For most people, running into multiple challenges when managing a membership business means it’s time to pack up and call it a day.
Well, Nicola Taylor of the Makers Momentum Club isn’t most people…
Her journey has its humble beginnings on Facebook, starting out as an add-on for The Makers Yearbook and evolving into a full-fledged membership.
As we go Behind The Membership with Nicola, she shares the challenges she’s faced changing her business model, the effects the pandemic has had on her and member base…
And how a significant increase in member engagement can be a double edged sword!
Bottom line, she’s proof that when the product is good, it really doesn’t matter how many challenges you face, as long as you forge ahead.
Let’s hear more from Nicola herself…
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How much time does it actually take to run a membership site?
This is probably one of the most common questions we get asked…
And as with many things when it comes to memberships, there isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ answer..
Some membership sites can quietly tick away in the background without really needing much attention…
Others, however, need you to work on them pretty much daily.
In general though, membership sites – or at least successful ones at any rate – aren’t really the holy grail of passive income that they’re sometimes portrayed to be.
After all, they do take a lot of work to run!
And your membership should be an ongoing value exchange between you and your members, either through the content you provide them or the community they’re part of.
That is going to need at least some ongoing time involvement on your part…
Checking in and engaging with your community, releasing new content and so on…
But how much time you dedicate to that is entirely up to you…
It could be half an hour a day, 5 hours a day or 8 hours a day.
To help you decide how much time you can, and want to, put into your membership site, let’s take a look at the more time consuming tasks your site might involve…
And some ways that you can minimise the time input needed directly from you.
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The Covid-19 pandemic was unkind to most sectors…
And performing arts is one that suffered more than most…
But that didn’t deter Jim Cooney.
He’s the founder of Amplified Artists, an award-winning director, choreographer, and educator, who managed to build his membership from the ground up, right in the middle of a global pandemic.
With his wealth of experience teaching in universities and offering guidance on a more personal basis, he decided to create a membership that could serve as an anchor for artists at a time when their industry had been decimated.
And as I’m sure you’ve already guessed, his membership journey has had its fair share of twists and turns…
Despite that, he’s managed to do more than just stay afloat, even as things have opened up a bit more.
So, without further ado, let’s go Behind the Membership to see how Jim managed to build a business and create value in a period of difficulty within his industry.
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Launching and building a successful brand isn’t easy…
We all know that…
But pivoting an already successful business to a completely different model is even more difficult…
Especially in the midst of a global pandemic.
That’s what Lucy Walker, from Lucy Walker Jewellery and The Metalsmith Academy had to do in 2020.
Realising the need to expand her business and navigate the ever-changing global restrictions of Covid-19, she transitioned from delivering in-person courses on jewellery making to launching her membership website.
And since then she hasn’t looked back.
But while she’s been hugely successful as a membership owner, the past twelve months haven’t been without their challenges.
As we go Behind The Membership, I speak to Lucy to get some insight into how she braved the transition.
How she managed the highs and lows of life as a membership owner, the lessons she’s learned so far and everything else in-between.
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In the final episode of season five of Behind The Membership, Craig Cannings, co-founder of Freelance University, joins us to share the story of how he and his wife Kelly transformed their business after switching to the membership model.
He tells us what inspired them to go down the membership route after selling a la carte courses for so long, why they made the decision to adopt the closed-door enrolment model and how they’ve found a way to stabilize growth in-between launches.
He also talks about what it’s like running a membership with his wife, the changes they made to the business during the global pandemic to better serve their audience and how they use badges and certifications to aid member retention… Plus much much more.
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Our guest on this penultimate episode of season five of Behind The Membership is Lisa Leander, founder of Women in Business Education.
Lisa’s story is a very interesting one. What started off as a planned side hustle targeting a very specific niche audience (possibly the smallest we’ve ever seen with only a few hundred people in the world in the market), quickly resulted in Lisa quitting her job and managing the membership full-time due to the pandemic.
During this episode, she shares what life is like as a membership owner. How she’s tapping into her 10 years of experience as a Director of a membership organization to build the business as quickly and efficiently as possible, why she made the decision to invest in building a team from the very beginning and how Lisa’s personalized approach to recruiting new members has a 50% to 70% conversion rate.
She also talks about why she only delivers live content to her members, how her site is structured to cater for different segments of her members to give them a specialized peer experience and her plans to grow her niche further later this year.
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Our guest on this episode of Behind the Membership is offers an interesting and slightly different perspective on memberships…
Unlike the majority of our guests Ali McGee Kelly doesn’t actually own her own site, she manages The Social Media Marketing Society, a membership owned by one of the world’s biggest social media marketing blogs, Social Media Examiner.
In this episode Ali shares what it’s like to manage a membership as part of a wider team for a larger business, she talks about the changes the company has been forced to make as a result of the global pandemic and the Society’s unique approach to recruiting guest experts.
She also reveals some changes that have been made behind the scenes to enhance member experience, why the Society has decided to adopt the open door model and how Ali and her team manage content within the membership to ensure it stays relevant in an industry that changes almost daily.
