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Work Less, Earn More is the podcast that explores how to get the most out of every hour you work. Gillian Perkins brings more than a decade of experience as an entrepreneur and educator to help you design a business that's not only flexible and fulfilling, but highly profitable. She shares strategies that are working in her own business to save time and maximize profits. She also features interviews with successful business owners on how they’re achieving big things in their businesses with crazy-little time investment. Share Work Less, Earn More with an overworked entrepreneur you know who could use a change of pace!
[0:00] [intro bumper]
We became entrepreneurs because more than anything, we want freedom. We want to be in control of our own schedule, income, and life. But unfortunately, that isn't always the reality of being a business owner. I'm Gillian Perkins, and I'm on a mission to take back entrepreneurship for what it's supposed to be.
In every episode, I'll share with you how to get the most out of every hour you work so that you can work less and earn more. Let's get to it.
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[0:36] Hello, friends. Welcome back to Work Less, Earn More. So we are currently gearing up for our first ever cohort of our new membership site launch program called Membership Launch Lab, where we're going to be working with a handful of students, just 25 students over a 12-week period to guide them to launch their membership sites. So for the past couple of months, I have been up to my eyeballs creating the curriculum for this new program. And it has been super fun, but it has the obvious effect that I have membership sites on the brain. So that's what we're going to be talking about today. If you don't know my backstory with membership sites, I started my first membership site back in 2018. It's called Startup Society. I still run it to this day. And when I started Startup Society.
[1:23] It had the most dramatic impact on my business's revenue of anything I've ever done. Up until that point, there had been a couple of years of struggling and not really making much of any money. And then finally, that year, I'd started making a little bit of money by hosting different live workshops that were paid. And then I decided to start Startup Society. And I went from earning $1,000 to $2,000 per month and only when I was live launching something to suddenly creating a $10,000 per month stream of revenue campaign. Basically, literally overnight. The only thing that wasn't actually overnight about it was it was actually a one-week period when I launched Startup Society. But before that week started, I was making no money from Startup Society and only about $1,500 or so per month period with my business. Then I launched Startup Society and Startup Society itself immediately starts bringing in $10,000 a month. So I'm sure you can imagine the impact that that had on my business and on my life because going from earning just a couple thousand dollars a month, you know, barely scraping by to suddenly earning five figures a month, that was a dramatic lifestyle change. I definitely felt like I had finally made it. And I would say, in fact, that I had. There are other business decisions that I can look at and point to as being very impactful as well. But there were no other decisions that had as dramatic an impact on my lifestyle.
[2:50] Now, literally ever since then, I have had my audience, my customers asking me to please create a course or a program of some sort to teach you guys how to create membership sites of your own. And of course, not just create them, but successfully launch them and grow them. Because a lot of you guys in my audience, you saw the dramatic impact it had on my business. Yeah. But for one reason or another, there have always been other projects that were first on the to-do list, right? Other things that for one reason or another, I wanted to focus on. So I am so excited that we are finally going to be launching Membership Launch
[3:27] Lab in just a couple of weeks here. So today, we're going to talk Membership Sites 101. And how we're going to structure this is I am going to be kind of answering four of the biggest questions that I hear people ask about Membership Sites and that I remember having myself. Questions about how do we create all the content we need to have to launch? What should we do about the tech? How to get the first people to join? And how do you get it to grow beyond then? But before we get into that, I just want to let you know that if you are interested in potentially being one of those 25 people in the first cohort of Membership Launch Lab, that you can go to gillianperkins.com/membership to put your name on the waitlist and find out when enrollment opens for the program and get the link to join and whatnot.
[4:14] So again, that's gillianperkins.com/membership. All right, now let's get into this episode. So like I said, I have these four questions. The first one is, how will I ever create all that content?
[4:29] So, you know, we're all familiar with this idea of a membership site. The most famous one I always say is Netflix. Obviously, Netflix has this huge library of content. I don't know if it's thousands or if it's millions of movies and shows that are on Netflix, but it's a lot. And maybe you've joined other membership sites in the past. You joined, there were endless courses or workshops, different training modules inside.
