#196: The Truth About Courses Vs. Memberships

In this episode, with my friend and marketing expert, Alisa Meredith, we’re talking the truth about courses vs. memberships. If you’ve thought of creating one or both, you don’t want to miss the episode.

I think you’ll be surprised by some of our conclusions.

Topics we discuss in this episode:

• Yes, there is a group of people willing to pay your for your expertise, call these your raving fans
• Setting up a membership or workshop is easier than you think
• Course are tricky and get outdated
• People join memberships for the content, but stay for the community
• People are more forgiving if you show up live
• We all want connection!
• Less is more!

Please join the workshop ($10) on Nov. 17th Alisa and I are hosting, showing you how to set up a paid membership in under two hours. It’s going to be fun!

If you’re looking for new ways to monetize your blog and online business, I think you’ll find this episode very interesting!

Show Notes:

• MiloTree
• MiloTree Easy Payments
• Alisa Meredith
• MiloTree Easy Payments Workshop
• Catch My Party
• Become a Blogger Genius Facebook Group
• Free MiloTree Blog Post Checklist
• 5 Secrets Successful Bloggers Already Know Cheat Sheet
• All Blogger Genius Podcast Episodes

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Intro 0:04
Welcome to the Blogger Genius Podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here’s your host, Jillian Leslie.

Jillian Leslie 0:11
Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the show. I’m your host, Jillian Leslie. And as I’ve been sharing, David and I behind the scenes have been building out our new product called MiloTree Easy Payments.

And it is the easiest way to host and get paid for a one off workshop or a membership. So, before I start this episode, where I’m talking to my good friend, Alisa Meredith, formerly of Tailwind, she’s a marketing guru.

Learn How to Set Up a Paid Workshop in Under Two Hours

And she’s actually working with me to launch MiloTree Easy Payments. But before we dig into that, I wanted to announce that ready for it, Alisa and I are hosting a paid workshop on how you can set up a paid workshop.

Now that is very meta, but we want to prove our point. So, it’s going to cost $10. It’s going to be an hour long session on Zoom on November 17 at 5:00pm CT. There’ll be a recording, you’ll get a PDF with a checklist on how you can set up your own paid workshop.

And what’s great about a paid workshop is you get to show up with your audience, you get to make money, you get to teach them something small, help them achieve a small win.

And then use all of the information, knowledge and feedback you get from this to either create another workshop or build out a membership. This is invaluable and it is so easy to set up. And we are going to be there teaching you just how to do it.

So, if you want to join us, please do. It’s only $10 it’s on November 17. We still haven’t picked a time yet. But please head to milotree.com/paidworkshop because remember, it’s a paid workshop to teach you how to set up a paid workshop.

Again, milotree.com/paidworkshop. You do not want to miss this. I think this could really help you open up new ways to monetize your audience.

So, now to introduce my conversation with Alisa for today’s episode, we are talking all about creating memberships, creating courses, what the differences are, what our experiences have been. My friends, we are sharing the good, the bad, and the ugly.

So, without further delay, here is my conversation with my friend, my co-host my marketing guru, Alisa Meredith. Alisa, welcome back to the show.

Alisa Meredith 3:04
Jillian, it’s great to see you again.

Jillian Leslie 3:06
I love seeing you. We’ve already discussed hair. Because you got a really nice haircut. And so, I feel like now we can start recording.

Alisa Meredith 3:15
You mean people don’t want to hear about hair?

Jillian Leslie 3:18
About curly hair. Alright, so we’re here today because just as a little background, David and I are busy building something called MiloTree Easy Payments. And it is all about helping creators start memberships easily.

Helping Creators Monetize Their Communities with MiloTree Easy Payments

We have a membership ourselves. And really, this came out of a need that we saw some of the people that are in our membership, who are bloggers and content creators, have communities, they’ve got audiences.

