Membership Sites: How and When to Launch One

if you're thinking about launching a membership site this year then congratulations that's a great idea i have launched and run three multiple six-figure membership sites over the years in two different niches i love them i love interacting with the members and the community i love serving people at a high level in a more interactive way and they're great for your bank account because you get some beautiful dependable recurring revenue but the questions are very simple how should you be launching a membership site strategically and maybe a not asked enough question when does it make sense for you to launch a membership site when it comes to your online business let's discuss both those questions in today's episode [Music] [Applause] welcome to episode 90 of the graham cochran show where i'm here to help you build your online business work less and live and give more to the things and people you care about i'm your host graham cochran pumped to hang out with you today we're going to be talking about membership sites one of my favorite products one of my favorite tools for online business and wealth creation of all time we'll get into the nitty-gritty i'm going to share a lot of the strategies that i've used and the lessons i've learned over the last 12 years of running online businesses and specifically about 10 years now of running multiple membership sites but before we get in really cool event happening next week i've got a live training on monday january 18th called my three secrets to earning six figures without working more hours or adding new customers don't you just love that literally i love this training just for the name alone but it's a great training some great content if you're trying to grow your business this year if you already have your business started and you've plateaued in revenue or you've got big dreams big goals maybe one of your goals this year was to hit the six figure mark where you're earning one hundred thousand dollars a year or more in your online business but you don't know how to get there you're looking to scale or go to multiple six figures then this training is gonna help you as i'm going to break down three powerful secrets that you can use to increase your revenue without working more hours which you know is one of the taglines of this show working less and without having to add new customers which is insane so i'm going to break down the surprising math of earning six figures there's a bunch of different ways to get there when you realize it's just a math problem it becomes a little more encouraging because there's not one way to hit it i'm going to share with you the 64 4 rule that you can use for explosive growth and my four step six figures blueprint i love this blueprint because it literally gives you a path of what to do first second third and fourth uh to get to six figures if six figures seems like a big leap to you it breaks it down into simple milestones and action steps to know that you're on the right track it is absolutely free to attend it is a fun solid hour of teaching there's also going to be live q a at the end so if you hang out with me i'll be able to answer your questions about what we covered or about growing your business or about whatever you want to talk about live i'm going to hang out with you all night it will be next monday night january 18th 9 0pm eastern standard time you have to register to attend it's 100 free but you got to register just go to grahamcochran.com three secrets that's the number three graham cochran.com three secrets uh it's the only way to get access to this training is to go there and register your spot it's free otherwise it doesn't cost you anything to come a lot of you are in different time zones a lot of you have commitments i get it i will be offering a replay but only to people who register so you must register to see it live or see the replay i hope you come live because that's where we can do the live q a and it's going to be a lot of fun i'm going to be drinking coffee and staying up to hang out with you as long as we want to go but if you know for sure that you really want this training but you can't attend live because of time zone conflicts or something else still go register your free spot because i'll be able to get you a replay a limited time replay after the live training so just go to graemecochran.com three secrets it's next monday january 18th 9 pm eastern and again this is my three secrets to earning six figures without working more hours or adding new customers absolutely free it'll be a lot of fun i love doing free live stuff with you because then we get to sort of workshop together and it's a little more um like a community almost like a membership site which is awesome because it's happening live so hope to see you there uh it's gonna be awesome all right let's dive into the content today uh membership sites are a critical part i think of not only scaling income it's a huge part of how you can reach six figures but also creating dependable income right so you're not just hoping that you have a big launch every once in a while with big spikes of revenue and then you're hoping that more money comes in so it's a great way to create predictable recurring revenue because they sign up once and their credit card is charged every month and you get that recurring revenue so you can kind of have a good idea of what your income will be next month but beyond those benefits i really love membership sites because you get deeper interaction with your students and that interaction is so valuable for a couple of reasons one you get to feel like you're a part of something if you're running an online business you're likely a one-person show like me right now i'm sitting alone in a room by myself with myself looking into a camera talking to a microphone and while i kind of like this because i'm a sick weirdo that likes to be by himself it gets a little lonely sometimes and it's hard to know if you're making a difference out there in the world so you're looking for feedback all of us are looking for some kind of feedback affirmation signs that what we're doing matters the most important sign typically in