Lessons, Tips and Tricks for Making Money With Interviews

One of the conventions I founded a few years ago was the Podcast and New Media Expo. We sold it two years ago to Blogworld.

One of the keynote addresses a few years ago was a Vice President of Blendtec, a blender company. Why in the world would a blender company be keynoting a new media convention? Because they were using online videos and new media to get a huge amount of traffic to their site (and actually selling a heck of a lot of blenders) by blending anything and everything.

They blended an iPhone the day it came out and they blended an iPad they day it came out.

It’s a brilliant strategy. Buy whatever is the hot gadget getting lots of attention and immediately have the company founder destroy it in one of their blenders. It’s hugely entertaining and is the perfect way to prove your blender rocks.

If it can blend an iPad, just think about how great it works on your smoothie.

As you watch the video, be thinking about how you could grab attention in your industry by doing something similar:

By the way, during the keynote the speaker blended a garden rake and a cell phone. It was a huge hit.

site marketing blendec, membership site marketing

I came across this video today and it instantly got me thinking outside the box for marketing our paid content sites.

I never considered television ads for our sites, but after seeing this, you bet I’m looking into it. It’s all about making the numbers work. For our higher priced products, I think I can.

selling content online, site marketing, starting a membership site membership site marketing

One of the sites I follow for tips on how to do marketing with video is Ask Mr Video. 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?

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site marketing, starting a membership site, website launches membership site marketing, online video strategies, Perry Lawrence

Jason Van Orden has been making a living online through membership sites and selling premium content for several years. In this case study interview, I talk with Jason about his model for finding new opportunities for membership sites, how he sets pricing, and how his sales funnel works to continually bring in new members.

Watch the video below or download the mp3 file for audio only.

Transcript:

MemberCon.com: I’m here with Jason Van Orden today, and I’ve known Jason for a few years, first through podcasting in the Podcast Expo Show that I started a few years ago and just wanted get Jason on the phone for a few minutes and talk to him about his membership sites and what he’s been working because he has really built a reputation for himself over the last few years as someone who really knows the stuff in terms of Internet marketing and membership sites overall. So Jason thanks for joining me on the phone today.

Jason Van Orden: Not a problem Tim, always a pleasure.

MemberCon.com: So how many membership sites do you own or are you part of right now?

Jason Van Orden: Well right now, I have one that’s active called the Internet Business Mastery Academy, and then here in the near future I’m going to be duplicating that model and launching something called the New Media Mastermind and that will be my second full-pledged membership site.

MemberCon.com: OK. So you’re definitely sold on the idea of membership sites as a business model?

Jason Van Orden: Absolutely. It’s definitely treating me very well. There’s lots of great advantages. I love that continuous income coming in. Its something that could be very systematized and after I launched the first one last year, it’s been almost a year now, and I just continue to grow and grow. And once I saw the immediate success of it I was asking myself why I hadn’t done it a year or more earlier. So, yeah, definitely I’ve been very pleased with the results and all of the benefits that it’s offered to my business brand and just bringing value to my customers in my community.

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building your list, site marketing, starting a membership site internet marketing, membership site marketing

In this second half of my interview with membership site owner Jeff White (see Part 1 here), we discuss pricing, joint ventures and partnerships and marketing of a membership site.

If you’d rather read the transcript, you’ll find it below the video (click on the “Read full post” link or click on the title of this post).

If you’d like to download the mp3 of this interview:
download or listen to the mp3 file. (to download, right click and then “save link as”)

Let me know your thoughts about the discussion in the comments.

Transcript:

MemberCon.com: One of the things that I’ve kind of struggled with and even in just in our first couple of weeks here with membership is how to become more consistent in terms of members. I’ll go a couple of days where I get a few members everyday and ours is $99 a month too, so not the cheapest but certainly not the most expensive in our, you know, the trading subscription sites. And then I’ll go four days with nothing and I’m thinking, “What in the world!” I mean, have you kind of figured out a way to make it more consistent or is this just what membership sites have to deal with?

Jeff White: I think that ebb and flow is just…I think that’s part of the process and I think each business is going to be slightly different from the next in regards to what causes that, what causes this high tides and low tides. For me, I know when the stock market is ugly. A lot of people are going to shy away from it, and so things will slow down when the market gets really ugly and it really doesn’t ever seem to correlate with my own trading with regards to performance maybe that I’m putting up on the website of recent, how good are we doing recently. It never seems to overlay the way I would think with that performance and instead it seems to be when the market is ugly, stock newsletters are just in less demand, and so…I think that’s to be expected. It is a little bit frustrating but one thing that I have found is that when I’m putting out free content on a very regular basis. I do get more foot traffic on the site and there are more people who, therefore, take the free trial and that does certainly help to build up membership as well, and so that’s one thing that I found even when conditions in my market aren’t very good such as when the stock market is down and fewer people naturally want a stock newsletter. It’s better for me to go ahead and give out more of that free content in order to prompt some of that traffic to arrive.

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site marketing, starting a membership site membership site marketing