And they wanted to figure out how to set up an easy membership. And what they realized was hacking together all the pieces was kind of complicated. So, we’re putting together an easy, super easy solution. And we’ll talk about that in a little bit.

But I wanted to get your take Alisa, on how you see people who are content creators who have audiences who are looking for new ways to monetize those audiences, and what your thoughts are about memberships and other possible solutions.

Alisa Meredith 4:28
So, creators to me, they put their heart, their soul, their many years of knowledge into their content. And it goes out on their blog, and it goes out on their email, it goes out on social and who’s benefiting from it. It’s the social platforms, right?

They’re running ads, because they have all this other great content on there. So, the only ones who aren’t really benefiting in a lot of cases are the content creators, especially if they don’t have another way to monetize.

So to me, this is just kind of a course correction. Pay for creators to figure out how to monetize this thing they’re already doing, how to take advantage in a nice way of the trust that they have built with their communities.

I don’t think people mind paying for good information, good useful information.

Jillian Leslie 5:15
I do. I think that we are switching to a model where we pay for subscriptions. And I think, too, that people do want to pay in order to gain more access to you as a creator. People who have audiences have raving fans.

Not all of their audience, but they probably have those people that are their evangelists. They’re the people who really rally, who comment all the time on their posts, those kinds of feel this connection.

How Best to Serve Your Raving Fans and Monetize at the Same Time

And I think that thinking about your audiences like, rather than this kind of big, anonymous group of people to really think about serving those raving fans.

Alisa Meredith 6:05
Absolutely. This weekend, I took a painting class was taught by somebody, and I believe she is in Australia. And I just followed her on Instagram, because she did beautiful work, and I enjoyed seeing it.

So, when her course came out, it was not even a question as to whether I was going to spend $250.

Jillian Leslie 6:27
Wow.

Alisa Meredith 6:28
For the class, that’s a lot of money for like a six-hour course. But if she did a membership, I’d be there, because she does amazing work. She also has a really great presence, and a philosophy about art that I really appreciate.

And it’s not for everybody. But I would pay for it. I know lots of other people would do.

Jillian Leslie 6:51
Well, that’s the thing you’ve connected to her. After the art class what are your feelings about her?

Alisa Meredith 7:04
Oh, I think she’s amazing. She is also going to add another class because I had such a mental block in the class. It’s very abstract. And what we were talking about before, it’s not about the product, it’s about the process. I have a hard time with that in my brain.

So, I really struggled with it. And I said, what I really need in order to get this concept is a step-by-step. I need you to tell me take this thing, make this consistency, and do it like this. And yeah, that wouldn’t be my art. But at least I’m getting the feel for it.

And I’m understanding what the options are. And then I can make it my own later. But this one time, I just need you to walk me through it. So, she’s making another course base on that.

Jillian Leslie 7:51
Because you said this.

Alisa Meredith 7:53
Yes.

Jillian Leslie 7:54
But that’s the beauty though, of getting up close and personal.

Alisa Meredith 7:59
Right. It’s great for me, but it’s also amazing for her because now she has another piece of content to monetize it’s going to take her almost no thought.

Because she just sits there and throws paint around so she can just explain what she’s doing. That’s worth the world to me. And it really isn’t that hard for her.

Why Creating a Course is Challenging

Jillian Leslie 8:17
And one thing creators are taught or are told is take your knowledge and monetize it by creating a course. And it was interesting, because I did this myself, I have a WordPress course that I created.

By the way, if you’re interested, go to milotree.com/wordpress. But what was interesting was I did it this way. I did it live. I put together a PowerPoint, and I advertised it and people signed up and David and I showed up live and we taught it.

And it was like an hour and it was cool. And we had a video and then we sent the Zoom. It was on Zoom. And we answered everybody’s questions. And then afterwards, we sent a link to the Zoom so people could see it. And also, there was like a PDF. And it was cool and we learned.

And the first time we learned that we were too technical in the first version of it. So, we’re like, let’s do it again. It was really great having an audience. We could see where we lost them.

