632 – The Ultimate Membership Site Checklist – The Membership Series

Podcast: Download (Duration: 35:58 — 16.6MB)

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James Schramko and John Lint

Podcast highlights:

02:42 – Four major membership components
04:13 – Setting up the portal
08:33 – The private coaching feature
13:23 – The community element
16:43 – Bundling it all up
17:48 – Building your waiting list
22:15 – Continuous value
23:54 – Time to open
25:58 – Bypassing the tech stuff
27:42 – Payment collection made easy
30:33 – Why they should purchase now
31:47 – The emails that go with it
33:11 – Now we automate

Create a successful paid membership of your own with James’s personal coaching

Part 7 of the series

Transcription:

James: James Schramko here. Welcome back to SuperFastBusiness.com. Today you are in for a treat, because we’re going to be running through the ultimate membership site checklist. I’ve brought along my special guest John Lint for this. This is part of The Membership Series, where we’ve been working our way through various topics relating to membership sites, courses, programs. Of course, John Lint runs the spectacular software called KLEQ.com, which is perfectly designed to set up your membership or course. Lots of SuperFastBusiness members are using this software and getting great results with it.

So today we wanted to go through a checklist. This checklist has a little bit of a focus on what to do when you launch a membership. So it’s going to be really handy if you haven’t got a membership or you’re thinking about a membership or if you’ve got a membership and you want to freshen it up. That’s what this checklist is going to do. So welcome, John.

John: Helllo, hello. Hi everybody.

James: So we put this checklist together, John, through a combination of your experience and my experience, having run memberships. SuperFastBusiness has actually been running for over 10 years now, I just worked out. So a decade in.

John: Congrats.

James: We’ve learned a thing or two about it. Thousands and thousands of students over that time. Why don’t we just run through this checklist, checklist item by checklist item, until we get to the end, and of course we will fully transcribe this episode.

What’s the first on our checklist?

John: Cool. So let’s do it.

So yeah, the first thing is, obviously, you want to set up your membership portal, right? And that’s where all the tech side of things come into play, a bit overwhelmed when you don’t have to use the right tools or whenever you’re using too many tools, then you’re going to get frustrated, you need to stitch them together. That’s why we built KLEQ, because we don’t want you to struggle with any of the tech stuff when it comes to setting up your membership site.

Four major membership components

Because the truth is, when you want to set up a membership site, you need to do a lot of things. There are different components, right? And that’s actually the first thing that we’re going to talk about, what makes a membership site? And we kind of mentioned that in the previous episodes, but you know, at its core, if you break it down, and if we look at your membership site, James, with SuperFastBusiness, you have those four major pillars, those those four major components which are, training program, so online courses, mini courses that you can deliver; content, awesome content, awesome value right there, is component one. Component two is the private coaching that you offer, and you do this so well. Then the third component is, for example, doing live streaming sessions, kind of like what we’re doing here, but live and you can answer questions from your members, you can provide training. So that’s the third component. And then the fourth component, which you have, and you use it, it’s a core of your business, is the forum, right?

So these are kind of like the major things. And all of these things use a ton of different technologies, a ton of different tools, a ton of different softwares. If you try to stitch them together, well, you have done this for the past 10 years now, James, so that’s why you had to do it. Because 10 years ago, nothing existed that will allow you to do all of this easily. But now technology has changed. Now, with things like KLEQ.com, you can do all of these without struggling with any of the tech, and you can set up everything without getting overwhelmed with tech and struggle with any scripts or plugins or trying to hire an expensive designer or developer to set things up for you, right? The goal is for you to get started straight away.

Setting up the portal

So the first thing on our checklist is to set up the portal, set up the membership portal and have that area, that welcome area that your members can log into after they purchase access to your membership site. You want to set that up so that later you can obviously then offer it on sale and open the doors for your membership site. So that would be item number one, setting up the members portal without struggling with tech, and doing all the things that you need to do. Now the great thing with KLEQ.com is that it’s that easy, right? You just give the name, add some images, and you’re pretty much up and running. I mean, it’s set up there and then everything else is integrated.

