Membership Geeks Podcast with Mike Morrison

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...

Whether you're teaching a specialist subject, or want to support others who share your interests; it's now easier than ever to reach a global audience and get paid for sharing your time, skills, experience and expertise. Two of the best models for doing so are online courses and paid membership websites. However with those terms often used loosely and interchangeably, it can be tricky figuring out...

We can spend months creating content, writing workbooks, pulling our hair out, and spending a small fortune on promoting a new membership site and then when we finally launch it… nobody joins. We all dread this as membership owners; and when it happens, the panic sets in and we start scrambling to rearrange the website, add testimonials, and change prices. This is all completely irrelevant stuff a...

One of the best things about running a membership website is that we can market and position it in a way that we attract the sort of members that we most want to work with. However no matter hard you try to get only the “right type” of people in your membership, you will inevitably experience problem members. Sometimes it will be a personality clash, where certain members just rub you up the wrong...

Creating membership content can be one of the most time consuming parts of running a paid membership website. If you’re billing people on a recurring basis, you need to deliver value on a recurring basis; and often delivering that value involves some form of content. In this episode of The Membership Guys Podcast, I discuss how to approach content strategy for your membership, and the steps to tak...

Less than a month ago, Callie bought a book. Unbeknownst to her, that simple act would be the start of the single worst buyer experience she's ever encountered, as she found herself subscribed to a membership she never signed up for, with no clear way out. In the interests of seeing how far the rabbit hole of terrible business practices went, she decided to see it through... Join us on this rather...

Many people measure success according to vanity metrics. How many followers you have rather than how much engagement you get; how much your turnover is rather than how much net profit you make; how many members you have rather than their average lifetime spend. But is success as a membership site owner all about how many members you have? Or is it about the money you make? Or the lifestyle your me...

If you’ve spent much time looking at online courses or membership sites and their associated plugins and software, then you are probably already familiar with the terms ‘drip feeding’ and ‘content dripping’. Drip feeding is essentially  time-releasing your content so that it isn’t all available to someone immediately  after they sign up to your site. But unlike simply providing ongoing content (wh...

It can be difficult to judge whether or not you're delivering enough value in your membership for the price you wish to charge. That's mostly because "value" is an abstract concept. There is no scientific formula behind it; it's not something you can accurately measure - it's entirely subjective, based entirely on individual perception. So how do you know if you're getting it right? It is even pos...

While the majority of online memberships tend to fall into the same 2 or 3 models in terms of how they deliver their premium content; there is much to be learned from those membership sites that do things a little differently. In this episode I discuss 4 content strategies for memberships that are fairly uncommon but certainly effective, and discuss ways in which you could incorporate aspects of t...

One of the key decisions to be made when planning a membership is whether to offer multiple membership levels or a single 'all access' option. While we always advocate for simplicity, there are definite pros and cons to consider. In this episode I discuss the key things you need to consider when deciding whether to have multiple levels in your membership, and provide my top tips for making this st...

Most membership owners - especially those earlier on in their journey - try to do everything themselves Chris Ducker refers to this as "Superhero Syndrome" - where you convince yourself that everything in your business rests on your shoulders; that you’re the only person who can possibly handle it all. But it’s a fallacy. You shouldn’t be trying to do everything yourself because it’s just not sust...

This year we embark on our biggest and most daunting challenge to date - running our very own live conference: Retain 2019 It's something we've wanted to do for years, and we're beyond excited to bring together hundreds of membership site owners from around the world for 2 days of amazing speakers and high-level networking. But the journey has not all been smooth sailing... In this episode of The...