I just finished a 3-day launch of my new course at https://1001TrueFans.com . I had over 150 people unsubscribe from my various lists these past couple of days because I sent them an email about the course. So I figured, I would share how I felt about that on today's show, in case you're also going through something similar, and I hope that it helps you realize that you are way more valuable to your true fans, and that we should obsessively focus on those who stay, than those who leave. Listen t...
Oct 05, 2019•14 min
Question: I would like to start monetizing my podcast by creating a membership club for new episodes. Do I put all the available episodes in the club and make them pay to listen, or leave a certain amount as free to continue attracting new customers. My Answer: I don't think you should put every single episode behind a paywall and make it all premium-only. You've got to have free episodes there, because that's what allows you to attract new listeners, and turn them into podcast subscribers, and ...
Aug 26, 2019•23 min
What if you weren't married to any specific platform to build your audience? What if your product was platform-agnostic? Or platform independent? As it should be, right? You don't create a course only for your Facebook followers. You want your entire audience on ALL platforms to buy your course, right? So if your goal is to get more leads, there are WAYYY better options for generating leads, at least when you're first getting started, than simply starting a new YouTube channel, or a new Podcast,...
Jul 30, 2019•21 min
Podcast Monetization, Direction, Strategy. Today's episode is the first of an AMA series I'm doing - AMA stands for Ask Me Anything. So a little while ago, on my birthday, I was feeling extremely grateful and thankful to my customers, my audience, my followers, my friends and my family. So I asked my audience, via email, via Facebook, via Instagram and even via Twitter, to submit their questions to me, and I said I would answer them on my podcast. So here goes the first question, which is about ...
Jul 12, 2019•25 min
So what does it really mean to stream audio or video? Is downloading a file the same as streaming? Does every video you watch online a streaming video? The 3 types of "streaming" - Progressive Downloads, Adaptive & True Streaming, why one of them is not even actual streaming, what you should know about, why you should care, and the way it impacts how you deliver content to your audience. I'm not going to go too deep into this, because you and I, we don't need to exactly become audio or video...
Jun 15, 2019•25 min
Go Deep, Then Wide: One day I woke up and figured out, that I have to do what my late father R.N. Jayagopal DID, not what he SAID. But in my father's case, he obviously wasn't trying to mess with me or trying to mislead me. It's just that he himself didn't fully quite understand his own mega-success in life. And it is really an immutable law to learning from successful people, is to do as they do, not as they say. But in my father's case, he obviously wasn't trying to mess with me or trying to m...
May 23, 2019•26 min
A Programmer and a Marketer Walk into a Bar is actually a true story. Easily one of THE most fascinating stories of my life. And this is also the story behind one of the biggest lessons I learned as an Entrepreneur. So enjoy the story, with the audio taken straight from my live video. If you are an Entrepreneur, then one of the most challenging things today, is building an audience. So where do you go to find your audience? Facebook? Instagram? Podcasts? YouTube? Amazon? Check out my online cour...
Apr 18, 2019•15 min
I recently created a video where I talked about why YouTube may no longer be a good idea for storing yours sales videos and promotional videos. I created that video purposefully, planning ahead, knowing that I'll be able to use the content for this podcast as well. I call it "Purposeful Repurposing". And I've actually created a full online course about it, titled DOPE - D O P E - Do Once, Publish Everywhere: How to Build Trust, Respect & Influence and Reach New Audiences Using Live Streaming...
Apr 09, 2019•10 min
DOPE stands for Do Once, Publish Everywhere. I recently launched a new online course, and I wanted to share with you some of the lessons learned, as well as thoughts and comments from my launch. I talk about 3 things: 1) Perceived Value 2) Turning 1 media format into 3 3) Urgency, Scarcity and Exclusivity - or USE, as I like to call it Listen to the rest of the show on your favorite podcast app or at https://SubscribeMe.fm
Feb 24, 2019•20 min
I wanted to share these 19 thoughts with you, about doing business online, and I hope they help you focus, or re-focus, in 2019 and beyond. I talk about everything from focusing on Making Offers (MOMMY, my new acronym), to creating an Epic Lead Magnet, to increasing its perceived value, why you should stop creating and start promoting, and my "Kindle-book-for-Review" strategy to quickly build a list of prospects, and more. Listen to the episode online at https://SubscribeMe.fm Or search for "sub...