business that what you're doing is connecting is dollars in your bank account uh because that shows that people not only like what you're doing but they like it enough to take out their credit card and part with their money which is a huge sacrifice because money is what we value it's reflective of our hard work so people are trading their hard work to get access to your content so that's a huge accomplishment and it's a great sign that you're on the right track but it doesn't feed the soul right money in your bank account feeds your bank account and your financial goals and your family but it doesn't feed your soul what feeds your soul is especially if you're in the information product business which we are knowledge commerce e-learning online courses membership sites we want to know as educators and influencers and thought leaders that we are making a difference that what we are sharing and teaching is helping people we we only know that if we hear back from our students and there's obviously a variety of ways to hear back but membership sites are one of the greatest ways to hear back because it's interactive it's always ongoing it's a community it's not just comments under a video or a course or an email back every once in a while it's a living breathing community that you are stewarding and you are leading and facilitating so there's so many benefits to that that feeds your soul and then what comes out of that is you learn a lot about your customers you learn a lot about the top people that are reflective of who you should be serving because they've paid to be there so you know they're legit they know they they care about you and what you have to offer so what they say is so valuable to you what they're struggling with what they're finding success success with what they their questions are what their wins are common trends um maybe even some of their complaints with your material you'll learn like okay maybe i'm not doing a good enough job explaining this or i'm under explaining or i'm over explaining so i get a lot of valuable feedback from my members so lots of benefits right so you might be saying yeah i want one i want a membership site this year well let me break down two important questions uh how do you launch one successfully but maybe more importantly when do you launch one and we're going to start with the win because i think that's important i i have learned through coaching students one-on-one through having members in communities and and students that take my courses i've learned some of the pain points and some of the pain points that relate to membership sites are failures launching a membership site and it's a failure it's a dud other failures and other pain points are they've launched one and then they're completely overwhelmed they don't know how to create all the content they don't know what to do and it fizzles out so even if it was an initial success it fizzles out so there's a couple of things that are related to that the how is important but also the win so let's start with the win and here's one that some people find confusing and maybe frustrating or maybe find it encouraging when should you launch an on a membership site excuse me you should launch one after you have an online course that was the 40 and slip there don't launch your membership site first i really don't believe that the first product you should ever launch is a membership site i think the first product you should launch is an online course i don't care if that's a mini course i don't care if that's a full-fledged flagship course i think you need an online course in your product suite before a membership site and there's there's three simple reasons why why number one an online course i think is the best way to initially help your people because it gives people your core teachings and your core method so membership sites never end and they're they're beautiful for a lot of reasons they're ongoing so they're continuously add value but what a student needs initially when they're coming into your fold and they're being sort of made aware of what you have to offer and they're they're trying to solve an immediate pain point is they need an immediate solution and an online course is that immediate solution it gets you from point a to point b or it teaches you one clear specific thing to get you one specific result or solve one specific pain point i think it's the fastest and best way to not only make money but to get your students success early which makes them students uh and fans for life so i think online courses are great to get your core teaching your core method out there and in the hands of your students which then will benefit you later when they join your membership site because they already know your core method your core teaching they've already gotten some results and now they want more because membership sites really are great as a backend or piggybacking off an online course when they have more questions more follow-up questions deeper questions they've gone through your core material and now they have the big questions i find people who are in my membership sites who haven't joined my courses or my flagship course let's say to be missing something and they're asking a lot of the same core questions that would have been answered in an online course my main course had they taken that first and it's okay if they haven't taken it maybe they didn't know it existed maybe they didn't think they needed it and maybe that was my my poor marketing if i didn't make it clear that this was critical to their success but they're always missing some core teachings i'm like hey it's kind of in my course so i really think that it's it's good to launch with a course first give people that core teaching number two for you an online course is fully automatable and hands-off membership sites are not hands-off they're very hands-on they're scalable and if you do what i'm going to teach you in a minute they're minimal effort they're the right amount of effort but they're they're hands-on ongoing work that never stops whereas of course you do all the work up front you put it in place you put it in your funnel fully automated little work for you i had a course