Membership Model #6: Coaching Portal: In this model, you sell coaching and consulting: When it comes to a membership plugin like DAP, even a service is basically created as a “Product”. So just like you would sell a digital report, or a software program, a service is sold the same way: Create a Product, give it a price, and use the membership plugin to configure what content they get if they buy your “Service”, and that’s it. Now, with a service, you don’t always HAVE to provide an online member...
May 02, 2016•15 min
In the last 2 episodes, I talked about Membership models 1 through 4. So if you didn't hear part 1 or part 2, I recommend that you start with those first. You can go to subscribeme.fm/26/ the number 26, and subscribeme.fm/27/ to hear Part 1 & 2. In fact, just go to the main site - subscribeme.fm and you'll see a big beautiful podcast player with the full playlist of all past episodes. And this beautiful podcast player is powered by CoolCastPlayer.com, officially the prettiest podcast player ...
Apr 25, 2016•14 min
Membership Model #4. Recurring Subscriptions with Lifetime Recurring. Basically, they pay until they cancel. It's obviously easy to do this if it's a SaaS product - SaaS is the acronym SAAS - which stands for Software As A Service. Like Leadpages, or Dropbox. Even at DigitalAccessPass.com, we offer a pseudo-SAAS model. DAP is basically a WordPress plugin that you install on your own site, but we packaged a lot of things into a saas like offering, where you get DAP, you get set up help, ongoing m...
Apr 18, 2016•15 min
Welcome to episode #25 of the SubscribeMe show from SubscribeMe.fm. I'm your host Ravi Jayagopal. This is THE podcast to listen to, if you want to learn about creating digital content, marketing it, selling it, and then delivering it. I am the co-founder & co-developer of DigitalAccessPass.com, easily the best membership plugin in the industry, fondly known as DAP. Membership sites aren't just for subscriptions that charge you month after month for life, until you cancel. That's just ONE way...
Apr 04, 2016•16 min
In today's episode, I give you a detailed example of how I have used my TOC Technique myself to create a book, a podcast, and how you too can churn out blog posts and social posts at will and enter any group or community and add value right away, without being spammy. So in the last episode, I introduced you to my "TOC Technique", where TOC stands for TOC, as in, Table of Contents. If you haven't listened to that one, then you should listen to episode #24 first, if not, this episode may not make...
Mar 25, 2016•20 min
The "TOC Technique" will help you become a master at creating content for your membership site, for your online course, youtube marketing videos, writing sales copy, writing books, creating a product, writing Facebook posts and Tweets. And when I say "TOC", I mean T.O.C, as in Table of Contents. The show notes for this episode is available at http://subscribeme.fm/24/ . And that's where, you will be able to play the episode directly from the web site, thanks to my podcast player plugin, called C...
Mar 18, 2016•20 min
Let's talk about the types of videos there are: #1: Sales page videos #2: Content Marketing videos #3: Native videos on Facebook & Twitter #4: Documentation and Tutorial videos #5: Members-only, private videos that are reserved just for members who have registered for free, or have paid for your online course For Sales page videos, content-marketing videos & tutorial videos that you post on your own blog, or for posting on online forums, and any public-facing videos that you are ok with ...
Mar 11, 2016•17 min
Most membership sites, will have a need to protect the following types of media: Video, Audio, PDF, Zip, Word Docs - well, don't use word unless you have to, because not everyone would have word installed, but you get the idea. Different types of files need to be protected. But for the most part, we're talking about video, audio and PDF reports. If these files are stored right on your web site, AND if you have a bunch of these files that are also big in size - like over 10 MB, for eg., then a lo...
Mar 04, 2016•14 min
I am so pumped up today, because I just soft-launched my new plugin. It is the prettiest podcast player on the planet, and along with celebrating its beta launch, I'm going to tell you about the biggest lessons I have learned from publishing 21 episodes of this podcast. Let me tell you about my new podcast player plugin, and why it's different from anything else you've ever seen before. It's called CoolCastPlayer, and you can see it in action at CoolCastPlayer.com When I first launched my podcas...
Feb 26, 2016•29 min
This episode is going to focus on how you you should focus on finding the D-list Super stars in your niche. These are the people who will have the inclination to help you. They too have something to prove, they're equally hungry and excited to work with other d-listers, they'll be more open to doing a mutually beneficial joint venture with you. They will be more willing to promote your product as an affiliate, write an article recommending you, interview you on their podcast. So many ways in whi...