Jan 09, 2019•20 min
And if you get to the root cause of the fear of making offers, that in turn comes from the fear of people unsubscribing. A lot of us are scared to sell stuff, make offers, because we think if we sell stuff, people will unsubscribe, they will mark our emails as spam, they will hate us, they will trash us on social media. In short, a lot of marketers fear the sky will fall on their heads if they make offers to their list. And they are so terrified of people unsubscribing. Trust me, that included m...
Dec 13, 2018•20 min
Since Episode #69, I've continued to wind-down my Facebook group. I still post there occasionally, but everyone in my group knows that I've moved the community to my own website and most have them followed me to my new forum. You can check out my new community by going to Forum.SubscribeMe.fm . And on this episode, I also talk about how I use Slack, how I use my Online Forum, When to use which tool, and How I'm using Scarcity, Exclusivity and Urgency to Build My Online Community Listen to the re...
Nov 28, 2018•20 min
One of the common myths that a lot of content creators have, in this day and age of crowdfunding, is that if you have a large enough audience, then you can earn a decent income using donations from your listeners. 90% of creators, will not be able to make even a few hundred dollars a month from their show, and I'm going to show you why. First, I'm going to play you a clip from a podcast called RadioLab, a super-popular radio show and podcast with millions of listeners, where you will hear a real...
Nov 06, 2018•20 min
It doesn't matter if the ad is like a pre-recorded ad from a third-party, or a show-halting, host-read ad. Yes, I agree that those ads are not the same, and people are generally more receptive to host-read ads, where the host of the podcast, or the YouTube video, or the author of the blog post, are themselves reading out the ads. And it gets more interesting when you throw in affiliate products. And the creative and organic host-read ads. If you know someone who tells you that they love ads, or ...
Oct 23, 2018•24 min
My AdSense earnings would fluctuate between $500 to $1500, most of the time averaging about $1000. But I never averaged more than that through AdSense ads. This, despite being #1 on Google, getting tons of traffic, targeted audience, despite buying every course on AdSense and SEO and list-building and optimizing every darn part of my website, constantly creating traffic and on and on and on. The work to stay at the top of Google as relentless, but all of that work didn't payoff as much as it sho...
Oct 08, 2018•18 min
3 bold predictions for the next 5 years: Subscription Overload, Loss Leader Overload and Lifestyle Aggregators. I predict that by the year 2023, everything we use today in day-to-day life, will become subscription based. And because there's going to be an explosion of subscription-based services, there will be what I'm calling Subscription Aggregators. or Sags. And one step up from Sags, will be what I call Lifestyle Aggregators, or Lags. Finally, there's going to be an explosion in Loss Leaders...
Sep 11, 2018•25 min
After I got back from speaking at Podcast Movement 2018, I was thinking about all of the positive things that have happened for me in the last 2 or so years. I've been getting a lot of traction with my efforts in the podcasting space. Which is why I'm going All-in on Audio. I have 3 podcasts now - one of which you're listening to right now - https://SubscribeMe.fm . And then there's my 2nd podcast called "Cut To The Chase", which I had put on the back-burner for a while, but I'm moving it to the...
Aug 27, 2018•21 min
"To Have Great Power, You Need to Take On Great Responsibility". That's my new "Reverse Spider-man" quote, a cool twist on the original Spider-man quote. I actually came up with the idea for this as I was preparing for a presentation that I'm giving next week, at Podcast Movement 2018, in Philadelphia. But as I was creating the slides for my presentation, I have a section in there, where I talk about building your own platform, owning your platform, owning your domain, building everything on you...
Aug 02, 2018•22 min
Part 2: Product First? Or Audience First? I talk about Strategy #2: Building an Audience First and THEN creating a product (ideally, productS) for that audience. Which is WAY easier said than done. And I'm also going to let you in on a little secret... that Strategy #1, which is Product First, Audience Next, and Strategy #2, which is Audience First, Product Next, are actually not mutually exclusive at all. You DON'T HAVE to choose just one or the other. You can actually do both. In fact, you MUS...
Jun 05, 2018•36 min
Product First or Audience First? A burning question for anyone starting an online business. And as much it might seem similar to the complicated "Which came first, the Chicken or the Egg" discussion, it's actually not all that complicated when it comes down to the core nature of these two strategies. There is no simple one-size-fits-all answer here, so I'll try to break it down as best as I can, given my own experience selling a number of products online since 1998, and then add to that my exper...
