Why Membership Sites Are Awesome

marketing tech Sep 07, 2020

Introduction

Yes! Okay so now we’re really making progress.

Over the last five posts you learned about:

You’re getting everything you need to build your online business! The next five posts are going to cover:

Making Sense Out Of Analytics And Membership Sites
Mental Tricks for Beating Procrastination
How To Outline Your Flagship Product
How To Build and Record Your Flagship Product
More Tips for Recording Your Course

>> Click here to get a FREE instant download of the PDF version of this post... I'll throw in my audio narration as a free bonus.

Then from there we’re going to move into the sales phase where you’ll finally learn how to start making money from all your hard work.

Everything you need is coming over the next few weeks; however, you can also get instant access to the entire training as a PDF package for just $14.97 here:

> Purchase The Vonimus.com: Building Your Online Business With Kajabi eBook

You can also get the audio narration mp3's as well so you can listen to the training on your commute, while working out or doing work around the house.

And the best part is the narration is by me! I didn't outsource any of that stuff.

So let's get back on topic here: we’re making some serious progress right?

In this lesson I want to show you how to measure your progress and introduce you to the amazing world of Membership Sites.

Smart Analytics That Matter

Someone once aptly said:

“What gets measured gets managed”

And this is one of the hardest things to do as an entrepreneur.

When I started my blog I didn’t really know how to measure success. I remember thinking: should I quantify success based on the number of social shares my blog got this week? Or perhaps I need to base success purely on my earnings. If I earned more this month than the previous month than surely that’s a success marker right? Or what about traffic? Maybe that’s the golden rule for measurement.

I didn’t really know what I was doing and I don’t want you to get caught in this loop of chaos confusion.

The bottom line is that when it comes to measuring the success of your online business you only need to get three things right:

Blog Traffic
Email Open Rates
Monthly Sales

We’re going to talk about each one and then dig into the nuts and bolts of actually understanding your success markers in New Kajabi.

Note: Download the FREE PDF Version of this article so you can read offline, anytime and print it for easier viewing. As free a bonus, it includes the audio narration as an MP3 file so you can listen on the go. Just enter your email address to get the entire thing. It's free, instant and available now.

Blog Traffic

The first thing we need to do before you start queuing up all your blogs is to install some kind of web traffic analyzer code. You need to have a way you can manage which pages are receiving the most hits and how your traffic is trending over time.

The good news is it is very easy to do this.

This is a good time to follow along so you might want to read this post on your mobile phone or listen to the audio version so you can copy what I'm doing in the New Kajabi dashboard.

Go ahead and jump into your New Kajabi Free Trial and at the top of the page in the giant search box type “analytics”

In the Analytics section you'll see a bunch of options such as "Net Revenue", "Subscription Metrics", "Opt-ins" and more. You should also see see a section called “Page Views”

In here you can compare the visitor traffic hitting different pages on your site. You can also see the total number of views (and unique views) on your blog. And you’ll see how it has been trending over time.

“In New Kajabi your page views are important because if you see a particular page or offer that you’re selling has a a higher amount of unique views that usually indicates there is greater demand.”

And if you know where your demand is you can craft specific offers around what your people want and thus maximize the value you contribute as well as maximize your profits.

Are you starting to see how this works?

Google Analytics

Now if you want to go deeper and see how many visitors are visiting your site in real time and what countries they are coming from, what types of computers they are using and what time of day they visit you need to sign-up with Google Analytics.

I’ve used Google Analytics for years and it’s not too difficult to set up.

First, head on over to https://analytics.google.com and signup for your Google Analytics account.

Once you set things up you can connect Google Analytics to New Kajabi.

Type “integrations” in the New Kajabi search bar then scroll down to Google Analytics so you can paste in your unique Google Analytics ID.

That’s all you need to do and now when you log back into Google Analytics you’ll start seeing awesome data.

Here's the analytics data for my securitypluspro.com web property:

Pro Tip: You can also install Google Analytics on your phone so you can monitor your stats on the go.

Here are the links for iOS and Android:

Quantcast (Advanced but Optional)

One thing you’ll also want to consider is signing up for a free Quantcast account.

Quantcast shows the top ranked websites in the world based on monthly visits. As you can imagine, Google, Facebook, Amazon and Youtube lead the top of list (and have been there for a long time).

Our goal isn’t to beat these guys it’s just to get on the map. Once you start publishing content you’ll start getting traffic. And once you start getting traffic your site will get ranked.

It’s nice to come in here after a year of publishing and see how your site ranks compared to others.

I joined Quantcast mainly as a motivational booster because you can see how other sites compare to yours in terms of traffic and you can make it a monthly goal to edge out your next closest competitor.

Plus it’s kind of fun to watch your site climb the ranks through the months.

You can see the top 100 ranked sites here:

https://www.quantcast.com/top-sites/

And you can sign-up for free here:

https://www.quantcast.com/signup

Then you can add the little Quantcast tracking tag into the source code of your website.

I won't go into the details of how to do that here because it is technically advanced (but that doesn't mean you can't do it).