called rethink mixing it was a 99 course i sold it for seven years i launched it in 2011 so i did all the work filming it getting it launched writing the sales copy and then didn't touch it didn't update it didn't touch it until i took it off my product suite in 2018 because i replaced it with a better course called mixing university but for seven years it sold day in and day out automatically and that one little 99 course made me over a million dollars just that one course hands off it's hard to beat that um i really really love that so it's great for you to have at least one product that's fully automatable so you're making some automatic income in the back end and then also i think courses are just easier to sell and easier to manage with a smaller list if you're newer to online business you likely have a small list and that's okay we all start with a small list and you can make good money off a small list but while you're growing your list and you should be growing your list and you do that through regular content content marketing is the secret building an audience is the secret um and you do that through content while you're in the early throws of building that audience you got a small list i think you can make good money off of a course by just selling the course you can sell a course for a higher price point than you will for a monthly membership although if people stay in your membership longer of course that can accumulate and become worth more but i think it's easier to sell a course when you're getting started because it's an easier promise you you have just a simple like beginning middle and end i'm going to get you from here to here it's it's easier promise to make than than this amalgamus online community membership site you almost need a little more clout and maybe a little bit more for you confidence to be able to sell ongoing like continue to pay me every month i find a lot of my students struggle to know how am i going to convince them to keep keep paying me every month that might be overwhelming to you so it's simpler if you just make a one-off transaction with a course plus i think with a small list it's harder to get a really vibrant community which leads me to the second thing about the when when should you launch your membership site and i think it's after you have at least a thousand people on your email list minimum okay why should you have at least a thousand people in your email list before you launch a membership site well you got to understand that when you're new to online business you're thinking like oh what if half my people buy it what if only 25 of my people buy it what if only 10 of my people buy it those numbers are dream numbers not saying impossible and some of my students have had significantly higher conversion rates than average but an average conversion rate an average good conversion rate to your email list is one percent realistically a half a percent to a one percent conversion is what you are shooting for when you launch to your email list any product now that might sound depressing to you but i'm telling you the truth so you have realistic expectations so if we just use the one percent goal or target if you have a thousand people on your email list and you launch your membership site and you get one percent to convert that's 10 people 10 people that's a small community think about having 10 people in a facebook group how much interaction is there going to be with 10 people not a ton just statistically because not everyone's going to log in every day and even if they did not everyone is very vocal or active in communities even communities they pay to be a part of most people lurk most people just read other people's comments and they still get value out of it but they just don't interact so if you have 10 people in your community you might have one or two talking if you're lucky so it's really you and one other person talking or you and two other people talking regularly in your community so it's hard with 10 people in your community so that's why i don't want you to have a higher than realistic expectation of how many people will convert and join your membership site when you launch just to set those expectations manage those expectations so that you will realize i need as big of an audience as possible i don't i don't want you to wait forever but i do want to be honest with you i think membership sites are a better fit when you can get as many people in them as possible and you can do that by having a bigger email list before you launch if you have a bigger community it offers more value to the other members if they join and they're excited about it and they realize there's only one or two people talking in this community they might be like what's the point of this there's nobody in here it's one of those weird things where like any community it thrives off having more people in the community so you're really beholden to the number of members you might be awesome your content might be awesome but the community is a huge part of what makes a membership site sticky i learned from ryan lee years ago that people come for the content but they stay for the community they join your membership because of the content and the promise you offer and you're going to deliver but they stay meaning they don't cancel because of the bonds they form in the community the value they get from the community so the community is so important and the more people you have the more value it offers the bigger the community you have the more people you will see interacting and engaging with each other in the community which is critical to the value to the vibrancy to the excitement to the the feel of like hey i'm a part of something here you don't need it to be huge for it to add value you do not need it to be huge i have had membership sites that are in the multiple thousands of members and membership sites that are just 100 people and both offer tons of value but when you have 10 people it's hard 20 or more you're getting into a better spot 50 or more might be ideal because you got to expect most people aren't going to check it daily or interact daily but you you you want as many people in it as possible so just to