Feb 19, 2016•19 min
My wife Veena and I spent the last 3 days at one of the biggest internet marketing conferences in North America, called Traffic & Conversion, put on by Ryan Deiss and Perry Belcher and the awesome team at Digital Marketer. It was really good. 3 days of non-stop sessions and talks. Of course, Veena and I, because we live in San Diego, just had to drive like 1/2 hour to get to the hotel where the seminar was being held. And on the 2nd day, we even took off early, came back home, watched most o...
Feb 12, 2016•24 min
In this episode, I'm going to talk about why, when it comes to finding a joint venture partner or an influencer or an affiliate to help you promote your product, you would be making a big mistake if all you did was try to go after just the biggest names in your market. And I'm calling this the "Don't go for the blonde" technique. Now, I mean no disrespect to brunettes, or blondes, or whatever color your hair may be. This is an equal-hair-color opportunity show. But what I'm referring to here, is...
Feb 05, 2016•15 min
In the last episode, towards the end, I was talking about the reasons why you should NOT make a 3rd party platform like Udemy your main course delivery platform. I talked about the first 3 reasons. Now here's reason #4 why you should NOT make a 3rd party marketplace your main course delivery platform. They have restrictions on what kind of emails you can send to your buyers. From what I've read, most of these marketplace platforms will not allow you to send your buyers links via email that lead ...
Jan 29, 2016•22 min
Hosting your membership site on a third-party marketplace - like Udemy.com and SkillShare.com On Udemy, it is free to create a course. And whatever price you end up charging for it, if you do the marketing and send buyers to your own course page on Udemy.com, and the visitor buys your course using a coupon that YOU have provided them with, then you keep 100% of the revenue from the sales. Of course, they deduct about 3% for processing fees, but still, that's 100% of the actual revenue. If Udemy ...
Jan 20, 2016•17 min
At DigitalAccessPass.com, we recently got an email from a prospective customer, who said this, in part (paraphrasing): Finally, I have built a course that I will use for content, should I host it on my site, or put it on Udemy and then give free coupons to my members to take it on udemy? And I'm going to break up my answer into multiple episodes. So in today's part 1, before I can answer that question about Udemy, we first need to talk about the 3 options you have for running a membership site. ...
Jan 08, 2016•18 min
Which One Should You launch First: A One-Time Product or A Recurring Subscription? If you have never launched a web site before or sold anything online, especially digital products, then I would NOT recommend starting with a subscription-based product right out of the gate. And on top of that, you should DEFINITELY not start with a high-ticket 1,000 dollar product. In the beginning, you will not have the copywriting skills, the marketing skills, the positioning skills, or the product development...
Dec 30, 2015•18 min
When should you NOT drip content? Are there situations when content dripping is not right for your members? What do you do in that case? Do you simply allow access to everything from day 1 and risk getting ripped off? Or is there an alternative to content dripping? #1: If you want your members to feel that you are continuously creating NEW content, fresh off-the-press, fresh-from-the oven type of freshness, then you should NOT use Content Dripping to make it look like it's new or just created. T...
Dec 25, 2015•17 min
To drip or not to drip. That is the question. In this episode, I discuss 5 reasons why you may want to drip content in your membership site. 1) If you have a lot of content to deliver in your online course. 2) If you have a structured online course, where things have to be delivered in a certain sequence. 3) If you want to put in most of the work up front and set up the content to drip slowly over time. 4) The Halloween-Candy analogy: . You give it to them little by little. To extend the value o...
Dec 20, 2015•20 min
So, why did they even bother creating a type of content called a Post? Isn't everything just a Page? Why did posts even come into existence in the first place? To answer that, we need to do a quick 1-minute flashback to the time, when the word "blog" came into being. Did you know that the word "blog" is actually a short form for "Web Log" as in, a online log of events. Like a personal diary. On one of my web sites early in 2000 - a lot of web site owners did this - used to have a link in their m...
Dec 12, 2015•17 min
In today's episode, I give you all of my deepest, darkest secrets... about Fiverr.com - including the most awesome Fiverr freelancers that I've had a tremendous experience working with! In the last episode, I mentioned 3 of my favorite outsourcing web sites. Check out Episode #9 for that. In today's episode, I go deep into one of them, which is Fiverr. I've found some really cool uses for Fiverr, no matter what others tell you about fraud and low quality of work on Fiver. I've had nothing but gr...
