Turning Your Knowledge Into Membership Dollars
One of the sites I follow for tips on how to do marketing with video is AskMrVideo.com. Perry Lawrence took his experience in television production, realized online video was booming, and turned that knowledge into a profitable membership site business.
In my interview, I ask him a variety of questions about how he grows his membership base, what works in terms of free and discounted trials, his conversion rates from the $1 trial to a regular monthly membership, and how he sets pricing.
As usual, 4 ways to watch/listen/read:
1) Listen to the audio here:
2) Download the mp3 file here
3) Read the transcript (below the video)
4) Watch the video:
Transcript:
MemberCon.com: Hi, Tim Bourquin here from membercon.com and thanks for joining me for another interview today. Today, our guest is Perry Lawrence and you may have seen his website, it’s a very popular one called AskMrVideo.com that talks about using video for your website. We’re going to talk to him a little bit about that and how he uses video and suggests that membership site owners use video to promote their sites. He’s also got an eBook he’s written called Membership Site Bible, which I understand a new version is coming out shortly this year. So we’re going to talk to him about that too. So, Perry, thanks very much for joining me on the phone today.
Perry Lawrence: Tim, thanks a lot for having me. It’s a pleasure.
MemberCon.com: Well, I always like start with a little bit of background to give our listeners some idea of the context to where you’re coming from. So, when did you first decide to get into the membership site business and create revenue that way?
Perry Lawrence: Well, I’ve been doing websites for other people for quite a while and really helping other folks make money online, but it never really occurred to me that I could use that for myself. So, a friend of mine, a good friend of mine, Rich Farina, dragged me to a membership site conference hosted by actually the developer of the platform I’m using. His name is Bill Myers and his associate, who now owns the company, Tim Kerber. So, it was I guess a three-day conference and really what they spelled out was really intriguing to me and it really made a lot of sense because they talked about it being a true business, a true sellable asset, the continuity model. They didn’t use the word continuity at that time, I think we called them subscription or membership sites but it all appealed to me but even more of the point that the type and caliber of people specifically Bill and Tim, but the people that they gathered to them was just outstanding. The people who had successes in other businesses who are now porting their knowledge to a membership or continuity website and I just for like, “Wow, I’ve found my calling, I found my people.” So, I went home. I really just studied the model, studied the systems, really got very familiar with the platform, started building membership sites for other people using that platform and others and just shortly, in a short matter of time, just really put my thoughts down to paper and came out with a book called “Membership Site Bible” that did extremely well and we pulled it off the market at the beginning of this year, while we’re rewriting it, and we’re coming out with Membership Site Bible to the New Testament and things have radically changed as you know even in the past two years. So, that’s kind of the story. After I wrote the book, I was still trying to figure out my niche. I thought, well there are other people such as your self and at that time Tim Kerber and Bill are both deeply involved in teaching folks the membership model. So, I knew that’s not exactly where I wanted to end up, but finally it dawned on me, “Well what have you been doing for the past 20 years, Perry?” And so I came up with a site called AskMrVideo.com. I’ve been here for so long, I’ve forgotten all the questions and so I figured, well let’s just have people ask me and I can tell them because I either know the answer or you find out the answers very fast and that’s kind of how the AskMrVideo.com site was born.
MemberCon.com: Yeah. So do you have a background then in TV production and then you just translated that to the web video?
site marketing, starting a membership site, website launches
One of the reasons I started MemberCon was because there wasn’t a lot of quality information online about how to start, grow and eventually sell a membership site. A couple of the sites and bloggers I do trust are 
download or listen to the mp3 file
MemberCon is written by Tim & Emile Bourquin, brothers and owners of Ideas For Download. MemberCon.com is your front row seat to see what we've done that worked and failed in selling content online. Thankfully, we've been pretty successful but we promise to always show you the reality of building an online business.