[4:55] And so with that idea of what a membership site is, even if you understand all of the benefits of starting a membership site and how incredible it can be for creating passive income and specifically recurring revenue for your business, the project of needing to create all that content can be so insurmountable, so overwhelming that you write this project off. You just decide, I could never do that Or maybe you do keep dreaming of it. You keep wanting to do it, but you're just not quite sure how to get started with it because it's such a big project. So how can you create all that content? Well, my best advice to you is that you create a much smaller amount of content to start. When you are first creating your membership site, you do not try to create all of the content ahead of time. In fact, I would recommend that you only create about enough content to keep your members very happy for the first month. So we definitely want to create a good first impression with them where they come in and they are happy with what they see and they have plenty to do. But you don't have to have a massive content library to accomplish that.
[6:07] Now, the most important thing when it comes to getting away with, if you will, creating just a small amount of content for your launch is setting the proper expectations. Because if you bill your membership site, if you market your membership site as a content library, as essentially Netflix for online business owners, or Netflix for homeschool moms, or Netflix for sourdough bakers, whatever it is, and a new member comes in and there's only three modules of content or there's only one small course or even there's only three courses, they will be dissatisfied because your site will not live up to their expectations and they will think, man, this isn't going to be worth paying X number of dollars every month indefinitely. But if you can set the proper expectations where they know exactly what they are going to be getting and they come into the membership and that is what they find, or maybe they even find a little bit more than that.
[7:05] Then they can be totally happy with just one course, or just three modules, or just five individual workshops. And part of the reason for that is because along with setting that expectation of the small amount of content that will be there when they come, so they're not negatively surprised, there also is the expectation that you've communicated to them that more content is going to be added. So they understand that they're not paying $49 a month for just those three modules. They're paying $49 a month for the complete program that is going to get them to their end result. And they are getting started with three modules. But next month, the next module will be released. And the month after that, the next module after that will be released and so on.
[7:51] So here's what you need to think about and how I would recommend you approach this question of how to create all the content before you launch. First of all, make sure that you have a super clear transformation that your membership is being designed to create for the members. So we really don't want it to just be a library of content, whether that's a big library or a small library. We want it to be something that really helps your members and gets them results. And the best way you can do that is if you are completely clear on what that result is that you are working to create for the members. And then you want to design curriculum or resources that are going to be the most effective, the most helpful for getting them from where they are right now to where they eventually want to be.
[8:38] Once you have decided what you ultimately want that curriculum to look like, and of course, this might change down the road, but we have a plan, a complete plan right now of what the curriculum will look like from point A to point Z. Then you can decide how much of it you want to create before you launch. Again, I would recommend creating just enough to keep them very happy and busy enough for that first month. And for a lot of membership sites, what this is going to look like is the first module or two or three of what is going to turn into one really solid online course. Now, a good thing to talk about right now might be what's the difference really between a membership site and an online course? And should you decide to create a membership site or an online course? The answer, honestly, I think, is that these two different things are not that different. In fact, the educational content that is contained within each of them can really be just about the same, if not exactly the same. The differences come first with, of course, the different payment structure, right? With an online course, people are either paying for it one time or they're paying a limited number of installment payments, whereas with a membership, it is practically by definition an ongoing subscription.
[9:57] Sometimes there is an end date. It might be a six-month program or a 12-month program, but most often memberships are indefinite, which of course is a part of their benefit that you are signing up customers for them who are going to pay you month after month on into the future indefinitely. And that means that your business will have very solid and consistent recurring revenue.
[10:24] Now, beyond the payment structure, the other couple of most important differences between a membership site and a course come down to the community and the support that you offer. So generally with a course, because people pay for it one time and they are planning to complete it and be done with it.
[10:43] It's really difficult to create a very active community. Sometimes you can effectively do it if you are running the course live and everybody's going through it at the same time for a six-week or eight-week or 12-week period, for example. But beyond that initial timeframe, it's tough to keep people coming back because again, they made that one-time investment and they were really kind of committing themselves for a limited period of time. They weren't planning to be a lifetime member of this course, if you will. Or to continue to engage with it beyond the end date of the course. But it's pretty different with membership because generally, as long as people are paying for the membership, they're trying to get their money's worth and they are trying to get, you know, the value that they were signing up to get from the program. And so they try to at least keep showing up in the membership community, which means that you can have much more engagement and can build stronger relationships and that the community can really be an added benefit of the membership, unlike what we can see with an online course. And then the other thing that tends to be fairly different between a membership and a course is because these members are continuing to pay you, it's in your best interest to continue to provide very active support to them, whether that is responding to them in your community, answering their help tickets in a timely way, which of course you would probably plan to do even if it was just an online course and not a membership.