So if we talk about, component number one is creating an online course. And we talked about this in the previous episode, was how do you create an online course, which is, you know, all about creating videos, valuable lessons for your members. And that’s where you need to decide, how many of them do you want to create, what kind of training course you want to create. And usually, you can create those quick products that are five lessons, seven lessons, seven modules, you know, quick type of products that you can add to your membership site. And you mentioned that last time, that you create pretty much one training every single month, right?

James: Absolutely. So I mean, you got to start with something. The interesting thing about this checklist, it’s really going to get a gauge on where you’re at in terms of your tech stack. And what do I mean by tech stack? It’s the technology that you’re using to host your membership.

Now, there are all sorts of options on the market. We talked about that in the last episode, everything from having a Facebook group through to having a pretty heavy custom bespoke setup with bits and pieces glued together. Then in between, there’s all these off-the-shelf or plug-on type things, whether it’s a WordPress-based or private type system that have varying degree levels of complexity or ability. You may have to hire someone to help you use some of them, they’re so tricky. They might break easily because they’re a little bit finicky, and they don’t talk to each other well. Or they might just limit you in terms of what you can do. If you’re talking about a Facebook group, there’s not much choice.

And I think this list is going to expose some of the differences between the different platforms. And so the first one we’ve already encountered, setting up your training program. I’m not exactly sure how you go about doing that with a Facebook group. That’s going to get messy very quickly. You might have to have a sticky post with a link to a couple of resources.

It’s important to note, as part of this episode, we have put together the ability for you to test drive KLEQ.com. You can get a free invite to try it out and put it to the test, like, go and set up your first course for free on trial, and see how it goes. And if you like it, you can renew your subscription. If you don’t, then I guess you can stop. But at least you can test the things we’re talking about using the platform.

John: Yeah, totally. And we have also put together an awesome package, an awesome bonus package with specific training that you and I designed specifically for people who want to set up a membership site, right? So these are going to be different components. Because when we talk about the key training programs and creating content, so you might be thinking, hey, how do I create a video? Some people are there. Or people are more advanced, they know exactly how to do that.

So as part of the package, you have extra bonuses that will teach you that. If you need help on how do you create awesome videos or content, how do you do all these things, it’s covered. So we help you with that. If you need help in, hey, how do I build my email list with my email system and all that stuff, we cover all that. So these are all extra stuff that we’ll help you with as well. You know, if you’re really just trying to figure out, hey, which niche do I select? How should I select that? What should be the topic of my online course? How do you create an outline of an online course, which we kind of talked about it in a previous video, well, there’s also training for that.

And something that I do as well for all members, every week, basically I’m live online answering members’ questions. So that’s also part of it. So we do as much as we can to help you get started as fast as possible.

But yeah, training programs, this is the first thing that you want to decide, right? How I’m going to add content and deliver that content in a beautiful way, in a classy way, and in a way that will allow me to do things like gamification, allow my members to mark their progress and feel motivated to complete the the training, right? Because that’s what we’re here for. We’re here for them to help our members get results and help them solve their problems and all of those stuff. So your training programs will help you with that and will become a very important part of your membership site.

The private coaching feature

Now the second component is something that I added to KLEQ thanks to you, James, and seeing how you were doing it and how awesome it is. It’s what we call private coaching. And this kind of private coaching is via chat. So some people, what they do, and you might want to hack a forum and then create some private threads and try to find a solution which is kind of hacked, what we did is that we built the solution from scratch. And we kind of mimicked it with things like, imagine you could send a message directly to your coach or whoever’s running the membership site. So that’s extremely valuable. And that’s something super easy that anyone can offer and add to their membership site, that will increase the value of the membership site. I mean, that’s really the main strategy.

