James McAllister Online

Tag: Monetization

  • One-Off Courses Vs. Membership Sites – What’s Best For Your Info Product?

    When it comes to selling digital products – especially courses, there are a few routes you can take.

    On one-hand, you can release your course as a one-off payment. The customer purchases it, and they have access to it forever.

    On the other hand, there has been a rise in membership sites / subscription services – entrepreneurs offering access to all of their courses, for a recurring monthly fee.

    I’ve spent a lot of time pondering what option I wanted to pursue myself, and had the opportunity to really dive deep into the pros and cons for each strategy.

    In this article, I want to help you make your decision, by covering the advantages of disadvantages to selling online courses in a flat, one-time fee, vs a recurring membership option. I don’t think there is a clear best choice for everybody, so I’m going to help you decide what the best option is for you.

    The Advantages Of One-Time Purchases

    This is the strategy I’ve currently been taking for all of my courses.

    However, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best option. And for a while, I was seriously considering changing it.

    There are a lot of advantages of selling things with a one-time payment though, and ultimately that’s why I chose to stick with this payment structure.

    1. A Finished Product

    First of all, let’s put profitability aside. Not all revenue sources are equal – especially if you’re trying to build a business that gives you true freedom in life.

    When you create and publish a course, you for the most part, have a finished product. There is not a whole lot of ongoing, recurring work that has to go into it.

    While I wouldn’t consider it to be passive income, it’s certainly much closer than a membership site is (more on that later, though.)

    That being said, if you want to have the most success selling one-off courses, it’s important that you approach them with a ‘never complete’ mindset. The way I personally structure my courses, I never consider them to be complete. I will continue updating and adding to them as relevant topics enter my mind, and this only adds to the value of the courses over time.

    However, since I’m not asking people to continue paying each month, there is a lot less pressure to come out with updates that have a deadline.

    Membership sites don’t have this luxury.

    2. Psychologically, One-Time Purchases Are Often Easier To Sell

    This is true even if it ends up costing more money.

    When you ask somebody to purchase lifetime access to a product, you are only asking them to make a commitment one time. When you wish to charge them a membership fee every month, you’re asking them to continue that commitment over, and over again.

    I realized this when examining my own purchase behavior. I find it easier to spend $100 on permanent access to a product, than to spend $25 monthly to receive access to it – even if I know I’ll likely unsubscribe before I ever spend $100.

    When you sell lifetime access to a product, buyers feel like they actually own it, rather than simply renting it.

    That being said, pricing does play a key role here. Once your course price gets to a level where it requires significant thought – or even life changes to be able to afford it ($500-1000+, depending on your market) than pitching the large, one-time fee can become difficult again. In this instance, it may be worth offering a payment plan that allows customers to split the payment over multiple months, but ultimately own it in the end.

    Analyze your pricing, your market, and yourself – what option would you feel more comfortable with?

    When you ask somebody to purchase lifetime access to a product, you are only asking them to make a commitment one time. When you wish to charge them a membership fee every month, you’re asking them to continue that commitment over, and over again. Click to Tweet

    3. Less Customer Support

    Because there is only…

    1. One payment being made
    2. One clear product, with a streamlined, obvious sequence to follow
    3. One place for the customer to go

    …Customer support inquiries do not occur frequently, relative to the number of customers that you receive.

    And when they do pop up, they’re almost always the same questions.

    This makes it much cheaper and much easier for you to better serve each and every customer that does need help, which lowers your customer service costs (or make your business more passive, if you’re running everything yourself.)

    4. Students Can Set Their Own Pace

    Have you ever signed up for access to something, then went through it as quickly as you could to avoid being charged again?

    I know I have.

    While there are some cases where a sense of urgency can be a good thing, you want your students to engage more deeply with your courses, and actually retain the information that they acquire after purchasing your product.

    People that feel incredibly happy with their purchase go on to tell their friends about it. They share their excitement with others, and grow your brand for you – for free!

    Without the pressure that deadlines provide, students actually have the time to deeply engage with an even apply the knowledge they’re gaining as they’re going through your course.

    That’s very powerful!

    5. All Else Being Equal, You Get Paid Quicker

    If you sell a course for $100, or you sell access to a membership site for $25 / monthly that retains customers for an average of 4 months, either way you end up with $100 / person.

