital Sharecropping
Sharecropping, by definition, is "a system of agriculture in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on their portion of land."
And building your business on a third-party platform, where they own the platform, they control the sales, and then they pay you a portion of the profits, is generally referred to as Digital Sharecropping.
It can work for many businesses – like my book SubscribeMeBook.com is being sold on Amazon Kindle and will probably make the most sales on that platform. However, that doesn’t stop me from selling this book on my own web site, or through other eBook platforms. And that is why my book sales will not get entirely shut down if Amazon decides to not allow my book to be sold there. It is not the end of the world. However, if you are building your membership business on a third-party platform, and something goes wrong with your account or your product, or the platform itself shuts down or gets bought out by another company that maybe absorbs the talent and shuts the business down, then all of your content, your members, their recurring billing profiles – everything disappears overnight.
That thought makes most membership site owners nervous, which is why a building your own self-hosted membership platform using WordPress and a membership plugin like DigitalAccessPass.com (DAP), is a great idea for most people.
All this and more in today's episode #16. Show notes available at http://SubscribeMe.fm/16/
At DigitalAccessPass.com, we recently got an email from a prospective customer, who said this, in part (paraphrasing):
Finally, I have built a course that I will use for content, should I host it on my site, or put it on Udemy and then give free coupons to my members to take it on udemy?
And I'm going to break up my answer into multiple episodes.
So in today's part 1, before I can answer that question about Udemy, we first need to talk about the 3 options you have for running a membership site.
1) Self-Hosted WordPress Site
2) A fully-hosted membership site, and
3) A third-party marketplace like Udemy.com
Let's get into each of these in more detail...
1) Self-hosted WordPress site: If you listen to Episode 3 of this podcast - this is episode 14, by the way. So the title of episode 3 was "$1.5 Billion for a Membership Site? Membership Site Dream Team" - you can listen to it at subscribeme.fm/3/ , I have talked about having your own domain, the kind of hosting you should use, and how you should have your own WordPress site, what to use for video, and so on.
So having your own domain registered via Godaddy, your own hosting with liquid web - to support this show, please use my affiliate link , http://subscribeme.fm/liquidweb/ . Your own version of WordPress downloaded from WordPress.org and installed on your hosting account, and then using a membership plugin like DigitalAccessPass.com, now THIS... is a self-hosted WordPress membership site.
So be sure to check out episode 3 at http://subscribeme.fm/3/
2) A fully-hosted membership platform: The difference between self-hosted and fully hosted, means that on a fully-hosted platform, everything is stored on their servers. You can use your own domain, but the hosting, the content, the videos, the forums - all of these are hosted by someone else. Just like gmail hosts all of your own email. So these third-party platforms manage your site, the content, the security, the server updates, making backups of your content. They basically take care of all the "tech", and you just log in and create content and set up your funnels. Easier said than done. Sounds very simple, but in reality, it's not.
Anyway, there are 3 commonly known, fully-hosted membership solutions: They are Kajabi.com, Nanacast.com and Rainmaker Platform.
Kajabi is considered more newbie-friendly and easy to use when it comes to usability and look & feel of the web site. It is a proprietary platform where everything is hosted on their servers. Proprietary platform means, it's not running on WordPress. Which means you cannot easily extend the functionality of whatever they are offering simply by uploading a new plugin or a theme. That can be good or bad, depending on what you're looking to do with your web site.
Nanacast is also a proprietary but more full-featured platform that comes with a lot of features, but it is generally considered complex to set up. Nanacast does offer a WordPress plugin to let you integrate your existing WordPress site with the main account on their server, but you will probably need to hire a Nanacast consultant to help you set it all up.
Finally, Rainmaker Platform is from the team behind Copyblogger and Studiopress themes. It is all built on WordPress, but it is hosted on their servers.
If you use Infusionsoft.com as your CRM, then you can use either Memberium.com or Infusionsoft-owned CustomerHub to integrate your membership site with Infusionsoft. DAP integrates with Infusionsoft too.
So Kajabi, Nanacast and Rainmaker are all fully-hosted solutions, and these are a completely different animal compared to self-hosted solutions (like your own hosting account with WordPress & DAP). And usually, such fully-hosted solutions start at about 100 dollars a month, and go up from there, depending on the number of users, and add-ons you purchase. So it could become pretty expensive over time - like 300 to 500 dollars a month. And even when you pay all that, you won't really have the full flexibility you can have with your own WordPress site.
