I'm glad that there are people who appreciate a more nuanced take on things and don't just want the simplest possible explanation in under 30 seconds. :D
Shane, I am a Thrive Themes member and have used the different plugins to power my WP site. I nuture a relationship via email and host my courses at Teachable. (But I'm thinking of hosting them on Thrive Apprentice.) I started by launching one course and then offered a membership idea to those beta students. Several of them have been with me since then (nearly 3 years now) though a few have canceled. I think a combination of courses PLUS a membership of bundled courses are a good idea. I offer value to my members by offering them personalized video critiques at their request. Only about 5-10% of my membership request them. It takes a couple extra hours a week, but it's worth it, because I have a steady income, at least enough to pay my mortgage every month!
Spectacular. You have just saved me a ton of time I had planned to invest in an ongoing revenue model, when really, I could just charge that one time fee up front, and not have to worry about continually churning out content that may end up being content for the sake of content, vs really valuable information that I want to deliver, fully and completely. This will free up my time for more marketing, which is essential if I want to keep earning. Thank you!!!
Thank you, Shane! I've taught for years but I'm creating my first course with Thrive Architect and plan to create many more! It's refreshing your outlook on building a long term business and selling value. There are too many funnel builders who want to sell their system. Or have you set up a landing page to upsell and general an email list and email them daily! Next, you get added to another marketers campaign and it goes on and on! Some funnels lead to membership or "mastermind" groups that are run by the members NOT the originator. I know I'm tired of it and I see people getting tired of it too. I'm focused on packaging my knowledge and experience into courses I can sell and some I'll give away!
Indeed, I've seen a lot of this kind of thing as well. Of course, if one is uncaring enough, one can just add a "mastermind" to the end of a funnel and scrape together some extra money with minimal effort, but that's no way to treat customers.
I'd come to similar conclusions, Shane. The content churn is a big one for some of us. This is one of the most clarifying pieces of advice you have given. Thank you.
I literally just had a conversation about this with Dean Jackson from I Love Marketing and he said the exact same thing. I love your clear explanations.
Persuasive information, Shane. I've considered a membership model, but I see the pitfalls clearly now and know it's not the right move. Thank you for saving me some big headaches!
Thanks shane. I m also using one time subscription model for 3 information product. And i m still adding more products to my chain slowly. This membership vs. One time model was always a curiosity for me but i tottaly agree with your reasons. Thanks so much for giving clear descriptions about these different model.
So clear and precise! I've been struggling for 6 months to start a membership site, not sure and dizzy from integrations!--and the whole time with a gut feeling that something was wrong, that I was feeling way overwhelmed from the start. THIS is why. Thank you!
@@TracyFensome I abandoned the membership site and went back to something I’d done before-publishing... except I updated my skills. I’ve created 17 books on Amazon KDP.
With all the fuss about memberships lately (Stu MC Laren launch), I've asked myself the question. But at the moment, I don't have what it takes to run a membership (team, time). I'd rather spend my time on marketing and copywriting to create great sales pages and ads that convert :-)
Hello and thank you for an honest, but realistic view of Subscription Course Services vs One-Time Course Purchases. And I think you have hit it right on the button!!
Very interesting and revealing video. Thanks for this valuable contribution, Shane! Your reflections and ideas have saved me many future efforts and mistakes.
I think a low value for a membership like $10 to $19 is a good way to go. It reduces a lot the pain of subscribing to a recurring subscription. Then if the customer cancels, if they need the material they come back and subscribe again. This is not possible with one-off pricing, they get your material for life. One-off pricing also means having to continuously create new courses, just like a subscription. This is because after a course launch, there is a spike in sales and the sales then slowly reduce over time to much lower values compared to the spike price. So this idea that there is no content churn in one-off pricing is an illusion. You still have to create new courses to maintain your revenue over time. It does not take a lot of content to keep your members happy. 20 to 30 minutes of content only per week on most weeks gives me a retention rate of 35% of customers over one year. You can do that working one day a week on content its quite doable. Its not like you have to swamp continuously your customers in content, they would not be able to keep up. I think a relatively low recurring fee with 20 to 30 minutes of content per week is a great alternative to one-time pricing.
