I came across the post from a Tweet by Andrew Warner of Mixergy.com. It’s an excellent article and I found myself saying, “Yes!” out loud after every point.

My favorite is probably this one:

Go with your gut and do not care about fameballing. Go with what your gut says, regardless of how it might look to the rest of the world. Too often we (I) get lost in caring about what people think. It usually leads to a wrong decision. Don’t worry about becoming internet famous or appearing on teh maj0r blogz. Fame is fleeting in the traditional sense. Become famous with your customers. They’re the ones that truly matter. What they think matters and they will ultimately put their money where their mouth is.

There was one I don’t entirely agree with, but it’s only because I found it gets me into trouble:

Be a master of information. Many think it might be wasteful that I spent so much time on newsyc or read so many tech information sites. It’s not, it’s what gives me an edge. I feel engulfed.

Personally I find that the more I consume information (and therefore the less I create) our income declines. Wealthy content creators always create more than they consume, but that’s a subject for another blog post.

Tom launched his membership site, YourMoneyHouse.com, at very reasonable pricing and did so with just a handful of videos behind his membership wall. He continues to grow the content as he grows his membership numbers, and I wanted to show an example of how anyone can start a membership site with just a small amount of content and grow from there.

4 ways to watch/listen/read:

1) Listen to the audio here (click on the triangle play button):

2) Download the mp3 file here
3) Read the transcript (below the video)
4) Watch the video:

Related Links:

Lynda.com
YourMoneyHouse.com

Transcript:

Tim Bourquin: Hello everybody. Welcome! It’s Tim Bourquin from MemberCon.com. I’m here talking with a membership site owner. As we’re going to just try to start doing a little bit more, we always get some nice response and nice comments from every time I do an interview with a membership owner. And today, we’re going to be speaking with Tom Wachowski and he has got a website that is a membership site, a paid content site called YourMoneyHouse.com. And we’re going to talk to him about why he started this site and kind of how he decided on the format and the content and pricing and all that good stuff that we membership site owners are always interested in. So Tom, thanks very much for joining me on the phone today.

Tom Wachowski: Oh, it’s no problem at all. I appreciate your time.

Tim Bourquin: All right. So, this was not the first site that you had started. You started others before you kind of got to this point, right?

Tom Wachowski: That’s correct, this was the first membership site I started. However, previous sites were really more sticking my foot in the pool and brochure type of site. So, Your Money House was my first membership venture.

Tim Bourquin: And talk about the premise of this site. What are you offering for a fee?

Tom Wachowski: Well, what we’re offering is access to a library of short videos on personal finance. The whole concept of the site is simply money subjects made simple, and so somebody can subscribe to the site and when they have a personal finance question, they can find a video related to that. Now, we really arm them to make the right decision with their money so that they know what to ask somebody who is perhaps trying to sell them a product or a service, and they kind of have both sides of the story. And because the site is not ad or revenue sponsored, in other words, I don’t have insurance companies, I don’t have investment companies advertising on the site, the information hopefully is more trustworthy, and I can give the pros and cons without having to worry about offending a certain type of investment or an investment or insurance company.

Tim Bourquin: And the reason I like that you went out and did that too is because a lot of the membership site owners, the first thing they think of is that well, there’s already a lot of free information out there and there is certainly is with financial products. But, you’re right. You never quite know the quality of what you’re getting.

Tom Wachowski: You’re right. And it’s amazing. I’ve spent the last seven years in that industry and kind of have, learned what drives a lot of the information that you see for free and make no mistake about it. Not all of it but a great amount of it is biased simply due to where it’s funded from.

Tim Bourquin: Are you doing these videos yourself? Are you doing interviews? What exactly is the content?

Tom Wachowski: The content is videos of me giving lessons on all kinds of personal finance subjects from life insurance to 401(k) to annuities, to emergency, savings account, stocks, whatever you can think of. We’re adding on a weekly basis content to the site with regard to personal finance. So, they are me and it’s simply because I feel pretty confident in teaching things and making them simple, not taking here is a mutual fund and making it a big complex thing. Just breaking it down so people only need to know what they need to know to make the right decision.

Tim Bourquin: And I see you’ve got the pricing there. It’s very reasonable, $5.95 a month, $15 quarterly, and $50 annually. How did you kind of come up with that pricing model?

Tom Wachowski: I wanted something that was going to be a pretty good value for the client or for the subscriber I should say, and I also wanted when I say value, as the site when we started, we launched late last year in late ‘09 and we only had about, five or ten videos up. So, it would be crazy to ask somebody for a whole bunch of money for just a little bit of content. So, the pricing went basically set in something that I thought was a great value for somebody. There’s no contract so somebody can punch in for a month for $5.95 and punch out, and get what they need to get. As we add more content, that pricing will go up.

Tim Bourquin: And I like the fact that you went ahead and launched the site and offered it for membership even though you only had just a small amount of content because I think that’s another mistake people would they think that they have to have years of content built up or certainly months and months before they launch, and I like the fact that you decided not to do that.

Tom Wachowski: Yeah, and I’m looking back and I’m glad I did that too because I had a lot of reservation. I mean, I had that thought you just described. I need to have this giant library of content, and I sat down and thought about it. What do people really need right now? And those are the first videos I put out. I’ll give an example. We have a YouTube channel that had some of the videos on there for free, and it makes it very easy obviously to track the analytics on YouTube. And one of my first videos was on emergency fund. I think it was titled “What is an Emergency Fund?” And I’m telling you, as simple I guess maybe to me because I have this background on finance, but as simple as that subject sounds, I expected just a few hits. I’m like, “Ah, this is easy. We’ll just get a few people to watch.” That has been the most popular video, so that really affirmed to me just get the thing launched. Because you know what, that one video might have saved somebody from some predicament because they learned what an emergency fund is, how to set one up, et cetera, et cetera, rather than if I had waited to launch that site. I mean, I can’t tell you that somebody was, in a better spot because of my video, but who knows? Launch the site, get the information out there. What are you waiting for, you know. I mean, this is a short game. We’re only on this planet for so long. What are we waiting for? Launch the site. Help people.

Tim Bourquin: That’s a good thought. Now, how do you decide how much free content you put out there versus just premium content?

Tom Wachowski: it’s really I don’t have a structured method to decide that yet because I’m still doing a lot of testing on what people are interested in and what people are not interested in. So, when I decide to put something up for free, well first of all, right now there’s a three-day subscription to the site for free so all content in essence right now is free for three days. But, that will be changing to a we’re going to be changing that format to just “Hey, you’ll get three free videos. You can pick any three but you get three and then you got to start paying.” And how I decide which of that is free, and which I put on YouTube and which is protected behind the premium packages really I feel when I complete a video, I kind of go “Well, is this something, where is the value in it? Is this sort of a video that would be valuable?” Not so much in monetary compensation to me or monetary loss to the, to the I think the subscriber ’cause he is going to pay for it, but where is the value and how much this would help somebody. Is this something that could drastically change somebody’s life? That will really put a lot of weight on just putting it out there for free ’cause you can always take it off, you know. You can always put it behind the membership site. And, well probably as this site progresses or just cycle through, there will be a video that will be in the membership site and I will throw it out for free for, a month. And, I’m not out to make billions of dollars here. I’m out to help people make smart decisions with their money. So there’s really no structured method to what I put out there for free and what’s going in the premium area.

Tim Bourquin: Now, is this sort of a way to get clients as well or have you decided this is going to be a stand-alone product and you’re not going to use this?

Tom Wachowski: I really do not want it to be a way to get clients because that raises the conflict of interest, and I don’t want that. What I want is people to be able to go to the site and go, “You know what? I can trust this content. There is no bait and switch here. He is not trying to get me to become a client,” for example, as you say. “He is really trying to help me make the best decision.” And I talk a lot about this with my wife. It’s like, I’ve almost thought in my head to take it to the extreme. Anybody who would want me to work with them from a financial planning standpoint, if they had gone to the Money House site, I’d almost they know, but I haven’t decided on that and I haven’t had that issue pop up yet, but there’s not a way the intent is not to get clients. No.