[12:10] But not every company does that when they sell an online course or if they sell a piece of software that is a one-time payment. But now, and I know that everybody, myself included, doesn't love that we have to pay for subscription rates for every piece of software that we add to our business. But one little silver lining is that the companies, they are much more motivated to provide good ongoing support for their products. And so that is another difference with your membership site where your customers will expect you to provide good service, good support to them since they are continuing to pay you. So now going back to the question of how to create the content before you launch, the content in your membership can ultimately be very similar to an online course. And we only need to create the first couple of modules before we launch. However, there also will be the support component and the community component, which are things you should be aware for a couple of reasons. One, because they are actually going to contribute to the immediate value that the members get. But again, we have to make sure that we clearly communicate that value to them so that they can get plugged in with those components of the program and really get the value out of them.
[13:21] The other reason you need to be aware of those aspects is, of course, because you need to be prepared to provide them, right? You need to have your community system set up and ready for people to get plugged into and be prepared to manage it. And you're also going to need to have a plan for how you will be able to offer that higher level of support.
[mid-roll ad] [13:42] If I had to guess, you've probably thought at some point about starting a membership site, a site where people pay you to be members and they pay you month after month, creating recurring revenue for your business. Maybe you even mapped out some ideas. But then you started to think, okay, well, I'm going to need a polished portal, 47 lessons, a ton of extra resources, and a complete plan for weekly group coaching sessions.
[14:12] Before I could ever launch this. Well, let me just tell you this. No, you don't. You do not need nearly that much content. In just a couple of weeks here, or maybe a couple of days, depending on when you're listening to this, I am hosting a live workshop called From Zero Content to Paying Members, a realistic membership content plan. And in this workshop, I'm going to walk you through how to build your membership in a much smarter way. We're going to start by planning the transformation, not the features. And then I'm going to show you how to design your core content in a way that is lean, strategic, and actually launchable within just the next couple of months. We'll create a complete plan for what you need to create before you launch and what you can build after you already have paying members. We're also going to be talking about some of the other challenges that you need to solve before you can launch, like what about the tech, how to get the first few people to join, and how you will grow beyond your first few members.
[15:16] So if you've been stuck in planning mode, this workshop is going to give you a clear, realistic path forward so you can actually start making progress and get your membership site launched before you know it. You can sign up right now for the free live class with me at gillianperkins.com/free-membership-class. Again, that's gillianperkins.com/free-membership-class.
[15:45] This might just be the plan and the permission that you've been waiting for. So one more time, go to gillianperkins.com/free-membership-class to sign up for this free upcoming live class called From Zero Content to Paying Members, a Realistic Membership Content Plan. I'll see you there.
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[16:09] All right, so now let's move on and talk about the second question, the second maybe challenge that you're facing if you're thinking about starting a membership site, which is how will you figure out the tech or what tech options should you use? Oh, there's so much that we could say about this inside Membership Launch Lab. I've done several lessons on the different options that are available and which ones I recommend and why and a bunch of tutorials on how to set those systems up and whatnot. But we only have so much time today. So let me give you some big picture thoughts. First of all, understand there are different types of platforms that you can use to build your membership on. We have some that were designed originally for building online courses.
[16:52] We have some that are very much focused on creating communities. So I'm talking here about platforms like Circle and Mighty Networks. And then we have some platforms that are trying to be at least all-in-one platforms. This would be things like Kajabi and Kartra, and also perhaps school, although school is a slightly different beast. And then one more category is WordPress plugins. So there are free ones, there are paid ones, but some of the most common ones are MemberPress and Access Ally. Now, depending on what you want your membership to be like, whether you want it to be focused on educational content or focused on the community or more of a coaching membership, the right platform for you might be different than it might be for somebody else. So it's great to do your research.
[17:44] However, let me just tell you kind of what I don't like about each of these different types of platforms so that maybe you can decide based off of the biggest thing that would bother you the most, the biggest problem that you might face with any of them. So first of all, we have the ones that were designed for online courses. And what's good about them is they're good for organizing your educational content. But what I really don't like about them is they tend to be very kind of template based. And it's really difficult to create a membership site that looks like a membership site that looks custom, that looks like a platform that is built for your program. They just tend to look very kind of generic and kind of turn your membership site into almost a commodity. So it's tougher to command a higher price for your membership when it looks like a lot of other memberships or a lot of other online courses, some of which are very inexpensive and many of which are poor quality. Then we have those member-focused platforms like Circle and Mighty Networks. Now, these are great, I think, if you are trying to build community-focused membership site with not very much educational content, a membership site that's not focused on an online course, for example.