I agree with you though. I have a membership group via patreon and giving them daily content is too much anyway. Plus people are super distracted. They’re not paying much attention anyway unless it’s night tickets. Keep it under $25 & they won’t need a lot of your content. 2x a week is likely enough
THE best analysis I have seen on this subject, by far. Thanks Shane. "Content churn" is prohibitive for two-person companies like mine. I must ask: are you available for consultation?
Great video! We have to test with courses before trying with a membership site. May be spend a year building the membership and you don’t have good results. It happens!
Exactly! Memberships become more interesting the more you already have an audience and fans. If you build something up via courses and there's a demand for something ongoing, you're in a much better spot.
I appreciate you sharing this with us. It affirms my desire to create courses instead of creating a membership site where I have to keep creating new content. Thanks so much.
That helped me a lot to make my decision between the both business model... Thank you so much. I was stuck with the ideia to re-start my courses business as a membership model or selling them avulse. I got a small audience (about 230 customers and 2.5k leads) and they are extremaly satisfaied with my courses and asking for more new courses. I thought create a membership was a good ideia but Im afraid to face the problem you said about dont have too much time for marketing (which is one of the most import thing IMO) . I already made that mistake once when I decided to create a HUGE training which took me about 7 months to finish and no time to marketing. The sales was very good in the begginig when I first launch but decreased fast becasue I stopped to marketing in order to keep creating the course content. I think the best thing is to sell a lot of courses first, create a good and engaged audience and it will be more easy to create a membership if we want...
Thank You the explanation! Zoho, HubSpot, SalesForse CRM, ERP, Active Campaign, ConvertKit = SaaS | Netflix -> service business | Word Press website building = information business, what is change very quick...we see the evolution of Avada, Divi, Elementor website builders.....Sir U R the king!!! Takeaway = 2-3 big (a certain problem solving) courses launch / year, and pay the customer a higher price for these products!!! U made my day...Sir!! We will try your Thrive Themes too in the furure! 🔥🔥🔥
Many thanks, Shane! Really fantastic and helpful video. I am also a big fan of Thrive Architect and Thrive Themes. Appreciate you making things simple, from web page designing to business decision making. Cheers! :O)
Would like to point out that the choice between choosing one over the other may also come around the realization of what is the purchase power of your targeted audience. I agree with the points you made but while thinking about the economic reasons for picking one over the other, you can also think about the emotional background or natural/developed skills of the person who is picking one over the other. For instance, if someone is at a starting point where they can't clearly structure a course but have lots of knowledge over a certain number of areas and have the ability to micro manage certain skills, information or tools, maybe picking a membership gives more freedom than creating a course. By developing the membership, one can also gain experience to mount a course after a bit, while also building a community to witch they can sell, test and then launch look a like audience campaigns through facebook. :)
There are so many options of how you can set it up though. It seems this video only touches on a few strategies. You can set up a course to be a one-time payment and then have another offer that packages the course along with extras, including a community and weekly Q&A videos and package that as a subscription.
This is pretty much how I was going to do it. I have a patreon which is 2 years old. I have so much content in there, I could pretty much copy paste that content. We have to get out of the mindset of creating NEW, when we have a lot of old content already. This doesn’t work in every niche, but for many it does
I would be interested to see the test results that show that selling at a high price can be more profitable than selling through a payment model. Also, there's a middle ground option, with fixed-term memberships, where the customer can see what the total price will be, but spread over time. With these, you also get the Zeigarnik effect, which compels some folks to complete a process nearly finished.
I am running an ecommerce site with Thrive architect. I am really looking forward to some ecom tools from your company. Please give some attention on ecommerce too. I truly believe that if you do, it'll be the best in the market.
That's encouraging to hear, thank you. We haven't specialized in ecommerce so far, mainly to avoid spreading ourselves too thinly. But we are working on better WooCommerce support in our next theme.