    The only difference is that in the 1st scenario, you get paid that full amount immediately. In the 2nd scenario, you have to wait 4 months to receive that extra money.

    Meanwhile, you didn’t have access to those funds to reinvest into your business, improving your products and advertising to bring even more people into your marketing funnel.

    There’s a reason most websites offer discounts for annual payments over monthly payments – having that money in advance is very powerful.

    The Advantages Of A Membership Model

    As mentioned at the start of the is article, there really are pros and cons to both options. Let’s look over the advantages that a membership offer has over one-time sales.

    1. Recurring, Predictable Income

    This is perhaps the most obvious benefit, and it’s what makes membership websites so appealing.

    Once you sign somebody up, it’s very likely that they’ll continue their subscription for more than one month. This is especially true if you’re continuing to release new content throughout their subscription.

    Churn is inevitable, and nobody stays signed up forever. However, as time goes on, you’ll have a rough idea on however long you can expect someone to remain signed up for – then takes steps to optimize it.

    In an ideal scenario, new subscriptions vastly outpace the rate in which people end their membership, and your monthly recurring income grows steadily over time.

    2. There’s Only One Product To Sell

    Some may see this as a disadvantage, but I actually see it as a huge benefit. It was this point that caused me to ponder the idea of pursuing a membership model for my courses in the first place.

    As your collection of products grows, it can be more difficult to manage the marketing to them. How do you know what product to promote in a given situation? What order should you present your products in? After somebody buys one product, what products do you promote next, and how do you set your marketing funnel up in a way to guide people towards the next sale?

    It can be a huge headache.

    Every time I release a new course, I not only have to go back and update old content to promote it, I also have to make drastic changes to all of my email marketing automations, create new ones, and change a bunch of other smaller things around.

    Because I eventually believe I’ll be releasing 30+ courses (with the help of other experts), I can’t imagine what monstrosity of a system I’ll have to deal with as everything grows.

    Membership sites don’t really have this problem. While you still have to change things around to adequately promote your new additions, you’re ultimately still selling access to one core product – your membership site, which contains all your courses inside of it.

    3. Membership Sites Tend To Be More Engaging

    If you’re trying to build a sense of community, or really engage your audience with your brand, there are advantages to running a membership site vs. selling one-off courses.

    If people are going to pay for continued access to something, they’re going to justify that action by returning to your offering more frequently. New content is more likely to be consumed, and it’s easier to build a community of members because of that.

    This may make it easier to up-sell additional services (like one-on-one coaching), but not necessarily – this would be something that you’d need to test.

    4. You Don’t Need As Much Content To Start

    Typically speaking, it’s good practice to raise the price of your membership site as its value rises  – at least to new customers.

    This also means that you can begin selling access to your membership site straight away, so long as you’re actively adding content to it, and you start your price low.

    Then, you can raise it over time as content is released.

    Or, you can also set content to be ‘dripped out’ after a certain length of time. For example, you could offer one month’s worth of content when the user signs up, then have the next month’s content done in advance – but not make it available to the member until they’ve been signed up for the 2nd month.

    This also makes it possible to create an entire year’s worth of content in advance, making the membership sites a tad bit more passive.

    Conclusion

    Becomes there are pros and cons to both strategies, it’s up to you to decide which is better for your business, and your life as a whole.

    Personally, I chose to publish one-time, digital courses as I feel it provides a better value for students, and gives me more flexibility to run my other companies as well.

    At the same time, I still feel like I’m likely to publish a membership site one day – just with different offerings. I truly love the membership business model, and I’m sure a membership site will be one of my offerings in the future.

    I’d love to hear more about the products you plan to create going forward, and how either one (or both!) of these will fit in your strategy.

    Finally, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to me.

    To your success,

    – James McAllister

  • You’re Not Done – Improving Your Info Products Long After Release

    There are a lot of beautiful things about digital products, that physical products simply can’t compete with.

    Instant distribution, for one. There’s no need to deal with picking and packing, shipping and returns. You can put it up for sale, and it’s available for consumption instantly.

    Ease of creation is huge as well – there’s no need to deal with foreign factories, import laws, and ordering thousands of units at a time to meet factory minimums.