Here's a couple of key disadvantages of a fully-hosted membership solution:
(check out the full episode to hear the rest...)
Which One Should You launch First: A One-Time Product or A Recurring Subscription?
If you have never launched a web site before or sold anything online, especially digital products, then I would NOT recommend starting with a subscription-based product right out of the gate. And on top of that, you should DEFINITELY not start with a high-ticket 1,000 dollar product. In the beginning, you will not have the copywriting skills, the marketing skills, the positioning skills, or the product development skills, or the ability to recruit JV's and affiliates, or the savvy to put it all together. No matter what kind of a superstar you've been in your day job, you simply won't have those skills when you are first starting out with your own membership site.
Let me quickly touch upon the 3 basic monetization models. I call these DIY, DWY and DFY. DIY stands for Do it yourself, DWY stands for Done With You, and DFY stands for Done For You.
DIY is the very basic level which is the basic fully automated online course where everything is delivered digitally. This is similar to the 1-site license we offer at DigitalAccessPass.com (DAP). Where the person who downloads the software can watch documentation videos and read how-to setup documentation and set up their web site themselves. Of course, we offer a lot of ticket-based support, but they don't get any 1-on-1 calls with us.
DWY - Done with you - is slightly more advanced where you do things WITH them - again, to give you an example of what we do ourselves, we set up our users' membership site by working alongside our Platinum users. We do it on a live 1-on-1 call. Either myself or my wife Veena Prashanth - we will get on a call with you and ask you what you want to accomplish, what kind of content, what kind of products you wish to sell, and we tailor the set up of DigitalAccessPass - DAP - to fit your specific needs. There is simply no other program that is better than the 1-on-1 coaching and consulting we offer. So that includes the software and the 1-on-1 setup and training. That's your classic DWY - Done With You. You can charge more for DWY compared to DIY.
And then there's the top-most tier - at least, it is top-most in most niches. Which is DFY - Done For You. We don't offer a Done-for-you option in our business at this time. In this model, the client does not want to do it themselves, they don't also want you to do it WITH them. They just want YOU to do it for them and tell them it's done.
So at the lower end of Done-For-You are SEO services, marketing funnel set up, setup of big CRM's like Infusionsoft, traffic generation, Facebook campaign set up, etc - they all fall under this umbrella of DFY. Now, to this same tier, if you add 1-on-1 coaching and consulting, where you work with your clients first, find out their needs, customize the solution specifically for their needs, and THEN ALSO offer the backend services to get it done FOR them, that's probably where you can charge the most.
So back to Keith. You said you are already selling a $1000 product upfront, followed by a monthly fee. That is absolutely a great model to follow. If you are already successfully selling a high-ticket item, then there's definitely no need to swap that out for continuity. What you are doing is already the best of both worlds - a big upfront payment, followed by continuity.
This is the DFY tier I was talking about earlier. So if you were doing marketing consulting, then the big upfront fee - whether it is $1,000 or $5,000 or $10,000 - all of that goes towards, say, your initial coaching and consulting where you work with clients 1-on-1, figure out their requirements, analyze their business, find areas for improvement, come up with a plan to optimize their funnel, get more traffic, get more leads, improve conversion, and so on. And that's what the initial 1000 or 5000 could be for.
Once that initial part is done, you could present them with a fantastic project report that summarizes all of the work done so far and tells them what they need to do next in order to get to where they want to be. And that's where your add-on services could come in, and you say, Hey Ravi, I have a team that can take all this stuff off your hands. And now here's 3 different tiers you could come in at for these services.
And that would be your continuity tier, where you create 3-tiers - say, Silver, Gold and Platinum, with each tier offering more benefits than the other, and that could include not just your team's time, but also your own ongoing consulting and review of the business roadmap.
Now, most importantly, remember this: Even if you launched a 100 dollar month program directly, your member would have to stay for 10 FULL months before you can earn that same 1,000 dollars from them. So 10 months of fees - if they don't cancel, if their credit card continues to work - if you keep delivering, if they don't lose focus - 10 full months of all that, at 100 dollars a month, would earn you 1000 dollars. BUT... if you are ALREADY charging that 1000 upfront, then your subscriber's lifetime customer value goes way way WAY up, because they are STARTING with a payment of 1000 dollars. And after that, all of the continuity payment you get from them is pure gravy.