Tim Bourquin: Now, you mentioned YouTube. Is that then your number one place to get traffic back to your site or are you using other methods?

Tom Wachowski: We’ve got a YouTube site. We’ve also got a Facebook page and a Twitter account. So we, as we add content, we update via all those avenues, and I honestly couldn’t tell you which one of those are sending the most traffic to the site. I just have not advanced enough in my analytics ability as to be able to pinpoint that, so I don’t know the answer to that. I don’t know which one is sending the most content. Now, when I look on the analytics, Google Analytics, the majority of the traffic is coming from direct to the site. So I might be able to read that as people going to YouTube and saying, “Oh, go to Money House and type to get in the browser.” I don’t know. I’m just not a I’m not I’m not yet up to speed on all the analytics stuff quite yet.

Tim Bourquin: Now, that’s good. It’s a work in progress for all of us of course. Now, why videos? Did you try text and maybe just audio too?

Tom Wachowski: Well, because I think it’s easy for somebody to sit down, press play, and watch a video for ten minutes. Reading on the internet is cumbersome I think. I don’t think a lot of people like to read. So, the idea of the video really came from A, people are really, really good at sitting down their couch, picking up the remote control and turning on their TV. They know how to do that. They are much easier and much more they’re more friend what’s the right word? They can really wrap their head around that motion versus going to sit down in a chair and pick up a book, which essentially would be similar to reading something on the computer screen. So I really thought “Hey, people know how to watch TV. They’re really good at it. So let’s make it easy for them to learn. Let’s put it on TV. Let’s put it on video.” That’s really where the concept originated from, that making video over text.

Tim Bourquin: I don’t see a live box or an email newsletter box of some sort. Are you not building an email list at this point?

Tom Wachowski: We are building an email list and that’s a great point you bring up. When we had this site designed originally, we had an email box in there, and the developer who I hired to build the site really had trouble making that work. Looking back, I now know he probably didn’t know what he was doing. Phase two of this which hopefully will be phase two of the homepage I should say which will hopefully be done this year will absolutely include, a free list or a list-building mechanism, unlike the AWeber forms. Those are pretty common. So that is a critical error in the site right now, which is on the front burner to be fixed when we do a remake of the homepage here this year.

Tim Bourquin: And the site is beautiful. I mean, even phase one, it’s very attractive. Can I ask what you paid for a site like that or what you paid for the site?

Tom Wachowski: Yeah. We hired a company out as customers only to put that together and we paid just over 10,000 to have that site done. That includes all includes everything, incorporating the membership, aMember and all that stuff, and I shopped around to about five different developers because this is not my my area of expertise, Tim, is in teaching money. My area of expertise is not in building websites. I tried. I tried to do the WordPress thing. I tried all that stuff. I tried learning and I sat down and realized, “Don’t do what you’re not good at. That’s a waste of time.” So, we found a company that we really liked and we paid them right it was just over I think like 10,250 or something like that, and they did build an absolutely beautiful site. It was a lot of I mean, there were a lot of candid meaning, to get what my vision was onto that computer screen, but they did a beautiful site. Now, I’ve since learned that the coding in it is not the most search engine-friendly thing. So, we talked a minute ago about on the front burner of getting that signup box on the homepage. On the burner right behind that front burner is doing a coding cleanup and that’s going to be part of the change that we’ll do this year.

Tim Bourquin: Right, And you mentioned at the beginning, and I didn’t really touch on it right then, but you said that you’ve got that three-day free trial. So, it sounds like they could theoretically, people always seem to think the worst, right? Somebody could go and grab all the content and leave before the free trial. This is why you’re kind of going with maybe just the three videos and that would be the trial.

Tom Wachowski: That’s exactly right.

Tim Bourquin: All right. And, the reason I like the pricing too is that at $5.95 a month, it’s almost like, it’s a Venti Latte or whatever at Starbucks at that point, right?

Tom Wachowski: Right.

Tim Bourquin: And so once you get people on board, I would imagine the stick rate is pretty good at that price.

Tom Wachowski: Yeah, exactly. Now again, I’m shy in analytics so I couldn’t give you numbers ’cause I just don’t know them. I just don’t I need what I need to do is find an expert on analytics and hire them.

Tim Bourquin: Right.

Tom Wachowski: I just want to sit down and then look at the screen and see the numbers, how to actually gather the analytics. I just don’t have I have no interest in them but I know that’s an important part of any internet business. You have to be able to measure things. That’s a big deal. So, we’re getting there. We’ll get there.

Tim Bourquin: Yup. And that’s Again, it’s about putting it out there and not waiting for every single piece of the puzzle to be in place before you put your shingle out there which is great. Now, the videos themselves, did you have to teach yourself video editing?

Tom Wachowski: Oh yeah, absolutely. It’s actually a funny story. I the short of it is, Final Cut Pro is the premier editing program out there. So, going into this, I thought I don’t do I’m one of these guys that kind of try to do things right the first time. I thought, “Final Cut Pro, bam! We’ll do that.” So, it’s a $1200 program. Well, thanks for that and a college roommate that worked with Apple that was able to get it for me half off. And I tried that program in and I couldn’t even figure it out. For two days I sat in front of the computer, I could barely get a footage offloaded to it. So I ended up downgrading myself to Final Cut Express. I learned that programs using Lynda.com, a great site for learning computer programs, and taught myself how to edit in about two or three days. And my editing, if you watch the videos, is nothing fancy, you know. It’s very simple editing. So I do all the editing myself. Now as we speak, I have a bid out to hire an editor so we’ll see what happens with that, because it really takes, I’ll do 60 minutes of footage and we’ll produce about four videos, and to edit 60 minutes of footage is a good two to three hours for me, and my time, I need, I’m hiring that out. If you get what I’m saying, that will be I delegate it to somebody who knows how to do it better and can do it faster.

Tim Bourquin: Sure. Yeah. And so that you can create on doing what you love and it sounds like you’re on the right track there. You’re not willing to spend all kinds of time on doing stuff that is not your forte.

Tom Wachowski: I tried. I dipped my toe in the pool and it was too cold, so enough of that.

Tim Bourquin: In addition to the membership sites, have you thought about in the future doing other products that are one-off based, maybe individual purchase type of things?

Tom Wachowski: Yeah. As a matter of fact, right now, I’m working on a site called PayMyFamilyIf.com, Pay My Family If, and what it is going to do is market an e-report or an e-book on how to buy suitable term life insurance at the best price. My venture is in the industry of financial planning, you know. Life insurance ends up being one of the foundations of the Money House, going back to the Money House analogy, and what I found is people don’t even know where to start. They don’t even know where to start. So, we’re going to try this, this report and see what happens.

Tim Bourquin: I like the idea too as we finish up here. You’ve got a gifts link, what you don’t see in a lot of membership sites. I’ve maybe only seen one other one. In fact we interviewed them almost a year ago. What made you think to put up a gift there so that somebody could actually buy a membership for somebody else?

Tom Wachowski: Because if you look at the statistics on uncomfortable conversations, you have conversations about religion, you have conversations about politics, and above both of those is conversation about money. Families don’t like talking about money. And eventually, what that leads to is a lot of pain in families, because for example, somebody may die and, nobody knows where the money is and then brothers and sisters end up fighting over it. So what I wanted to do is have a way to non-threateningly or non-intrusively people could offer the ability to learn about money to, somebody that matters to them, to their brother or their mom or their dad and not be like “You need to do this.” It’s more along the lines of “Hey, here’s a great resource. I thought of you. You could learn about money. Check it out. Here’s a gift. I paid for it. Go on there. Watch videos.” A way for people to help other people without getting uncomfortable about it.