[19:05] But if you do want to add very much of that educational content into them, it's often very difficult to organize the content and kind of like lay it out for the members in a way that is easy to follow along with and just has like an obvious, logical sort of layout. They also tend to look fairly similar. Of course, you can customize the colors and whatnot. But ultimately, it's going to look like a Mighty Networks community or a Circle community.
[19:34] Okay, now I think the next category I mentioned are the all-in-one platforms. So Kajabi, Kartra, School. What's good about these is that, I mean, the name kind of says it all. It's all in one. We don't need five different pieces of software that are all working together to manage your email list and manage your member database and also manage your membership site itself and also be your website and so on. So it's nice that you only need to pay for one thing.
[20:03] But the downside is that we end up with this kind of jack of all trades situation where, yes, they do everything, but they don't do any of those things very well. And then I'll just really briefly talk about school specifically. I think there are a lot of good things about school, but two things I particularly don't like about it are, first of all, that it's going to look like a school community no matter what you do. So again, that can kind of turn it into a commodity. it can make it so it can be tougher to command a higher price. Another thing I really don't like about it is how much you are building your membership business on someone else's platform. Now, that's going to be true to some extent with any platform you might pick. But I think it's pretty different to build, say, a membership site on Facebook or to build your audience on YouTube compared to building your email list and using an email marketing software to manage your email list. When you do it that way or that sort of thing, you really do own the email list yourself and you could switch to a different platform. Whereas when we build, say, a membership site on Facebook or build the audience on YouTube or build the membership site on the school, it's very difficult to ever transfer that membership site over to a different platform.
[21:22] Because the members or the subscribers, they really live on that platform. And there's just not a way to simply export that list from the one platform and import it into another platform.
[21:37] Okay, and then finally, let's talk about those WordPress plugins. So they really vary. There are great ones. There are terrible ones. I started out with a WordPress plugin, a free one. And today I run Startup Society from AccessAlly, which is a premium paid WordPress plugin. The good side is they're really modular and some of them are great. Like I love Access Ally. But the bad side is that they tend to not be nearly as intuitive. They tend to be more difficult to use. If you've ever tried to build a website on WordPress, you know how challenging that can be. And when you use a platform that is a WordPress plugin, you're going to have all those normal WordPress challenges, plus a whole lot more just because you're building something really substantial on WordPress and you're dealing with that specific plugin. So I would not recommend WordPress plugins for the faint of heart, for people who don't consider themselves quite techie, for people who don't like WordPress or aren't familiar with WordPress. Also, not really for people who don't have a team or some support that is going to be able to help them in setting up that whole system. So as much as I do personally love Access Ally, it was expensive to set up. I had to outsource the setup of it to a design and development agency. And I have a team now that helps me manage my membership site. So I wouldn't recommend that for most people who are starting their membership. What would I recommend?
[23:06] Personally, after considering all these options, there might be one that is right for you just because of the specific type of memberships you're creating. But the one that I find is the best option for the majority of people is Kartra. Kartra is one of those all-in-one solutions. So one thing that's good about it is that you will only need that one piece of software. You don't even need a separate website because it can take care of that as well. But what I like about Kartra is that it does everything and it does everything pretty well. In fact, it does most everything very well. And so I don't feel like you have to really make any significant compromises with using Kartra. And I love how customizable everything is. You really can make bespoke website for your membership that looks completely custom, completely proprietary, and it will enable you to be able to charge the premium rate that you want to charge for your membership and really to make your own rules when it comes to building your membership, rather than having to play to the rules of your industry or what other membership sites are doing.
[24:16] Now, we've got a few more things to get to, and I'm running out of time before I have a meeting in not too long. So let's get on to these next couple questions, even though, of course, there's so much that could be said about platforms, how to decide which one on the right one for you, how to set up Kartra, whether Kartra is the right fit for you or not, and so on. I guess I'll say one more thing about it right now, though, which is that if you are considering doing membership launch lab with us starting in a few weeks here, and you maybe want to use Kartra or you don't, but you're just wondering, like, do you have to use Kartra? I'll just answer that question now, which is you certainly do not have to use Kartra. It is my number one recommendation in the program. And it is the one that we are focused on guiding people on how to set up. But the tech setup is one small component of the much bigger project of planning, creating, developing, and launching a membership site successfully. And there are plenty of tutorials online for the tech setup for any of these membership platforms. So if you are interested in doing membership launch lab with us, but you want to use a different platform, that really is not going to be a roadblock. But if you don't know what platform you want to use and you want my recommendation, it is Kartra. And we will be guiding you step-by-step through how to set up the tech for that.