We could see where they were the most engaged and based on their questions we learned. So, then we did it again. And we updated it based on that kind of feedback. And also I sent a survey out after the first one and we did it again.

Alisa Meredith 9:38
Did you do it live again?

Jillian Leslie 9:40
Yes, we did it live again. And it was really good. And I thought to myself that I already had this PowerPoint, and I knew what I was going to teach and I said I’m going to turn this into a course.

First I researched all these platforms and I decided to go with Podia because it seemed easiest and it was actually cheapest and this is my experiment. It’s like $40 a month. But I have to say I had to learn this platform. And I started recording videos.

And I found it much harder than I thought it was going to be. Now I’d already taught this twice live. But there’s a difference between teaching something live, and then putting it together as a course.

Like the videos I couldn’t be messing up, I just felt like when you’re live, people I think are more forgiving.

Alisa Meredith 10:30
Absolutely.

Jillian Leslie 10:31
All of a sudden, it’s a video and then all of a sudden, I need to make a better PDF, like a workbook. Anyway, just even the logistics of recording the episodes, and then describing them and stuff like this.

It was honestly harder than I thought and more frustrating than I thought. And then I finished it. And I launched it, and I sold it and all this stuff. But right now, nobody’s buying it, because I’m not pushing it.

Anyway, going through that experience, and then now I have to keep updating it because of those changes. So, I thought about this.

And I thought, well, creating a course like Podia type course not teaching something live was much harder than I would have anticipated. And what’s your experience with creating your course?

Alisa Meredith 11:21
So, I had one on Pinterest advertising. I remember, recording, I had the last module to do, it was New Year’s Eve. And I just wanted to get it done. And every time I would start, my neighbors would set off fireworks. Oh, it was so bad. It was so bad.

If it had been live, I wouldn’t have been doing it at that time anyway, but it wouldn’t have mattered. But like you said, as soon as it’s recorded, you want to go in, you want to edit out all the ohms and ahhs and you want to make it perfect.

And it was grueling, even though time wise it was probably eight modules, maybe an hour and a quarter. But it was grueling. And then as soon as it comes out, something changes. So, I ended up having to redo the whole thing about a year later.

And then that was it. I was like I’m done with this. I had a Facebook group where I would post the updates. But I felt a little bad selling a course that I knew was outdated. So, I took it down. I don’t think I’ll ever do a course like that, again, it was just too much.

Jillian Leslie 12:33
And the weird part for me now is my course is sitting on Podia, if I’m not selling it, I’m still paying $40 a month to host it. By the way, this is the other thing that I’ve learned. And I’ve heard this, which is most people buy courses, and they don’t complete them.

So, now I have a bunch of people in my platform who’ve, let’s say, done 4 out of 20 lessons. So, I can’t take it down. Because there are like halfway through.

Alisa Meredith 13:01
Jillian, yes. I had got an email from somebody two weeks ago, and she said, “I paid for your course and I can’t access it anymore.” And I said, “Well, it was very out of date. So I took it down.” And I looked because she sent me like, “See I signed up for it.”

She signed up for it three years ago. And now three years later, she’s ready to access it. I kind of bandage it together and put it back up so she can access it. And then I’m going to take it down again. But yeah, it was too much.

And I built it because of what you said, I was not sure that I would do a good job at launching or promoting because I had a lot of other things going on.

I wanted it out in the world but I did not want that pressure of if I don’t sell at least one of these. I’m going to end up losing money on this site. I just did not want that.

So, I put together I think three different WordPress plugins, easy digital downloads, some LMS and then an affiliate program. And it worked okay-ish, but it was a pain in the neck.

And then it would not add people to the course, it was supposed to add people to the course, but it never did. So, I had to watch and make sure I added people in but it didn’t work as expected. It was a pain.

Jillian Leslie 14:20
Well, that’s the thing too, you end up hacking together certain solutions, and we’ll talk about that when it comes to memberships as well because in our research, we’re finding that people want to have memberships.