Tim Bourquin: Right. Well, this has been great. I really wanted to do an interview with somebody that was relatively new with their site because we’ve been talking a lot on MemberCon, the blog, about just getting started, just not waiting for everything to be perfect and just do this business. The site looks like fantastic. I’m sure you’re going to do well. I’m sure you’re going to get all those puzzle pieces in place. But just to have to show an example of somebody who said, “I’m not going to wait for everything. I’m just going to put it up there and get started.” I like that a lot. So, congratulations on that.

Tom Wachowski: Absolutely. Absolutely. What are we waiting for, you know. Let’s go.

Tim Bourquin: Right. All right. Well of course you can go to YourMoneyHouse.com to check this out. We’ll link to it above the transcripts of the video and audio as well. Tom, thanks very much for your time today. I appreciate it.

Tom Wachowski: Thanks, Tim. I really appreciate it and hopefully we’ll help some more people out there.

Other membership site owner profiles:
- Selling Content to a Passionate Community: DVDs to Membership Sites
- On Launching a Membership Site – Part 1 (membership site owner Jeff White)
- On Launching a Membership Site – Part 2 (membership site owner Jeff White)
- Membership site owner profile of Don McCalister, Part 1 and Part 2

Even worse, we judge the value of that content based on the number of comments. More comments = more value. We couldn’t be more wrong.

Everyone gives lip service to “the community” and bloggers the world over talk about having a conversation with their community in the comments.

The trouble is, lately I see very little value in the comments on the most popular blogs.

“Great post as always, John! I’m definitely going to use some of those tips!”

Hang on a second while I gag with dry heaves. The writer of the post feels great and the commenter sneaks in a link to their site – which is truly the only thing they care about anyway.

Additional value added to the conversation with their lame comment? ZERO.

Now don’t get me wrong. I dig comments just as much as the next guy. On a blog the size of this one, the comments have introduced me to new colleagues and people I feel I know and count as friends. And it IS nice to get good feedback on a post you worked hard on.

But it seems to me that most people these days just use them to get a link and some extra traffic to their site. Do they really give a crud about adding their two cents? Rarely.

It doesn’t start that way. A content site begins with great intentions and when the audience is relatively small (like on Membercon) the conversation in the comments works – it DOES add value to the post itself.

But something happens along the way. The traffic grows to the point where it draws the attention of a lot of people – people who want some of that attention for themselves and their own sites. The comments go from “adding value” to “wasting time” or worse. Popularity breeds haters and haters love to give the blogger crap in the comments. And for some twisted sense of “transparency and open conversation” the blogger feels they need to leave that garbage in there.

Not me, by the way. Say you hate my guts in the comments and that bad boy is getting deleted as soon as I see it. It’s my site and I’ll do what I want with it. I don’t live by that warped code many other bloggers do – and neither should you. It does nothing to add to the conversation or help you sell your content.

We actually get more email about posts we write than we get comments. And several excellent blogs I read daily rarely get comments. I don’t comment simply because I don’t feel like a comment that says, “Nice post” and little more adds any value to the post itself. I only comment when I truly have something I think would add to the message the author has put forth.

All this is to say two things:

1) Let’s all stop judging the value of blogs and content by the number of comments they draw, and
2) Don’t worry if your blog or membership site doesn’t have a lot of comments. It says nothing about you or the value of your content.

In fact it probably means your readers respect you enough not to fill your site with useless drivel.

And if you are in the position of getting a lot of comments, are they adding value to the conversation? If not, maybe it’s time to turn them off – or at least delete any that don’t give your readers good information that adds to what you have already said.

The key for all of us is to figure out how to get comments back to adding value to the post itself – not to the commenter. How about charging ten cents to comment? I bet it would go a long way to making sure the commenter has something worth saying.

Now I dare you to leave a comment. No charge.

There’s a “line” somewhere that everyone has in their mind. It’s a line in your head that, when crossed, feels like you’ve done something unethical or dishonest. The line is different for everyone. For some people, the line stops just short of outright fraud. (“As long as I give them something for their money, no matter how pathetic, I feel OK.”)

For some bloggers, the line is crossed the moment something is sold. That’s fine for them – to each his own. But we’re not willing to have our “line” be the poverty line either.

People begin discussing “the line” right about the time they decide to put a lightbox on their site to capture email addresses to grow their list. 5 years ago that might have been where our line started. Except we weren’t making money with our content sites.

I admit that our “line” has moved a little over the years. We don’t know where where it will be 5 years from now, but one thing is for sure – “the line” will never be moved beyond the point where we feel uncomfortable giving out our website address to friends or family.

I also know that trapping people on our sites so that they can’t figure out how to leave is crossing our line. Some internet marketers have become so desperate that confusing their visitors when they try to leave is their only option. Do people really say to themselves, “Damn, I can’t figure out how to leave this website! I guess I’ll buy something…” That seems a stretch.

Then again, I can never figure out who’s buying the percocet and viagra from the spammers – but someone must be since they keep spamming away.

I visited a site this morning selling some Google AdWords “secret” that I literally couldn’t leave. I’m a pretty web-savvy guy so when even I get fooled into clicking a “Cancel” button, I’m surprised. I had to close the entire browser to get away.

These types of pop-up box tactics or sites that refresh to a different page with a different product for sale are well beyond my “line”:

Where’s your line? Let us know in the comments…

As you can imagine, there were a host of problems right from the start that made the site difficult to execute. The obvious issue of trying to ensure the comments you were viewing were for the right “John Smith” you had a date with that evening was just one of the many, many issues we tried to tackle. Privacy issues were another.

But there were also a number of interesting things we came across that we didn’t expect. When we floated the idea to several people in the digital identity industry as well as several people who study online ethics, one person’s comments struck us as odd. She stated that such a site should include the ability to control every piece of information about the person being commented on. In fact, she truly believed that everyone should have full control of their own reputation online. This made no sense to me. In the offline world, a person does not have control over their reputation. Sure, you can act in a way that improves your reputation, but ultimately your reputation is controlled by everyone who knows you. It’s something that can be tweaked and adjusted based on your own behavior, but full control? I don’t think so.

So why should the online world be any different? Just as a poor reputation can cause you to lose out on a job opportunity (or a date) in the offline world, the online world can have the same affect. With one exception – there is no central database of “reputation” that people in the offline world can go to. Prior to the world wide web, you had to connect to someone who knew a person to get their opinion – and then it was just one person’s opinion. Today, Google, Yahoo!, MSN and more offer a central database of information on people. And it is a database that doesn’t forget, forgive or die. That old friendship that soured five years ago could be forgotten as lives moved in different directions. But the nasty comment you left on your blog and later regretted – Google never forgets that thanks to the magic of caching – even if you delete it.

It would be interesting to have two types of search results that I could view when I was searching a person – what they wanted me to see, and what the search engine thought was the best overall representation of that person. When I search for John Doe, another button perhaps would be added to Google’s home page under the search box: Google Search, I’m Feeling Lucky, and….”John Doe’s Results”, where I see the results that John wants the world to see when they search on him.

In the end, the online world operates a lot like the offline world when it comes to reputation. Just like an offline jerk can begin to improve his reputation by being kinder to his fellow human beings, you can massage your online reputation by adding connections and content that pushes the past further into the past (and in this case, further down in the search engine results).

You do have control over your online reputation – to a point. An article by Wall Street Journal reporter Julia Angwin is a good example of how a person can do just that.

By the way, we never launched the dating reputation site. In the end, we felt that unless we required everyone who left a comment on their date to use their verified real identity, it wouldn’t be of much use. Unless, of course, the goal was to ruin your date’s reputation.