[25:37] All right, let's move on to question number three, which is, what if no one joins? Or how do you get your first members to join? Or what if only like three people join? That'd be so awkward. What would you do? Now, this is perhaps the scariest question for people when they're thinking about starting a membership site, because you might get over the tech question. You might get over the content question, have all of that created, have all of that set up, and have invested quite a bit of time into this project and then not be able to get anybody to sign up. And you would have wasted all of that time. So it's very important that you have a solid answer to this question. How do we get our first members?
[26:19] So my number one piece of advice for you when it comes to making sure that you have enough people initially sign up is that you build a list like an email list that is 10 times the size of however many members you need to initially get to sign up for this to be well worth your time. So for example, let's say that 30 members when you launch would create an amount of revenue that would make this worth your time. In that case, you need to build an email list of 300 or more people that are the right fit, okay? They are your target market for this membership site. Now, depending on how good of a fit these people are or not, you might see a higher than 10% conversion rate or slightly lower. But generally, if you have a small email list that you have very recently built, and they are the right people, you can generally convert about 10% of them into reasonably affordable membership site. Now, when I say affordable, I don't mean it needs to be seven bucks a month. I just mean we're not talking about like a multi-thousand dollar coaching program. We're talking about a membership site that costs somewhere in the range of $20 per month up to about $200 per month.
[27:35] Now, that is not the only launch strategy by any means. In addition to having that email list, we also are going to do a strategic warm-up campaign for at least a month before the launch. We are going to be building an intentional waitlist of people who have on purpose signed up to learn more about the membership site and to be able to join once the membership opens for enrollment. So I don't mean just build your email list and then launch and you'll get 10%. But I mean, if you're worried about will enough people join, that is the number one metric that I would focus on is building an email list 10 times the size of however many members you need. So if you do already have an email list of the right sort of people, and it is a few hundred people big or even a few thousand people in size, then you honestly are already there. You still have some other challenges to overcome, creating all that content, making those tech decisions, setting up the tech, running that warm-up campaign to really get people primed and ready to sign up for your membership, running a compelling and strategic launch to, in fact, close those sales, etc, etc. But you are there in terms of having enough people and this really can be successful.
[28:50] Okay, now the last question we're going to tackle today is how can you get your membership site to grow beyond the initial launch? Honestly, I'm really running out of time here. So let's make this really quick. You need to have an evergreen marketing strategy. In Membership Launch Lab, we're going to work with you on creating an evergreen sales funnel where we have an evergreen visibility strategy that's generating leads for you. And then we have automated email campaigns that are warming up those leads, in addition to other ways that you can engage with them in a more like live interactive sort of way, which is always a bonus and creates higher conversion rates. And then you need to have a model of how often you are opening and closing the doors for your membership, or if you want it to be evergreen enrollment where people can join at any time whenever they want. Those are some important strategic decisions to make.
[29:43] All right. Well, I'm out of time. So we're going to wrap up this episode. I hope that this information helps to answer some of maybe the questions that are on your mind if you are considering starting a membership site. As I shared at the beginning of this episode, starting my membership site, Startup Society, was one of the best business decisions I've ever made and definitely had the very biggest impact on my revenue compared to anything else I've ever done. The biggest impact on my lifestyle. And so if you are considering starting a membership site, I would really love to help you do this because I know the huge impact it can have on your business and your life. Now, if you want to learn more about Membership Launch Lab, again, just go to gillianperkins.com slash membership. On that page, you'll be able to read more about what we are going to be doing in the program, what's included, the start date, and all of that. And make sure you put your name on the waitlist so that you can get that link to join as soon as enrollment opens. All right. Well, that's all for today's episode. Thanks so much for being here with me today. And here's to your success.
[30:48] [outro bumper] Thank you so much for listening to this episode of work less earn more. Here's what I want you to do next. Take a screenshot of this episode you're listening to right now and share it out on your Instagram stories. And when you do, make sure you tag me at Gillian Z Perkins so I can see you're listening. Sharing on stories is going to help more people find this podcast so they too can learn how to build their business in a way that allows them to work less and earn more. And if you really love the show, head over to Apple Podcasts right now and leave Work Less, Earn More a review to give it a boost and help even more people find it. Okay, let's wrap this up. I'm Gillian Perkins, and until next week, stay focused and take action.
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