Now, another thing we tend to forget, is that a 1,000 dollar customer's mindset is going to be WAY different, in a good way of course, it's going to be WAY better compared to a 100 dollars a month client. No offense to anyone paying less. That's just how it is for the most part. Who would you rather serve? The person buying at the dollar store? Or the person buying at Walmart? Or the person shopping at an expensive jewelry store? See what I mean? The more expensive your product is, and the more they pay you, the more fun they usually are to work with, they require less hand-holding, need less support, will bother you less, will praise you more, and will refer more clients to you. Weird, but true! I didn't make that one up, ok?
That means that if someone paid you 1000 dollars to begin with?? then the chances are very high that they will continue with your 100 dollar a month continuity afterwards. Because if they could afford to pay you that much upfront, then they definitely value their time... and what you are offering them in return. And they will not have a problem paying a small percentage of that to keep getting that value from you.
Now, if you - Keith - had said you're not converting enough people to your 1000 dollar program, and because they don't get in, they're not even getting to the point of continuity, then that's an entirely different issue altogether. I'm going to talk about that in a different episode, because this topic is way too important to be left unfinished.
Anyway, for now, the quick summary for you, Keith, is this: You are already selling the perfect hybrid model. Get a big chunk upfront, followed by continuity. This is probably THE BEST monetization model there is as far as continuty goes. Because the standard stick rate for the average membership is like between 3-6 months. That's like a very generalized number of course. But if you're getting lock in from them to the equivalent of 10 months upfront, and then add to that the mindset advantage you have with such customers paying for high-ticket items, then you now have the best kind of membership site there is.
Big Chunk Upfront - Plus Backend Continuity - Membership Thy Shall Maketh Successful, like Yoda would say.
All this and more in today's episode #14. Show notes available at http://SubscribeMe.fm/14/
When should you NOT drip content? Are there situations when content dripping is not right for your members? What do you do in that case? Do you simply allow access to everything from day 1 and risk getting ripped off? Or is there an alternative to content dripping?
#1: If you want your members to feel that you are continuously creating NEW content, fresh off-the-press, fresh-from-the oven type of freshness, then you should NOT use Content Dripping to make it look like it's new or just created. That is NOT what content dripping is meant for.
Your members will figure it out that the content that you are dripping was probably created a while ago - sometimes maybe months or even years ago, because there is bound to be some kind of a trail - like comments from other members, or references in the content to dates or events from the past. So DO NOT use content dripping to try to fool your members into thinking that the content is freshly created. You shouldn't do that with content dripping or with email autoresponders.
#2: Another reason why you should not drip content: is when you have a LOT of modules, and there's a chance that your audience might not want to consume it in the same order that it is dripped. Let's take the example of a physical fitness course. Within the main course - that we will call "Get The Body of your Dreams And Keep It For Life", you may have a long-term strategy and schedule for losing weight and keeping it off. Your modules might be Cardio, Thighs, Abdomen, Shoulders, Arms, etc. And you may be dripping the content in a certain order. And someone who joins your course gets the Cardio module on week 1, Thighs in week 2, Abdome in week 3, Shoulders in week 4, and so on. If someone joined today, and after week 1, they just don't care about the Thighs module, and they want to skip ahead to the Abdomen module from week 3, then since you're dripping content, they cannot fast forward the content. But at the same time, you may not want to make everything available from day 1. In fact, let's even say you're dripping content monthly, and not weekly. And what if they want content from Month #4 to be available today? You want to drip content, but they don't want you to drip content. So what do you do in that case?
Many years ago, at DigitalAccessPass.com, with the help of a DAP user's tiny little spark of an idea, we came up with the concept of what we called the Credit Store. The idea is, that instead of dripping content based on YOUR personal preference, you instead give CREDITS to your users, and then they can take those credits and redeem them for specific modules in your content store.
This is similar to buying tokens at the local fair. You buy tokens at the entrance, and you can use them on any game or ride in any order, as many times as you want, based on YOUR preference. Similarly, when someone signs up for a subscription, then with each monthly payment, they get, say 10 credits. They can take those 10 credits and go to your Credit store - which is basically your Content Store. And there, they see the Cardio module for 3 credits, Thighs for 2, Abdomen for 4 credits and so on.
This is an extremely powerful alternative to Content Dripping. And at DigitalAccessPass.com, we launched the Credit Store plugin a few years back, and it has been a huge hit among those who want to offer their members this kind of flexibility of redeeming content, while not giving away the farm on day 1 and still maintaining control over the security of the content.