    This is why digital products are so popular for bloggers, vloggers, and other content creators online. The risks are low, and upsides are very high.

    However, perhaps one of the greatest benefits that digital products have is the fact that they can continuously updated over time. They never have to be truly complete, and always have room to be improved. Because of this, it’s possible to start out with something very small, and have it blossom into something truly amazing as time goes on.

    In this article, we’ll go over more about why you need to be updating your products, and how to do so in a way that continues stacking on value for your customers. (more…)

  • 5 Digital Products You Can Create This Week, To Skyrocket Online Earnings

    It’s a well-known fact that creating your own product is one of the greatest ways to make money from your website, YouTube channel, or podcast.

    You build something you already know your audience is interested in, and offer it for sale.

    More so than any other product you’ve promoted before, buyers pull out their credit cards, because they already know, like and trust you.

    After all, the free content you put out is already great, so whatever you’re charging for must be really freaking good.

    However, most bloggers don’t offer their own products for sale, which perplexed me a little bit. After asking a bunch of bloggers, YouTubers, and podcasters why this is, the response was almost always the same:

    “I don’t have time to create my own product. Besides, I can just offer other people’s products as an affiliate.”

    This post is going to destroy that excuse once and for all. In this article, I will share with you 5 product ideas you can start and begin selling this week.

    Before We Begin – The MVP Strategy

    Even people who choose to create a product, often don’t end up following all the way through until release.

    Why? Because they spend too much time on it. They chase perfection, especially if it’s their first product, without realizing that a perfect product doesn’t exist.

    I’m going to tell you to do the opposite of that – release the absolute bare minimum you need, so you can get going faster.

    This is called the minimum viable product strategy and was popularized through the book The Lean Startup by Eric Ries.

    The idea is that you get a bare-bones product out into the marketplace, then refine and improve upon it over time, as you receive feedback and ideas from customers.

    It also prevents you from investing too much time in a product that may not be a huge hit, so you can minimize your losses and bounce back from something quickly.

    In essence, it minimizes your risk, both in time and money invested. As someone creating your first product, this is even more imperative. Let’s face it, the real reason you haven’t created a product yet is because you’re afraid it wouldn’t be worth it. If you thought it would be a monster success and 10x your income right away, you would have done it long ago. Everybody would have.

    Therefore, this strategy is almost always worth pursuing, and in fact, I still use it for all of my products today.

    The only reason you haven’t created your own product yet, is because you’re afraid that it won’t be worth it. Click to Tweet

    5 Quick-To-Launch Product Ideas Worth Considering

    1. eBook / Downloadable PDF

    Perhaps one of the most common products content creators sell, eBooks still work surprisingly well at generating revenue.

    You’re already putting out content that people are spending time to consume. Not only that, your audience likes it so much, they come back regularly to consume more of it.

    This makes an eBook tailored to your niche a wonderful choice for a first product.

    eBooks have several advantages to take note of:

    1. You should have a good idea of what problems your audience is looking to solve. Therefore, you know a demand is there for the product.
    2. eBooks are very straightforward to create. Come up with a topic, write the content, pay for a book cover, and publish it.
    3. eBooks can bring in additional exposure to your brand, especially if they’re well done. Selling your book on marketplaces such as Amazon, Google Play, and iBooks will bring in entirely new people who have never heard of you before.
    4. If selling the book yourself, or on a marketplace that makes this possible, you can start building a ‘buyers list’ – a segment of your email list that consists of proven buyers. These people will be easier to sell other products to later on.
    5. eBooks are a fantastic tool to generate leads for your company, and can funnel people to more expensive digital products later on.

    2. Course

    Blogging For Money: Starting Your Very Own Web Business!

    Even better than an eBook in many situations, you may consider producing and releasing a course.

    Courses have a few huge benefits over eBooks:

    1. You can charge more, even for the same content.
    2. It’s easier to up-sell or cross-sell other products you offer in the future.
    3. Courses are more easily updated as new information becomes available.
    4. Courses are better at building connections with buyers.
    5. You can include interactive elements, such as tests or quizzes.

    That being said, courses are generally believed to be harder to create than eBooks, due to everything that goes into the recording process.

    Like eBooks, courses can be created on any topic imaginable, but technical, informational courses with actionable takeaways tend to work best.