Not only are you helping them kind of one-on-one, but it’s leveraged one-on-one. I like to call it leveraged one-on-one, because you don’t have to answer straight away. It’s not like what we’re doing now, where you’re going to be spending 30 minutes online with someone. It’s leveraged. People can send your questions, but it’s questions directly to you. And that will boost the value of your membership site, which ultimately means it’s going to help you sell more of it, and yeah, bump the value, right? So that’s the second component, trying to set that up.

Now, with KLEQ, there’s not much to explain. You just create a page, that we call a private chat page. And that’s it – you’re up and running. Now the beautiful thing is that you can add it to as many training programs that you have inside the membership site. You can add a private chat page to all of them if you wanted to. Or you could do what most of our members do, which is basically, you create one course that only has that one private chat page, and now it’s basically your private chat section inside your membership site.

So now, you have those two sections. You have a section where you deliver training content, you have all that stuff going on. And then you have another section in your membership site where you’re providing that one-on-one coaching. So if they need to ask you a question, and you know, some people, they don’t want to post it publicly, because maybe it’s a private question or they really want your help, they only care about your opinion, then they can do it there. So that will be you know, component number two. And I know that for you in your membership site, James, I mean, this is just something that’s so valuable, right? A lot of members love it. I personally love it, the way you use it.

James: It’s super powerful. I mean, I can actually get a customer result, and that’s the purpose of this one. So these are like the power moves. If you could have a training program, so you’ve got that course content, you’ve got private coaching, you can actually help people use it and explain and answer things and customize and tailor it for them. Then what comes next is the live Q and A component, which is how you can have ongoing updates to training.

I put a new training into the membership each month. The next one that I’m doing around about the time of this podcast is how to do revenue share deals. It’s the topic of a previous podcast episode that I did with Charley Valher. And I actually did an in-depth training for SuperFastBusiness members teaching them about this business model. I need a section of the community to put that. And that’s a huge draw card. I know for a fact that people join to get these trainings, and they stay to continue to get these trainings. And it’s also good for me to know that I’ve got basically a once-a-month deadline to create something new. It will keep my fantastic business model alive.

John: Yeah. It motivates you to create awesome content, to to keep your finger on the pulse, and yeah, you’re always connected with your members like once a month, or you can do it twice a month, or you can do some of the things I do, which are kind of like weekly Q and A calls. It’s really up to you how you want to do it. But the beautiful thing is that, you know, this is a great way for you to re-engage people, to remind them that, hey, you know, this is the topic of this month. For example, you can obviously tease the topic of next month, so you always have that ongoing training happening. And it feels like the membership is alive and there’s always fresh stuff. So it’s pretty great.

And as well, obviously, answering any questions that your members have, it’s all about helping them, again, get the result that they want. So that’s a great component that you want to add.

Now, of course, you have so many live streaming technologies available, right? And there are many options. You can go with something like GoToWebinar, you can go with something like Zoom, right? You can then use other types of solutions. With us, it’s all built in, and we integrate with YouTube live events, and we’ll allow you to then run your event pretty much free, because you know, YouTube events is kind of free.

So we’re using that technology and we’re leveraging it, and then we’re putting it inside. So now, it’s a private live streaming that you can have in your members area, and then your members can just participate and ask you questions throughout the streaming. So you can present your screen, you can share your screen, you can do a little training, and then at the end you can simply check the questions that you’ve got, and then you simply answer them. So it’s very easy, very low-key. Nothing to it. And everything’s built in. So that’s a beautiful thing.

So that’s the third component. Again, it’s all about bringing that value up of your membership site.

The community element

And then the fourth component is community. And community, you are an expert on that James. It’s all about having that awesome forum. Now, again, we talked about this in a previous episode. Forum, awesome. Some people who are just starting out, they are like, scared and they think hey, but you know, my audience is not as big, I can’t have a forum yet. So that’s fine. And there are multiple tools within KLEQ that you can leverage that will help you along this journey of you building that community inside your membership site. You can easily start by just having a basic commenting area, private, helping them out. People can, like, share, connect with each other and see each other’s profile. Very good stuff.