But they’re finding it somewhat problematic when they have all of these different moving parts. And then all of a sudden, they’ve got to figure out all of this tech and that’s hopefully the solution that we’re talking about.

So, let’s talk about that, a course versus a membership and why a membership might be an easier way to go.

Alisa Meredith 14:53
Well, for me, and maybe it’s different for you. The answer is it’s automatically updated. So, if you run it for five years, and things change, that’s okay. Because people expect that and you’re always constantly adding new material.

As opposed to having to go back and create and edit whole new course. It just kind of grows organically that way, as opposed to a course, which just feels like such a big thing.

Why Teaching Something Live in a Membership is Easier

Jillian Leslie 15:20
Yes, it also, if you show up live, this goes back to that thing. We taught our WordPress course live at first and it was a lot easier. As I mentioned, we have a membership of bloggers and online entrepreneurs.

And we show up live twice a month on Zoom for an hour each time. The first time we do a workshop where David and I teach something. And then the second time, I will give homework. You don’t have to do it.

But if you do it, I’ll review it and then we’ll talk about that in the second session of the month. And then we’ll open it up for questions. Any questions anybody has, they can also put them in our private Facebook group beforehand.

Let’s say it’s a technical question, David will do the research. And so, we can show up and know what the answer is. But what’s interesting is, it’s become our friends. And we show up together on Zoom. So, we see each other. So, it’s not just David and me.

And it’s not just access to us, it’s access to everybody. It’s interesting, because there’s certain members who are the cheerleaders. And then there’s a design expert, and she always will pop in with some sort of design information.

And then we have like more of a technical person and everybody has their role. They’re not like assigned roles, it just so happens. And it’s this really nice way to show up for each other.

And weirdly, during the pandemic, I realized it was so good for me, one; to have people that I needed to show up for. But two; then I saw all these like smiling faces, and I care about their businesses.

And I have this very intimate connection to all of them. And that is what’s so nice about it. And we tend not to have a lot of churn, meaning people leaving. And I think it’s again, because now we’re almost like a family.

We’re not a family, we are a group of people a supporting team. And I find that super interesting. So, one thing that people say about memberships is but I can’t create all this content. And I always say less is more.

Membership Tip: Don’t Overwhelm Your Members

Main thing you don’t want to do is overwhelm your people, you want to make it so that it’s digestible. So, for us nobody in our group has said, “You guys don’t show up enough.”

In fact, though, we have a private Facebook group, people can put questions in there all the time. And we are in there answering questions or putting prompts or somebody will put their win.

Somebody was just on it on a TV segment on a news segment sharing like how to pack lunches. And it’s like, you go, that is so awesome. And you have this built in group of people who are cheering you on.

So, it’s not like there’s no access, there’s access all the time, or they can email us. Somebody else say, “I just put together a sales page, will you take a look?” Of course, I’ll take a look.

But it’s not about overwhelming people with all of this content that you’re creating. There’s an experience that people are paying for.

Alisa Meredith 18:24
Yes, but I think if you have an audience, if you have a community, you’re already creating content, and you’re probably giving it all away for free.

And I think that we’re kind of used to doing that. But I don’t think that means that that’s what we need to do. Your time is valuable, your expertise is valuable, you should be paid for that.

Jillian Leslie 18:47
And I think too what you said is you’ve spent all this time building a following. So, one thing especially like when Instagram was everything, or any new platform that comes out, it’s like, I need to grow my followers.

And I always in my coaching groups in my courses in all of this stuff. I say, “Great.” And then I always say, “But why. Why do you need to grow following?”

And a lot of times people don’t go down that path to say, how is growing a following going to ultimately grow my business or help me make money?

We’ve spent all this time creating these communities, growing this following, and then we don’t know how to actually get money from them.

Jillian Leslie

And so again, we’ve spent all this time creating these communities growing this following and then we don’t know how to actually get money from them. And sometimes the attitude is I’ll grow the following and then eventually I’ll figure it out.

