Running an online business is fun. But some days you feel like you’re drowning.
Just when you think you know something, that’s when life will slap you in the face and show that you, in fact, know nothing.
What is my membership site?
I spent months and over $600 creating a membership site at learn.robcubbon.com. I then had a horrible rabbit stuck in headlights period before promoting the site to my list.
Why did I create a membership site?
Ever since March this year I’ve been making over $2000/month from my video courses on Udemy – some months, more than $4000/month. Logic suggests that I should sell these courses on my own platform directly to the customer and pocket the cut that Udemy takes.
Why did I think it would work?
I’ve been so impressed recently of the power of the email list to sell my Udemy courses and e-books that I thought that one email to the list would result in hundreds of sign ups to the membership site. I was wrong.
Why? Here are some of the mistakes I made and I hope you can learn from them:
Lesson #1: Pricing
At Udemy, users pay a one-off fee for lifetime access to a course (2-4 hours of video).
However, with my membership site, users are asked for a monthly fee for access to all my videos and courses (10+ hours of video) plus forums with access to yours truly.
The two pricing structures and products are completely different. My subscribers evidently prefer a one-off price rather than recurring fees.
Lesson #2: Email title
I split-tested the email by sending to 10% of my subscribers first, then another 10%, and then the remaining 80%. The first “test” email had the title “The day has come … ” A bit dramatic! The second’s title was: “Watch me create an online business” – much better and more specific and it was rewarded with increased open rates.
I should have gone for the second one in the last 80% email instead of “experimenting” still further. But, at least I didn’t go for “The day has come…” because that was obviously a bad idea.
Lesson #3: Email branding
I usually send emails with my logo at the top. If you’ve been on my list for the last few years, you’d have seen exactly the same logo on every email I’d sent.
However, because the membership site is a new site (well, a new subdomain) I thought I’d change the logo.
So subscribers were immediately greeted with an unfamiliar logo at the top of my email to them. Not great branding.
Lesson #4: Email sales copy
I would guess the copy could have been better considering the poor performance of the email. Here’s the email text:
Do you want to know how I create online businesses that allow me to work when I want, at what I want?
Big announcement! I’m opening the doors to my new membership site where I’ll teach you web design, online marketing and more.
All my courses are available – you can learn:
Making money running a web design business
Creating custom WordPress websites for clients
Building a brand, blogging, SEO and social mediaPlus many more. And I’m adding to them all the time.
There are already six video courses available. Plus there’s also a private forum with access to me.
Join me at learn.robcubbon.com and learn online business.
Too much detail? Not enough? Difficult to say. What do you think?
Lesson #5: Links in the email
I always try to keep the links in an email really simple. I never like to give the recipient any choice of which link to click although I may put the same link in twice.
On one email (yes, the 80% one!) I decided to list the three courses without linking to them. This caused a 1% drop in click-throughs (see chart in Lesson #2).
Lesson #6: I should have offered free membership first
As I mentioned in Lesson #3, this is a new site with a new branding and my customers weren’t used to this. So it would have made more sense to introduce them to learn.robcubbon.com by getting them to sign up to a free course.
I will be making this course free soon: Talking To Clients: An Introduction To Website Building.
People should have a some free value from a membership site first, before they’re asked to pay for the premium content.
Lesson #7: I should have asked the audience
I have been asking about pricing and the membership site on Facebook a lot but I didn’t ask my subscribers about whether they were interested in a membership site. That might have been a good idea. 🙂
You can do it
Have you thought about creating a membership site. Don’t let my mistakes put you off. But, if you do, be sure to introduce the membership site to an audience gradually and explain the benefits over a period of time.
Rob, really great article. I’d love a follow up post on how things changed. Hope you don’t mind if I learn from your process!
Not at all, Mike, that’s the idea. Hopefully there’ll be a follow up with some better news soon. 🙂
The membership site model is definitely one of the toughest to make work. There are so many factors that you have to consider, and there are certainly a lot of things that can go wrong.
Have you shut this idea down completely Rob, or are you going to keep pushing?