manage your expectations i would say wait until you have at least a thousand people in your email list before you consider building and launching a membership site and again like i said in the previous point make sure you have an online course you've launched first it's really going to help you get some some results for your students some money in your bank account some automated income and some experience writing sales copy and doing a launch that then you can carry into when you launch your membership site okay if that's the win after you have a course and after you have at least a thousand people in your list here's the what what do you need to do to launch a successful membership site so let's talk about what you need in place at launch date because a membership site the beautiful thing is you need less in place when you launch than you do with an online course because it's an ongoing living breathing thing so it really takes less upfront work than an online course but you do need a few things in place i think at launch to make it valuable and successful when people do join so we'll backtrack we'll start with what what you need to have in place and then we'll talk about some launch strategy one is you want to have thought through obviously one have built the membership site know where it is and know how it's all set up but you want a really good welcome video and a really good onboarding email sequence these are very easy easy things to do but often overlooked either they're not done at all or they're just assumed to be placeholders or just sort of like what you do but there's no real point to it your welcome video and your onboarding email sequence are critical to the success of your membership site here's why if you've done your job with good sales copy good positioning a great offer people are going to join your membership and they're going to be excited because why they love you they like you they trust you they want what your membership site offers they're lonely they want some community they want access to you all these good things they want access to other like-minded people and they want accountability so they're going to join they're ready to join what happens after they pay what happens after they're inside your you know your back end right let's say you're in kajabi they pay and all of a sudden they're inside your kajabi product and it's your membership site videos right there which you should have a video says hey watch this video first right with a big smiley picture of you looking great with a big old arrow pointing to the play button like hit this button so you can figure out what to do first literally this is you welcoming someone as they walk into the room hey i'm so glad you're here i'm so excited for you that you joined you made a really smart decision right very simple one or two lines there what you're doing is you're excited you're smiling in the video if you don't smile on your welcome video what's wrong with you even if you're not a smiley person you can do it for at least one video put on a big smile so that they feel welcomed right that's the first drop of welcome videos to make them feel welcome to what to a community of awesome people and you're encouraging them and affirming them that they made a really smart decision and you are so excited to have them join your community it is a privilege for you to have them pay you every month to be a part of a community so act like it act like it's truly an honor because it is that people will be willing to pay you every month just to be a part of your community is insane so put on a smile thank them welcome them and reaffirm that they made a smart decision immediately after that you've got to understand that you have just a few moments where they're going to pay attention everyone's going to see this video who joins to tell them to do what you want them to do they're listening they're all ears what do you want me to do first graham so you have to think long and hard about what you want them to do and it's critical that you get them to take some form of action immediately when they join because if they take some action if they if they poke their head around the community and do what you want them to do they're more likely to check back in with the community they're more likely to take advantage of all that the community offers which makes them more likely to stick around and less likely to cancel because you got a great membership site it's awesome of course it's going to be awesome because you're awesome and you're only going to deliver value you're not going to just phone it in so if that's true get them to stick around get them to dive in since this is a community i think the first thing you should have them do personally is click over on the community link whether that's inside of a kajabi community which is what i use for my memberships or if you use a facebook group like a private facebook group for the community element of your membership site that's fine or you use something like discourse that's fine whatever you use for the actual interaction you know what we used to call a forum back in the day right get them to click over there so they see where that is and make sure there's an introduce yourself section or category or topic and have them introduce themselves and give them sort of a framework what to do say hey say my name is graham i am a business coach from tampa florida and this is what i'm most excited about learning or working on in this community so their name what they do where they're from and what they're hoping to get out of the community and have them share that in the community that's probably the simplest and most helpful action that they could take and that you could have them take because it shows them where the community is again that's what's going to keep them sticking remember what ryan lee says people come for the content but they stay for the community and it's going to get them to be active in the community which is better for all your other members so the people are actually posting because it might be the only post they ever post because they're willing to do it because they're new and you told them to do it but it also introduces