Hi Shane, I'm now a new member of thrive themes. I run a health, safety and well-being business. Offering B2B training. We do consultancy subscription offers but it's all face to face. What do u recommend as my first product? I'm thinking an online course as an MVP, but I'd also like to create a customer portal for my clients where they can assess their content and more.
You say it is easier to sell someone a 2000 to 4000 Dollar course than a lower priced course. Question, on what planet do you live? I'd like to move there. Besides that, this is a very valuable video for people that want to sell knowledge. THANK YOU. And please don't forget to give me the stargate address of that planet where people like to pay 4000 Dollars for a course instead of 600 or less.
Thanks, but I'm very confuse a membership site is don't necessary for sell online course (not a membership site ) ? I don't buy thrive apprentice becouse says that need a membership sites... I need login pages and sell courses.
Hi there. Thanks for the info. I am personal trainer and looking for a site were i can have my exercise library for my exercises and also my webinars, can i have a page were its members only access? Like a log in? Im not to fussed about funnels and blogs at the moment, can i just build a site and have the members page? Thanks
Hi, Thanks for a great video. I am a little bit confused in regards of what I will need to launch my business. Will NewKajabi, Kartra or Teachable (with additional programs) solve my problem best? I am a sales consultant and I want to market individual counselling sessions through a website as well as offer a pre-recorded online video training program which the customer will get access to by either a monthly subscription or through a one time cost. In addition I will sell a small amount of physical products, like daily planners and other accessories. The individual coaching part basically only need a good looking page to market the service, the training program need a good solution for giving customers access to video courses (and I really want to be able to attach quizzes and downloadable files to the training sessions) and the accessories will need a basic online store. Do you need any more information to give me a good recommendation? What would you do in my shoes? Best regards, Dominic
You're going for a pretty complex setup, there. I recommend that you use something that can be truly customized. As in: custom code, if needed. If you want to use a SaaS/platform for this, you will be restricted to whatever features they offer you and I don't think anything exists that covers all the use cases you've outlined here. WordPress, plus plugins, plus custom code will get you there, eventually. But be warned: there's enormous cost to complexity of this level. It's very expensive to build and maintain a setup like this. I'd recommend simplifying and starting relatively small and building up, as the business grows.
Hello. Thank you for this very good video. In thrive apprentice you develop lost of membership fonctionnaly this days. I dont understand why you develop this fonctionnality after i saw this vidéo. Can you explain me why ? Have a nice day
@@Benoitnicomette all good :) Happy that's cleared out! Drip functionality is actually a really good way to keep people engaged with your online course longer. - Hanne
Want to learn more about how to launch an online course, quickly and effectively? Check out this tutorial: ruclips.net/video/7WJ6v7F9MGg/видео.html
Finally, someone who doesn't oversimplify things and really understands the pros/cons of membership sites. Thank you for your honest thoughts, Shane!
I'm glad that there are people who appreciate a more nuanced take on things and don't just want the simplest possible explanation in under 30 seconds. :D
Shane, I am a Thrive Themes member and have used the different plugins to power my WP site. I nuture a relationship via email and host my courses at Teachable. (But I'm thinking of hosting them on Thrive Apprentice.) I started by launching one course and then offered a membership idea to those beta students. Several of them have been with me since then (nearly 3 years now) though a few have canceled. I think a combination of courses PLUS a membership of bundled courses are a good idea. I offer value to my members by offering them personalized video critiques at their request. Only about 5-10% of my membership request them. It takes a couple extra hours a week, but it's worth it, because I have a steady income, at least enough to pay my mortgage every month!
Spectacular. You have just saved me a ton of time I had planned to invest in an ongoing revenue model, when really, I could just charge that one time fee up front, and not have to worry about continually churning out content that may end up being content for the sake of content, vs really valuable information that I want to deliver, fully and completely. This will free up my time for more marketing, which is essential if I want to keep earning. Thank you!!!
Thank you, Shane!
I've taught for years but I'm creating my first course with Thrive Architect and plan to create many more!