People just weren’t ready to use their full identity online back then – they still aren’t actually. But as a content creator and website business owner, you don’t have a choice. I see so many content sites trying to sell something without a shred of information about who is behind it. I guarantee they don’t sell a thing. Nobody wants to buy from someone who doesn’t trust their customers enough to let them know who they are.

If you want to start a successful membership or subscription or content sales site of any kind, get used to the fact that people will know your name.

4 ways to watch/listen/read:

1) Listen to the audio here (click on the triangle play button):

2) Download the mp3 file here
3) Read the transcript (below the video)
4) Watch the video:

Transcript:

Tim – MemberCon.com: Now, you have a forum, which is really busy. I’m looking at it now. Are only members allowed to comment on the forum?

Don McAllister: No. No. Anyone can join. You have to become a member of the forum, but you don’t have to be a ScreenCastsOnline member to access the forum. I did initially set up a members’ only sort of area on the forum, but to be honest I’ve not really leveraged that very much. I don’t use it very much. I did in the early days. I sort of had conversations with the members in that particular forum, but I tend not to do much in there now. And to be honest, the forum itself is pretty much self-managing, which is a good thing. I did find a couple of people in the early days who were really, keen and frequently on the forum and they’ve done moderators. So in effect it self-runs, although it’s set up.

I mean I’ll drop in. I always go in every week and start a new thread to do with the show so that people can actually talk around, what I’ve discussed on that week’s show. I’m making extra information and, they can give comments about the show. So, that’s something that I regularly update as part of my workflow publishing the show. But everything else, the chit chat forums and their requests for help – it will be too difficult for me to actually manage that on a day-to-day basis. So, the moderators. And really the community of people on there is super. most of them are very knowledgeable. Everyone’s very helpful and it’s very friendly. There’s no spamming. There’s no aggression in the forums. it’s really what I feel to be a really safe place for a new Mac user to go to because they will be helped out. It’s a really valuable resource.

Tim – MemberCon.com: I like the idea. That’s interesting. Most people that start a membership site, they put the forum behind the wall as well. You’ve decided not to do that and in a way I can see that being a really nice marketing tool. You’ve got the members talking about how great the last video was. Maybe it’s enticed people to join up and at the same time, you haven’t had to worry about trying to get that momentum going on the forum?

Don McAllister: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, very much so. I mean the only thing I might – in retrospect what might be better would be to actually put the discussion on the show page itself. on the main site rather than over on the forum. And I think I need to use testimonials a bit more. Because, I get tons of really good feedback on the forum for every show and that sort of – it’s definitely not behind the wall, you know? Anyone can see that, but they have to go to the forum to see it. When I get time to redesign the site, I might actually bring that across and actually put that on the main page for each show.

Tim – MemberCon.com: Now, you’ve been creating content for awhile. You’ve got a ton of HD video already up there. Do you find yourself struggling at times to find out what the next show’s going to be or has it always been easy?

Don McAllister: It’s fairly easy because the Mac market, it’s a rapidly evolving market. There’s tons of software available. Apple themselves, bring updates out. What I’ve tried to do, it always has to be something that I’m interested in. I never do a tutorial on a bad product. If it’s a bad product, I just won’t cover it. So, again that goes into the recommendation engine type of concept as well. So, it always has to be something that I’m interested in or more importantly something I think that, the viewers would be interested in. And if I can sort of expose something that people don’t realize or is, hidden away the more the better. So, I like to sort of bring the best out in a particular application set in its context and that gives people value. They’re not just, learning the nuts and bolts. They can see how it works and where it would work and where it might fit in with what they do.

Yeah, I mean there are weeks when I sort of scratch my head when I’ve got, a choice of things that I want to do and I’m not quite sure which one to do next. But there’s a ton of stuff. And also, I get loads of suggestions from people asking me to do stuff. So I’ve got a list, as long as my arm of applications that people want me to cover. So, if ever I do run out, I’ve always got that to fall back on.

Tim – MemberCon.com: And video is really time intensive. Have you been able to systematize it a little bit to make it easier?

Don McAllister: Not really. It’s still probably, the most intensive part of the workflow. I mean that each show now is never normally less than 30 minutes. Sometimes it goes up to 45 minutes. And, it’s sort of compressed into the latter half of the week. So I’ll try and sort of do the recording on a Wednesday and try and do the editing on a Thursday and then do all the postproduction stuff on Friday to get it published.

I mean obviously, I’m becoming faster as I get more experience and I’m now faster at editing. And there are templates I use and there are a set of tools within the editing suite that I use now that I’m quite familiar with. So, the process is speeding up just because of the experience I’m gaining.

And there’s a lot of automation as it regards to the encoding side of it, which is another big part of video. once you’ve corrected your video, you’ve then got to do the encoding and the transcoding and then the uploading. So, again there is some automation there whereby I’ll take a master file and drop it on an icon and that will generate the four different versions of the show that I need and I can just, let that go ahead. So, yes and no. It’s certainly not fully automated but there are levels of automation in there that speed the process up.

And investments in the kits as well. I took the decision early on. And again, one of the reasons for going full time is that, the show pays for my Mac addition. So it’s easy for me to justify buying the latest and greatest Mac gear and, certain specialized stuff that I need. special video, encoding cards and stuff and that is all tax deductible and it’s part of a legitimate business expense. So, that’s good as well.

Tim – MemberCon.com: Do you use iMovie still to do the video editing?

Don McAllister: No. No. No. I’ve moved on to – well I actually use a couple of applications. Now, I use one called ScreenFlow, which is the thing I use to capture. Now ScreenFlow itself does have an editability and that’s sort of optimized for a screen capture. You know that’s a total reason for being glued. It’s a screen capture and an editing tool. But because I’ve been doing this for awhile I actually use Final Cut Pro and, I’m familiar Final Cut Pro and there are some aspects of ScreenFlow which are limiting for what I normally do. So, I capture in ScreenFlow and then actually I do most of the well all of the editing in Final Cut Pro and use Motion as well for graphics and titles and stuff. So, yeah they’re the current main tools that I use.

Tim – MemberCon.com: How about affiliates? I know you’ve got a tab up there for them? Are they a big proportion, a big portion of your memberships or have you not kind of gone down that road?

Don McAllister: Not really. Well, it was something that I thought I’d sort of put forward. But it’s certainly not a big deal as far as I’m concerned, you know? I get the occasional sale come in from the affiliates. I see the clicks coming through, etc. But no it hasn’t been a significant part of the business to be honest, although it’s nice to have it. It’s good that people, enjoy the show and support the show that they would want to become affiliates. So in that respect it’s good. But it certainly doesn’t generate a ton of revenue to be honest.

Tim – MemberCon.com: You’ve mentioned maybe even off recording that you do a lot of marketing just by word mouth? People hear about it and they hear about how good the content is. Are there outside of word of mouth or do you upload portions of the premium videos to YouTube? What kinds of things are you doing to try and get some exposure?

Don McAllister: Well, to be honest I sort of haven’t pushed very hard in sort of traditional advertising. I’ve obtained the occasional sale on the site now and again from an affiliate. But most of it is word of mouth. And the good thing with it being a Mac podcast is there is a large Mac podcast community and, that’s sort of cross promotion. Well, not so much cross promotion to be honest because I don’t really promote other Mac podcasts on ScreenCastsOnline, although I do participate in a few Mac podcasts other than ScreenCastsOnline. So, the Mac Jewelry, I do the Mac Roundtable as well and these are also like pundit type, panelist type shows whereby we discuss what’s going on in the Mac world. And, that’s been a really great way of getting, the brand out, the ScreenCastsOnline and myself as well.

