Membership Geeks Podcast with Mike Morrison

The right idea can make or break a membership website. Far too often, people steamroll ahead into worrying about which membership plugin they're going to use or how much content they need without actually doing the research necessary to make sure you're on the right track. But how do you know if your idea is a winner? In this episode of The Membership Guys Podcast, I take you step by step through...

Amazon have just announced the launch of a new digital subscription marketplace called "Subscribe With Amazon". This will enable people to tap into their sales tools and, of course, their huge audience in order to sell digital products for a recurring fee such as - you guessed it - membership websites. Make no mistake, this is a potential game-changer for the membership space. In this "hot off the...

In many ways, launching a new membership website is one of the biggest marketing opportunities you'll experience as a membership owner. So it makes sense why some people may advocate for constantly closing and re-opening your membership in order to recapture that opportunity over and over again. But it's not quite as simple as that. In this episode, I cut through the hype and talk about why I stro...

Running a membership site is the best job in the world… but it’s still a job. Some days you wake up and just aren’t feeling it. Your motivation is AWOL and you’ve not got a colleague to complain to, a different project to focus on, or anywhere to turn. Well, that was until we recorded this episode of the podcast. Because we have felt that lack of motivation and almost every membership site owner w...

Like it or not, your members won’t stick around forever, losing members is just part and parcel of operating a membership site. However there’s plenty that you can do to make sure that you’re not losing members for the wrong reasons. In this episode, I discuss the most common reasons people typically leave membership sites, and provide tips for improving your retention strategy to prevent them.

Getting someone to join your membership site is great, but it’s just the beginning. Before you have time to celebrate, you really need to figure out how you are going to get that member to stay month after month, year after year. Hanging on to your paying members is crucial to the long term success of your membership site; so you need to make sure that you have a strategy for keeping members engag...

Great memberships are never truly finished. That’s actually one of the best things about the membership site model. If you are writing a book, creating a course, programming your piece of software; then there’s a lot of pressure to have a polished completed end product. But with a membership site, some of that pressure is off because people understand that they are boarding a moving train. That wh...

Member retention is key to the long term success of a membership website; however if you offer both monthly and annual billing people often end up so focused on keeping monthly subscribers that they take annual renewals for granted. Or worse - they assume people joining on annual plans aren't likely to stick around beyond their first year, so they don't even try to retain them. In this episode of...

As founder of the Female Entrepreneur Association, Carrie Green credits investment in personal development and conditioning herself for success as the keys to having the right mindset to grow her membership to over 4,000 members. In this interview, we discuss how FEA came to be and the challenges Carrie faced along the way; and we also dig deeper into the strategies Carrie uses to keep members hap...

Gamification is a technique that has gained huge popularity in enhancing user experiences and the effectiveness of e-learning within online courses and membership websites. And as lifelong videogame geeks, it's right up our street! In this episode of The Membership Guys Podcast, I hand over the reins to Callie, who talks more about what exactly gamification is and how you can use it in your member...

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...

When inspiration strikes and you come up with an idea for a membership website or some other product or service that you're convinced is a winner, all too often it's easy to get carried away in trying to make it a reality without every stopping to really examine whether your idea is actually as solid as you're convinced it is. Before you invest countless hours and immeasurable quantities of blood,...

Are you worried that your membership website kind of sucks? Hopefully not. I'm sure you’ve got plenty of happy members who are giving you great feedback and showing you that your hard work is actually making a positive change in their world. But there are unfortunately a lot of membership sites out there that do - to be frank - completely suck. So if you're someone who is running one of those webs...

Is the fact that someone continues subscribing to your membership really a sign of loyalty? So much of our time as membership site owners is spent trying to attract new members, and worrying about those who cancel, that it's easy to take for granted the ones who continue paying us month after month. We tend to assume that those members are happy, content and loyal; but quite often that couldn't be...

Membership owners have a lot on their plates in the day to day running of their website. There's more than enough to think about without piling onto your worries by concerning yourself with situations and things you perceive as problems, that you either have no control over or that you really shouldn't be occupying your time with. In this episode of The Membership Guys Podcast, I look at the 6 mos...

There's no "one-size-fits-all" approach to marketing a membership website. However there are a number of tactics and strategies that are proven to work well, or that take advantage of some of the unique elements that come with running a membership website. In the concluding episode of a two-part podcast series, I discuss a variety of different marketing tips that you can use for your own membershi...

Sales are the lifeblood of a successful membership business. While being able to hang onto those members is critical to the long term health of your site, the best retention strategy in the world is useless if you're not bringing in any members in the first place. In the first of a two-part podcast series, I discuss a variety of different marketing tips, strategies and tactics that you can use for...

It's a new year, time for resolutions and focusing on new projects; and for many that means deciding to start a membership website. However rather than joining the countless people out there dishing out motivational platitudes and encouragement by the bucket-full; I've decided to take a different approach for this episode of The Membership Guys Podcast. Instead, I'm going to try to talk you out of...

As 2016 draws to a close, we're in a reflective mood here at The Membership Guys HQ. It's been a great year for us and for many within our community; and a particular highlight has been the growth and evolution of The Membership Guys Podcast. We've had the great privilege of being joined by a number of great guests, and it's been humbling that many of our most popular episodes feature only Mike an...

As the holiday season approaches, it's a good time to remind ourselves of the value of taking time away from your membership. In some circles, working every hour under the sun and being so busy that you're eating your Christmas lunch with your laptop on your knee, is seen almost as a badge of honour. Evidence that you're "hustling" harder than anyone else and as a result your business will be more...

Most memberships are focussed on helping people to reach a goal or achieve some sort of positive outcome. Whether you enable this with courses, worksheets and tools, community or something else - it's the result that matters. Running a free online challenge as part of your audience building and lead generation strategy taps into this in a big way and as a result can be one of the most effective ta...

Live video is hot right now, and it's only set to become ever more powerful as a marketing tool. A lot of memberships we see are centered around an authority or expert of some type; and it stands to reason that one of the most effective ways of demonstrating your expertise, establishing your credibility and truly connecting with your audience is to get in front of a camera and share your message....

Growing your membership audience can be a slow, painstaking process. Ultimately when all things are equal, people will buy from people they know, like and trust; and that sort of relationship takes time to develop. However there are ways to speed up the process; and in this episode of The Membership Guys Podcast I look at 4 of the tactics you can use to accelerate your audience growth. In this epi...

Building an audience is essential to the success of your membership. After all if you have no audience to speak of, then who are you going to sell to? Where are your members going to come from? “Build it and they will come” is, unfortunately, a myth – so you need to invest time in growing your own audience in terms of your email subscribers, website visits, podcast listeners, social followers and,...

When starting a membership, you have to be in it for the long haul. However despite your best intentions the time may come when you're considering shutting down your membership site. However if that is an option you're considering; it's important to handle it careful to avoid upsetting your members and ruining your reputation. In this episode of The Membership Guys Podcast, I discuss the best appr...