themselves and it gets the other people to be like oh i want to welcome the other new members so get them to introduce themselves get them to see the community and see what it's all about so important so critical if that's all you ask them to do great but then what i use the welcome video for after that is just to show them a tour here's where the monthly content is going to show up so you can go check out what this month's content is here's where you get access to our live q a call that happens every month or every other week or every week whatever you do um just show them around and i talk about it i use a little screenflow so you know you could use um quicktime on your mac to record a little screencast you could use loom for free to record a little screencast just to show them clicking on the things and showing them where everything is they go oh gotcha that's where all the content is that's where all the stuff is uh and here's how to get a hold of me if you have any questions here's the email address or the support link at the bottom or whatever just give them a tour well you know you're welcoming them here hey here's where the bathroom is here where the snacks are there's where the you know the stage is where the the speakers are going to be you're just showing them around the room and you're telling them what to do first to to take part of the community i i cannot stress enough how important this one simple video is it does not have to be long you're not having to do anything crazy here but just be a friend and be a host and welcome them a close cousin to this welcome video is the onboarding email sequence so what i want you to do in your email provider if you're in kajabi you can do this obviously if you're in mailchimp or convertkit or aweber or whatever you use have pre-written a number of emails usually four to seven days worth of emails that they get signed up for the moment they join your membership and it's just a daily action step a daily piece of homework a daily little teeny easy task to onboard them to get them acclimated to the community and what do these emails consist of basically what you talked about in the welcome video so the first email should go out the the moment they join saying the same thing welcoming them i'm so glad you're here it's so awesome that you're here here's the first thing i want you to do click over to the community introduce yourself that's that's literally the same thing you say in the beginning of your welcome video and that's all for today and you tell them over the next few days i'm going to give you some quick start tips i'm going to share with you some ways to take advantage of this community i've literally called these uh in the past my quick start guide you know whatever and it could be like one of five two of five three however you wanna do it but they realize okay each day for the next couple of days he's gonna drop in and give me a little tip on how to take advantage of this community they appreciate that they're looking forward to that it seems helpful and not intrusive so you know first thing is to get them to take that first action the next day maybe you highlight um the the monthly call hey remember when you joined every month i'm doing a live q a call click this link to go check out when our next scheduled call is and register for the call or whatever or put it on your calendar and have them just go get familiar with that part of the membership maybe the next day you tell them about the monthly content here's this month's content and each month i'm going to be uploading the new content in this area check it out watch this month's video and maybe you talk about any bonuses you included maybe you talk about one of the biggest takeaways previous members have had maybe you share a testimonial from a previous member and a cool thing that they learned maybe you can go jump in the community and share what you've learned so far like anything you want them to do to get acclimated to the community to take some action and to post inside the community which is probably the best action they could take and it's just one little thing a day any product has shown that if users take advantage of the product within the first day to first seven days they're more likely to stick with that product because they got familiar with they bought it they took advantage of it early on oh i'm gonna come back i'm gonna come back so you want them to take some action in this first couple of days very important so so important to have that in place second when you launch you want to have at least one month's worth of content in place that month so if you launched into january have january's video in place you don't need any more in place because guess what you're dripping out new content every month so you just need one month's worth of content in place and they understand that if it's new if this is a brand new membership that's fine they have one month's birth of content they've got the community and you probably have that month's live coaching call and then they know that next month you're going to drop another piece of content that's all they need that's fine and obviously when you you're launching or reopening or re-promoting it down the road you have lots of content available but when it's brand new again they don't need tons of stuff just that month's content so they get an idea of the format the length and the value that you're going to be bringing every month you want your community element in place like we already talked about needs to be in place so if you're using a kajabi community which is a built-in type facebook group inside of kajabi which is super slick and easy to use have that in place if you're using a facebook group have that in place that when they log in they can click over and find the community you obviously need that in place and i would have posted if it's me a few posts sort of prompting conversations getting people thinking about what to post and then you're gonna probably want a bonus mini course this is not necessary but really really nice it can either be a surprise bonus that they didn't know about when they joined or it can be part of your sales copy to convince them to join is that