Hey, John, no I’m not going to shut it down. I’m going to offer a free course and get people in that way. I will also push people gently through a funnel with a lot of other cool free stuff and try again 🙂
Hi Rob,
I got into learning about WordPress from http://www.wp101.com. They way they got me into signing up long ago was:
1. They offered some free videos that I watched for free. Then when I finished watching the videos it showed me what other videos that I would be able to watch if I paid for the membership.
2. Also, at that time they were beginning with their website they offered an incentive for customers to sign up now. I signed up and took advantage of that deal and now grandfathered with their training program. You may or may not want to try that. But just letting you know that it lit a fire on my butt to sign up then because I didn’t want to lose out on that offer.
All I will say is don’t give up on this. I have taken a look and its got some great resources! Personally begrudge paying recurring fees as you never know if you will get the same value in a few months you get at sign-up,
If I get the option of one off fee say $300, or 6 x $55 then lifetime membership I would always go for the 6 payments. If I decide after 2-3 months its not for me I can limit the investment damage, if it turns out to to be worth it and I end up paying a little more……so what!
Great feedback, Niall, thanks. I know recurring fees are a turn off. But I thought, as the video content is 10+ hours, then people could always cancel after a few months so they wouldn’t end up spending much.
The yearly and bi-monthly payments are all options. I’ll keep an open mind about everything.
Hi Rob
Many thanks for sharing this!
IMO people will not like the recurring fee if they do not know what they will get in the next months. Maybe you could mix the model = let people choose to either pay for 1 course (not recurring) or for all and those to come (recurring)
I like the example of WPSessions.com where Brian propose each past sessions (or upcoming live) for a 1-off payment, OR to become a VIP via the membership and get access to all past and future sessions.
see the page
http://wpsessions.com/vip/
and see that on that page:
“Each and every month, WPSessions brings in new WordPress experts to teach or talk about a specific WordPress-related topic.”
= we know what we are paying for for the future
and
“*Billed Annually. Save over $1,150 as a member, compared to purchasing all benefits separately”
= I think it’s the total price for all the sessions if paid separately
And still…. I didn’t sign up, even at launch when there was a more than 50% on the membership (ok, I missed the deadline lol), but I also would have want to be sure all the future sessions would be interesting for me, if not we can easily get the feeling to have “lost money”
I’m not sure if my example can help you.
Furthermore, maybe I missed it, but get testimonials. and after that, offer a “relaunch period” sale with special pricing (induce scarcity with a deadline), and ask everyone to share everywhere (I know offering affiliation can be a nightmare to manage, but maybe it’s worth having a look, or giving other privilege for those sending you someone)
You know the story of the shoemaker’s children… that’s me 😉
Wishing you lot of success with learn.THERob.way
It’s an idea, Patricia, I could offer $17/month or $277 for lifetime membership? It’s another great idea. The problem is using all these great ideas and still keeping the sign ups simple. 🙂
And, yes, temporarily, offer a cut price monthly membership which will be “grandfathered” in.
I don’t have any testimonials but I easily can.
I can offer affiliate links for the site I just haven’t got round to setting it up.
Thank you for your advice, Patricia.
Totally off topic here, but is this the Beautiful theme? Your body copy font looks a bit different from mine, but more importantly, it looks like you’ve made the links a bit bolder! It bugs me on my site that they sorta fade out. Did you customize that?
And thanks for your transparency about your business!
Hi Louise, yes I’ve just changed it to Magazine theme on Genesis. Loving the Roboto font. Nice W’s! They have the links in bold, I didn’t customize that but I customized the color to be the same as my logo. This is done through the style.css of the child theme.
But I love your new look as well!
Hi Rob,
I think you could have offered an early bird special to those that signed up early. Maybe giving the entire membership at a one time fee of let say 39 dollars. But the deal will only last for a few weeks and can be taken down anytime. So sign up now for early bird special while prices are low. Then when the special is complete raise the price to a one time fee of lets say $99 for a year.