You can then graduate to what we call a private group, which we call the social wall. Page, awesome stuff. It can do all of these things, kind of works like a Facebook group. And whenever you post, the item comes at the top and people can share, like, all of these cool community things.

And then when you’re ready, when you feel like, hey, you know what, yeah, I want to have a dedicated forum, then you have the forum. And again, it’s all built in. You don’t need to try to get another tool, another system, try to figure out, well, how I’m going to get people, who are on my site, now logged into that forum software. How I’m going to do it, it’s a nightmare, right? With here, everything’s built in and everything is the same area. They just go to the different section, and ah, OK, that’s the forum section.

And these are the four components, right? And I know for you, James, community, it’s a huge thing and your community is so alive. And I know that when you shared with me some of the numbers, they have been with you for a long time and the numbers are very stable. It’s not like people are dropping off or or leaving. People stay. And usually, they stay because of that strong community. Right?

James: Definitely. I think they don’t join for the community, that seems like a side thought. They’re joining because they want coaching from me or they want a piece of content that I’m training on. But they stay because of the community, because you make friends. When we have SuperFastBusiness Live and we get all those people together in one room, the atmosphere is just incredible. Some of them have come to like 10, 11, 12 events. And it’s like you and I, actually. We’ve become friends, John, because we keep going to the same event, the Maldives Mastermind, and we’ve really got to know each other well, dodging reefs and catching powerful waves together. You build up that camaraderie.

I like my communities. I really enjoy hosting it, and it’s like entertaining and having a bunch of friends over, but you don’t have to leave your house for it, you don’t have to wear shoes. And I love that.

It’s harder to organize on free platforms like Facebook.

John: Yeah.

James: The page, what is it, it’s a group, they call it, can get a bit out of control. You definitely need a heavy moderation. If it gets banned or whatever, then there’s nothing you can do about it. There’s no recourse. You don’t have much control.

I mean, all of these solutions, and we talked about this in a previous episode, they’re not going to be hosted on a black box in your living room. Like, you don’t have full control. They’re going to be hosted on a server somewhere. But hopefully the provider is being responsible and taking backups and would give you at least the ability to load your own content in there, the videos, and use your own email list and stuff, whereas with Facebook, quite often you’re missing some of those components of control.

So they’re the main pieces that form together to create this amazing foundation – training, coaching, live calls, membership forum.

Bundling it all up

So the next step is set up the offer bundle, so that when someone purchases they can get the components all at once.

John: Exactly, yeah. So you want to obviously start setting that, and that’s the thing that’s pretty cool with KLEQ, is that, you know, you can actually sell whatever you want. And you can sell courses individually, you can sell multiple courses, you can bundle courses together, so now it’s a package. You could sell access to the forum on its own. You could sell access to the private coaching on its own if you wanted to. But when it comes to a membership site, OK, well now those guys are going to be paying for the whole package. Then you can easily bundle it together. And once you bundle the forum, the private coaching, the live Q and A calls and the training all together, it becomes a bundle, and that becomes your membership site offer. So now it’s ready for you to start promoting it.

And the first step, if we look at the strategy, there are two main areas. The first step is building that waitlist, that’s a cool new strategy that you can use for your membership site. You build that list, build that waiting list. And then the second step is that once you have that waiting list, you can then launch it. You can then open the doors, you can do that sales sequence.

Building your waiting list

So if we talk about step number one, building that waitlist, then you have a couple of steps. So step number one, the thing with KLEQ is that we integrate it with the most popular emailing systems – things like Ontraport, Infusionsoft, ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit, AWeber, all of that. And if we don’t deeply integrate with your emailing system then you can always use our webhook technology and you’ll be able to then easily add your emailing system, web forms, and all of that stuff. But bottom line, what that means is that, what you want to do, you want to start building your email list. You want to start collecting names and emails of people who are interested in your membership site.