Now, it’s only really in the past six months when I’ve started to take it more seriously sort of promoting sort of myself. Because it was always that, I hid behind the camera and I didn’t really appear on screen. The screen casts were just the desk top. But it’s only really been the last six months when I’ve come from behind the camera. So, now I’ve set up a YouTube channel and I do sort of like video comments pieces to camera. So you can actually see me in the studio and I’ll do one or two sort of video comments every week where I just either talk about the case, or I talk about the show or I talk about what’s going on within the Mac world.

And on there as well, I’ve set up playlists for hints and tips for the Mac so these small two or three-minute clips. You know just a little small hidden thought tip on what’s going on to the Mac. I’ve put the tray list for the member shows as well and I do like a 90-second to 2-minute trailer just describing what that particular member show is all about. I put them up there as well so people can see them. So, a little of that, but it hasn’t been within the past six months that I’ve actually started to look at that seriously.

Tim – MemberCon.com: One of the things you touched on was doing comments about other things outside of just the business. And I noticed in your Twitter account, you do a ton of tweets and you’ve kind of combined your individual persona with the business and do talk about both. That’s been a struggle for me. I’m not sure whether or not my website should have its own Twitter account and I personally should have a Twitter account but you seem to have blended it pretty well.

Don McAllister: Yeah. I mean I have got a separate Twitter account, I’ve got a ScreenCastsOnline Facebook fan page, but I still can’t get scripts with Facebook. It still does nothing for me. I hate going on to the site and I really don’t. I don’t know Facebook really is more for personal use than business use to be honest. But I sort of followed the trend that, you should have a Facebook presence so I have a Facebook fan page.

What I tend to do is I have a Twitter business account. Sort of an actually online Twitter account and I’ve linked that to the Facebook page. So whenever a new show comes out I’ll go to Facebook and post the details of the show and that will then post across to Twitter on the ScreenCastsOnline account, which has relatively few followers. I think 500 or 600 followers something like that.

But my main account, my Don McAllister account on Twitter, yeah, you know? I mean most days it just sits on the corner on my screen. I monitor it. I will tweet away about sort of what I’m doing that day about nothing too personal to be honest. It’s maybe all to do with Mac. there’s a great bunch of people on there that are all Mac heads and we converse on Twitter. And then I will, throw in the occasional business related one, but never blatantly. I’ll post about my daily blog posts ’cause again I have a blog, TheMacScreeCastGuy.com and I try and do at least one blog post a day. I can’t always keep to that to be honest. But if I do produce a blog post I’ll post that in the Twitter stream. So, I would think the ratio is probably, even up to like 30, useful normal conversational tweets to like one sort of business related tweet really. The ratio is very low for, trying to promote myself or the business. It’s maybe all – I’m just a normal Twitter user that tweets away about the daily activities.

Tim – MemberCon.com: Nice. I notice you have some free tutorials on your site as well. Have you come up with a good ratio of free stuff I’m going to put out to promote the premium stuff versus…?

Don McAllister: Yeah.

Tim – MemberCon.com: too much and having too much free?

Don McAllister: Yeah. Yeah. Well, it’s again and that’s something that sort of evolved over time. I mean initially it was completely free. I felt bad taking away free content and replacing it with paid content. So, in the early days, the very first take was – it probably goes back to the $25 for six months. That was only for one member show every month. So it was one member show and three free shows. The member show that was restricted to members plus it was in HD so I sort of removed the HD side from the free shows. And I also introduced sort of chapter markings as well to make the shows easier to navigate for members.

And then I went from, the one member show to three free shows a month to alternate weeks. So, one week would be a member show the next week will be a free show. And that lasted probably for the past two or three years. Up until when I sort of took the decision, not longer after blog world actually was sort, blog world I was sort of thinking about it then and I decided that as from January I was going to completely flip it and do one free show a month to three member shows and also increase the price. That’s when I put the price up to the $57 for three months. So, at the moment it’s one member show to three free shows.

Again no negative feedback at all from the people who subscribe to the free shows. What I did do though is before I flipped it was to do a crazy 50% off offer for November. So that anybody who’d been with me for awhile yet was still sitting on the fence, you know I sort of said, “January we’re moving. We’re going to three member shows and one free show plus the price is going up. But, if you’re on the free feed and you want to join know now, you can get in and we’ll do a 50% offer.” And, that did get a significant number of people in that month. all the people who probably would never have paid the full price even before I put the price up and changed it jumped on board at that point. So I had quite a big spike in the membership numbers for November to get those sort of stragglers on board before I put the price up.

Tim – MemberCon.com: So, used it as a sales tool. I like that idea. Now, I know if it was me because, I have this attention disorder I’m sure that after about two or three years I’m itching to try and replicate this somewhere else. You’ve stayed really focused on this, which has always been a challenge for me and just to grow these numbers. Have you considered trying to duplicate this success on maybe a different membership site?

Don McAllister: Not really because it’s so time consuming. it really does take well all of the working weekend and longer. I mean I always say that when I left my IT job really it was sort of like retiring because I was stopping that to do what I enjoyed. But I’ve actually worked hardest since I left my full-time job than I ever had. Because it’s not just the ScreenCastsOnline, there are other podcasts that I take part in. There’s the whole running the membership site, doing the websites, all the ancillary stuff. I mean my wife has come on board now and she does a lot of the admin stuff now to help out in that respect. But there are always things to do. my time is pretty much occupied. There’s no real free space for me to branch out, which in some respect is a bad thing. But I want to focus on the show and deliver value in it.

I think when you are delivering a service like this on the net, you have to be consistent. attention to detail is paramount. You have to deliver a good product and, that’s the way people remain loyal to you. So, I can’t really see me freeing myself to do too much outside of what I’m doing now.

Again the other think process which is a time consumer that I still do myself, I suppose I could look at, getting an intern in to take some of that off my hands. But again, I see the editing process possibly, the creative process. Because, it’s never one take. There are always things that I either fluff or I need to retake. And, there’s a judgment joining the editing process when, of the best way, which take to keep and how to tie it together. So that people don’t notice there’s been a fluff. And, I enjoy that bit quite a lot. So, I might sort of try and free myself off for other projects, but certainly not at the minute.

Tim – MemberCon.com: Alright well listeners and viewers of this, check out Don’s website. It’s ScreenCastsOneline.com. We’ll put the link right here in the transcripts as well on the top above the video. Don thanks very much for taking the time to talk to us today and more success for you going forward here.

Don McAllister: Thanks a lot a Tim. It’s been good to talk to you.

After I wrote that sentence I thought, “ContinuityKing.com is a great domain name – wonder who owns it?” Ryan Lee does.

I called Ryan to do a quick interview about his thoughts on membership sites, growing an online business with integrity, and dealing with the time pressures of being an online entrepreneur.

As usual, four different ways to listen, watch or read:

1. Listen to the audio here (click on the triangle play button):

2. Download the full mp3 file here
3. Read the transcript (below the video)
4. Watch the video:

Transcript:

MemberCon.com: Hi, everybody Tim Bourquin here from MemberCon. I’m going to talk with Ryan Lee today and a lot of you probably know of ryanlee.com. He’s a pretty much a leader in terms of membership sites and giving advice and education and coaching for membership sites, but I met Ryan at Blog World Expo really briefly. Ryan thanks very much for joining me on the phone today?

Ryan Lee: I’m excited to be here.

MemberCon.com: I watch your videos and of course you notice right away that the domain is your name, you’re branding yourself as the product, was that a conscious decision because I always think down the road of selling it and branding yourself as a person is tougher to sell while, but you make more money while you own the site. Was it a conscious decision to kind of make it your brand?