And I’m always saying, well, I think that might be kind of backwards. If I want to have the strategy in place before you grow the following.

But let’s say somebody does have a really big Facebook following. You’ve already got a built in community there’s money to be had in that community by serving your big fans by being close to them.

Alisa Meredith 20:04
You’re already doing it. You wouldn’t have that community if you weren’t giving something of value already. So, it’s just a matter of trying to convert the super fans in the group to paying members.

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Do You Give Content Away for Free?

Jillian Leslie 20:54
So Alisa, what is your thought about creating content and giving it away?

Alisa Meredith 21:02
Oh, my goodness, I have so many thoughts on this. So, example, case in point here. I had that course. But I also have this blog. And so, if you wanted to just sit down and read my entire blog, you could probably get everything you needed that was in the course.

And in fact, I had somebody messaged me complaining about that. “I bought your course but I could have gotten that all free from your blog. And I want my money back.” And it was like, “You’re welcome.”

So, there’s something going on. And it could be because we’re women, or because we’re helpers, we really want to help people that for some reason, we have been trained to think that our expertise, our time, our information is not worth anything.

And that just really frustrates me. And it makes me feel bad for all of us who bought into that nonsense. To think that what we have is not worth anything.

Jillian Leslie 22:14
I think that if you think about, say the New York Times, the New York Times, they monetized via ads. And so did we.

In the beginning, when it was a lot easier to get traffic, the way that we thought about monetizing was you put out a lot of content, you put some ads up and you make money.

But you know, when you think about what a CPM is right now, it could be like you need 1,000 people to come to your site to see one ad to make $1.

Alisa Meredith 22:41
No, no.

Jillian Leslie 22:42
Like the amount of traffic, you need to actually make money is incredibly, it’s like crazy, like you would, for example, never run an ad to your site in order to ultimately get people to your site.

It could be lost on Facebook, like at least $1 a click to your site. But you need 1,000 clicks to make $1.

Alisa Meredith 23:05
That did not work.

Jillian Leslie 23:06
That doesn’t work. But I think in the beginning, especially with Pinterest, and the explosion of Pinterest and Pinterest was driving a lot of traffic. It was like how many people I interviewed on my podcast who said I backed into a business.

I started getting all this traffic and then I could put ads up and then I could make money and it was like so cool. And sponsors would reach out to me. And today, I think you need to be much more intentional, but also that traffic is not as easy to come by.

So, you end up then creating a lot of stuff for free hoping at some point your traffic is going to grow large enough that that will actually monetize for you. And then you’re putting it all out there like even Pinterest, let’s say and I do not need to dunk on them.

But now they’re going, “Hey, we don’t really want to drive traffic to your site, we want you to add your content to our platform.”

Alisa Meredith 23:56
Now Pinterest was smart enough to realize that would not go over well with content creators unless they gave other options to monetize. Which is why they now allow you to add product tags.

So, if you have products that are on Pinterest, you can link to those if you have an affiliate deal with someone you can link to those products. You can add mention and it takes care of all the disclosure for you.

But a lot of other networks haven’t done that. I think TikTok has like a creator fund. So, they will pay some creators. I think YouTube has something similar, but I don’t feel like we should have to be at the mercy of the networks deciding that we are worthy of being paid.

And so if we’re not making money off of these endeavors, what are we getting? Maybe we’re getting likes, we’re getting followers.

Jillian Leslie 24:51
Validation.

Alisa Meredith 24:53
Yes. Which is nice, but that does not pay the bills. It’s like being asked to speak at an event for exposure. I’m making you money, but you’re not going to give me money. It’s upside down. It doesn’t work, and it needs to change.

Don’t Be a Slave to the Algorithms

Jillian Leslie 25:13
Again, I think you’re right, I think it is about taking back our power. I remember we were on a trip in New York. And this was way in the early days of Facebook.

