178: Secrets to Long-Term Membership Success with Limited Churn

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Welcome to the Creators MBA Podcast, your go to resource for mastering the art and science of digital product entrepreneurship. My name is Dr. Destiny Kopp and I help business owners generate consistent revenue from their digital product business without the need to be glued to their desks, constantly live launching or worrying about the social media algorithms. I hope you enjoy our episode today and my special guest today is Becky Beach. Becky is a million dollar digital product seller and coach@coachbeckybeach.com with her innovative strategies and expert coaching, Becky has not only carved a niche for herself, but has also been featured in prestigious publications like Business Insider and Forbes. And Becky, I am super excited to chat with you today and we're going to be talking about all about memberships and I know you have a successful membership and I have a ton of questions for you. But before we get into all of those, can you tell the good audience just a little bit more about you and how you help people?

Oh, sure. Thanks so much for, for letting me be on today's show. Destiny. I'm a really big fan of you and I've been following your podcast for a while now and, and the way I got started doing this was I was pregnant with my son Brian, he's now eight years old, going on nine, a few months. And I just wanted a better way because I was working, working like 60 hours a week as a web developer and, and I was just very miserable. Like I knew there had to be a better way out there to make money and know I couldn't just be under these people's thumb. Like all the, all these power trip and bosses, you know, that were having me feel bad. Like I don't, you can't make someone feel bad. But I just said they, they kind of lead me to feel bad, you know, so I was just crying and stuff and I just hated my life, you know, so I just decided to start a blog and then from there, you know, and I now earn like multiple six figures and I've sold over a million dollars worth of digital products selling printable spreadsheets, courses, you know, so.

Let'S jump into this. And I know one of your flagship is a membership in memberships. What I love about them are the recurring revenue that you're getting from the membership. So you have, you can basically, you can predict and generally you can predict how much money you're going to be making every month. So that's one of the reasons why people like to start memberships and they also like to start them for other reasons too. But tell me A little bit about why you started your membership, what drove you, and how did you even come up with the idea, oh sure, Destiny.

I need a way to make reoccurring sales. I was on a content hamster wheel. It seemed every single month I was having to create like a new course or a new product in order to get. Get my sales goal for that month. And I said, God, I just need to do like something with recurring income. So I thought maybe I should create like a digital product membership that has courses in it and, and also digital products delivered each month. Because I, I sell done for you digital products at PLR beach and it's like Canva templates. You can rep as your own and sell. So I thought, why don't I add those to the membership for people that are interested in selling digital products. That way they can get started right away and they don't have to do things themselves. They can just get a monthly membership with these products and courses on how to sell them. So it just took off and, and now I call it Business Beach Club because at first it was, it was more geared, it was more geared to people who wanted to sell an Etsy, but now it's like it's more generic.

Well, tell me a little bit more about the products that you have. You mentioned that they're digital products that people can customize and resell as their own. And where are your clients selling these?

Well, a lot of them sell them on Etsy. They're Etsy sellers and. Or they'll sell them on their own site. Because I have a Shopify store where I sell printables and other digital products myself. And I'm able to make like 10,000amonth selling those products. I thought maybe I should sell done for you products so other people can sell them too on their stores, in their Etsy. So that's how I started doing that because I got a lot of requests asking if I would be able to sell my printables that I was selling on my Shopify store with commercial use so other people could sell it too. So I thought I should just do that, you know, So I made a separate store so they wouldn't be confused in a separate brand too for that.

Now one of the things that people worry about, and it's, I think it's a valid concern, right, when you have a membership are churn, right, because you work, you do a ton of work to get people into your membership and you know, and they may leave after three months or four months or whatever, but you have Seemed to have mastered this because you have 45% of your members that have stayed in the membership since it started three years ago. So what is your secret here? And tell us all the goods because we want to make sure that we can apply this to our own business.

Oh sure, Destiny. I provide lots of benefits for my members. The thing, the most popular thing my membership offers is I do a $7 sale and also like bundles too. Every quarter there's either a sale or bundle. And a lot of members have reported getting, you know, the money back from the membership in the sale. Because I promote the sale to my three email lists. Like one email email list is personal use and then those other two are business to business, one's business to customer. And I have two business to business lists. So I promote them to all the lists because in the sale you can either sell personal use products or you can sell commercial use, you know, PLR products in the sale. So I sell both of them in the sale and I promote this sale to all of my subscribers and all of my affiliates and the people in the sale promote it to all of their subscribers. And every. And then everybody comes together and everybody gets sales from this $7 sale or even when I do a bundle. So this is a very popular draw to the membership and a lot of people will join the membership just to get involved in that sale because a lot of members have reported like so much success and also do monthly challenges. That's another good idea to get people in your membership is to do like challenges and the reward could be like more products or maybe some time with you. So what I do is I do like monthly challenges and the reward is like a 30 minute one on one call with me. If they complete the challenge, there's like a bunch of stuff you could do. And like these things have really helped my membership grow and be successful.