    I highly recommend checking out my own courses – particularly the blogging, email, and success mindset courses, as these will help you increase sales of your own as well.

    3. Membership Site

    If you have the resources to do it, building a membership site can be a fantastic way to pull in additional revenue, and provide even more for for your audience.

    Membership sites are closed off sites that typically offer a monthly subscription for access. In exchange, the member gets some key benefits over non-members.

    Common examples include:

    • Extra guides, resources, or tools.
    • Better access to the content creator – be it group coaching, priority support, one-on-one streams, etc.
    • Extra content you don’t publish on your normal platform (be careful with this – you don’t want to hurt the relationship you have with your existing audience.)
    • Unlimited access to a collection of products (such as all courses the content creator has created, vs buying them individually.)
    • Community access – invitations to a group of others interested in your niche, often for networking, friendships, or collaboration.

    What makes a good membership site will be highly niche dependent. Ideally, you’ll be looking for an opportunity in which you can solve problems and add value on a regular, recurring basis. This will encourage people to sign up for longer periods of time.

    However, membership sites have a few key benefits:

    • You get money coming in each and every month, from the same people.
    • If your website delivers on its promises, you should expect to retain these members over time.
    • While there will always be members unsubscribing, ideally this rate should be lower than the number of new subscribers you acquire. This means that your monthly income should increase over time at a fairly predictable rate.
    • You may consider dripping content out over time, meaning somebody always gets a certain piece of content X amount of days after signing up. This means that it’s possible to have all of your content done well in advance!

    4. Freelancing

    Freelancing at home

    One of the quickest ways to begin bringing in more revenue from your company is to begin offering freelance services. It’s direct, it’s simple, and it’s easy to sell.

    This can be providing a skill (such as writing, design, programming etc.) or something more tailored to the individual, like coaching, consulting, or tutoring.

    In my baby product company, we’re going to be rolling out of a service to provide baby sleep consulting very soon, as this is a problem our audience has indicated that there is a strong demand to solve.

    See, even if you’re not an expert at something, that doesn’t mean you can’t offer the service. You just need to be great at identifying true experts (who actually know what they’re doing) and bringing them in as part of your team.

    Bring in clients at a price higher than what you pay out to others. It’s a service business at its most fundamental level.

    For more information about why I recommend freelancing, especially as a first product, click here. You’ll also learn some tips about scaling a freelance business to massive levels.

    5. Related Merch

    One unconventional, but potentially quite lucrative method of making money from your website, YouTube channel, or podcast, is to sell related merch such as shirts, mugs, or decals that relate to your content.

    For example, check out these products that one of my companies sells a lot of:

    The data doesn’t lie – people love to make their passions known to others!

    So why do I consider this to be a ‘digital product’ that you can offer when quite literally, it appears to be the exact opposite?

    It’s because the entire process can be entirely outsourced, and you never have to actually touch the products you’re selling.

    Let’s Work Together On This One

    I own a factory based out of Ferndale, Washington here in the United States, and we’d love to work with you to get your products up and going.

    The way this works is simple:

    1. You send us your product designs. Alternatively, we can make the designs for you at a fair price.
    2. You list the products for sale on your site.
    3. When you make a sale, you let us know. We make the product and ship it to the customer.
    4. We later bill you per the terms negotiated.

    Depending on the price you choose to sell your products for, you can make significantly more than what we would charge for this sort of service, and best of all, it immediately gives you your own unique products to sell, without any of the hassle of product creation!

    If you’re interested in this service, please reach out to me for more information. We can lock you into better rates now since it’s still so early on (in fact, this is the first announcement I’ve made of this service on this website.)

    Within a few months, I’ll begin pushing this service heavily on my website, and will have to offer higher rates to new clients. Therefore, the best time to get in on this deal is now.

    Conclusion

    Every content producer needs to have a product of their own, to help fledge out their monetization strategy.

    Product creation can seem daunting and difficult, but it is only that way if you make it that way. In reality, all it requires is creating something valuable enough that people are willing to pay for it.

    I hope that this article has given you some ideas. As always, if there are any questions I can answer for you or you’d like to bounce some ideas off of me, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

    And of course, once you’ve got your product up for sale, please do us a favor and share it – we would all love to see what you were able to create.

    Looking forward to it,

    – James McAllister