Membership Site And Online Course Marketing: How To Make, Market & Monetize Online Digital Content - Subscribe Me At Subscrib

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 me as well at one point, and such thoughts do pass through my head even today. So it's not unusual for marketers to worry about the dreaded unsubscribe. Listen to the rest of the show on your favorite podcast app or at https://SubscribeMe.fm 

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 rest of the show on your favorite podcast app or at https://SubscribeMe.fm

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 really shocking revelation about the ability - or should I say, inability - to raise funds through donations even when you have a super-successful podcast, which, according to their media kit, they get 1.6 million weekly radio listeners. On a cold morning in January 2007, a violinist wearing a baseball cap was playing some beautiful music in a Washington DC subway train station. 1,097 people passed him by, but only 7 of them stopped to listen to him. He had a mat spread out in front of him to collect donations. For his 43-

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 they like ads, they're either lying to you, or something is wrong with them and you need to tell them to get their head checked LOL! Listen to the show for the rest. https://SubscribeMe.fm

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 should have, given that I did reach #1 on Google and built a list of more than half a million email subscribers at one point. You know why it didn't work? Because ads generally don't work for most people - not for most publishers and content creators, anyway. Listen to older episodes of this show at https://SubscribeMe.fm

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. Listen to the rest of the show on your favorite podcast app or at https://SubscribeMe.fm

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 front-burner now. And then a few days ago, I launched my THIRD podcast, which is really an Alexa Flash Briefing first. See https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GLP1KV1/ That is also available as a podcast at https://CutToTheChase.fm. Listen online at https://SubscribeMe.fm 

"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 your own website, vs building it all on a third-party platform. As I was doing a comparison table comparing third-party platforms versus your own WordPress site, I came up with the idea for today's episode. Do you remember Uncle Ben from Spider Man? He is Peter Parker's uncle who gets killed by a burglar who is trying to escape after a robbery. So in the movie, Peter Parker, aka Spider Man, lets a burglar get away just a little bit earlier, and that same burglar ends up shooting and killing his Uncle Ben. And a dying Uncl

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 MUST do both. But only in a certain order. And I'll talk about that in a second. Now to give you better context, I have to say this real quick about Strategy #1. The cool thing about Strategy #1, is that once you've accomplished that, then Strategy #2 - which is building an audience first - becomes kind of moot, because now you already have an existing audience who have already bought your first product. So creating additional products for an existing audience is going to be a lot easier than finding or building a new aud

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 experience coaching and consulting with clients since 2003. There are basically two schools of thought when it comes to creating an online business. Each one involves a completely different strategy. Strategy #1) You create a product first, and THEN find an audience for that product Strategy #2) You build an audience first, and THEN create a product Strategy #1 is basically to start with what skills and resources you have and create your product or service first based on your own knowledge and experience. And then you find

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 still urge you to listen to the entire episode, because I hope - actually, I know - that there is going to be something in here that you may not have thought of before. Listen online at http://SubscribeMe.fm/

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 about how much you care about something, then if you have NOTHING invested in it financially, then it makes it that much easier to just walk away from it. Which shows a lack of commitment. So, don't TELL me, SHOW me that you care - about your online business, or your online course, or your audio course, or your Kindle book, or your podcast. (listen to the show for the rest) Listen online at http://SubscribeMe.fm/

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 show for the rest) Listen online at http://SubscribeMe.fm/

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 be true - that it was probably a recording of an actual live webinar when there WERE real people listening. Either way, it usually takes about 10 minutes or so to get into the meat of the content. There's the obligatory self-praise in the beginning, showing some warm-and-cuddly family pictures with kids and pets, and vacation shots, and a bunch of "see, this is why I'm cool" type of accomplishments. Honestly, most webinars are a waste of time because there's way too much fluff. Have you ever been at a Karaoke party? I

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 in life, whether that's people discovering your website, blog, your product, or service. Heck, there is a discovery issue even when it comes to meeting the woman or man of your dreams! The goal of this episode, is to acknowledge the issue, find out the root cause, and then also talk about what we can do about it as Podcasters. The issue of discoverability in podcasting is exponentially magnified, for a few different reasons. Check it out the show-notes at http://SubscribeMe.fm/65/ (listen to the show for the rest) List

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 something quick, I just went to Amazon and bought the best couple of books on the subject. So for promoting my book, I bought a book called "1001 Ways to Market Your Books". Back then, it had like a massive number of reviews, highly rated, lots of folks all over the web singing its praise. So naturally, I bought the book. Long story short, there's a reason why it has 1001 ways to promote a book, because it lists every dang method there is, however basic, like Print a business card, Attend meetings and hand out your cards, A

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 that you can get an idea as to not just how much work this thing is, but also that it is very much doable if you have the know-how, and the right tools. Other links mentioned on this episode: TOC Technique: http://SubscribeMe.fm/24/ Start with the Pricing Table: http://SubscribeMe.fm/62/ Free Facebook Group that you can join to see behind the scenes of my upcoming membership site: http://SubscribeMe.fm/group/ To see the rest of the show notes, go to http://SubscribeMe.fm/63/ (listen to the show for the rest) Listen onli

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 Twitter account, a Facebook page, an Instagram account and on and on. And then they completely lose track of one critical piece to all of this. When I say pricing table, I'm talking about your OFFER as a whole So start with the pricing table FIRST. BEFORE you create any content, BEFORE you create any products, BEFORE you even design a landing page on your web site... the very first thing you should brainstorm and strategize, is your pricing table because everything starts and ends with your offer. And you don't need a

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 DOGPOO stinks and DOSAA rocks). Now back to your voice... "But Ravi, you're the guy who is always saying that you have to add a recurring subscription model if you want your business to flourish in the long-term - so you're now telling me I'm better off with a one-time product rather than a recurring subscription?" Yes and No. There are some disclaimers. So don't freak out just yet. You should plan big, but start small. You should plan and prepare to add a subscription model, but you should start with a one-time product.

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 few reasons for both why you SHOULD and why you should NOT start a podcast. You know how in shows and movies, someone walks up to a main character and says "I have both Good news and bad news", and the main character always says, "give me the bad news first". So that's what I'm going to do here as well, because, you know, you are the main character in this show. So, first... Reasons why you should NOT start a podcast. Audio is actually easier than video - at least, most forms of face-on-camera videos, because if you're go