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Sean Wilson joins Callie for this episode of Behind The Membership to talk about Sean Wilson Piano, his membership site for Gospel pianists.
During this episode Sean shares the details of his journey so far, how he tapped into a small but engaged audience to launch his membership back in 2017, why his approach to delivering content within his membership has changed and the positive impact the pandemic has had on it’s growth.
He also tells us how he recently overcame his subscription ceiling, now attracting over 100 members a month instead of 40, the steps he’s taken to make engagement skyrocket inside his community and how YouTube has played a huge part in the success of his membership … Plus so much more!
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Our guest on this episode of Behind The Membership is Vahn Petit, Founder and singing coach at School Vocalize, an online contemporary singing school based in France.
When Vahn made the decision to adopt a child she realised that she needed to make some changes to the way she worked so she could prioritize family time… and a membership offered her the perfect opportunity to do that.
Since launching School Vocalize just under two years ago Vahn shares how she has quadrupled her income after niching down to the French market, how she attracts new members using youTube and how recently introducing a new tier to her membership has enabled her to offer one on one feedback to a limited number of members.
She also discusses how the pandemic has had a positive impact on her membership, how she’s building a thriving community who plan to meet in person soon, her goals for the future and much more!
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Meet Anna Geiger – mom of 6 and owner of The Measured Mom Plus, an online membership that offers resources, printables and training to pre k-third grade educators.
In this episode of Behind The Membership, Anna joins us to share the story of how she has turned her hobby into a thriving business.
What started as a blog sharing content with family and friends while living abroad has become, over the space of 8 years, an online shop and membership that attracts millions of site visits per month and hundreds of thousands of subscribers to her mailing list.
In this episode Anna talks about how she’s built her audience, why she made the decision not to sell any of her products until two years after her blog went live and what inspired her to launch her membership just under 2 years ago.
She also shares how her site attracts over 100 members each month with little to no marketing, what she loves most about being a membership owner and the challenges she faces targeting teachers… Plus much more!
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Alisha Robertson from The Purpose To Service Academy joins Callie for this episode of Behind The Membership and she has a very interesting story to share…
After experiencing burn out as a coach, Alisha knew that she had to find a solution that would help her scale her business, without the time constraints of one-on-one coaching… and she did, in the form of a membership program.
But the interesting thing about Alisha is that before doing research and launching her membership, not only had she never heard of the business model before, but she’d never been part of a membership herself!
In this episode you’ll hear about Alisha’s membership journey to date… how her program looks very different from when she opened its doors nearly two years ago, her realization that she could serve her members better if she niched down and the challenges she’s faced being new to the membership space.
Plus you’ll hear how Alisha adds a few personal touches to her member experience, how her life has changed since launching her program and what her plans for the future are…And much more.
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Mark Asquith, founder of Podcast Success Academy, is my guest on this week’s episode of Behind The Membership.
Mark’s membership story is a little different to most, not only because of its position as part of a wider ecosystem of businesses, but also because it has a whole tier that members can access for free!
In this episode Mark shares how Podcast Success Academy came to be and what inspired him to build it using the freemium model. He also shares how he’s building a community with two very definitive segments who share an interest in all of his products and the challenges he’s faced in getting his audience to take action.
Plus he explains how he’s going the extra mile to give his audience the best learning experience by plugging a gap of knowledge in the podcast industry, without the hard sell… And much more.
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We’re kicking off season five of Behind The Membership with an awesome guest. Jenny Finnell is Founder of CRNA School Prep Academy, a highly specialized membership for nurses in the United States who want to become Registered Nurse Anesthetists.
The Academy has recently reached its first memberversary and in that time has become a big success – so much so that Jenny was able to retire her husband within eight months of launching the membership!
In this episode we talk to Jenny about her membership journey so far. How some queries from nurses resulted in her creating a free Facebook group that sowed the seeds for her idea of the Academy, why she hired a team to help her ahead of her launch and how she’s growing her membership successfully with little to no marketing.
Plus we talk about the challenges she faces managing her time juggling life as a mom of three children (one of which is a newborn) while managing the Academy, how the flexibility of the membership model enables her to better serve her members and much much more!
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So we say goodbye to another year – and what a year 2020 was!
It was certainly a busy year for Membership Academy, as world events pushed us to refocus on how best to serve our community – leading to some big changes and additions.
We thought it would be useful to recap all of the new additions and features from Membership Academy during the past 12 months, just in case you missed anything!
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Customer service is at the heart of the member experience.
No matter how great your membership site is, you’re going to have members contacting you for additional support at some point.
Providing your members with good customer service is an easy way to elevate their experience of your site, and similarly a bad customer service experience will quickly turn their opinion of your membership sour…
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As a membership site owner it’s easy to tie yourself in knots trying to come up with the best ways to get your members to engage with your site, your content, and your community.
From fancy progress tracking to complex loyalty schemes; laborious member outreach programs through to advanced gamification systems.
However it can be easy to forget that often some of the less glamorous methods of engagement are the most effective.
In this article, we look at one of our favourite tactics for member communication, engagement and retention – the humble “member roundup email”.
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