And I remember having my laptop with me as we’re walking around New York and having to pop into Starbucks so that I could post, this was before Facebook had their scheduler, and I would have to post throughout the day, just to keep the algorithm happy.

Like, I’m some slave to the algorithm, because I have to feed this instead of saying, you know what, I’m going to create something on my own terms, because I have my own audience.

And they’re connected to me, and maybe they found me on Instagram. So, there is value to being on Instagram, especially again, if you know at the end of the day, I want to connect with people on Instagram.

Who will then join my membership who wanted to be closer to me. So, the perfect example is you with the art teacher, or the art influencer, how did you find her?

Alisa Meredith 26:15
It was probably because I have hashtag monitoring setup for certain hashtag. I bet that’s how I found her. She just appeared in my feed. And I thought, well, this is something and I started following her.

Jillian Leslie 26:30
Would you start commenting on her posts? Like were you just stalking? Were you engaging? How did that work?

Alisa Meredith 26:37
I would definitely, give her a double tap, every once in a while, maybe comment. I’m not a huge commenter on Instagram. But I definitely notice.

Jillian Leslie 26:47
And then she advertised her class. How did that work? How did she reel you in?

Alisa Meredith 26:55
There was an Instagram story. That was just like, “Hey, I’m doing this master class. And here are the dates and go check it out.” And I actually had a hard time finding the links. I don’t think it was where it was supposed to be.

I had to message her. And I had to go back and look at other posts to figure out how to sign up. I really wanted to sign up.

Jillian Leslie 27:17
Wow.

Alisa Meredith 27:19
So, now she’s in her garage in Australia, throwing paint around, and making money from it, which is great.

Jillian Leslie 27:26
And would you say you are a fan girl?

Alisa Meredith 27:30
Yeah, yeah. I would. She has a really different way about it. It’s very much like trying to get back to when you were a kid, and you would scribble and not care what it looked like, it just felt good. And that’s what hers is like, now, hers actually looks good.

But not all of them, her thing is about, creating the quantity and don’t worry about ruining a canvas, you can just wash it off later. It’s just a very kind of freeing approach, which is different.

Your own thing, and that’s another thing too, l have a friend who’s really good with live streaming. And like, you ought to be monetizing that. It’s like, yeah, but my other friend does something similar. It’s not the same.

People are not going to say, “Oh, he’s doing it.” So, I don’t know. They’re going to go for the personality when it comes down to it. Whoever you resonate with.

Jillian Leslie 28:33
Absolutely.

Alisa Meredith 28:34
Yeah, just do it.

Jillian Leslie 28:36
Absolutely. I say that all the time the internet is a really big place.

Alisa Meredith 28:40
Yes.

Why Connection Matters

Jillian Leslie 28:41
And, when I think about all the subscriptions that I have there, because I care about that person, and I weirdly, feel like I know them. And they add something to my life. I feel these connections. I guess that’s it.

When I consume people’s content on social media, I do feel somewhat of a distance, but all of a sudden, I subscribe, and I get emails from them. And I feel this level of connection.

So Alisa, you’re helping us launch MiloTree Easy Payments. And we’ve been talking about the product. Again, I feel so lucky to have you. And we’re talking about what is the pain point that we were solving for?

And this is the thing that I wanted to give some behind the scenes. Again, we coach bloggers, creators, and we saw this need because people had these communities predominantly on Facebook.

And they’re like, “I want to start a membership in a private Facebook group. How hard could that be?” And then when they tried to research how to do that, it was really difficult and because we do technical help for people.

Why We Built MiloTree Easy Payments to Help Creators Make Money

We started to hack together this whole system of how to get paid and then David and I said, “Wait a second, we see a real problem here that we could probably solve.” So when we build products like MiloTree, we make it super easy.

That’s the one thing I feel that would be our special sauce, we recognize that you don’t have time to learn a whole thing of technology to have a bunch of things you got to set up, we just want it to go boom, boom, boom, done.