when they join they're going to get a mini course thrown in for free that's valued at 197 or something like that but they're going to get it for free and again this is nice when you're launching for the first time especially because you don't have a ton of content in there and it's not like a course where they can pay for it and start going through all the content it gives them something like a course that they can have right away this does not have to be long again a mini course is better suited for this because they don't need a ton of content in fact don't give them too much content uh stu mclaren has said that the number one reason people cancel memberships is because of overwhelm just too much and they're not taking advantage of it they feel bad they feel like they're wasting their money so they cancel because they don't have time to consume all the content so don't give them too much but it's nice to have a bonus mini course there when they join either a promised bonus that's an incentive to join or a surprise bonus when they join both can work beautifully and ideally for you the last thing i would have in place before you launch is a year's worth or 12 months worth of content outlined and this can just be bullet points not created not even fleshed out but you launched with the first month's worth of content and have at least the next 12 months of like i'm gonna launch this in the next month this and the next month this is the next month for what your monthly content will be you will feel so good launching membership knowing what a year's worth of content your membership is going to be you don't have to make it now just make it once a month that's what i do i create my content once a month ahead of time but when i launched and generally every year i plan out a year's worth of content in advance makes you feel good that you know you're going to be delivering value to your members right so what you need in place at launch welcome video and onboarding email sequence the first month's content in place your community element in place a bonus mini course in place and then at least bulleted out 12 months of upcoming content so that you feel confident final thing to talk about here when we're talking about how to launch your membership site open and close the membership site during that launch week make sure you close the cart at the end of the week 100 whether you are going to have an evergreen membership which i i've had or an open and closed membership site which i have either way for the first launch close the cart and there's three simple reasons why number one it creates urgency which increases sign ups which increases conversion so if you're unfamiliar with the term closing the cart it literally just means i'm opening the doors to my new membership site you can join now but you have to join by friday at midnight or sunday at midnight or tuesday at midnight because after then you will not be able to join i'm closing the doors that's all we're doing is is literally giving them a window of five to seven days to join your membership to take you up on it to read the sales copy to think about it to make sure they can afford it and join after which they will not be able to join you don't have to promise anything about when you'll reopen it or or if you'll reopen it it almost doesn't matter like you can assume that you're going to reopen it you can say i don't know when i'm going to reopen it next it doesn't matter because you don't have to have that planned out all that matters is you're launching now the doors are open and they need to join now this is going to create natural urgency scarcity where people like dude man i really have to make a decision and this is not manipulative at all this is simply helping them get over their their procrastination because that's what people do they look at it and they go yeah sounds cool and then they get busy they haven't made a decision they're on the fence having an end date where they must join by friday at midnight forces them to make a decision the decision does not have to be yes if it's not a good fit right now that's great but just make a decision join or don't join are you in or are you not in either way is fine by me but it forces them to make a decision which is good and likely you will get more sign ups which is good for a lot of reasons right when you have more signups you have more members when you have more members you have more interaction we have more interaction it creates more value it gets people more excited to be a part of the community and it's going to give you more opportunity for testimonials and great screenshots of people saying oh my gosh this community is amazing oh the people here are so helpful screen grab screen grab screen grab so you can put on your sales page later right so good for you it also helps you to feel like you can manage the influx of new members and welcome everybody if you keep the doors open all the time especially when you're launching it's hard to just keep track of new members they might slip through the cracks so at least for the first time while you're working out the kinks close the cart close the door so you have a fixed number of people who join and then you can spend those next few days just welcoming them loving on them and getting the community started and finally i feel like when you close the doors and your members know that the doors were closing that's why they joined um and they now know that no one else can join it makes them feel like they are part of an exclusive community and exclusivity is important if it's something that's always open all the time it doesn't feel super exclusive it just feels like anything that anybody can join there's something beautiful about they got in while the doors were open and now you're just focused on this group of people and i think people appreciate that i might be reading too much into it maybe students don't care at the end of the day it might be more subtle than i'm alluding to but i truly believe that if they understand that the doors closed that they are now in and whatever that means that has psychological value they are in they're on the inside they got in and now you're not welcoming lots of