Hey everyone!
Jason here, digital marketing consultant.
And in this video, seven reasons building a membership site is a complete waste of time,
and money, and can actually get in the way of you achieving the results you're looking
for, in starting and growing a information product business.
Timestamp table of contents in the description, along with some other helpful videos that
will walk you through some membership site ideas and other ways you can generate income
online, without getting sucked into building a full-fledged membership website.
So kicking things off at number one, the number one reason you don't need to build a membership
website, is if you don't have multiple products and services, the whole purpose of a membership
website is to give people a nice central location where they can log in and get all of their
content.
Because at the end of the day, all membership site is decided to do, is deliver content.
And so if you only have one product, you don't need a giant membership website to deliver
just one product.
In fact, there are multiple different ways that we'll talk about as we go through these
seven things, that you could do in order to deliver content without a membership website.
One of them is, just providing a locked content page on your WordPress site, and you can use
something like the eStore plugin, that's just $50 one time.
And then you can consult as many products as you want without going through the headache
of setting up membership websites.
Because the number one headache of setting up a membership website is reason number two,
you don't want to do membership websites and that is customer support.
It doesn't matter how great your software is.
As soon as you say that it's a membership website, people are going to expect customer
support.
Because inevitably emails are going to get broken, people are going to change their email.
They're not going to be able to log in.
Links are going to break.
It's just a mess, if you don't already have a team or you don't already have experience
with delivering customer support.
I'll tell you from personal experience, that has been one of the worst parts of having
a membership website, is just all of the log in headaches.
And you can skip all of that by simply just straight delivering the content either with
the plugin, I just talked about, or you can actually just email the course files, because
the content is the most important part, which is number three on our list.
Remembering that content is King.
People don't care how the content is delivered.
People care that the content is good.
And so if you're looking at trying to put together a information product or deliver
services, it makes a heck of a lot more sense to spend more time and energy on the service
or the information and the product and making that nice and tight versus trying to create
this awesome looking membership website, where you're eventually going to fill in all these
products and services, right?
So just remember that the content is the important part, not how it is it's delivered.
And if you're concerned about your content being stolen, stick around for number seven.
Now, number four on our list deals with putting the cart before the horse.
And that is validating.
Look, unless you already have an email list and you've already sold multiple digital products.
Then frankly, you don't know what course, is actually going to be the most profitable.
You don't know what's really going to work and what's really going to sell.
And because the process of driving traffic, warming up leads, your email sequences and
your funnels and your upsells and down sells all that fun stuff.
Sounds great, but you don't want to build out an entire membership website before you
know that that's what people want, that the content you're going to put in there, which
is the most important part is actually what people want.
And so here, what I recommend doing, is validating your idea before building out an entire membership
website.
Now there are multiple ways you can do this.
You can simply just put up a landing page and then have a lead magnet, that offers something
very similar to your course idea.
Of course, if you want to take it a step further and say, you know what?
I really want to see if people are willing to pay for it, then make a quick eBook or
short course.
That's like one or two videos max.
Put it together very quickly.
And then you can offer it to your email list, to see if they're going to buy or not.
Now, if you don't already have an email list, then check out a link in the description to
a video that walks you through a minimum viable funnel.
So, you can easily figure out which type of product to build.
Because frankly, if you don't have an email list, you should not be building a membership
website.
Now, number five on our list, deals with annual fees.
And that is most membership software out there is going to be a few hundred dollars a month
or a few hundred dollars a year.
And so depending upon the price point of your future membership website, you do need to
sit down and I know it's boring, but do some math, look at how much it's going to cost
to advertise, how much it's going to cost to purchase the membership software and then
keep paying for the membership software and how many sales a month do you need, in order
to just cover the bare minimum.
For most people, you're looking at anywhere from 5 to 10 sales a month, just to break
even after you've paid yourself back for the giant investment you made in putting together
this membership website, not to mention all the time and energy, that's going to be sucked
away, trying to put this together, which is why I'm such a huge proponent of the minimum
viable funnel method, figuring out what people actually want before you go and do all this
work.
Again, link in the description to a video that walks you through how to put that together,
what is very important to stay on top of your cost.
Because every dollar you're pouring into some fancy piece of software, which there's a lot
of marketing out there, that tells you membership sites are the way to go, but that's because
they want you to get sucked in and buy their software.
They want you to put all of your content inside of their software.
So you have no choice, but to keep paying them, otherwise you have to go build another
membership website again, right?
So you want to validate not only validate your idea, just do some basic math.
There we go.
I got it out.
Do some basic math to figure out whether or not it actually makes sense to start for a
membership site platform.
Now, number six on our list deals with your personal time.
Now there are some membership websites that you can put together, that simply just deliver
an online course.
That's great.
You don't really have to worry about your involvement other than the countless stream
of customer support emails you're going to get of people who can't log in.
After that though, there are a lot of other styles of membership websites that are talked
about a lot, like monthly Facebook groups or masterminds or newsletter updates.
But the problem with these is they all take your personal time.
And when you're just getting started, you really don't have the time to invest whatever
it would take to be inside that Facebook group or be inside that form that you put together,
or do a weekly call or bi-weekly call to answer all of those questions.
Yes, it's a great way to learn about your customers and improve your product.
But when you're just getting started, 95% of your efforts should really be on figuring
out how to make your funnel profitable, to get more people into your funnel to purchase
your digital product or service.
Now, finally, number seven is the false sense of security.
Look, this is something we have to talk about.
And it's something that I struggle with personally as well.
And that is those pirates in the world.
People are going to steal your content.
It doesn't matter if you email them directly, all of the files and then they immediately
ask for a refund.
It doesn't matter if you use a fancy piece of software that you think is locking up all
of your content and videos, they'll download it all and refund anyway.
Or there are those who know how to hack membership websites as well, and just download all of
your content without even going through the silly refund cycle.
So when it comes to needing that feeling of security, in the fact that your content isn't
going to be misused or stolen, that's just part of an information product business, as
part of doing business online.
As soon as you put it online, someone is going to figure out how to copy and steal it.
And it doesn't matter what membership site software you're using or how you're delivering
your information products that is going to happen.
So, thank you so much for watching.
I hope you got some value out of this video and it gave you some things to think about.
Again, the real purpose of this video is to help you figure out how to get up and running
with your information products or digital services as quickly as possible, and really
a membership website for most beginners.
It's just a waste of time.
It's something that sounds really good, but it's ultimately going to just suck up your
time, from a way from things that are more important, like learning how to drive traffic,
optimizing your email sequences and optimizing your sales funnel.
So, go ahead and hit that like button and subscribe for more marketing tutorials and
strategies, just like the ones covered in this video.
And until the next one, keep building the business you love.