How I Make Money With My Membership Site (A Simple Strategy)

Don’t Call Them Members…They’re Clients

My membership site is called the Youpreneur Academy and our focus is on helping people become the leading source providers in their industries.

This means building a business that’s “future-proof” to a range of market conditions and builds around their personal experience and the target market they want to serve.

It’s perfect for people with businesses that are based around their personal brand like coaches, speakers, authors, and consultants. Anybody who’s putting themselves out there online.

On the other side of my business, I’m actually employing 450 people in a call center business, as well as a virtual staffing company, so it can get quite busy!

What I really want to cover today is how to consistently show up for your members.

This is so important because believe it or not, there’s a lot of entrepreneurs out there who don’t do it! They’re dropping the ball with their clients.

And that’s what they are… clients. Not members. That’s my mentality because it’s my job to serve them continually.

Calling them members almost sets the relationship in reverse where they owe me.

That’s not how it goes. They’re sending me money every month, I have to deliver. To me, this is just a more professional attitude.

When I promise a new piece of content for Wednesday at 5pm, it’ll be up on the site by 4.30pm. When I promise my monthly mastermind call for the last Thursday of the month at 9am EST, that’s when it happens.

This sets a standard that my clients can come to trust and expect from me and setting a similar tone for your own business can really by a game changer.

When you start meeting your promises consistently over and over again it sets you apart from all the other memberships out there that don’t.

It also helps to train your members to expect certain things from you at certain times in the month, quarter, or year. Whatever your schedule is.

I think it’s very important to establish that practice as early in the relationship as possible. That’s half the battle.

You know what time your favorite TV show is going to be on each week. You’re not sitting around randomly guessing when you’re going to get that next episode.

Generally, I don’t create a piece of content for the community unless I know it’s something they want and need.

I keep my ear to the ground in terms of what questions my members have and what specific content they need to succeed.

In my monthly live calls, I do a little coaching segment called “What’s working now with…” and you can complete that sentence with whatever the community has voted on for me to cover.

This can really be anything. Recently it was podcast artwork. A lot of members have been working on this and I was happy to dive into the subject for them.

I also have a private forum and a content library available to my members where they can follow up with me and get feedback on what they’re working on.

It starts with delivering what people want and need and then going on to deliver it on a consistent monthly schedule, and providing support around your content.

 

Action Steps

1. Gather feedback from your members to understand what content they want and need the most.
2. Provide this content on a consistent schedule, stick to your promises regarding, time and date, and frequency of content.
3. Establish this high level of trust early in the relationship.
4. Make yourself available to follow up with client questions on the initial content you’ve provided.

 

Result You Will Achieve

A consistent schedule that will earn your member’s trust and have a stronger, longer lasting business relationship.

This article is based on an EHQ interview with the mentor.