So that’s something that you want to do upfront. And we do that with a simple waitlist page, and it’s a template that we designed together with James, and you know, it works really well. It’s all about just simply sharing and showing people what the membership site is all about. OK? So, nothing complicated.

There are some key things that you might want to do in that page. Obviously, showing testimonials, very important to try to get some testimonials for your membership site, even if you have to give access to some people for free at the beginnings to get some feedback. Well, you know, you can do that in exchange for some cool testimonials, for example, right? But you want to have that on that page. You want obviously to tell people about the benefits of joining your membership site.

So that waitlist page, it’s an opt-in page, so it’s a page that will allow you to build your email list and add people to your emailing system, but it’s really a page that will kind of act as a sales page, but it’s not selling the order, it’s actually selling to join a waitlist. And the strategy with having that waitlist is just to, obviously again, build that scarcity, that urgency and just allowing people to just join that waitlist so they can be notified when you open the door. So the first step is to do that, just try to build that wait list of people who are interested in your membership site.

In terms of checklist, you’re going to obviously set up your emailing system, you’re going to create that waitlist page that has all the information about your membership site, you’re going to create that thank you page, so the page that they’re going to reach after they join your waitlist. So these are the three components – you have the emailing system, the opt in-page, and the thank you page. And that basically becomes the first part of your strategy, building that waitlist.

James: And that’s where we’re going to send everyone to, right?

John: Exactly.

James: That will be the first point of contact. I’ve found that waiting lists can be particularly helpful if you’re new or you’re not already famous. You can actually warm people up with email sequences to get them ready to buy and to understand what the offer is before you show it to them. And I’ve tried this on and off for the last 10 years. I can definitely tell you, if you’re not that great at sales copywriting or you’re not already famous, this is a really good thing to get going, especially if you’ve only got low volume.

Because firstly, if you’re always open and you’ve got no traffic, it’s weird when there’s like, one person in there and there’s tumbleweeds rolling around the forum. It can look a little bit deathly quiet and it could undermine the confidence of the buyer.

Secondly, you don’t have to now try and do a big launch to get 100 people at once, where you sort of make or break event, you get to hire all the people, get the JV things, get the emails sending out, have a frenzy of activity, hire extra support, beg with your payment processor to handle all the extra money and then, you know, you’ll either have a big launch or nothing. Quite often it is unsuccessful compared to the expectations. And so this is a lovely, low pressure way of having a constant flow of people that you can manage and you can change things like how long the waiting list goes for.

And importantly, when it comes to the waiting list, you have this expectation is there that this is special. I remember waiting for Pinterest when I got my invite. They wouldn’t let me join up straight away. I had to wait. And then a few days later they sent me the invite,and it was kind of more special. It seemed important.

John: Yeah. And it’s a strategy used a lot, by softwares, by video games. You know, it’s like, join that early bird or early notification or waitlist page. It’s a common strategy. And it’s something that will help you, and just like you said, it will help people get that relationship going, especially if you’re starting out. It’s low pressure. There’s no hype, OK? You’re not doing one of those launches where you’re promising.

It’s two simple pages, and then you are obviously connected with your emailing system, right? So first page, you just tell them what the membership site is all about. And you know, that’s a beautiful thing. If someone opts in for that, they join the list, you know they’re interested. There’s no need to do any hard sell or pitch or do some type of crazy stuff. It’s just about the facts they’re after and just reminding them that, hey, these are going to be the benefits.

Continuous value

So they go on the waitlist, they opt in, they reach the thank you page. Again, the thank you page, super easy. After that, you know, you can then decide when you want to actually open the doors for the first few times. And in the meantime, keep on building the relationship. You keep on sending them some cool stuff, some training that will help them solve their problems, some cool tips, maybe link to a podcast that you’re doing, or some videos that you’re posting on YouTube. I know that right now, James, you do a lot of those very short YouTube videos. I mean, that’s something easy that anyone can do, right? I mean, last week, I created 30 videos in an hour or so, you know, because those are very short videos. So you can simply send an email to your list about that, and provide value and keep in touch.