Finally, another reason to NOT drip content, is when your content could get outdated quickly. Like stock quotes, or financial news, or current events, or when you're following a certain company or trend or current event. You absolutely cannot queue up any content, because by the time your content gets dripped, in weeks or maybe even in months, then it might already be outdated partially or even entirely.
So those are the 3 major reasons when dripping content is NOT a good idea.
All this and more in today's episode #13. Show notes available at http://SubscribeMe.fm/13/
To drip or not to drip. That is the question.
In this episode, I discuss 5 reasons why you may want to drip content in your membership site.
1) If you have a lot of content to deliver in your online course.
2) If you have a structured online course, where things have to be delivered in a certain sequence.
3) If you want to put in most of the work up front and set up the content to drip slowly over time.
4) The Halloween-Candy analogy: . You give it to them little by little. To extend the value of your content, even if your members know that it is already there, and you give them a sense of anticipation and excitement. You can even tease them what's coming up. Almost like a trailer for a move that hasn't been released yet.
5) Finally, two important reasons to drip content, is to prevent a) your members from feeling like they're getting ripped off, and b) to make sure YOU yourself don't get ripped off.
So, why did they even bother creating a type of content called a Post? Isn't everything just a Page? Why did posts even come into existence in the first place? To answer that, we need to do a quick 1-minute flashback to the time, when the word "blog" came into being.
Did you know that the word "blog" is actually a short form for "Web Log" as in, a online log of events. Like a personal diary. On one of my web sites early in 2000 - a lot of web site owners did this - used to have a link in their menu called "Web Log". I certainly did, and it took the visitor to a page that had an online diary of sorts - the kind that we would publish on Facebook today.
A typical WordPress blog shows all of your blog Posts, in reverse chronological order. And if your blog is set to show the latest 5 posts, and you keep publishing new posts ever week, if I go to your blog in 2 months, I will see an entirely new set of blog posts on the front page, assuming your front page IS your blog. So if I am on your blog, and I like one of the posts I read on the home page, and I want to send the link to a friend, then I can't send my friend to just your home page, because depending on when the friend visits your home page, that post may or may not even be there. And so each post needed a more permanent link in order to be able to share with friends and index in search engines. That permanent link came to be known as the now famous "permalink" in WordPress.
Then, there is the WordPress Page, with a capital P, which is a more static entity. There's no rolling sequence of pages. A page is a page. It's just there. It has a link. Which is a permanent link.
So, when should you use WordPress Posts and when to use WordPress Pages?
In today's episode, I give you all of my deepest, darkest secrets... about Fiverr.com - including the most awesome Fiverr freelancers that I've had a tremendous experience working with!
In the last episode, I mentioned 3 of my favorite outsourcing web sites. Check out Episode #9 for that.
In today's episode, I go deep into one of them, which is Fiverr. I've found some really cool uses for Fiverr, no matter what others tell you about fraud and low quality of work on Fiver. I've had nothing but great experiences working with Fiverr Freelancers, especially when it comes to unusual, wacky and odd jobs.
In today's Part 2 of my "Top 20 Favorite Tools" series, I get into more detail about outsourcing services and a couple of really neat tricks to get the biggest bang for your buck.
In the last episode, I talked about tools that I use for communication, a 3-pronged data back up strategy, video creation, and finally Graphics and Image creation. So make sure you listen to that one first.
Category #5. Outsourcing:
There are 3 major sites we use for outsourcing work in our business. 1) Upwork 2) 99Designs & 3) Fiverr
Each of them has a different utility. So when do you use which web site? And what is the best way to use them? All that and more in this episode. So be sure to check it out.
Show notes available at http://SubscribeMe.fm/9/
In today's show, I'm going to list my top 20 tools, that I simply couldn't live without. And won't live without.
Show-notes and links to everything mentioned on the show, are available at http://SubscribeMe.fm/8/
#1. Communication: Skype
And for business communication, I use Gotomeeting.
#2. Data backup: When it comes to keeping our business data safe and backed up, I use a 3-pronged approach. I use Carbonite, Google Drive and a local hard-drive.
#3. Video creation: Camtasia Studio, Jing, Powtoon, iPhone, Audio downloaded from Audiojungle.
#4. Graphics & Images: Canva, Box Shot King, Gimp, and Jing
More tools coming up in the next episode. So stay tuned.