Alisa Meredith 30:24
Well, another thing that you’ve done really intentionally too is to limit the options.

Jillian Leslie 30:28
Yes.

Alisa Meredith 30:28
Because one of the things that I found when I was doing some user research in the Facebook groups, for people who have memberships, one of the things they’ll say is, “I got stuck. I have software paralysis.”

There are just too many options out there in life in general. So, I love what you do with your products, which is this is how it works. We’ll take your feedback; you can change these two things. And that’s it. It’s almost like a gift to people.

We limit your box of Crayola Crayons.

Yes.

Jillian Leslie 31:02
We give you a box, but we’re not going to give you the 64 box. The 64 crayon box.

Alisa Meredith 31:07
Everybody thinks they want the big box, but then they end up using the same four crayons anyway.

Jillian Leslie 31:12
I love that. Yes. So, what we did was we said that this is our philosophy, and we got this. And the reason why I want to share this is by being super close to your people. You get to hear how they see the world and what they’re struggling with.

So, what we decided is technology. David is like the most talented technologist I’ve ever met my life. There’s nothing he can’t do. But I think every day literally this is our mantra. “God, technology is hard.”

How many times have I been like my computer is not working and who knows what it is. By the way, when your computer doesn’t work, the best thing to do, reboot, reboot, reboot. That’s just my one piece of advice.

But in general, though, even David will struggle with stuff, he can solve it, but it doesn’t mean that it works effortlessly for him all the time. So, we recognize that creators typically aren’t in it for the technology.

That’s like the being of their existence. So we said, okay, what if we created a way for people to get paid easily from their members, and then have a dashboard that they can manage their subscribers.

Then all we do is say, now go use the platforms that you’re comfortable with, we don’t want you to have to learn a new platform.

You Don’t Have to Learn New Platforms to Use MiloTree Easy Payments – Use the Ones You Know

So, go host your membership in a private Facebook group. And we will automatically link to your email service provider, so you can contact your members.

Alisa Meredith 32:51
I think that was really important, because people have a little bit of fear about relying on Facebook. Because it can go away at any time. Or they could decide to charge me $500 a month, which is why it’s super important to still have that owned audience in the email.

Jillian Leslie 33:07
Absolutely.

Alisa Meredith 33:08
So it’s great doing both.

Jillian Leslie 33:10
Absolutely. So, you have access to their email, and you have this relationship with them. And then let’s say you decide, you know what, we’re going to start adding Zoom, great, invite people in your email, get them on Zoom.

Let’s say, I was just talking to a friend of mine, and she makes videos, and she has a membership. And I think she’s hosting them somewhere. And I thought, all she has to do, she could host them on YouTube, or Vimeo.

And have like a link to the videos that she shares with her members or let’s say I just do a weekly newsletter, where I share my top tips on parenting, or my top tips on let’s say, I’m political and I share that.

So, it’s just wherever you feel comfortable. Oh, here’s one. People hosting memberships in a private Instagram account.

Alisa Meredith 34:02
Yeah, I would not have thought of that one.

Jillian Leslie 34:04
That blew me away. And that they’re using things like IGTV to post videos. And they’re using their feed to connect to the different lessons in IGTV and they’re using Instagram stories to tell people to show up today. Here’s what we’re talking about.

And they’re using the highlights to highlight different parts of whatever the membership.

Alisa Meredith 34:27
That’s great.

Jillian Leslie 34:27
And I was like, wow, I hadn’t thought of that. Like my daughter is on Discord. And you can have a Discord server, you could do it in Slack. There are so many ways. So, what our thinking is, be where your people already are.

Alisa Meredith 34:44
Right. So, you don’t ask them to go to another site.

Jillian Leslie 34:48
To get your content, or you don’t have to learn a whole new platform and have all of these bloated solutions to figure out so that you can get your membership up.

