Category: Memberships & Online Courses

If you’re like many online educators, you probably feel pretty confident in the content and quality of your course. After all, this is what inspired you to begin your elearning adventure in the first place. However, many online educators are less confident when it comes to selling their course. And it doesn’t help that many of us use industry terminology that may or may not be familiar to those trying to learn the basics of sales and marketing. So, for this post, we’re going to take a step back and look at one of the basics: lead acquisition and nurturing. Here\’s how to do it right.

It can be frustrating to get refund requests after all of the hard work you’ve done to get your membership site up and running (not to mention creating the content itself), but unfortunately, they are a reality! Let’s be honest: it hurts when your members cancel. When it comes to the value you provide, you’re confident in your product, and the last thing you want is to lose a customer while having to return the money you’ve earned. So, how should you handle refunds? What’s the fairest policy for you and your customers?

As a membership site owner you may have so many things to keep track of, produce, and manage that simplifying things sounds like a far-off dream. Decluttering, consolidating, and automating are all key words here, but you’re looking for specific tips and strategies for accomplishing these things within the context of your membership site. Here are 6 steps to doing that and make your life a little easier!

You’re getting new members, retaining old ones, and building a community; your membership business is growing! Awesome. But, what adjustments should you make in order to manage the increasing load? Let’s face it, running a membership site is no small task. Though rewarding, it requires a lot of dedication – and as you scale up your business, you may identify some areas that need fine-tuning. You also might find yourself struggling to manage a bigger enterprise, with more content, more members, and more responsibility. Simplifying your membership business is a good place to start, but when it comes to growth, there are some specific things to look out for.

If you’re thinking of selling an online course, then step #1 is to find a profitable niche. Everyone has things that they’re good at, but it’s more important to find something that you are good at and that is proven to sell if you’re planning on starting an online course business. There are literally thousands of profitable niches to choose from, but here are 15 great ideas for those looking to begin selling an online course.

Figuring out what to charge your members can be downright confusing! Some membership sites seem to have such high prices, yet others are so affordable, leaving you wondering: what’s the value of my own site anyway? In this post, we’ve discussed some perspectives to help you get a bit clearer on what you should charge and why.

Getting your membership site up and running in the first place can be quite a substantial feat – and it can be easy to fall into some common mistakes because there are just so many things to create and manage. So, what are some of the mistakes membership site owners make? Here are 10 of them to think about!

Membership sites are different from standard digital product stores in that they depend on recurring income to be successful. Check out our top tips for creating meaningful memberships for long-term success.

You’ve accepted that churn is an inevitable part of running a membership site, but what should you be doing to win back lost members – and how? It’s important to remember that members have lives of their own, and may cancel their memberships for a variety of reasons. Your job is to find out why they cancelled, what you can do about it, and to offer them a solution. Here’s how to do it right!

According to Harvard Business Review it costs between 5 and 25 times more to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one. Wow! Are you putting exponentially more effort, care, and attention into nurturing existing member relationships relative to acquiring new members? That exponential effort can be reduced over time if you put the proper infrastructure in place now. Laying a solid foundation for churn optimization poises you for scaling later. Here’s how to do it.

Pricing your memberships is an important part of running a membership site – and the tiered membership model is a popular choice. But, how do you know if it’s right for your site? What makes tiered memberships so popular?

Subscription models have been around for a long time, but modern digital content consumption (along with the increasing dominance of eCommerce) has created a unique demand for consistently fresh content – and a membership site is the perfect solution!

One of the best things about running a membership site is that your success isn’t necessarily all about the number of new sales you make, or even member churn. The truth is, your growth and success can be measured by the long-term value of your members – but what does that entail? In this post, we discuss the significance of long-term member value and how you can tap into it to maximize your membership results.

It’s no secret that people are attracted to free stuff, and bringing in more traffic means more leads – and more opportunities to convert sales! But, when it comes to membership sites, having a free option provides benefits beyond the obvious.

There are many elements that contribute to member retention – from membership pricing, to the rate that you replenish your site with quality, fresh content. But when it comes to everyday use, your site design can truly make or break the member experience. Here\’s how to do it right.

If you’re a digital business owner, you might be wondering what you can do to expand your brand and revenue. Enter memberships. Incorporating memberships into your existing business can transform the entire experience for you and your customers – from a more streamlined approach to things like payments and delivering content, to vertical scalability that enables you to grow your business to levels you might not have imagined. Not only that; the membership model is rapidly becoming the go-to business model in a fast-paced society that wants increasing efficiency, simplified payments, and regularly updated content. In this post we discuss some of the ways you can beef up your business with memberships so you and your customers can reap the rewards!

Keeping your members engaging with your site on a regular basis is essential if you want to avoid member churn, build your brand, and maximize your revenue – and one of the best ways to do that is by using gamification!

What is gamification? In simple terms, it refers to incorporating game-like elements such as points tracking, leaderboards, rewards, and achievement badges into your business. Since its first appearances in the early 2000s, this trend has exploded, becoming a dominant engagement strategy used by some of the biggest brands around – and it’s particularly useful for memberships.

Keeping your members engaged and coming back to your site is essential if you want to avoid member churn and nurture the long-lasting relationships that sustain a thriving membership business. Member engagement is the goal, but what drives it? It’s not just about creating interesting and useful content, it’s about helping your members get from A to B – giving them the real-world results they need to improve their lives or achieve their goals.

One of the most important parts of setting up your membership site is creating an effective onboarding process for new members. It sets the tone for your business and shows new members how much you value them. Lucky for you, for the most part setting up a good onboarding process is a one-time project that pays off with every new member who signs up. Here’s how.

Marketing wisdom tells us that communicating the features of your products is not enough; you must emphasize the benefits your customers will experience. In this post, we discuss some key differences between marketing benefits vs. features, and how this relates to what your members really want.

Membership sites have become increasingly popular as a model for generating revenue and building a community around your online business. And if you’ve got the content, the products, and the drive, you can create your own membership site that will amplify your brand in all kinds of ways. Here’s a general guide to help you figure it all out, and take your vision from a dream to reality.

Building a thriving membership site isn’t easy, and you want to crack the code to success. But first, you must consider the incentives for your potential customers to join your membership site – and stick around. Enter premium content. This kind of super-exclusive content opens the door to a cascade of benefits, from generating interest in your site, monetization, and building revenue, to enhancing brand perception and reinforcing your content authority.

This interview is with Jonathan Williamson, co-founder of CGCookie. He’s going to talk to us about running a real world membership website on WordPress. Jonathan is Pippin Williamson’s twin brother, and he has years of experience running membership websites. There is much that we can learn from him.

Online courses can do a lot of things. They’re a great way to share your knowledge and help others, and they can make you quite a bit of money in the process. But creating them can take a lot of work and time, and if you don’t sell them right, that can be a lot of wasted effort.

I have an enormous amount of respect for what Brian has created over at Poststatus. Poststatus is a mix of WordPress and industry news, with a paid for membership component. Brian spills the beans on how he started the successful WordPress membership and news website, Poststatus.

Increase your profits by selling All Access memberships – which give your customers an extremely improved experience. All (or just some) of your store’s products will be right at your customers’ fingertips when they need them. After purchasing a membership, they simply log in and start downloading products. Your customers spend more than they otherwise would have, and also get more for their money – everyone wins.

If you’re trying to sell corporate memberships and felt like WooCommerce couldn’t do it, the good news is that now it can! Check out this demonstration.