Membership Geeks Podcast with Mike Morrison

Retain Live 2019 was a phenomenal success - especially for our very first live event! However as we discussed during the first part of our "debrief", it was a little rocky in the build up. In this concluding episode, Callie and I talk through the event itself, breaking down everything that happened and how it all came together; sharing some of our biggest lessons and top takeaways for anyone think...

Two weeks ago, we kicked off our very first live conference: Retain Live 2019. It's the first time we've run an event of this scale, and to say it was a new, interesting and challenging experience would be a major understatement! While the event itself was a huge success and we've had overwhelmingly positive feedback - getting there certainly wasn't smooth sailing. In the first of our two-part deb...

If you have a great idea for a membership, you need to validate whether or not it’s destined to fail or succeed. Like Rome, the world’s leading membership sites weren’t built in a day. They started as an idea in someone’s mind, which was nurtured, tested and validated until there was undeniable proof the idea was a winning concept. When you’re excited about an idea for a membership, it’s easy to l...

Deciding how much you should charge for your membership site is one of the most important decisions you’ll make. Charge too little and you risk losing out and making no profit. On the other hand, if you charge too much, there’s a chance nobody will be able to afford your membership. So, how much should you charge? Unfortunately, there’s no one-size fits all approach when it comes to pricing your m...

Have you ever wondered what the main differences are between B2B memberships and B2C memberships? When it comes to membership sites, most of the strategies that we talk about on the podcast and inside the Membership Academy can be applied to pretty much any niche or market. But, there are a few key differences to look out for between a B2B membership and a B2C membership. These differences are imp...

Holy smokes, has it really been four years already?! It honestly feels like yesterday that we were gearing up to open the doors to the Academy. I'm not sure we fully realised the awesome journey we were about to embark on. Join us as we celebrate the 4th anniversary of Membership Academy by taking a look back at the last 12 months and highlighting the 7 'ups' and 3 'downs' from the past year. In t...

Like it or not, membership cancellations are going to happen. Hopefully if you run your site well those cancellations will come at the end of a long tenure, but regardless they will happen. How you deal with these cancellations has numerous implications for the continued success of your membership site or online course; so it’s important to know how to handle them and also what to avoid. In this e...

Having a hard time deciding which membership plugin is for you? Although the main feature of a membership plugin is to give you control of the content in a restricted ‘members-only’ area of your site, there’s a lot more to consider when selecting the right one for your site. So, what should you keep an eye out for when choosing a membership plugin? Tune in to hear four factors that could be huge g...

Have you ever had somebody tell you that your membership is overpriced? Honestly, it would be a surprise if you haven’t . Discussions like this are usually followed up with a bargaining attempt to reduce the cost of your membership. You might have experienced when a somewhat pushy potential member tries to haggle your price down. Or, they might even ask for a discount or a free trial run that last...

Our members often ask questions about how we run our membership and how our business has grown over time. The first thing we tell them is that our success didn’t fall out of the heavens and onto our laps. It took a lot of hard work, dedication and strategic thinking to get to where we are today. We’ve intertwined a concoction of approaches and strategies that have helped move our business forward....

How do you ensure that your membership doesn’t get the chop when your members decide it’s monthly subscription payment Armageddon? With so many businesses moving into the membership space, consumers are faced with an overwhelming amount of choice. There comes a point when rather than juggling a countless array of subscriptions, your members will do a brutal clear out and scrap anything they consid...

Memberships have been a hot topic in recent years. Everybody is talking about them, and it seems like everyone and their dog is starting a new membership; but what happens when all of this hype dies down and people move onto the next thing - what will that mean for the future of the membership model? Are memberships just the new shiny fad? And is there any point starting a membership if the bubble...

It's an exciting time for us here at The Membership Guys as we unveil a fresh new update for our brand, and also announce that Member Site Academy is now Membership Academy! While on the surface it may not seem like a major change, there's a lot more involved than meets the eye... In this episode I give a bit of backstory about why these changes mean so much, and walk you through the process we us...

Membership site owners wear a lot of hats and juggle a lot of tasks on a day to day basis. With so many moving parts, and so many plates to keep spinning, anything that we can do to streamline our workload and become a little more efficient is a big win. In this episode of The Membership Guys Podcast, I talk about 4 specific things we do within our business to make us far more productive in runnin...

Are you trying to be all things to all people with your content? The truth is, the more broad your content is, the less compelling, relevant and effective it's likely to be for the individual reader. By trying to cater to everyone, you end up catering to no-one. This is where segmentation can be a gamechanger. By identifying 3-5 key segments within your audience, and tailoring not only your conten...

Are you delivering an exceptional member experience? Your membership could have the best content in the world, but if your member experience isn't up to scratch then people just aren't going to engage. They're less likely to log in, less likely to consume your content or participate in your community, and ultimately less likely to stick around long term. Much of crafting a remarkable member experi...

Attracting the right people to your membership is essential for the growth of your business. Not all members are created equal - the best ones will consume your content, positively engage with your community and actually use what they're paying for. These are the members who will stick around for the long term. But how do you tailor your marketing to ensure you're attracting more of the right type...

We regularly get asked for our recommendations on the top tools for membership website owners. The truth is that there’s no such thing as the “perfect” membership site setup that will work for everyone – it all depends on what it is you want to achieve with your membership site, what features and functionality you need it to have, which email and payment software you’re using and a whole bunch of...

This week we're doing something a little different on The Membership Guys Podcast! You may or may not know that we actually have another show called 'Behind The Membership', which is hosted by the one and only Callie Willows Behind The Membership features hype-free, no-fluff, frank conversations with real membership site owners just like you about the highs, lows and day to day realities of runnin...

Memberships can be challenging products to sell, as often they're made up of so many different things that it's hard to get specific in your marketing. One way to counteract that is with the "Splinter" strategy. This is where you take one piece of content from your membership and you make it available to buy as a standalone product. But you market it in such a way that makes joining your membershi...

It's easy to get carried away in those early days of planning and building a membership site. So many people get overexcited by their idea and a little too swept up in the process that they skip the first few fundamental steps. Most importantly: idea validation and research. And then when they launch their membership and it doesn't quite go to plan, they're left scratching their heads wondering wh...

We're celebrating a huge milestone for The Membership Guys Podcast as we hit our 200th episode! To mark the occasion, we thought we’d do something a little special... So both Callie and I opened the floor up to you, and invited our members and wider audience to ask us absolutely anything you wanted - about anything! We’ve picked the best questions and answered them together in this special 200th e...

Membership websites are a value exchange. As long as you keep delivering value to your members - in the form of content, resources and ongoing investment in your product - they'll keep giving value to you in the form of their continued subscription payments. So what content can you actually include in your membership in order to ensure you keep up your side of the bargain?

When publishing content online - whether freely or inside a membership - there's always the chance that someone will copy or steal your hard work. In truth the only way to guarantee that this won't happen is to not publish anything online. However this doesn't mean you should just roll over if it happens to you. In this episode I give my top tips for dealing with people stealing and copying your c...

Reducing the price of your membership might sound like the last thing you'd ever want to do. As time goes on and you add more content, the value of your membership increases - so surely you'd be considering putting your prices up, not down? Why would you want to go backwards? However there are some situations where lowering your price might make total sense. Maybe what you're offering has actually...