James: Just an important point here. If you’re trying to do this independently, there is software that does this, but the software itself is not cheap. And it’s not easy. So that’s why you’ll only see more advanced marketers have this technology in the past, because it’s not a simple feature, and it’s definitely not included in some of the solutions out there. So this is where I think you’ve done a really good job with KLEQ, integrating something that was a very expensive extra. It usually retails for thousands of dollars. And the solutions out there are great, but they’re not within reach of everyone. For the same money, you could actually have a year’s worth of KLEQ membership, and it includes all the other stuff as well. So this way, you get good value with all the things that you’ve put together.

So where do we go from here?

John: Yeah, I mean, that’s the goal, right? With KLEQ, we try to give you all the tools that you really need to build your online business, and we keep on adding cool stuff that we feel are going to help all our members. And we always listen to members and and try to add stuff that are going to actually help you.

Time to open

So yeah, so now you have your waiting list set up, you’re providing value. Great. Now it’s time to open the doors, right? Very simple funnel, you can build the funnel with what we call our page builder. You can create any kind of marketing page with that, from super simple to super advanced as well, it’s really up to you. But basically when it comes to the sales funnel, you have a couple of pages that you want to set up. So first, of course, you’re going to be setting up a sales page. You’re going to be setting up an order page. You’re going to set up a thank you page, and a close page when you close. So, four simple pages.

James: They sound simple, but you know, I know a lot of people who would get stuck at this point. I got an email from someone on LinkedIn yesterday, said, “Hey, I’ve got a friend who’s a fisherman, and he knows nothing about online marketing, and he wants to sell an information product teaching people how to fish.” How’s he got a chance of setting up an order page, a thank you page, etc. Unless it’s in a system like this, it’s not going to be easy to do.

John: Totally. Yeah. I agree. And that’s why we built it, right? Because you’re right. And if you’re trying to, for example, set up an order page, you need to figure out how to set up the payment systems, how to integrate with that, how to make sure that when someone buys, well, then your membership site is also contacted by your payment system. And then we should obviously get their login details via email, right? So then they know how to log in.

All of that, obviously, you can try to do it yourself and you can pay thousands of dollars a developer to try to do something for you, and struggle for days. But with us, it’s super easy. It’s basically, you just integrate, you just say, OK, you click a couple of boxes, you say, OK, well, here’s my PayPal account. Here’s my Stripe account. And these are basically systems that you can simply sign up, and now you’ll be ready to accept payments online.

But then once it’s integrated, you don’t have to worry about any of the stuff that I just described. People just go to the order page, they can select, they put their details, it’s all safe, it’s all secure, everything’s backed up daily anyway on our servers, and then that’s it. When people order, they’re going to get the thank you page, and then they’re also going to get their login details. They can reach your membership site, login and start getting access to all the cool stuff that you have set up, right?

Bypassing the tech stuff

So that’s what happens in the background, but you as a client, you probably don’t see that, because you simply see that, hey, I’m using the page builder, I’m using my mouse, I’m dragging dropping, I’m putting a cool image here, I am editing my text, I click on the box and I just simply add in my text. We’re trying to make it as easy as possible to do that.

And that’s what I mean, you know? You just need to create those four pages, you use the system. Follow along, because there are actually templates that have been designed in collaboration with James, such as the sales page, where all the elements that you need, all the important things, such as talking about the benefit at that spot in the page, talking about the testimonials, reminding people about the deadline, having that deadline timer, which again, if you don’t have a system like KLEQ, then you need to pay for a deadline funnel that’s going to cost you 97 bucks a month or something like that.