Ryan Lee: Yeah. And you know what it’s a great question because for years I fought it. I fought branding myself because of your exact reasons like it’s really hard to exit, but for me this is one component of my business is something I’m going to do forever. Like I’m Ryan Lee, just like Donald Trump, he’s Donald Trump, Martha Stewart is Martha Stewart. She’s not going to sell Martha’s. She’s always going to be doing whatever she’s doing, but what I’ve also done is build a lot of other business that aren’t depended on my name. I own a lot of membership sites. I own one called strengthcoach.com. My own software called Fitness Generator, a Nutrition Generator, and I own a lot of different properties that are not necessarily tied into my name. So Ryan Lee is kind of the umbrella for a lot of my Internet marketing stuff, but there’s still a ton of things that I own that are not my name. Like I have a new magazine coming out, it’s going to be called Dot Com Lifestyle and I could have called it like I could have been kind of an egomaniac and called it Ryan Lee Magazine or something like that, but I wanted to build a separate kind of brand, and I set up some separate corporations for some of these and separate merchant accounts. So if I were to sell those, it’s easy to just slice off little pieces of it.

MemberCon.com: Yeah. I’m glad you brought up about the magazine again too because I want to talk to you about that. You’ve got the recurring revenue report, which is a printed newsletter and a CD.

Ryan Lee: Correct.

MemberCon.com: And then you talk about doing an actual print magazine now?

Ryan Lee: Right. In case, I don’t have enough on my plate.

MemberCon.com: OK, you’re right, exactly, exactly. But I’m curious about that decision because of course prints are having a tough time right now and Internet is all about making it easy for digital downloads and things like that, did you find that people are signing up more for membership stuff these days if they get something physical on mail?

Ryan Lee: Yeah. Well, think about what I just said before, right? What did I just say?

MemberCon.com: Everybody’s doing it, yeah.

Ryan Lee: When everyone’s doing one thing, I like to do the other.

MemberCon.com: OK.

Ryan Lee: Because there are always opportunities. So you’re right, a lot of people are going digital, but right now my business 95% of it is digital and online, but there’s still something about getting that physical thing in the mail. It’s still hard to sit on the toilet with your laptop. As disgusting as it sounds, but it’s still hard to go to the beach with a laptop and read it in the airport, like there’s still something about that magazine and what a magazine does and in physical products, it still gives you a lot of credibility. If you think about it, emails, membership sites, all these, there’s still not a 100% deliverability, but something physical coming in the mail, a CD, DVD, a newsletter or magazine, whatever, assuming their address is right, if it’s wrong it’s going come back, but that’s a 100% deliverability. So, there’s a lot better ways to reach people in terms of marketing. So again everyone is online and everyone is trying to go online, so I’m going the opposite and plus the magazine publishers, the traditional publishing, they’re just, I’m not going to generalize and say they’re all morons, but what happens is no one thinks differently. It drives me crazy with business, everyone copies everyone else and they think, “Well, we’ve been publishing magazines like just for 120 years, this is the way it’s done.” No. It’s not the way it’s done. It’s not the way it has to be done. Like I’m looking for direct to consumer types stuff where they can cut up the middleman and so few people buy stuff in newsstands anyway and bookstores can return everything for a 100% of the money back, and just no wonder why all these magazines go out of business and they rely a hundred percent on advertising. I’m relying zero on advertising. I also know how to monetize the back end. So there are a lot of advantages that I know I’m going to have in getting into the magazine publishing business.

MemberCon.com: Sure, absolutely.

Ryan Lee: And I’m excited about it. I just love challenges.

MemberCon.com: That’s good.

Ryan Lee: But I think if you can add physical components, it’s definitely a great way to add a lot of value to your membership sites and also create different levels of memberships as well.

MemberCon.com: Right. We’re jumping around a little bit here.

Ryan Lee: I love to jump.

MemberCon.com: When I signed up for your inner circle, you gave away a ton of stuff. You gave away all the videos away from your Continuity Summit, and there were all kinds of bonus material available. I mean it was really a ton of stuff and for a lot of people that probably put them over the edge, but how did you kind of decide how much you are going to give away to get people on to that continuity program?

Ryan Lee: Well, another great question. I knew I wanted to do a big launch for this coaching because right now I had a mastermind group and people paying ten grand a year, and then I had my $40 a month newsletter, but people still email me everyday all day and they want me to coach them and I don’t want to take on individual clients anymore, it’s just not worth my time and I wanted to find the program that can kind of be a middle ground where I can answer a lot of questions and it’s not too expensive, which its cost prohibitive for everyone, but it also makes financial sense to me. So I said, “OK, I need to have some kind of continuity coaching and what I’m going to do to get attention and one of my main marketing guys said, “Well, why don’t we just give away this, I did this one DVD,” which is basically I took one session from my Continuity Summit and just took that out and made it its own DVD. Which by the way is good tip like even if you’re going like a multi day event or a multi hour, try to create them a separate sessions and I purposely created that, so it could be it’s own DVD. So anyway, he said, “Why don’t we just give away the DVD,” I’m like, “Yeah, but that’s not buzz worthy.” That’s not the kind thing where everyone is going to be talking about it and telling their friends about it. So I said, “Here’s what we’re going to do. Let’s give away everything from the Continuity Summit.” And then I saw people with, it was already being downloaded anyway online. I’m like, “Screw it,” because I already pre-selling for hundreds of dollars and sold the bunch from, but I’m like, “Screw it, I’m taking a chance, I’m rolling the dice, let’s do it and it was just a big hit. Sometimes you got to have some of the cajones to just put it out there.

MemberCon.com: Right.

Ryan Lee: There are a lot of people just did the dollar and cancel right away and, yeah, absolutely, but that’s OK because now they saw the stuff, they saw that I can deliver the goods, they saw I do this with a lot of integrity and honesty and hopefully they’re going to follow me for a long time and perhaps purchase other products or maybe get a membership to the magazine or whatever. But I know I’m going to change a lot of lives and touch a lot of people and reach a lot of people by really over delivering and making it. I want the people to see this site and say, “I’d be insane to not join.” And with giving away one DVD is just not going to do it.

MemberCon.com: Right.

Ryan Lee: But this level of insanity like Mark Joyner wrote a great book, The Irresistible Offer, like creating a super irresistible offer. So that’s what I try to do.

MemberCon.com: Then in terms of the stick rate in terms of what people are doing to continue on with that. It’s an open question, but what is a good retention right to go from that dollar these days to the first and getting them charged for that first month?

Ryan Lee: It’s going to depend on obviously your product, your market and the price of membership, but in general, this is a real kind of blanket statement, if it’s a forced continuity meaning, OK, you pay a dollar and then you already put it, you automatically put into like hundred dollar month program. You probably are going to get about half of the people stick through the first billing and then depending how good of a job you do keeping them and providing good content, it could fall by 5% a month, it could fall up to 20% a month, and you just have to keep refilling the bucket. So that’s kind of a real round, a real base number, but if you think that you’re going to do a dollar trial with even optional continuity or force continuity and think that people are going to stick in and you’re going to get 80 to 90% of the people sticking up on the first billing, you’re a 100% mistaken.

MemberCon.com: Yeah. It’s just not going to happen.

Ryan Lee: Because what happens is when you lower the barrier of entry to a dollar or free, you get so many more people in the door. Like literally five to ten times as many people, but you also get a lot more tie up kickers and what you’ll notice is it’s really an interesting phenomenon, but the more money people pay, the more laid back and understanding they are with things. So there were a couple of technical issues that happens and some people couldn’t get in and we get a lot of email supports and those questions and people who paid, who said, OK, they definitely want to stay with the 97 a month like, “Oh, Ryan I know you’re busy. I know about the technical issues, so just set me up whenever you can. I just want to check in.” It was probable 90 to 95% of people who were pissed or the people who only spend a buck. What is this crap? What’s this scam? I just spent a dollar, I can’t get in, I’m going to call my credit card company and charge back right away.” But it was the people who paid a dollar, who didn’t even want the continuity? So it’s like you attract the crowd that is just there, just the bargain hunters, and you don’t want to do that either. I mean you’re going to get more people in the door, but just be prepared for that as well and be prepared for up to 50% canceling before they even get to the first billing.