I also think you could have built your course on tier levels rather than recurring. Maybe you should have built it similar to WPMU.com with a price for one course at $19 dollars. And if you want full access for a year you pay $99.
I don’t know. I just don’t like the recurring method especially when the content is all but learned and there isn’t anything else to learn from it. I would rather have paid a higher price to get all of the access without recurring fees. But thats me.
I honestly do not think you should give up your membership site. I think all you need to do is reconsider changing directions on changing your membership structure to something I just mentioned.
Anyways I said a mouthful. Just want to wish you luck and I have to say that your online courses are great, especially for an inspiring web designer like myself.
More good ideas here, Virgil. More ideas to offer a more expensive lifetime’s or year’s access. Good idea!
I can offer individual courses for one-off fees. I’ve just got to keep the sales pages simple though. I don’t want to give people loads of options.
No, I won’t give up on it yet! 🙂
thanks for this informative article Rob. I am looking into developing a website selling a niche service and taking a commission on top (abit like how lastminute etc do). Found your article really interesting especially the split testing the email.
I thought your email was abit too long and too much information, I have the attention span of a goldfish and like to see really short and straight to the point stuff, but its probably just me !
Yes, I can see that is probably was too long, Louis. I could have stretched my point out over a few emails rather than putting everything into one.
Hi again Rob. Would you mind if I give you more advice on your copy page?
Here is your copy:
“Do you want to know how I create online businesses that allow me to work when I want, at what I want?”
I think its a bit too long and doesn’t hit a sore spot. Sore spot meaning a problem that your readers have and would want a solution for, etc.
I would put it something like this:
EFFORTLESS ONLINE BUSINESS MASTERY by Rob Cubbon
Hi Im Rob and I’ve made a living online.
Now you too can succeed online with the simple and easy steps that I provide you with in order to start and creating an online business.
What you will learn from my courses:
– How to start a web design business
– How to approach a potential client for your website services
– How to use free online resources to build your brand using SEO, blogging, and social media
– How to use Photoshop to draw out a website design for your clients
– How to configure a theme to fit the clients needs
– and much, much more.
Next part here have testimonials:
Next part here maybe put together a video about what your ideal customer will learn from your courses.
Then Last of all, put a call to action. Since you just started I would try to give something for free that you will give to the first people that sign up within a time frame. After that time, no one will be able to receive this for free. This can be a free book or even a free course, etc. Something that we haven’t learned before that no one is offering.
Lastly, Rob I really love your creating a responsive web design course. However, I think you can gear that towards more towards the Genesis framework marketing. I would never have bought genesis because I’m fearful that I would not know how to configure it.
I would love to learn how you configure other Genesis themes such as the magazine theme that your running. I would also love it if you also include how to integrate it to opt-in forms from Aweber and Mailchimp and have other courses on various plugins that work great with Genesis.
Last but no least Rob, I think you should have a questionnaire form for all your email list people to fill out and ask them what they would love to learn. Ask them details on what they would like to focus on in future courses, etc. That way you would know what kinds of content you can put out for your audience.
Anyways, I think thats all for now and I’ve said a mouthful. Just trying to help you out cause I love your stuff.
Take care,
Virgil
Hello Virgil, “Do you want to know how I create online businesses that allow me to work when I want, at what I want?†Yes, that was too long and it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.
I agree with your bullet points as well. More choice – they were definitely popular as I got more clicks when they were links.
Yes, I need testimonials.
I have a course on Mailchimp and Aweber that I’m going to put up on the membership site. I need to get that done!
I should do another Genesis course using the Dynamik plugin as people have been asking for that.
I’m hesitant to do a questionnaire for the whole of the list – I’ve done it before and it took ages going through the replies and in the end no very clear picture emerged.
Thanks a lot for your feedback as ever!
Hi Rob,
Did you actually spend $600 to construct your membership? Wow…you have put a lot of work, money, and energy. Appreciate all the time you have put into it. I would like to construct a membership just like yours someday. You really inspired me.