May 06, 2018•27 min
Should you create a Facebook Group? Or an Online Forum on your own site, your own domain, on your own hosting account? This episode is for you if you have a Facebook group that doesn't have too many members, or has many members, but not enough engagement, or maybe you're planning to start a community, but you're torn between a Facebook group and creating your own Forum. And even if you have a successful Facebook group right now, and have absolutely no plans of starting your own forum, I would st...
Mar 15, 2018•35 min
What Shark Tank has taught us about getting some skin in the game, why you must pay to play in order to get the best, and fastest results, and how you can come up with the money to pay for promoting just about anything! You've probably heard the saying "Put your money where your mouth is". Which basically means: Stop TALKING about things, and start putting in some money into whatever you're trying to accomplish. If you just TALK about how passionate you are about something, and TALK some more ab...
Feb 10, 2018•29 min
Do you want to take your online business to the next level in 2018? Here are 13 things that will help you reset, refocus and reprioritize by revisiting everything - starting with your goals, your priorities, your web site, sales offer, content marketing, lead magnet, website performance and more. Likes and Comments won't pay the bills. You have to build a business, you have to market and monetize your content, create offers, make sales, and work on attracting your 1000 true fans. (listen to the ...
Jan 07, 2018•27 min
Do you remember the last time you signed up for a webinar, showed up at the pre-scheduled time, then watched it start to finish? If you have, then congratulations - you're among the minority of folks theses days. And that's because most people are getting jaded by so-called "webinars", which are nothing but a pre-recorded video, with a long, drawn-out intro, where the presenter usually starts off really slow, welcomes users as if there are real users listening live, and sometimes it may actually...
Dec 13, 2017•26 min
Is there a "Discoverability Problem" in Podcasting? Yes, absolutely! Unless you're Tom Hanks' character in the movie Castaway, and your show is titled "PodCast Away" :-), and you're the only podcaster on the island and you have a completely attentive audience with no other options for entertainment, like you know, Wilson, the volleyball, then there is going to be a discoverability issue. And this discoverability issue doesn't affect just podcasting, but it applies to pretty much everything else ...
Nov 29, 2017•24 min
My "Brilliant-5, Blah-95" Rule For Making or Marketing Anything, Hobbyist vs Entrepreneur, Death (of your business) by a 1000 cuts, my Guinness World Record, the Worst Title Ever for a free report or Facebook post or just about any type of list post, and finding out: Are you a Performer, or a Pretender? When I published my first, real, paperback book back in 2007, called " No Business Like E-Business ", I wanted to quickly figure out how to promote my book. So back then, if I wanted to learn som...
Nov 09, 2017•20 min
I'm currently working on "SubscribeMe Academy" - my Online Hub of Courses, Coaching & Community - that I'll be launching shortly. I have so far completed just over 160 hours of work on it so far - mostly with the video creation for my first major course, called Premium Podcasting. On this episode, I'm going to take you behind the scenes of this new membership web site that I'm creating, as much as I can do on a podcast, of course, and talk about the tools and strategies I've been using, so t...
Oct 10, 2017•23 min
Start with the last thing first. You may have have heard of variations of that. Like start with the end in mind. So when I say start with the last thing first, I'm talking about starting with the pricing table, which is the LAST thing most people would think about when it comes to creating their membership site. People worry about themes, and plugins, the design of the web site, what colors to use, what logo to use, creating all social media properties for their membership site - like creating a...
Sep 16, 2017•21 min
I'm going to share a very stark and dark truth: That when you're first getting started, selling a one-time product for 99 dollars is Better Than selling a Recurring Subscription for 9 dollars a month. You're probably like "Wait... whaaaat? But Ravi... You're the guy who has a podcast about membership sites and recurring subscriptions, who talks about DOGPOO vs DOSAA" (which stands for Do Once, get Paid Only Once, which is DOGPOO, and stinks.. versus DOSAA - Do Once, Sell Again and Again - so DOG...
Sep 02, 2017•36 min
Welcome to Episode #60 of the SubscribeMe show from SubscribeMe.fm , where I talk about creating membership sites & online courses, how to make, market and monetize digital content, the world of WordPress, and tools, techniques and tips that you can use to create a long term, profitable online business. I'm Ravi Jayagopal. I'm the creator of CoolCastPlayer.com , a pretty yet powerful audio player and podcast player plugin for your WordPress site. In today's episode, I'm going to give you a f...
Aug 09, 2017•41 min