If you want me to show you how to do it, I'd much rather hop on a call with you (or a Skype session) or email and walk you through it personally. So if you need help, just reach out to me and we'll go through it together.

Email Open Rates

Email open rates are a biggie and are arguably more important than traffic.

Think about it: if your site is getting thousands of monthly views but no one is opening the emails you send then that means you have an unresponsive audience and very little potential to earn income.

In other words, you’re doing something wrong. Something is wrong with your opt-in copy or the offer or the lead magnet.

By the way, if this is that case please reach out to me so we can setup a Skype or Zoom session so we can talk through what’s going on. You can reach out to me by joining my email list so we can setup a time to talk.

Anyway, that being said, once you start sending emails, you’ll start getting feedback on the percentage of emails your audience opened, the percentage of links clicked in those emails and the percentages of people who unsubscribed from your email list.

Now here’s the kicker:

Don’t let email unsubscribes demotivate you.

I remember when I was just getting started, I would stare at my unsubscribe numbers and ruminate over why they unsubscribed. I felt rejected. I felt like I was doing something wrong. I felt like... sometimes I felt like I should just give up.

I would start to doubt and think things like: maybe I’m in the wrong niche? Maybe the people on my list were offended by something I said so now they’re leaving? I can’t do this.

Don’t get trapped in this negative self talk loop.

Generally speaking, across most niches, you want to aim for a 20% open rate. If you send an email to 100 email subscribers you should only expect at least 20 of them to open the email.

Historically speaking having an open rate between 15% and 25% is considered good.

An open rate of 30% is considered really good. 40% is amazing and anything above that... you need to call me so I can learn your secret 😊

The other important metric is the Click Through Rate (CTR). You want to know what percent of the people on your email list are clicking your links. Now this number may surprise you (and it obviously depends on your niche, your content and how much your list trusts you) but on average, if you’re getting a CTR of 3% you’re doing good.

I know a CTR of 3% is a small number but you don’t need a bunch of people clicking through to be profitable.

Think about this scenario:

Suppose after 90 days of hard work, you have an email list of 300 subscribers. 20% of your email list of 300 subscribers open your emails, so you get 60 opens. And let's say you get a CTR of 3% so only 9 of those people click your Buy Now link.

Then, let’s say only 2 out of those 9 people actually purchase your $97 mini course. That means you have a conversion rate of 22% right?

I'm doing the math like this:

(purchasers / visitors) x 100

So that means you just earned $194 from one email sent to 300 subscribers. Your CTR was 3% but you still took almost $200 to the bank.

Not bad right?

Do you think you could do this?

Yes I think you can.

Remember, our initial goal from this Vonimus training is to help you earn your first $500 to $1,000 with an online course you create which will be part of your larger business strategy. To get a bigger picture of what is possible go re-read the “Profit Path” lesson.

Monthly Sales

Besides tracking the obvious metrics such as number of product sales and net revenue you’re also going to want to track your subscription metrics after you decide to build a membership site.

This brings me into our perfect segway into Membership Sites!

Membership Site Awesomeness

Having a membership site is a great way to augment your existing income streams because it grants you a steady stream of income reliably hitting your bank account... month after month. People will be paying you monthly or annually which means you can plan your personal budget better

Now, of course some people will stop paying, this is known as churn and it is an unfortunate reality of having a membership site but let's think about this for a moment.

How can you keep people from clicking cancel on their memberships?

One of the best ways to reduce your churn rates is to think about a simple retention plan so people aren't dropping in 3 to 4 months. You need to think about how to keep your members happy once you get them in the door.

The honest truth here is the real power of membership sites is keeping your people happy. The money is made when you keep them happy because when you keep them happy they stay! It's not just about bringing them in.

Another way to reduce churn is to “open a loop” in month one and then leave them hanging until month two when you close last month’s loop and open a new one. The goal here is to create anticipation for next month’s content. This works well to reduce churn but notice you can't do this if you're not organized because then you won't know what's coming up next month right?

So get organized!

If you're organized your members will want to carry on with you into the next month to close the open loop.

So you can do little things in your customer retention strategy to release part one of some content in one month and part two in two months. Or you can have a challenge in one month and have the results announced in two months.

Also, in your email on-boarding process you can explain the success path you have for them and how your member can fit in with other people in the community.

You basically want to teach people and deliver value for free but support them with the implementation of what they learned in the paid membership site. People will pay for that.

And the best part of it all is all you really need are a few hundred people in your membership site; you don’t need thousands and thousands of people to be profitable.

The Plumbing Shop

Imagine you created a membership site for brick and mortar plumbing supply shop owners and you launched your idea to your email list of 500 subscribers but only 50 people become your members. Let’s say each member pays you $49.97 per month to get curated content from all the top plumbing shop owners in the area. Their membership provides a community where owners can exchange ideas and tips for all things related to plumbing and business.

This means you are now earning $2,500 per month from only 50 paying members! That’s not bad right?

So how did I know I should price the membership site at $49.97 per month?