It's refreshing your outlook on building a long term business and selling value. There are too many funnel builders who want to sell their system. Or have you set up a landing page to upsell and general an email list and email them daily! Next, you get added to another marketers campaign and it goes on and on!
Some funnels lead to membership or "mastermind" groups that are run by the members NOT the originator.
I know I'm tired of it and I see people getting tired of it too.
I'm focused on packaging my knowledge and experience into courses I can sell and some I'll give away!
Indeed, I've seen a lot of this kind of thing as well. Of course, if one is uncaring enough, one can just add a "mastermind" to the end of a funnel and scrape together some extra money with minimal effort, but that's no way to treat customers.
Highly informative, logical, clean while NOT overly simplified. Thank you for creating and sharing this useful content, Shane!
I'd come to similar conclusions, Shane. The content churn is a big one for some of us.
This is one of the most clarifying pieces of advice you have given. Thank you.
Thank you, Patrick!
I literally just had a conversation about this with Dean Jackson from I Love Marketing and he said the exact same thing. I love your clear explanations.
Thank you, Blas!
Persuasive information, Shane. I've considered a membership model, but I see the pitfalls clearly now and know it's not the right move. Thank you for saving me some big headaches!
Thanks shane. I m also using one time subscription model for 3 information product. And i m still adding more products to my chain slowly. This membership vs. One time model was always a curiosity for me but i tottaly agree with your reasons. Thanks so much for giving clear descriptions about these different model.
Thanks for your comment!
So clear and precise! I've been struggling for 6 months to start a membership site, not sure and dizzy from integrations!--and the whole time with a gut feeling that something was wrong, that I was feeling way overwhelmed from the start. THIS is why. Thank you!
My thoughts exactly!
Hey Beth I get the overwhelm. What did you do in the end
@@TracyFensome I abandoned the membership site and went back to something I’d done before-publishing... except I updated my skills. I’ve created 17 books on Amazon KDP.
With all the fuss about memberships lately (Stu MC Laren launch), I've asked myself the question. But at the moment, I don't have what it takes to run a membership (team, time). I'd rather spend my time on marketing and copywriting to create great sales pages and ads that convert :-)
I think that's the right choice to make!
This is music to my ears as is this video. You’ve nailed the exact obstacle I’ve been trying to identify. Thank you for your comment and insights.
Thanks for this very clear overview of pros and cons. Makes sense to me - just starting my online-business.
Hello and thank you for an honest, but realistic view of Subscription Course Services vs One-Time Course Purchases. And I think you have hit it right on the button!!
Very interesting and revealing video. Thanks for this valuable contribution, Shane! Your reflections and ideas have saved me many future efforts and mistakes.
thank you, Victor!
I think a low value for a membership like $10 to $19 is a good way to go. It reduces a lot the pain of subscribing to a recurring subscription. Then if the customer cancels, if they need the material they come back and subscribe again. This is not possible with one-off pricing, they get your material for life. One-off pricing also means having to continuously create new courses, just like a subscription. This is because after a course launch, there is a spike in sales and the sales then slowly reduce over time to much lower values compared to the spike price. So this idea that there is no content churn in one-off pricing is an illusion. You still have to create new courses to maintain your revenue over time. It does not take a lot of content to keep your members happy. 20 to 30 minutes of content only per week on most weeks gives me a retention rate of 35% of customers over one year. You can do that working one day a week on content its quite doable. Its not like you have to swamp continuously your customers in content, they would not be able to keep up. I think a relatively low recurring fee with 20 to 30 minutes of content per week is a great alternative to one-time pricing.
After you launch a course & the sales slow down you have to continue to market it.
I agree with you though. I have a membership group via patreon and giving them daily content is too much anyway. Plus people are super distracted. They’re not paying much attention anyway unless it’s night tickets. Keep it under $25 & they won’t need a lot of your content. 2x a week is likely enough
Shane, thank you for your insight. For what I’m wanting to do, one-off course seems the way to go.
Thanks for your comment!