Then you’re going to have to figure out, well, yeah, I want to have an email timer on my emails, because I heard that it actually boosts the conversions, and people will click on my emails, because there’s that urgency in the email. OK, great. Well, if you want to do it yourself, you need to find a script, you need to go out there and you need to try to figure out, you need to purchase something else. Then, well, OK, you need to try to figure out how to sync that email timer with your page timer that is there, right? Well, OK, so that’s going to take you a lot of time and all that. That’s why we always say, the better you get at tech, the less money you’ll make.

So if you’re an entrepreneur, your job is not to try to figure out tech. It’s not to try to be good at that. That’s my boy’s job. That’s my team’s job. They’re developers, they need to be good at tech. You as an entrepreneur, you don’t need to try to be good at tech and try to do this yourself. That’s the worst use of your time as a entrepreneur, so don’t do that. Let us take care of that for you. And that’s what we do.

Payment collection made easy

So you simply use those templates, you have a sales page, boom. When they click, they’re going to go to the order page. Now, when it comes to a membership site, the goal is to have a subscription-based business, it’s to have a recurring revenue, right? So a couple of strategies – you can offer monthly payments, you can offer them to pay every six months, or people to pay every year. I think that you do that as well for your membership site, right, James?

James: Yeah, I’ve got the option of monthly or annual.

And did you talk about loading up the Stripe or PayPal?

John: Yeah. I mean, with us, it’s very easy. Basically just put your details, and that’s it. With PayPal, you click a connect box, you’re going to get a pop-up saying OK.

James: I can’t emphasize how profound this is, because when I started online, it was very hard to collect money. It took me four years to get my bank to help me get a merchant facility to be able to take credit cards.

John: Yeah.

James: The only thing I had access to was PayPal. I’ll tell you how important that is right now. I just compared PayPal to Stripe over the last 12 months for my own business. And guess what I found? 75% of sales were with a credit card. In terms of retention, a PayPal member is 10 times more likely to stick around. It was profoundly different. I think, because, to have a subscription with PayPal, you need to have a credit card or a bank account hooked up to it. Instead of just one line of defense, there’s like a backup, and it sort of helps you protect against rebill failures. But in any case, for me, it’s worth having both, and it’s as simple as just adding them both into your cart.

John: Exactly. And that’s a big thing.

James: And again, you can pay $1,000 or $2,000 or $100 a month just for a cart. I still pay $150 a month for my original cart that I put my first $10 million through, because I have so many legacy payments coming through. And that’s $150 a month, so just for a cart.

John: Yeah.

James: And it did some of the features you’re talking about, but it didn’t look good. That was always the problem, it wasn’t easy to use and it didn’t look good. And you’ve solved both of those problems.

John: Yeah. And then once you have the integration with those systems, then you can start going to powerful things, right? Then you can start going to those promo code strategies and having, like, those extra offers on the order page and obviously making all of that super easy to use. Being able to do one-click upsells, not only with credit cards, but also with PayPal, which a lot of people don’t think about that. One-click upsells with PayPal, and all that set up, ready to go, templated, you just use the page, you click a couple of boxes, and you are up and running.

And you don’t have to worry about hey, is it going to break today? Like, you know, so many times you go on holiday and you try to have a good time with your family, but you’re always thinking, hey, how is my business going? I mean, is the page still working? And then, you know, you’re getting notified via email from your support that hey, something is broken, people are not being able to pay, and you’re losing money. So what kind of holiday is that, right?

Why they should purchase now

The goal is for you to never have to worry about those things, and that’s what we try to do. So, you know, that’s what you set up, you set up that little sale sequence, sales page, order page, thank you page. They go there, you open the doors, great strategy is obviously limited time offer, right? You always want to have a reason why they should purchase now. So it’s available for a limited time.

We talked about this in previous episodes. Just a little recap – that can be because it’s a special type of offer, that does not mean that you need to discount the price, but that can be because, yeah, you’re going to give more extra coaching, you’re going to have some extra bonuses. Or because, yeah, it’s the first time you open the doors, and you just want to make sure that you can take care of everybody in the right way. So that’s why it’s limited. But you want to have a reason why it’s going to be open for 80 minutes. And that is super powerful, because that’s what’s going to drive your conversions and your sales.