By the way, I like the new timely pop-up you put here to ask people’s email address. I’m trying to do the same. Except the plugin I have in mind is paid and you can time it before it appears. I think it’s kind of rude to have a pop-up in your site without them reading your post first. How do you know they want to subscribe without reading your articles first, and so that’s the kind of plugin I want to have in my site.
Also, if you are earning $3000-$4000 a month passive income from Udemy alone, imagine how much you can earn direct from your site. Specially if this is a recurring billing plus a direct access to you. This is an excellent idea!
Anyway, I continue support you 100%. Hope you have a wonderful weekend.
Cheers,
Angela
Hi Angela, yes, I spent that easily on the Sensei plugin, the MemberMouse plugin, Vimeo Pro and outsourcing some of the web dev.
The pop up here is Sumome. Is it annoying you? There are lots of other great plugins that do this very intelligently.
Thank you for your continued support, Angela. I appreciate you.
Hi Rob,
I have zero doubts in you dude. All that you do is top shelf, and this was a hiccup along the way. Truth be told, my first eBook – from some 9 months ago – was an absolute flop. I sold like 4 copies, after buying a domain, and setting up a blog for it. I was frustrated as hell because my mindset wasn’t great at the time but I learned my lesson for my Blogging from Paradise blog, and eBook series.
Actually, I just published eBook number 2 yesterday: How to Build an Online Empire through Blog Commenting.
Thank YOU Rob because you gave me the nudge that I needed to make this happen.
I also used the lessons I learned from my eBook flop, from almost a year ago, and applied to my current eBook..
Sometimes we just fail to get more clear. We learn to trust our intuitive nudges, to go against the grain in some areas and to go with the flow in other areas. It’s a delicate dance of course at times but with honesty, and a willingness to simply ask and listen for feedback, you can learn so quickly from any perceived failure, and benefit from the experience.
Thanks so much for sharing with us Rob.
I’ll tweet this in a bit.
Ryan
Thank you again, Ryan. I think we’ve all had little failures, especially when we started out on something new.
Interesting that your first e-book didn’t go so well but your second did really well and you’ve got another one coming out hot on the heels of the last one. I think it’s great that you are on a roll!
The secret with these things is taking action. If we didn’t do the first thing (badly) we’d never carry on to see the projects that we’re really proud of 🙂
Great post. And great that you’ve shared your insights and findings, but the only way you would have come to this point is by testing new things and seeing what happens.
What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, or so they say!
Absolutely, Phil, we’ll keep going and good things will happen. 🙂
Well, I have it in my budget spreadsheet to join in the second week of October. As I commented in my email, I love the typography in your newest work, like the Ws I just typed.
$17 a month, or $40 a month, for a site that teaches one how to become self-employed strikes me as a good deal. Nothing works like experience. I am at the point in my WordPress and design studies where the guidance of someone experienced may offer that confidence one receives by finishing school or an apprenticeship.
Offering access to technical help when one gets stuck on a job sounds like a gold mine to me. That’s Business-to-Business Consulting. The new WordPress contractor has both money in hand and an urgent need for a bailout.
Thank you, Theron, I’m delighted you’re considering joining us. There are a good selection of WordPress, design, web marketing and other courses there, but, I can’t guarantee future earnings as a result of taking the courses, of course.
I finished your book on running a Web design business, which I liked. Come to think of it, that is the first book I have read in decades, havng switched to reading the Internet when it became available. Now I’m reading your book on becoming an entrepreneur, which is fun and inspiring.
You mention Paul Jarvis in the first book mentioned above. I looked at some of his work and wonder if I really want to spend the time necessary to develop such visual skill. That guy makes beautiful sites. Thinking of the instructors in the Lynda.com courses I took, the visual creatives were consumed by their passion for that work. I think your noodle grows new circuits when you do visual design, and it takes time. I have been back at it, studying colors and layout. I like this study but wonder how I would ever come to conceive sites as great as some of Jarvis’s.
Your second book above is a bit of what I expected, which is a heads-up to really make your work your own. I see you found as I did that letting available work be your life is to lose your natural life, in a sense. I’m only a bit into the book. But already I’m looking at how you decided what to do, and can see there are lots of things I can do to earn money or to have fun.