- Ravi Jayagopal
http://SubscribeMe.fm/8/
Why not simply use email to deliver content? Why bother with a membership site, membership software and all the setup & maintenance headaches?
Let me first show you how to create the world's quickest membership site - in just 4 hours.
Step 1: Signup for an account with Mailchimp. They allow you to have up to 2,000 subscribers on your list, and send out 12,000 emails per month. So that's about 6 emails per month. Go to subscribeme.fm/mailchimp, and get $30 in free credit to use when you exceed 2,000 subscribers.
Step 2: Load up all of your course content into an email autoresponder sequence, set up these emails to go out once a week. You could even start with just the welcome email and content for module 1, since you will be dripping the emails over time.
Step 3: Create a one-page landing page through a free WordPress.com web site.
Step 4: Log in to Paypal, create a buy button, and put it on your free one-page sales page.
That's it! You could be done with this basic membership set up in about 4 hours. And you could launch it tomorrow.
So, if creating a membership site with just email can be done in 4 hours, then why even bother buying specialized membership software? Why bother with all of the setup and maintenance headaches of installing and running your own membership site, and spending time and money setting up a member’s area, and creating your content online, and protecting that content? So why bother with all that work?
In order to automate everything for yourself and your customers, you need a web site. And simply throwing up a WordPress installation on your site is not going to help you automate payments, automate member-account creation, automate content delivery, send out follow-up and marketing emails, allow members to access private content, watch videos, listen to audio, download reports and documents.
In this 6th episode of Subscribe Me, I have a special interview. No, it's not me interviewing someone else. Instead, it's ME being interviewed on somebody else's show.
I was a guest on the Thriving Entrepreneur Radio Show hosted by Steve Kidd. Steve has an amazingly gentle way of asking great questions, while offering his own perspective along the way. And Steve has a program called "Write Your Best Seller" where he helps you become known as an authority, get on TV, become an amazon best seller among a host of other promotional services. Check out his program by going to SubscribeMe.fm/authority/ .
After he interviewed me, I wrote to him and asked him if I could publish the interview on my own podcast to my own listeners. And he very generously agreed. Thanks, Steve! So check out Steve Kidd interviewing one of the most awesome people I have ever met... that's ME! :-)
In this 5th episode of SubscribeMe, I pick the brains of Ryan Lee, a veteran online marketer from Connecticut, Host of the Freedym show at Freedym.com - and one of the earliest people to start a membership site online.
Ryan started his first membership site in 2001. The previous year, in 2000, I had just moved to New York (from India) with my wife and daughter (my son was born in the US several years later). Ryan has seen the evolution of the Internet Marketing industry, and has launched many successful web sites. He has previously been a writer for Entrepreneur.com online magazine, and lives in Connecticut with his wife and 4 daughters.
On the show, Ryan and I talk about the early Google, the now defunct Goto, ClickBank, Paypal, hustle, "Ask and you shall receive", the importance of building a recurring-income based business, personality-based marketing, emailing you list without worrying about unsubscribes, how much of yourself should you share with your audience, and keeping your members around for long and reducing churn.
Ryan's enthusiasm and energy is contagious, so listen to the show and you will get inspired and take home lots of actionable tips.
Cheers!
Ravi Jayagopal
In today's show, we have a question from Michael Britt, a Psychology professor who has been super-successful at creating lots of content, has millions of downloads of his podcast and his youtube videos, but has not had much success at monetizing 9 years of hard work.
A weak call to action, content all over the place, not focusing on one sub-niche at a time, trying to be everything to everybody, spreading yourself too thin.
The problem might be that you've just kept creating content for years, without any kind of structure or specific goals. And you've been creating products without identifying who your target customer is.
When I go to your web site, I can't really make out who it is really for. Is it for students studying psychology for a college degree? Is it for the casual person looking to learn about psycology? Is it for people who are looking to learn more about psychology because of a loved one who has an issue? The content is just too much, and it is all over the place, from what I can tell.
You have a very weak call to sign up for your newsletter at the top. Doesn't state any benefits. Just "sign up for my newsletter" is not going to cut it. Instead, it should be something like "Get the top 10 memory boosting tricks that are borderline illegal, have been baffling both scientists and students - and will rewire your brain like you are Sherlock Holmes". Have a nice digital image of a great report. Say how many times it has been downloaded. Why it helps. Benefits. Who all it helps. "Whether you are a teenage student or you are 60 years old and you have just been diagnosed with Alzheimers".
