Membership Geeks Podcast with Mike Morrison

So, 2019 is done and dusted. Hopefully it was a successful one for you and your membership. It was certainly a big one for us, with more highlights than you can shake a stick at - many of which you've heard us 'document' right here on The Membership Guys Podcast. And I know this is so cliche... but I swear the older I get, the faster each year seems to pass. I can't quite come to terms with the fa...

Although every membership site is unique, you’ll usually discover that seven types of members keep showing up in every single one of them. While some of these will mimic your ‘ideal member,’ others will test your patience and frustrate you beyond belief. Whatever the case, you’re sure to recognize some (if not all) of these ‘member profiles’ within your membership site! Listen in to discover the s...

Are you thinking about charging a joining fee for your membership? A joining fee is an arbitrary fee that new members pay on top of their first monthly payment. If you ask me, I think that joining fees are unnecessary and there’s often no real justification for it. However, there are situations when a joining fee may be necessary. If you’re considering having a joining fee for your membership, mak...

You know your membership is going through a downturn when you notice a reduction in sales, fewer member signups and a potential slowdown to your overall growth rate. When your membership experiences a downturn, it can be pretty nerve-wrecking as thoughts of its impending doom race through your mind. But, before you jump to conclusions, you need to take some time to analyse the situation and come u...

Is now a good time to have a membership site? On this special episode of the podcast, you’ll get to listen in to the opening keynote from our very first conference ‘Retain Live 2019.’ It was an incredible event with some phenomenal speakers gracing the stage eager to share their expertise and insights with the audience. The first keynote was delivered by myself (Mike Morrison) and Callie Willows,...

Have you lost interest in your membership? When you first launched your membership, you were probably bursting with excitement and enthusiasm. But, over time those positive feelings you associated with your membership faded and now you can’t remember why you ever got into this in the first place, am I right? If you have a lack of interest and enthusiasm for your membership site, it’s time to make...

A waitlist is a dedicated email list that people subscribe to in order to receive updates about a membership that you are going to launch in the future. We are big believers in setting up a waitlist for your membership. But once you have it organized you have to keep everyone engaged until your launch date. In this episode, we share lots of ways you can keep your waitlist interested and engaged wi...

Payment disputes are a reality of running any business, including membership sites. Luckily, they don’t happen often. But when they do, they take valuable time away from your business and revenue generating activities.  Since the beginning of the Membership Guys Academy site, we have had over 6,000 members and only 20 payment disputes.  We have learnt a few things about this issue along...

In our early days of working with memberships, we stumbled across an article that claimed that the average member only stays subscribed for a mere 3 months. You’ve probably heard this yourself. It’s a claim that’s been repeated and republished so much, that it became readily and widely accepted. But it’s nonsense. There’s not a single shred of data or evidence for that ‘3 month’ claim. No source d...

It's coming up to that time of year where promotions and discounts abound. Whether it's Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Christmas or New Year, the sales season is definitely upon us. While these kind of sales are traditionally for physical products, there's no doubt that digital products have jumped onto the bandwagon over the last few years, and you'll see more and more discounts being offered....

Despite what the slickest of snake oil salesmen will try to tell you, there is no secret sauce or golden formula for building a successful membership website. The key to the long term success of your membership site lies beyond marketing tactics, sales spiel and fancy production values; and the memberships which do best are those which - at their heart - understand and embrace a core set of fundam...

The path to membership success is paved with a litany of mistakes. Along the way you’re going to screw up, especially in the early days. It’s all part of the learning curve and it happens to the best of us – yes, even your friendly neighbourhood Membership Guys! However you will come to a point where it feel like you truly have your house in order, you’re now on the right track and those initial s...

There are many reasons people are attracted to the membership model. The most compelling for us is how dramatically different (and better) making recurring income from a membership is compared to servicing clients on a one-on-one basis. This is particularly true if you’re a “one man band”, where you’re solely responsible for the delivery of what you sell, so that might be: Website developers Busin...

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...