Alisa Meredith 35:02
And some of those do not work very well on mobile. But when you’re already on a platform like a YouTube or Instagram that was built for mobile, it’s going to be a great user experience that you do not have to build.

Jillian Leslie 35:14
Absolutely. And that’s I think the thing too, there are a lot of solutions out there. And they offer, to put your membership and they offer email, and they offer sales landing pages and all of this stuff.

And we say, well, instead of us building all that, go use those best platforms, just do that. Go use ConvertKit as your email service provider, and one of the thing that we are offering, which I think is really cool is a Gutenberg sales page template.

All you do is copy the HTML and paste it on a new page in your blog, and boom, you’ve got a sales page. And what I’m even more excited about is the sales page creator that we’re building.

Use Our Free Sales Page Creator to Build Sales Pages

And all you’re going to do is fill out some fields, and you’ve got a sales page with a custom link. And if you don’t want to use a sales page, we also give you a money button, which is just a buy it now link and you can share it everywhere to get people to sign up.

Alisa Meredith 36:11
That’s wild. Question, Jillian, okay, I do have an audience may not be huge. I would like to monetize somehow. But I don’t know if I want to be locked into weekly lives every day for the rest of my life. How do you handle that kind of commitment phobia?

Jillian Leslie 36:35
So, one thing you could do so for example, this friend of mine, all she does is she sends weekly emails with videos that she’s already recorded.

And she’s got a library of videos. And she switches them up and add some new information and schedules them so she doesn’t necessarily have to show up live.

Alisa Meredith 36:58
Yeah, that’s good. What do you think about just throwing this out at you. I’m having a time bound membership. So, what if you did like a season? This is the season that you are going to get healthy, just for example.

And we’re going to spend these three months together, and it’s going to change your life, here’s the membership. Is that good idea, bad idea?

Create a One-Time Event (like a Workshop) with MiloTree Easy Payments

Jillian Leslie 37:25
I think that’s a terrific idea. In fact, you can create a one-time event in MiloTree Easy Payments. You could sell it as a three-month program, a one-time workshop, a coaching call, however you want to use it.

Like you said, Alisa, we need to use social media for our good, it’s no longer I just feed the algorithm. It’s now I feed the algorithm because I know at the end of the day, I’m building something for me.

Alisa Meredith 37:54
And they’re going to love it. So, that that added incentive you have of knowing that you’re monetizing, it’s going to bring even better content for your community, and they’re going to sign up.

Jillian Leslie 38:05
And that’s one less thing too. And this kind of speaks to your art teacher. When you have your community, you get really close to them, and then you know what to create. You know what to build. They’ll tell you.

Alisa Meredith 38:22
That’s right.

Jillian Leslie 38:25
So Alisa, I want to say, thank you so much for being on the show and for talking about this with me and for being my thought partner every step of the way.

Alisa Meredith 38:36
Oh, you know, it’s my pleasure.

Jillian Leslie 38:38
I hope this opened your eyes to memberships and courses and one off workshops. And speaking of one off workshops, please join Alisa and me on November 17, where we are going step-by-step showing you how to create a paid workshop.

So, head to milotree.com/paidworkshop. It’s $10. And we’re so excited about this and we can’t wait to see what you create. And I will see you here again next week.

Other Blogger Genius Podcast episodes to listen to:

• How to Start a Membership to Inspire Others with Roland Denzel
• How to Grow a Successful Membership by Loving Your Members with Amy Sadler
• How to Set Up a Paid Membership Program with Ease with Melissa Lanz

Imagine a world where growing your social media followers and email list was easy…

If you are looking for ways to grow your community whether that be email whether that be social media, right now head to Milotree.com install the MiloTree app on your blog and it will do the work for you. Let it do the heavy lifting for you.

Let it pop up in front of your visitors and ask them to follow you on Instagram Pinterest, YouTube, Facebook, join your list, check out the exit intent but really get your community growing. And we’d love to help you with MiloTree. And I will see you here again next week.

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