Dream Team of 5 Tools You Need To Create A Membership Site.
Let's do a quick flashback. Back in April 2015, LinkedIn purchased online learning website Lynda.com for a cool $1.5 billion. Lynda.com, at its very core, is nothing but a membership site offering online courses with videos and checklists and PDF document downloads.
So when you have a membership site that earns recurring revenue, you increase the value of your business as a whole, and that makes it easier to sell your site to a prospective buyer in the future, if you ever decide to walk away from it all. So a web site with recurring revenue has greater lifetime customer value, which will help you sell your site for a lot more than if you had just one-time products. Which is why a site like Lynda.com could get a valuation of 1.5 billion. Of course, they had millions of members, but the point is, that they weren't just regular members, but members paying a monthly fee.
And you too can create your own mini version of Lynda.com.
Here are the 5 members of Ravi Jayagopal's Membership Site Dream Team:
1) Content Management System
2) Theme
3) Media Host
4) Payment Processor
5) Membership Plugin & Marketing Platform
So which ones did Ravi choose for his dream-team? Listen to the show to find out!
So just how important are memberships and subscriptions? I read this article from marketwatch.com, which is a web site published by Dow Jones, and tracks the financial markets and apparently has more than 16 million visitors per month. And I'll link to this article in the show notes - http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apples-iphone-payment-plan-could-upgrade-the-stock-2015-09-16
So here's what it says - and I'm quoting verbatim here...
The headline: Apple’s iPhone payment program could upgrade the stock
The subheadline: Upgrade program, launching with iPhone 6S, could drive Apple shares above $200
So let me give you the context. Recently, with Apple's iPhone 6s and 6sPlus launch, they announced that they would offer new iPhones on a payment plan, and people can get a 1 year payment plan or a 2 year plan directly from Apple, and not worry about extending their phone contracts. So you basically pay the cost of the phone directly to Apple, and in return you can get a new phone from Apple every year, or 2, depending on the payment plan. And apparently, Apple in turn also gives you some premium support and service.
So back to quoting from the article: It says... Apple Inc.’s new iPhone upgrade program isn’t going to just benefit users who want to get their hands on a new phone every year, it could also give a boost to Apple investors.
"By encouraging customers to upgrade more frequently, the program — which takes effect later this month with the launch of iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus sales — could produce more sustainable iPhone revenues, driving earnings per share higher and producing a better stock multiple."
Ok, now pay attention to this next part: "Analysts at UBS, who have a buy rating and $150 price target on the stock, said this week that the installment plan “could be a big deal” for Apple and drive its shares higher than $200. “The iPhone begins to look more like an annuity and less like a hits business,” UBS analyst Steven Milunovich wrote in a note to clients this week. End quote.
Now think about that for a minute. To give you some perspective, Apple is the world's most profitable company not in the world, not just right now, but in the history of the world! Apple is the largest publicly traded corporation in the world by market capitalization, and Apple last year became the first U.S. company to be valued at over US$700 billion. Yes, that is 700 BILLION - with a B! A monthly payment plan is nothing but essentially a subscription, and this is really Apple's first big subscription-based product - of course, I'm not including the underwhelming launch of Apple Music. And people in general are agreeing that Apple adding essentially a subscription-based product to its offering, is going to make it look even better, and make its shares become even more valuable!
Even A 700 Billion dollar company can do better by adding a recurring subscription model to its business. I hope that right there makes you seriously consider adding such a subscription model to your business.
Don't worry, you don't have to figure it all out by yourself. I will help you get there - all you have to do is to just keep listening to this show.
SubscribeMe.fm is THE podcast that teaches you all about about creating a highly profitable, long-term business with online courses & membership sites, using recurring subscriptions.
In this podcast, and I don't mean just this episode, but the entire series, I'm going to be talking about how you can build a successful business by creating subscription-based products and services that bring in recurring income month after month... where you don't have to go hunting for new customers all the time, where you can focus on creating a remarkable product - like Seth Godin would say - A product that your customers love, where they keep paying you to keep delivering your product or service, and where you get to actually focus on your remarkable product - and improving it and adding to it over time, and you get to focus on, quote unquote "Enchanting" your customers, like Guy Kawasaki would say.
The main focus of this podcast will be how to make, market and monetize your online digital content. But here's a a list of other topics that we will get into in this podcast series.