Setting up your very first membership site should be fun and exciting. Please, please PLEASE do yourself a favor and don’t strive for perfection… and stall out. Make sure to put all your effort into striving for excellence.
Here are 5 things that you absolutely need to avoid while you’re creating your membership site if you don’t want your membership area to be a deserted island with no members.
1. Lack of simplicity
While you’re building your first membership site, always remember that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. Do NOT try to build an overly complicated membership site with too many levels and trials, etc. KISS (keep it simple smarty!)
If you’re interested in having a trial offer – you’ll want to set up a simple trial (7, 14, or 30 days) followed by a paid membership that will charge their account on day 31. Your content should be delivered smoothly, on time, and be easily accessible to the members. It’s really that simple. 🙂
You’re building a membership site, not a space shuttle..
2. Biting Off More Than You Can Chew
It’s understandable that you want to blow your customers’ minds by giving them a ton of content. But, before you run off and do that… you’ve got to ask yourself:
Is this sustainable?
You might be able to pull it off at the start, but will you be able to overdeliver consistently… month after month? Or will this pattern of over-delivery urn you out fast?
Setting the bar too high initially can make customers expect a lot, and when you fail to deliver, they’ll look at it as you not delivering on your promises – and they’ll quit your membership. It’s best to set yourself up to avoid this failure from the start. You can thank me later! 🙂
Less is more.
3. Late Delivery
Oh man… major pet peeve here! I rank this up there with canceling meetings at the last second!
This really should be the #1 mistake. Always ensure that you’re at least 2 months ahead of your ‘oldest’ subscribers when it comes to having your deliverable ready. This will give you lots of buffer time just in case you run into delays in content creation.
Many who are just starting out make the mistake of preparing the following month’s content during the current month and they’re always rushing to get it done. Being behind the 8-ball is not a good place to start. It’s frenetic and stressful.
You’ll never get a second chance to make a first impression again.
When you’re late with your delivery, you’ve lost the trust of your members. Yes, some are nice and will give you the benefit of the doubt, but keep in mind you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Make sure yours is impeccable as far as content delivery is concerned.
4. Test, And Retest Your Onboarding Process
After you have built your first membership site, you’ve got to make sure you purchase the product and test the entire delivery process.
Pay for it like you are a customer. Sign in to the member’s area. Was it a smooth login process? Do you see everything in the member’s area that is supposed to be there with new members signup? Spellcheck your follow-up emails. What happens if you cancel and refund? Did the access go away?
It would be a good idea to keep your subscription active for at least the first 30 days just to make sure you’re billed the second time with no issues. Once you are billed the second time, were you able to access the new month of content without any issues? This is a fantastic way to stay ahead of any problems that may arrise.
But what if you cancel? Did you still get access to the next month’s content? You shouldn’t have.
All these details must be checked BEFORE you launch your membership. Once it’s all ready, you can shout from the rooftops about it and there will be fewer hiccups once people start joining your site.
5. Overselling
Running a membership site is a marathon and not a sprint. Your goal is to get more members and provide good content monthly. Don’t try overselling your subscribers by hitting them up with new offers every 2 days or so.
Give them time to consume your content. If you wish to make more money, you should provide affiliate offers or more to the backend funnel within the membership site so that they can get more perks, etc.
2 or 3 membership tiers with varying payment plans will help you get more customers who can choose a membership that’s suitable for their budget. All you need to do is look at Netflix’s membership options to get an idea of how it’s done.
Give your potential customers 2 or 3 choices – but no more than that. Too many choices will cause overwhelm and you will lose them before they are ever signup.
These 5 mistakes are common and can affect your membership site adversely. Please keep them in mind and steer clear of them… I can’t wait to watch your Membership site grow and become a profitable investment that reaps rewards over and over.
To your success,