This was very helpful in clarifying my direction in 2020. Thank you!
Happy to hear that!
I agree with the strategy, great video!
Absolute Gold information by Shane...as usual.
WOW... Just what I needed. A1 content! Thanks
Thank you Shane. I am wrestling with this at the moment. Very helpful video.
Very insightful wisdom .. thnx.. It can save many from future blunders!!!
THE best analysis I have seen on this subject, by far. Thanks Shane. "Content churn" is prohibitive for two-person companies like mine. I must ask: are you available for consultation?
This was really great and validated my direction with your input and clarity. Thank you!
Great video! We have to test with courses before trying with a membership site. May be spend a year building the membership and you don’t have good results. It happens!
Exactly! Memberships become more interesting the more you already have an audience and fans. If you build something up via courses and there's a demand for something ongoing, you're in a much better spot.
I appreciate you sharing this with us. It affirms my desire to create courses instead of creating a membership site where I have to keep creating new content. Thanks so much.
That helped me a lot to make my decision between the both business model...
Thank you so much.
I was stuck with the ideia to re-start my courses business as a membership model or selling them avulse.
I got a small audience (about 230 customers and 2.5k leads) and they are extremaly satisfaied with my courses and asking for more new courses. I thought create a membership was a good ideia but Im afraid to face the problem you said about dont have too much time for marketing (which is one of the most import thing IMO) . I already made that mistake once when I decided to create a HUGE training which took me about 7 months to finish and no time to marketing. The sales was very good in the begginig when I first launch but decreased fast becasue I stopped to marketing in order to keep creating the course content.
I think the best thing is to sell a lot of courses first, create a good and engaged audience and it will be more easy to create a membership if we want...
Fantastic Shane - great insights!
Thank You the explanation! Zoho, HubSpot, SalesForse CRM, ERP, Active Campaign, ConvertKit = SaaS | Netflix -> service business | Word Press website building = information business, what is change very quick...we see the evolution of Avada, Divi, Elementor website builders.....Sir U R the king!!! Takeaway = 2-3 big (a certain problem solving) courses launch / year, and pay the customer a higher price for these products!!! U made my day...Sir!! We will try your Thrive Themes too in the furure! 🔥🔥🔥
Very interesting and surprising, changed my mind completely. We would love to know what goes behind running your Saas company.
Thanks for a very powerful insight 👍
Glad you found this useful!
Every video of his is good advice
Thank you very much for such great advise. Got great lesson !
Great Video.. I agree. Solid guidance as usual!. As a consumer I will not pay recurring fees if the value is not there. Thank you Shane!
Thank you, Kile!
Shane has the best insights! Thanks
Thank you very much! :)
Many thanks, Shane! Really fantastic and helpful video. I am also a big fan of Thrive Architect and Thrive Themes. Appreciate you making things simple, from web page designing to business decision making. Cheers! :O)
One and done! I like that.
Thanks Shane for your input, your video just came out at the right time, because I didn't know if I should start a membership or not.
Would like to point out that the choice between choosing one over the other may also come around the realization of what is the purchase power of your targeted audience.
I agree with the points you made but while thinking about the economic reasons for picking one over the other, you can also think about the emotional background or natural/developed skills of the person who is picking one over the other.
For instance, if someone is at a starting point where they can't clearly structure a course but have lots of knowledge over a certain number of areas and have the ability to micro manage certain skills, information or tools, maybe picking a membership gives more freedom than creating a course. By developing the membership, one can also gain experience to mount a course after a bit, while also building a community to witch they can sell, test and then launch look a like audience campaigns through facebook.
:)
Also, if you like to study and take notes over a wide range of information and skills, making content comes out as natural as breathing. :)
There are so many options of how you can set it up though. It seems this video only touches on a few strategies. You can set up a course to be a one-time payment and then have another offer that packages the course along with extras, including a community and weekly Q&A videos and package that as a subscription.