MemberCon.com: That’s true, whatever reason we’ve seen that two the higher the product price, the less support it actually takes to support those people which is interesting.

Ryan Lee: It’s just so counterintuitive, but it’s amazing. Like it’s just the way it is. I don’t get it. I mean I do get it, I do because there’s different mindset and the reason the people could afford the hundred a month are because they have the good mindset and they understand I’m investing in my education. With the dollar people like, “Yeah, let me just see this crap. Oh, let me see it’s only a dollar and I should do it, let me try it.”

MemberCon.com: And I know you’ve closed it now too. And I know that’s very popular these days, is to actually close the program because otherwise people don’t take action. I mean do you see that as pretty much the trend these days? You have to open it, close it and to get that urgency?

Ryan Lee: Well, yeah. You have to give some kind of reason and when all of my marketing is a 100% transparent and open. So everything I’m doing I tell people because I can’t stand, like you used to be able to get away with the crap, you can’t do it anymore. And when you say, we’re only selling 1,000 memberships this week, like people aren’t dumb, like it’s digital. You can sell 50,000 of them and why wouldn’t you? Why wouldn’t you want more members? It doesn’t make any sense. So at least if you close it down and give a reason why and to be honest it sounds like BS, but we were really having the technical issues, so we couldn’t handle anymore. So we have it closed now to the public and I still open it once in a while, and I have a secret page where my members can get it or people on my waitlist. So we still let people in, but it’s not open to the general public. We don’t want the big influx, and you know what, my members appreciate that because I’m handling more of them. I can give them better service; I can answer more of their questions, so they’re enjoying it too. But you have to be open and honest and I can’t stay when people are just dishonest and it’s so obvious too. “We only have ten more of them, our server crashed, we only have five more,” come on.

MemberCon.com: Right.

Ryan Lee: But give us a freaking break.

MemberCon.com: The emails.

Ryan Lee: Once they start sending that crap, I just unsubscribe. I’m like, “I am never going to trust you.” And once you break that trust you just can’t get it back. And a lot of marketers, they do the churn and burn mess. They get people in, they email them to death with no content until they unsubscribe and they just keep getting more people in the funnel, but that’s not how you build relationships? I mean I have client’s who have been with me for like 11 years online.

MemberCon.com: Wow.

Ryan Lee: That come to my events, that know my dad when he comes to the events. They give me hugs. One of my kids’ birthdays, they send presents, that’s the kind of stuff, that’s how you have an impact. It’s not just about lining your pockets with more money. It’s making an impact, making connections. Like my first job for six years, I worked in the children’s hospital, that’s all I knew and it was about making connections with the kids. It wasn’t just kind of suck money out of the kids and their families, I mean, I still don’t get that world where it’s just money, money, money, and that’s all it is. It’s more than that.

MemberCon.com: Yeah. And kind of going back to that whole branding your self too, online there are so many anonymous commenters, people that don’t want to give any information about themselves to go out there and say, “This is my name and this is who I really am,” I mean that could be a little scary at times, but it’s really what works. People think that if you just put good content out there, people want to know who’s behind it, right? I mean they want to know.

Ryan Lee: Yeah, absolutely. They want to know a story. They want to know who you are, again that’s the difference you see in a real business and selling a couple of eBooks, that’s the difference. That’s the difference between five and six figures and seven and eight figures.

MemberCon.com: Right.

Ryan Lee: And the ones who do really well. And I’m not talking about the scumbags who do the CPA offers and fake blogs and the Acai-Berry, and all that crap. I’m talking about like real, legitimate businesses that are making seven and eight figures. They’re developing relationships. They’re delivering really good content there, you know who they are. It’s not some faceless corporation with some cold message. Like if you’re a solo entrepreneur and you’re running a membership site, use that as your strength. Let people know you. Let’s say, “My name John Smith and I’m the one who runs this site and here’s me on the farm and this is what we do.” Like let people into your world.

MemberCon.com: Right.

Ryan Lee: It’s such a natural and easy way to market because you’re just being you, and when it comes across people can appreciate that. Not everyone’s going to like you and that’s fine. As you said, you’re putting yourself out there, but you have to have tough skin when you’re doing this. There is no doubt about it because even this as likable as nice as you are, as much as you are trying to help, there are still going to be people who don’t like you or think you’re an ass.

MemberCon.com: Yeah. Well, the things we’re battling right now too, is we put out a ton of free content to our email and newsletter and yet we’re still getting people that say, “You’re trying to sell me something all the time.” And I think to myself, “Well, you’re just realizing this now? I mean, of course, we’re trying to sell you something, but do you remember those four-hour long interviews we just sent you the last four days and yet that doesn’t stick in their head, it’s the one pitch that you sent them.” And yet it’s a small vocal group. You have to realize that that’s not the feeling of your entire list. It’s a small group.

Ryan Lee: Right. Yeah. And I used to read all my emails and believe it or not I really am very sensitive. Like every movie, I’m always freaking crying like I’m a big baby, softie. So even for making millions of dollars, like if someone sends me an email saying, “Oh, I didn’t like this or I want a refund or I want send back this product,” it still bothers me. So my assistant’s job is basically to protect me. Don’t let me see that crap. I don’t want to see it. I don’t need to see it.

MemberCon.com: Right.

Ryan Lee: Because it puts me in a little bit of a funk. So try to shield yourself from all that crap and just say, “Hey, look it’s one person who doesn’t like it and there will always be,” especially if you’re selling any business or marketing thing, there are some people who have such a lack mentality and anyone who tries to make any money, God forbid, you’re like the devil. “This should all be free. How could you charge for this? I could just find this stuff online.”

MemberCon.com: Yeah.

Ryan Lee: First of all, I know you can, and even if you could, it would probably take you four years and $50,000 investing in education to figure this stuff out when you could pay 99 bucks and let me shortcut it for you. So go knock yourself out. They’re bitter. They’re bitter people. They’re jealous people, and let me tell you, when you still make a lot of money it definitely changes some relationships. When you put yourself out there and people know your name, your friends are going to hear about it, and that definitely changes some relationship and some friends are going to, I can’t stand this phrase and say, “Can I just pick your brain?” Like, “Can I take you to lunch for an hour to just pick your brain?” It’s like, “No. You can’t.” I just picture some of the little pick, clicking away my brain like, “No. Just here, take my book, just read.

MemberCon.com: Well, especially when it’s stuff that that’s what you sell, right? I mean this is how I make my living and so you’re asking me to do something I do for a living.

Ryan Lee: Yeah. I mean if your friends, a personal trainer you say, “Hey, you know I gain ten pounds this past three months, can you just train me for free everyday?”

MemberCon.com: Right.

Ryan Lee: Like, “No. I can’t.”

MemberCon.com: It doesn’t work that way. All right. Two more questions.

Ryan Lee: Yeah. And especially if you’re, this drives me crazy. Like I spoke at a seminar a couple of weeks ago and I went up, I did my presentation. I had a product to sell, which included everything. And I always try to help people at the event, I answer all the questions. And one guy was sucking the life out of me, twenty minutes, he wouldn’t let me even help anyone else. He just kept asking and asking, then at the end he’s like, “Oh, can I ask your cell phone I want to call you and ask you more questions.” I’m like, “Did you buy the product?” “No.” I’m like, “All right, I got to go.”

MemberCon.com: Yeah, I mean.

Ryan Lee: That to me is just rude. Like don’t bother anyone and there was no, “Hey, thanks so much for the information; how can I help you Ryan?” Nothing. “But help me. Help me. Help me. Help me more. “No. I’m not going to buy your products. Help me. Help me.” Like why would I ever do anything for someone like that?