So I guess I have not decided what sort of Web designer I’ll be. Most importantly, from your lay of the land in both books, I see I don’t really have to choose yet!
Enjoy the Thai food, Rob!
Good round up, Theron, yes, Paul Jarvis is a certain type of designer who really builds excellent sites and he is the go-to guy for top quality blogger sites. But there are so many other things you can specialise in and there’s no need to hurry your decision, as you say.
Hey Rob, this is an intriguing story. I had no idea that things didn’t go well with the launch of the membership site.
One thing I want to ask – are most of your subscribers coming from Udemy? I would think that your subscribers base is a totally different audience.
I’ve never thought about doing a membership site, because it sounds like a lot of work and you would need to put together a team to handle all of that!!
Hang in there Rob. I’m sure the site will be a success after a little tweaking here and there. Cheers!
Hi Ileane. No, most of my subscribers will be from this site having found me organically through Google or through social media. I have been building this list for ages – long before I started on Udemy.
They always bought the Udemy courses in quite considerable numbers so they like the content. They just didn’t like the membership site 🙁
Yes, I will continue tweaking and we’ll see how it goes.
Rob, I find your post quite strange and self-important. You think your membership site launch failed because the logo wasn’t right? Seriously? Did you ask any of your subscribers why they didn’t sign up? Did they even want your course in the first place? What were you offering anyway?
I’ve been reading your blog for 6 months now and I still have no idea what you do. Do you?
I think one of the reasons why it failed was that my audience were unfamiliar with the new site and branding, Jonathan. As you can see I give other reasons in the article. Another reason was that I didn’t ask the audience and I’ve been trying since and this article was part of that. No one until now has expressed a negative reaction to the site when they find out what it’s about (and all the courses do very well on Udemy).
Also, since I’ve written this article I’ve had a decent amount of signups. The membership site has now made nearly $1000 which has justified the expense of creating it at least. And I’m assuming once I launch the free courses and re-launch the paid courses it will do much better.
The site offers a variety of courses on running a web design business, WordPress, web design and online marketing.
I do what interests me, Jonathan, I know that means the site is hard to pigeon-hole and I’ve probably missed out on Google traffic for not being the “web design guy” but I don’t want to pin myself down to anyone thing and get bored. 🙂
I find it perfectly straightforward what Rob does, and am perplexed why someone should fail to see the point of his article about his launch.
Rob has written three books about working for oneself as a graphic and Web designer, and on becoming an entrepreneur. He launched a membership site teaching the pertinent skills. Launching the site involved the same skills he teaches. Why would he not then write about how his effort went?
I’ve read all three of Rob Cubbon’s books and taken his video courses. Rob’s material is invaluable because he’s become successful in the industries he writes about, and he makes himself and his experience accessible to those of us who are considering those industries. That is a bit like walking into a local shop where I might like to work, and finding an industry veteran who cares to pass along his learning.
Rob also taught me how to use the browser developer tools, how to approach editing my CSS, and how Web designers and developers generally go about their projects. I was already learning that from written tutorials, but seeing it is much better. Thanks to video, Rob’s courses are indeed like walking into a shop and having the lead operator show me the ropes. I use Linux so I don’t have Photoshop right now, but I would otherwise love to take the one course at his site I did not, on Photoshop techniques.
One important lesson I am grateful for is to be certain I am not tricked into working for free, and not to start work on promises instead of cash deposits. Another thing I Rob has shown us by example, which I see in many others who are meeting or doing business with the public, is to have constructive, creative thoughts in your head.
Anyone can run around being competitive with those around him. How many can create something from nothing? Of the latter group, I would say all such people know, in one way or another, that they can create, invent and grow. And they influence others by proving it is so, which is what Rob, the people he talks to in his videos, and other successful professionals are doing.
Hi Rob, I want to thank you for sharing this. I really appreciate these stories as it helps us learn from the experience of others and that is gold. Many people write about how they succeeded but rarely about how they failed. I hope you keep on with this project and perhaps update us of its progress on a future post.
