In This Episode You’ll Learn:
- The benefits of finding out where your online audience wants you to reach them — and meeting them there
- What to ask yourself when setting up your pricing structure, no matter the business
- The difference in revenue between offering online membership and one-off courses
Membership Creates Relationship
Joe is a master web-developer, podcaster and teacher. As an accredited college-course developer, an entrepreneur, a YouTube tutorialist and a course creator for LinkedIn, he has discovered the value of selling his courses on a membership-basis rather than just as individual courses.
Joe says when you offer membership access in addition to one-off purchases of courses, you create a solid stream of recurring revenue and have the opportunity to engage with your customers long-term. Engagement with your audience is key for customer retention.
Pace Your Content
The trouble, however, with membership-based content is that it can be time-consuming and tedious. Membership services mean you must create a steady stream of new content for members — Joe advises that a little bit of new content goes a long way.
“Constantly bombarding your members with content is overwhelming to them.”
Instead, get them in the door with a few good pieces of content, update that content every year and then build a community for them to rally around. People want community and are willing to pay for access to it.
Invest In Online Community
Joe attests to the value an online community can bring to both consumers and creators. He admits that his community-fostering skills still have room for growth, but within the past two years Joe has seen how giving students community enables them to find answers more easily to their specific questions and become returning customers.
“I want that community. . . . I want a place where students can ask those questions.”
Joe has polled his Slack community members and has learned that they want to be part of a Facebook group community. Joe believes that creators should go where the people are. Even if it’s a lot of work, he wants to ensure his students have access to him and each other.
“I want [my students] to know that I am here — and part of membership is access to me and getting questions that [they] have about specific projects answered.”
Pricing Your Content
Joe says when he designs his courses, he focuses on giving away supplementary information for free and keeping the detailed information behind a paywall. This gives consumers enough information to know the basics of his course while giving them room to delve deeper into the details if they wish.
When pricing content or services, Joe recommends asking: What value does this provide to the person receiving it?
Asking this question helps avoid selling yourself short when pricing your services or products. You want to be sure you are giving a fair price to yourself as the creator in addition to the consumer.
