How to turn your expertise into recurring revenue, Episode 109

with Michael Steele on June 30th, 2016

After several years of running a general WordPress design and development agency, Michael Steele and his co-founder Travis Northcutt saw the writing on the wall: specialize or die. In 2014, they shifted their positioning and the focus of their services entirely toward helping entrepreneurs create membership products and build subscription-based platforms.

I’m thrilled to have Michael on the show to talk about his experience shifting focus from one-time project fees to a recurring revenue model.

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Show Notes

Member Up helps develop a strategy for acquiring new members and can create a site for you.

Michael Steele worked with Travis Northcutt in a 50/50 partnership.

With the Bright Agency all the business came through referrals and was centered around local and small businesses.

The member subscription business slowly grew out of the original WordPress business.The member questions that came up from users were pushed to a separate landing page.

Specializing in membership sites has eliminated the process for proposals and pricing which falls under creating WordPress sites.

Recurring Revenue

You can create verticals in the membership space if you need to specialize in a specific industry.
The products and services that are generating recurring revenue are hourly retainers.
There is a niche area where your can help other people get into the membership space and migrate older sites into the membership model.
You can offer membership sites for courses or e books. These can be offered behind a paywall.
Start slow and do not be afraid to create a course and offer it to your followers. Create the content for free for your followers.
You should be writing the content to help build your audience.
You can build an audience quickly with a lot of money to put into marketing and advertisements.
Building the trust of a community takes time.
There has been a lot of documented success in niche markets that have been great for membership sites within specific communities. (ex: Seth Godin)
Build your offering around what your community struggles with.
You can set automated actions on your membership site using Intercom and the Segment feature.
Today at Member Up all projects start with a paid discovery.

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Show Notes

Recurring Revenue

Important Links from this Episode