If you say to someone, hey, yeah, don’t worry, take your time, you can buy anytime, well, that’s not the smartest thing to do when it comes to selling your access to your membership site or selling your courses. You want to have a reason why they should purchase now, why they should take action now. People need a reminder that they need a solution to their problems, and if they don’t take action, it’s not going to go away. So that’s our job, to remind them that we are here to help them get results.

The emails that go with it

So you set up that new sales sequence, nothing to it, you’re up and running. And then once that’s set up, it’s all about setting up the emails in your emailing system about that. Hey, we’re open. Hey, here are some questions I got. So you can go with a very simple sales sequence that we kind of talked about in a previous episode.

First day, it’s open. That’s the gist of the email. It’s open, here it is, you can get access here.

Next day, it’s all about, hey, reminder – I opened the doors, by the way, I’ve got a few questions. Here are some questions I got, and you’re answering those questions in the email, and then you link back to the sales page.

Third day, hey, reminder that it ends tomorrow. By the way, here are some testimonials that we’re getting. This is what people are saying, all of that stuff, reminding of the benefits.

And then the last day, fourth day, is basically, it ends tonight. This is why it ends tonight. Remember, you’re going to get all of that, these are the benefits, etc., etc. Keep it simple. No need to go with some crazy story that you need to invent or make up or like, crazy copy. Just keep it simple, just do your job as a marketer and remind people about why they should investigate this, what it will do for them, how it’s going to solve their problem, and, you know, how are you different, how are you going to help them by doing that private coaching, how you’re going to be able to have them get more results by joining that community of like-minded people, all of that stuff. Just remind them of that, open the doors, you close the cart. And that’s it. And now basically, you have just done your first launch.

Now we automate

And now the last step of the checklist, that once you have done your first couple of
sales and sales sequence, it’s time to automate. And you can then automate everything. And that’s the beautiful thing with KLEQ, is that it’s all built in as well. The automation, the advanced automation, is part of everything we just talked about. So building your list on autopilot, so everything is set up. It’s on autopilot.

And it’s all built in. Allowing them to go to a sales sequence after they have joined the waitlist on autopilot, it’s all built in. Having a countdown timer on the page that works exclusively for them based on when they actually first register in that waiting list page that we talked about, that’s going to open and close the doors to that sales sequence that is going to be unique for them, it’s built in. The email timer that is on autopilot, it’s all built in. All of those other things, you know, one-click upsells, the order page, all of that.

So now you can set up your entire campaign on autopilot, and then the next thing that you need to do is just pretty much what James does – drive traffic to your content, drive traffic to your podcast, let people know about it. And now you have this whole machine is working for you on autopilot, people join your waitlist, a couple of days later, open the doors, etc., etc. In a summary, that’s basically the entire strategy and the entire checklist of how to launch your membership site.

James: That is amazing, John. Excellent work.

So this is available for download. We’ve also got special access to KLEQ.com, with some bonus features which I can’t talk about on this podcast because it’s a publicly broadcasted podcast. But if you go and get the PDF checklist, download it, you’ll see there are some exclusive bonuses just for SuperFastBusiness listeners, with a few extra modules that are not available to the public, that will definitely help you get success with your membership.

And I know you can tell how passionate John is about membership sites, and I support this, very pleased to be able to see the results that members are getting using this platform.

John, this has just been an amazing run through. Thank you so much.

John: Thank you for having me.

James: Alright, so this is Episode 632. This is The Membership Site Series. We’ve really been enjoying putting together these episodes. Keep tuned for more. And also, if you have any questions about membership sites, you can always ask us. Put a comment. John and I read the comments, and we’d love to answer some of your questions in an upcoming episode.

So that’s it for this one. Look forward to getting the the PDF check sheet and seeing some new members coming through there in the KLEQ software platform.

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