Dec 04, 2015•16 min
In today's Part 2 of my "Top 20 Favorite Tools" series, I get into more detail about outsourcing services and a couple of really neat tricks to get the biggest bang for your buck. In the last episode, I talked about tools that I use for communication, a 3-pronged data back up strategy, video creation, and finally Graphics and Image creation. So make sure you listen to that one first. Category #5. Outsourcing: There are 3 major sites we use for outsourcing work in our business. 1) Upwork 2) 99Des...
Nov 20, 2015•14 min
In today's show, I'm going to list my top 20 tools, that I simply couldn't live without. And won't live without. Show-notes and links to everything mentioned on the show, are available at http://SubscribeMe.fm/8/ #1. Communication: Skype And for business communication, I use Gotomeeting. #2. Data backup: When it comes to keeping our business data safe and backed up, I use a 3-pronged approach. I use Carbonite, Google Drive and a local hard-drive. #3. Video creation: Camtasia Studio, Jing, Powtoo...
Nov 13, 2015•17 min
Why not simply use email to deliver content? Why bother with a membership site, membership software and all the setup & maintenance headaches? Let me first show you how to create the world's quickest membership site - in just 4 hours. Step 1: Signup for an account with Mailchimp. They allow you to have up to 2,000 subscribers on your list, and send out 12,000 emails per month. So that's about 6 emails per month. Go to subscribeme.fm/mailchimp, and get $30 in free credit to use when you excee...
Nov 04, 2015•19 min
In this 6th episode of Subscribe Me, I have a special interview. No, it's not me interviewing someone else. Instead, it's ME being interviewed on somebody else's show. I was a guest on the Thriving Entrepreneur Radio Show hosted by Steve Kidd. Steve has an amazingly gentle way of asking great questions, while offering his own perspective along the way. And Steve has a program called "Write Your Best Seller" where he helps you become known as an authority, get on TV, become an amazon best seller ...
Oct 28, 2015•47 min
In this 5th episode of SubscribeMe, I pick the brains of Ryan Lee, a veteran online marketer from Connecticut, Host of the Freedym show at Freedym.com - and one of the earliest people to start a membership site online. Ryan started his first membership site in 2001. The previous year, in 2000, I had just moved to New York (from India) with my wife and daughter (my son was born in the US several years later). Ryan has seen the evolution of the Internet Marketing industry, and has launched many su...
Oct 23, 2015•39 min
In today's show, we have a question from Michael Britt, a Psychology professor who has been super-successful at creating lots of content, has millions of downloads of his podcast and his youtube videos, but has not had much success at monetizing 9 years of hard work. A weak call to action, content all over the place, not focusing on one sub-niche at a time, trying to be everything to everybody, spreading yourself too thin. The problem might be that you've just kept creating content for years, wi...
Oct 17, 2015•26 min
Dream Team of 5 Tools You Need To Create A Membership Site. Let's do a quick flashback. Back in April 2015, LinkedIn purchased online learning website Lynda.com for a cool $1.5 billion. Lynda.com, at its very core, is nothing but a membership site offering online courses with videos and checklists and PDF document downloads. So when you have a membership site that earns recurring revenue, you increase the value of your business as a whole, and that makes it easier to sell your site to a prospect...
Oct 10, 2015•24 min
So just how important are memberships and subscriptions? I read this article from marketwatch.com, which is a web site published by Dow Jones, and tracks the financial markets and apparently has more than 16 million visitors per month. And I'll link to this article in the show notes - http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apples-iphone-payment-plan-could-upgrade-the-stock-2015-09-16 So here's what it says - and I'm quoting verbatim here... The headline: Apple’s iPhone payment program could upgrade th...
Oct 03, 2015•25 min
SubscribeMe.fm is THE podcast that teaches you all about about creating a highly profitable, long-term business with online courses & membership sites, using recurring subscriptions. In this podcast, and I don't mean just this episode, but the entire series, I'm going to be talking about how you can build a successful business by creating subscription-based products and services that bring in recurring income month after month... where you don't have to go hunting for new customers all the t...
Sep 26, 2015•33 min