new people you are focused on them the people that got in and that feels good and that's one of the things that separates a membership site from an online course is that insider i'm on the inside and graham or whoever the community manager is right is focused on me and this group of people and that's valuable it's subtle but it's valuable and that's again one of the distinctions of a membership site a bonus that i didn't write down um but i teach my students is when you're launching a membership site one of the coolest things you could do is once you've figured out what the price of your membership site's going to be is to launch at an exclusive founder's rate which will be a discount it could be half off the the final rate it could be 25 off what the rate's going to be something in that range and you tell people look this is what the price is supposed to be for this membership but if you launch this week as one of my founders because you're you're launching with me when i start this community you're gonna be able to join at you know 50 off what everyone else will pay in the future and as long as you're a member in good standing as long as you don't cancel that will be your rate for life you get to lock that discounted rate in for life this is great for getting a lot of members in creating more urgency and creating more stickiness in the sense that they're less likely to want to cancel because if then they want to come back and join again at some point the price goes up there's a slight danger to this because if you're reducing your price basically you're going to attract potentially you know bottom feeders as i like to call them people that just you know they're low value customers that don't want to spend much money and it's like yeah well i'll give it a chance and they're going to cancel and you might have you know more turnover because of that but at the same time i think you're going to you're going to attract your super fans early adopters who are going to get rewarded and have incentives to stick around for a long long time because they just have such a great deal such a great deal um this is this is true of all kinds of products that are subscription based if you get in early you're locking in a better price and good for you happy clap for you and i think that's great i think you should reward your early adopters and you should reward the people who took action when there was no testimonials there was no proof yet because it was brand new so that's one option you can have and then the next time you launch you just raise the price back up to ultimately what it needs to be or you could incrementally stair step up one more time and have two rounds of discounts going in but either way it's going to give you a base and create more urgency when people join and then after you've closed it you can love on your members and you can figure out what to do from there if you want to reopen it and make it evergreen from then on which is fine or reopen it a few times a year you can open it twice a year once a quarter either way is great but just i'm talking about when you're launching for the first time for sure open and close the cart there you go so in review launch your membership after you've launched an online course after you have at least a thousand people in your email list make sure you have all those things i mentioned in place before you launch you don't need more just those basics and make sure you open and close your membership during launch week uh don't have it open evergreen have that closed cart date in place so the question for you is have you launched a membership site already and if so um what have you found to be successful when you launched your membership site if you're watching on youtube leave a comment below and let everybody know what other things you would suggest to keep in mind when launching a membership site if you haven't launched and that's why you're listening to this or watching this and i want you to let me know in a comment below as well if you're watching on youtube which of these takeaways was most eye opening to you and most helpful as you consider launching your membership site and don't forget next monday i've got the live training i'm doing a live webinar on monday january 18th on the three secrets to earning six figures this year without working more hours or adding any new customers i'm going to break down the surprising math of earning six figures i'm going to break down my 64 4 rule for explosive growth and my four step six figures blueprint so you can just have the map to go from where you are to six figures it's super actionable teaching plus live q a at the end it's absolutely free to attend but you must register even if you think you can't make it or make it for all of it you want access to the replay i'm not posting it anywhere but to people who register so you must register so go to grahamcochran.com three secrets if you're watching on youtube i'll link to it below if you're listening on apple podcast or spotify it's grahamcochran.com the number three secrets slash three secrets and i hope to see you there it's so much fun i love doing live trainings you guys are so smart ask great questions and i want to be available to you not only to teach you some great material again it's gonna be awesome training but also at the end of the training then i can unpack your questions about what we just covered or questions about growing your business in general or questions about where things are going right now in 2021 happy to answer whatever you want to talk about next monday january 18th at 9 00 pm eastern that's at grahamcochran.com 3 secrets hope to see you there as always thanks for listening thanks for watching thanks for supporting this channel and uh stay healthy and stay safe and i'll see you on another episode real soon

Channel: Graham Cochrane

Views: 16,747

Keywords: how to launch a membership site, launching membership sites, membership site launch strategy, membership site vs online course, online course vs membership site, online business, passive income, online courses, graham cochrane

Id: T6ilOvVOMyw

Length: 41min 4sec (2464 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 12 2021