Hello Henry, I’m delighted you found this useful. I will be sure to update about the membership site. I’m learning stuff all the time.
Rob, What a moment!!
I just asked about the same question from you in your post (https://robcubbon.com/make-money-month-udemy-skillfeed/) and I accidentally saw this article link in the footer “Recent Articles” widget when I was about to leave 🙂
Thanks so much for writing your practical experience. Definitely a worth giving post.
– Zeeshan
Ah, I see you have found your answer, cool!
Glad you stuck around to read more, Zeeshan. 🙂
Now, I finished reading your article. For the point # 1 (Recurrent vs One-time). Personally, It is one of my plan to do not ask for a monthly billing, why? Because, I don’t like that myself paying again & again as compare to pay one time. So definitely, this is a user experience.
Also, I got courage to jump into video courses & selling by watching a series from David (http://www.therisetothetop.com/). I’m not sure if you know about him but this was my start point to get ideas and clear lots of my questions and fears. And, regarding asking the audience, price pitching and other related topics, he shares his experience too. If that’s something helpful to you, then nice otherwise I was just sharing a source I used to learn things.
Now, you are in my list as well for recommendation because you are helping others with practical experience 🙂
Cheers,
– Zeeshan
Yes, monthly billing is a harder sell than a one-off payment, for sure. Yes, I’ve been learning quite a lot from David Siteman Garland as I have followed his three video series (which he in turn learned from Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula).
We’ll get there in the end!
Thanks, Zeeshan, Rob.
Thank you for sharing this experience. I am doing well on Udemy and am in the process of evaluating the path of starting a membership site vs. signing up with one of the online course hosting sites where you do all the marketing yourself but keep a much larger share of the revenue (also directed to your own domain name and with you owning the email addresses). I’ll remain on Udemy for their marketing programs, but want to also generate my own traffic for my own sites and list.
It seemed like it should be so much more attractive to people to get a membership program than just a collection of courses they could buy. With the former, they get progressively moved through a cohesive program that doesn’t expect them to already know what they need. With the latter, they have to first know the topic well enough to know which courses to even take, and what order to take them in. And in the former case they also invest less upfront, perhaps even having a free trial period at first. In the latter case, they have to drop hundreds of dollars all at once.
There are so many other things I thought would be more attractive about a membership community, not the least of which being the community of other learners and time based activities that could be planned within the community. That is so much beyond a self-paced “learn on your own” course.
But now reading your post and the comments is really giving me pause. I did a small survey with my list (small because my list is so small) and it was split between those interested in a series of webinars, online courses, and membership site 40-20-40, so that also led me toward membership site. But only a dozen people responded to the survey, so that’s not much to go on. Processing… processing…
Hello Indigo, my own chastening experience is that you should never, never offer a monthly membership fee straight off the bat.
Yes, I get all you’re saying but it seems people are so wary of committing to monthly payments on a site they have no connection with. People are more comfortable paying money on well-known, trusted brands and if they are going to do a recurring payment the trust has to be much, much greater. That’s why they are much, much more likely to pay a one-off fee on sites like yours and mine.
At least that’s what I’ve experienced in this last week where I’ve earned the same amount of money in a few days with a one-off lifetime access than I did in the previous 8 months offering a (much lower) monthly payment.
You can still offer the students the structured, drip-feed learning with a one-off payment.
Yes, I think that feedback is possibly too small to be limited.
Creating your own membership site is 10x harder than selling on Udemy so you will have the time to interact with your audience more to find out what is the best way forward. Best of luck!
Thanks so much for your feedback! I’m still processing all the options, but you’ve provided me with a clarity I was struggling to achieve.
Hi Rob,
Your membership site has been a great success in my view because of everything I have learned from it! Keep trying things out, testing and learning. You are setting a great example for us all, and in the meantime you have helped me tremendously.
Cheers,
Mary
I’m glad you’re getting a lot out of the membership site, Mary. It’s improved since I wrote this article and I’m actually changing the plugin this weekend to hopefully improve it even further! Thank you for your kind words.