MemberCon.com: Yeah. And you got to just realize that some people are just going to keep taking and as long as you give it to them and in some place just be nice and say, “No. I can’t do this anymore.” It’s just that line you have to do. All right I’ve kept you on the phone longer than I promised, so I appreciate your patience. Two more questions. You mentioned the virtual assistance. One of the things that I’ve even done battle with myself lately is that I realized, “God, if I train a virtual assistant, I could almost do it in as long as it will take me to train them, but that’s really short term thinking.” How did you get over that hope of saying I’m just going to bite the bullet, training this person so that at long term I can get away from doing these things?

Ryan Lee: I’ll tell you what, that was a big bullet to bite. It took me months and months to finally say, “You know what, I’m just going to do it,” because I didn’t want to hire anyone. I want to do it all myself, but I had at the time Debbie Collin who’s great. She was coaching one my friends and I said, “Let me hire this business coach to help me kind of organize things.” And we’re talking and she’s like, “You’re at the point of your business, you need to hire someone, you have to have someone doing this.” I had someone who is basically just doing some transcription for me and I trusted her, she’s really responsible and I hired her. At that time, it was like 12 bucks an hour, which felt like a ton of money, but ever since then my life changed, like my businesses grown exponentially, and I couldn’t have done it without hiring someone. So there’s going to come a time we just hire someone. It doesn’t take long. I mean, it could be as easy as just do the screen capture videos of the process, like here’s how to go into the shopping cart, here’s how to change an order, here’s how to answer the email, here’s what to say, here’s what to do, here’s how to ship this, whatever it is. And you take a day or two out of your schedule, but once you do, within a week you make it back many times over. And there are even companies now you can just outsource customers support too. There’s so many resources, so many virtual assistants, but if you’re going to run a real business, you need someone, you can’t do it all yourself. There’s going to be a definite feeling on what can accomplish with just you.

MemberCon.com: You said you hired a couple of people for the magazine side. Did you decide that they work and be virtual people that you wanted them in the office, what made that decision for you?

Ryan Lee: With the magazine, it’s interesting because I had a guy, and he was my first intern. He is twenty years old, he’s like, “Hey, I live in the area.” He’s like, “I’d love to come help you out, do whatever you want.” He paid his own ticket. He came from live event last year. I really liked the kid. He would come in a couple of times a week and just help me out and do things and really motivated and he used to run magazines and newspapers for a school, for a college, and so I hired him to run it. So he’s in my office. That’s why I got a bigger office, so he’s going to get his own office, and then I hired another basically another customer support and someone to help out with the magazine as well. So that’s a local person. I actually put an ad in craigslist. I had like 200 responses. I was going through them all, and this guy is an intern, he said, “I have a friend who I used to work with in college and she ran the school paper there and she’s really motivated,” and I came and I interviewed her and she was just great. So I hired her on the spot. So that’s how I have those two people.

MemberCon.com: All right. We’re looking forward to seeing the magazine.

Ryan Lee: It’s so cool.

MemberCon.com: Good. That’s sounds great. So let me ask you, is lifestyle, when you say about kind of the online entrepreneur lifestyle thing, so it wouldn’t be business-oriented, but more kind of outside of that or what will it be?

Ryan Lee: Yeah. It’s definitely broader, like it’s going to be the making money online stuff, but it’s not this cheesy, “Here’s how to make money with AdSense in Google.” Like, it’s not an ad stuff. It’s real life case studies. It’s real people who have gone from zero to five, six, seven figures. It’s not just the “gurus.” It’s not just gurus trying to pedal their wares. It’s literally like step by step case studies. There are successful bloggers, there are successful guys who make it on the Internet like Yanik Silver, Russell Brunson in the first issue. There’s Kristi Frank who was on the Apprentice. There’s this woman, Isabel, who was a personal trainer who created first product. And it’s literally just start to finish how they created it, plus we get some really cool columnist. In social media, there’s a really popular guy now, have you heard of Gary Vaynerchuk?

MemberCon.com: Of course, yeah.

Ryan Lee: Yeah. He’s on board. He’s a columnist and then we got some guys who are just legends like Brian Tracy. He’s a columnist talking about productivity. Another columnis, he’s going to be talking about traffic and social media marketing. I said if I’m going to do this, we’re going to get the best of the best, and we’re going to talk business, but we’re also going to talk lifestyle. We’re going to talk a lot about productivity, getting more things done in less time. We’re going to showcase getting organized the different offices and resources and calendar of events and the top links and resources like really practical stuff, but in a fun way as well.

MemberCon.com: That sounds awesome. I already subscribed like 15 magazines. This will be another great one, I can’t wait. I love magazines. I love the format, so I’ll definitely be subscribing. So I was looking on your site today just as I was preparing for the interview a little bit, and I saw your case studies and saw some of things on that site. Have you changed anything you’re doing in terms of this new FTC thing that went in the December 1st?

Ryan Lee: It’s stuff we’re looking at to now because some of the things I’m going to have start changing some of those, which stinks because my stuff as a whole is legit, like all these testimonies are all real, there’s people who are getting just incredible results, but yeah I mean it’s stuff now we have an attorney that we’re talking to and trying to go through everything because I just want to make sure that I’m protected.

MemberCon.com: Yeah. It’s a shame that the law, of course, is to protect people that just flat out lie I think about testimonials. I don’t understand why it has to totally say if it’s a real testimonial that you could not be.

Ryan Lee: Yeah. I don’t get it. Look, if I have a client that I taught from scratch and now he’s making $3 million dollars a year, why can’t I say that? If it’s true. Look, I agree I think there are a lot of sleaze balls out there, and a lot of people make up testimonials, this is a lot of crap. There definitely should be something in place, but I don’t know, we’ll see what happen but we’re still working on. If anything, I think it’s going to help me in a way that a lot of competitors who don’t really have much for platform, it’s really thin. And they rely on a lot of lies and deception. They rely on how to make six figures a month in three days that kind of crap. The FTC isn’t going after small price now, but they’re going to be gone. I mean they have no leg to stand on. It’s all a bunch of garbage so what’s going happen is the people who over the years have developed relationships, like what I’m doing. It’s going to be much better for us because all this fly-by-night people are just going to be gone.

MemberCon.com: It’s a good point.

Ryan Lee: They’re just going to disappear.

MemberCon.com: Lot less noise.

Ryan Lee: Yeah. Absolutely. And that’s what I’m positioning myself for to be the trusted voice of all this stuff. And a lot of people don’t want to do it because they don’t want to take the time, they’re too lazy. “Oh, my God, I have to blog. I have to create a new video each day for three minutes. Oh, my God, how am I going to have time?” It’s like, “That’s not, hey, bring it on.”

MemberCon.com: All right. Well, Ryan I appreciate that. I kept you on the phone a lot longer than I said. Again, I appreciate your time. Of course, listeners, very easy website ryanlee.com.

Ryan Lee: R-Y-A-N-L-E-E.

MemberCon.com: There you go. And I’m sure you’ll announce the magazine right there?

Ryan Lee: Yes. We had it announced it there and it’s going to be. The site is not up yet, but it’s going to be dotcomlifestyle. D-O-T-C-O-M L-I-F-E-S-T-Y-L-E.com.

MemberCon.com: Excellent. All right, Ryan. Well, thanks for your time today. I really appreciate it.

Ryan Lee: It is my pleasure Tim. Thanks so much everyone listening. I wish you the best and thank you.

I also like to talk with other membership site owners and find out what is working for them. One of my favorite ways to see what other membership site owners are doing is to simply click on over to their business and take a look at what they are doing to attract paying subscribers.

So we’ve started a Membership Site Directory where we’re listing paid content sites we’ve visited.

If you’d like your membership or subscription site listed, contact us – we’re always looking for interesting sites to visit and and learn a thing or two.