In general, most of your membership sites should be 10% to 15% of your flagship course price. So if your flagship course costs $297 your membership upsell price can be between $29 and $47 per month.

But what do you actually put in your membership product?

Your membership content should be more about the community, more about customized coaching, more about individual support, more about templates and resources and less about teaching more material.

The goal of your membership product should be to mainly refer your members back to the materials they ALREADY learned in the flagship course so they can implement and actually get results. Don't fall into the trap of thinking the more you create the more value you provide. That’s why people leave membership sites because too much information just overwhelms them!

For example, if you're dishing out more than 60 to 90 minutes of content per week to your members, you’re starting to creep into the too-much-content-red-zone. Remember, it's less about content volume and more about speed of implementation with baby steps.

You Don’t Need To Be An Expert

And the best part of this process is you don’t need to be an expert.

You can just be the guy or gal who curates all the content from all the experts in your niche and simply presents it to your audience in an entertaining and informative format. And when you drizzle your delicious personality over everything you do it's an added bonus that will keep people engaged and happy.

If you're not an expert, just find the people who can speak to the topic you're not an expert on. Identify the problem and find the people who can speak to the problem and curate that to your members.

Your Membership Site Strategy

Your flagship course is the digital product we’ll create to drive the maximum impact in your business. We’ll get into that in the Product Outline lesson, but I want to show you the big picture workflow of a successful membership site strategy.

You’ll start by selling people into an online course and then offer a membership site as a backend upsell to the course. This might work well if you notice people in your course are constantly asking about what's going to come next after they finish your course. And it also works if the people in your course already trust you, have already gotten massive value from your course and are looking for the next logical step of long-term implementation support.

By the way, this means you'll need to be interacting with your audience and really paying attention to your members on a regular basis. Once you sell them into your course your job isn't done! Now it's time to crank up your attention and to really try to understand what they need and how you can improve your product.

Another membership site strategy is to use pricing and positioning tactics to make your offer a no-brainer.

For example, you can offer your flagship course for a one time payment of $97 as the Starter package. But the Unlimited package offers the course in the Starter package AND instant access to your membership backend site for only $104/mo.

This is a clever technique because you are using price juxtaposition science to make your market decide between you and you not between you and a competitor.

The Founders Launch

But I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking you don’t have time for all this.

If you're thinking you don't have time to build a membership site, just do a founding member launch. You don't even need to have anything setup when you launch your membership site. Just invite everyone in your flagship course to a webinar where you show screenshots of people asking "hey what's next?".

Then on the webinar you can openly admit that your membership site isn’t create yet but if anyone wants to join as a Founding Member then three months from now when you open the doors you'll give them a rock bottom deal and they’ll be grandfathered in at that price.

So when you launch to the public the price will go up but your price as a Founding Member will stay the same. You can also underscore the benefit that Founding Members get to shape the future of what the product will become.

Going The Extra Mile

One last bit of advice here: to really wow your members don’t slam them with content. Instead of opening the content faucet you can consider creating a customer success path that's broken into multiple stages in your email on-boarding sequence.

Take the time to describe the progress journey they can go on and show them what stage they are on in that journey by having them complete a survey.

>> Click here to get a FREE instant download of the PDF version of this post... I'll throw in my audio narration as a free bonus.

This is an awesome trick because it enables you to help your people focus on what's next for them. At the end of the on-boarding email process you can say something like “based on the information you shared with me, you're on level 3 of your journey so here's where you should go based on where you are". Then you would provide the links and content they should consume once they get in the membership course.

This is the right way to do this but unfortunately almost no one is doing it this way.

Now It’s Your Turn

We'll talk more about this when we get to the upsells lesson but for now I just want you to see that creating a membership site is easier than you think. I hope you can see that you don't thousands of paying members to be profitable. And with a Founders Launch, you don't even need to have the membership product completed before you pitch the offer! Isn't this amazing? Are you starting to see how this all works?

What's your excuse for not doing this! It's too hard to setup?

Okay, I want you to experience how easy it is to setup a membership site in New Kajabi.

Go ahead and sign-in to your New Kajabi free trial and type “Products” in the search box at the top of the homepage. Then you can create a membership site by clicking the membership site icon.

So I bet you can already predict your mission for this week.

Your mission for this week is to create your first membership site and figure out how to price it in New Kajabi. Remember, your membership site should be the next logical progression from your flagship course.

So I know we haven’t created your flagship course yet (we’ll begin outlining that in exactly two lessons) but think about what your flagship course will be and then think about how your membership site can help people implement what they learn in your course.

As you build your membership site think about everything we talked about... you technically don’t even need to have it built yet if you use the Founders Launch strategy and you can price it in such a way that it becomes a no-brainer! Remember the price juxtaposition trick we talked about earlier!

Quick Action Result

In the next lecture we’ll dig into overcoming procrastination and how you can treat your online business like a project so you can make sure you actually build this thing!

Remember, I’m dedicated to getting you awesome results, to earning $500 to $1000 because I want awesome testimonials!

Sorry, I’m just being honest... so let’s do this together. Together we win! See you next week!