This is pretty much how I was going to do it. I have a patreon which is 2 years old. I have so much content in there, I could pretty much copy paste that content. We have to get out of the mindset of creating NEW, when we have a lot of old content already. This doesn’t work in every niche, but for many it does
Very Helpful, thank you
I would be interested to see the test results that show that selling at a high price can be more profitable than selling through a payment model. Also, there's a middle ground option, with fixed-term memberships, where the customer can see what the total price will be, but spread over time. With these, you also get the Zeigarnik effect, which compels some folks to complete a process nearly finished.
Brilliantly done tx
Excellent points! Thanks, Shane
Thank you
Thank you for clarity
These videos are so valuable and helpful. I think I may have found the company to help me create my courses.
Where can I find more information?
I have a membership site and it is awesone 🎉😊
Nice!
I am running an ecommerce site with Thrive architect. I am really looking forward to some ecom tools from your company. Please give some attention on ecommerce too. I truly believe that if you do, it'll be the best in the market.
That's encouraging to hear, thank you. We haven't specialized in ecommerce so far, mainly to avoid spreading ourselves too thinly. But we are working on better WooCommerce support in our next theme.
Thanks bro
Thank you ... very helpful and useful info. (what software are you using for your overlays on the video :) )
Hi Shane, I'm now a new member of thrive themes. I run a health, safety and well-being business. Offering B2B training. We do consultancy subscription offers but it's all face to face. What do u recommend as my first product? I'm thinking an online course as an MVP, but I'd also like to create a customer portal for my clients where they can assess their content and more.
You say it is easier to sell someone a 2000 to 4000 Dollar course than a lower priced course. Question, on what planet do you live? I'd like to move there. Besides that, this is a very valuable video for people that want to sell knowledge. THANK YOU. And please don't forget to give me the stargate address of that planet where people like to pay 4000 Dollars for a course instead of 600 or less.
Thanks, but I'm very confuse a membership site is don't necessary for sell online course (not a membership site ) ? I don't buy thrive apprentice becouse says that need a membership sites... I need login pages and sell courses.
Hi there. Thanks for the info. I am personal trainer and looking for a site were i can have my exercise library for my exercises and also my webinars, can i have a page were its members only access? Like a log in? Im not to fussed about funnels and blogs at the moment, can i just build a site and have the members page? Thanks
Hi,
Thanks for a great video. I am a little bit confused in regards of what I will need to launch my business. Will NewKajabi, Kartra or Teachable (with additional programs) solve my problem best?
I am a sales consultant and I want to market individual counselling sessions through a website as well as offer a pre-recorded online video training program which the customer will get access to by either a monthly subscription or through a one time cost. In addition I will sell a small amount of physical products, like daily planners and other accessories.
The individual coaching part basically only need a good looking page to market the service, the training program need a good solution for giving customers access to video courses (and I really want to be able to attach quizzes and downloadable files to the training sessions) and the accessories will need a basic online store.
Do you need any more information to give me a good recommendation? What would you do in my shoes?
Best regards,
Dominic
You're going for a pretty complex setup, there. I recommend that you use something that can be truly customized. As in: custom code, if needed. If you want to use a SaaS/platform for this, you will be restricted to whatever features they offer you and I don't think anything exists that covers all the use cases you've outlined here.
WordPress, plus plugins, plus custom code will get you there, eventually. But be warned: there's enormous cost to complexity of this level. It's very expensive to build and maintain a setup like this. I'd recommend simplifying and starting relatively small and building up, as the business grows.
Hello.
Thank you for this very good video.
In thrive apprentice you develop lost of membership fonctionnaly this days.
I dont understand why you develop this fonctionnality after i saw this vidéo.
Can you explain me why ?
Have a nice day
Hi Benoit, what do you mean "lost of membership functionality"?
@@Thrivethemes Thank you for your reply. I beg your pardon, I confused drip functionality with membership functionality
@@Benoitnicomette all good :) Happy that's cleared out!
Drip functionality is actually a really good way to keep people engaged with your online course longer. - Hanne
Well obviously he is going to be biased. He sells a platform for making courses.
Well... I feel like I’ve wasted a lot of time now lol