I want to go back to that $7 offer that you do. You said you do it once a quarter. Tell us a little bit more about that because I want to make sure I understand exactly how you set this up.

Oh sure, Dusty. What I do is I have like a form, like a Google form. It's really simple to create your own Google form. And I send the Google form to all the members and I have it in their private Facebook group too because I have a Facebook group community and that, that's also good. You should always have a community for your members. And I'll put the sale in the, in the Facebook group and also I give it to their, to the email and also put it in their dashboard. So I create a dashboard in my membership. I use ThriveCart, you know, for. For my membership. And then I put the sale in there. And then people sign up with their product and they actually will learn how to create their own sales page. I actually have a workshop where I show people how to make their own sales page and get a product up for sale, even if they're a complete newbie. And that really helps, you know, people that are new to selling get involved in this sale. So I get a lot of new sellers, and then they'll fill out the form with their product, and then I'll have my va create the sales page. There's like one sales page. It's like a shopping mall where everybody has their product on it. And then I take this sales page and I make it into the affiliate program. So I'm able to give it to affiliates to promote so that they can get sales. Because they get sales if someone buys my product. Like, that's why the affiliates will promote it, because they get sales. That someone buys my products and I'll put my product at the top. You know, that way people could buy that and the affiliate will get sales. That's an incentive for the affiliate to promote it.

So I want to make sure I understand it. So basically, your members will fill out this form and they'll submit for their product to be in this. It sounds like a pay bundle that you're putting together for $7, is that correct?

Oh, it's like a. There's a bundle and I do a. Like a shopping mall style where everybody has their product on there for $7. And then people individually, each link on there and each product is $7. So that they go to the sales pages from this one sales page. So it's like a big shopping mall, and each product there is $7. You have to sign up individually for the products and pay $7 for each.

One I got you. Okay, so that makes it more clear to me. So they fill out this form and this form, you know, the put their product in there and that will get them on this, like, sales page where all of the $7 products are listed and people can go there and buy their product. And then, you know, your affiliates are also promoting that sales page that has all those individual products too on it.

Oh, yeah. Yes, yes, correct. And then the. The members get to keep 100% of the sales they make. And I also do bundles too, where everybody has their products in the bundle. And. And I charge a fee for the bundle. So then when someone signs up to get the bundle and pays the fee, they get access to everybody's products in the bundle. I do it both ways because some members prefer a bundle because like they, they're, they're unable to get many sales in the $7 sale, especially if they sell personally used products. Because personal use products just don't do as well in the $7 sale, like PLR, commercially used products tend to do because it's like, because the business of business people are mostly interested in it.

So I, I can see why that would be such a huge drive to keep those members in your membership. And I think you've done a really good job there when you have, you know, 45% of your members have stayed in it since it started over three years ago. So that's a huge kudos to you because it sounds like you've kind of created a lot of different opportunities for your members. Let's switch gears just a little bit and talk about how you find your members organically or how do people find you and know you do a lot of organic type marketing activities. Can you walk us through some of them?

Oh, sure. Destiny. I have my own podcast where I constantly promote the membership before and after each episode, even sometimes during it I talk about my membership. Then the key to having a membership and getting organic traffic from it and, and like and signups is to just keep on blabbing about it. Like never shop about it. If you're excited about your membership, let it shoot show. Like I'm so, I'm getting goosebumps. I'm so excited about my membership because it has helped so many people. Like a bunch of people have made like multiple thousands of dollars each month since join the membership and they're able to quit their job. And one of my members earns like 8,000amonth and she quit her job and, and she's like getting increased amount of sales every single month, you know, using the tactics she's learned. And this membership is just so exciting to me because it as I know it works and I put everything that I've learned, you know, over my 10 years of doing my online business into this membership. So you pay with and you get all the content because I used to spend like $20,000 on courses, you know, to learn all this stuff, you know, and implement it and I know what works and what doesn't. So I'm just so excited about this membership, you know, and if you're excited about your membership to just keep talking about it, never stop like post on social media and post like short form videos because. Because short form videos tend to get a lot of reach like Instagram reels, Instagram stories, TikTok videos and just talk about your membership, you know, in the videos. Just never shop about it. That's the key to getting growing organically. You just, you just keep talking and talking about the membership and I could keep going on about it. I'll stop.

Well, no, Becky, I was, as you were going through that, I was laughing to myself because I was like, she just gave me a quote for social media. Just keep blabbing about it. But you're right, you just have to constantly talk about it and make sure that people are aware of what you're offering and how you can help them. And I think you're doing a great job doing that. So one of the problems I would say that or might keep people from starting a membership is they might be concerned about, you know, can I be consistent with everything that I have to create for the membership? Because with the membership, right, you're for most of them you're creating content on a regular basis. That's why your members stay. Obviously there's other things you can do to keep them to stay, which we've talked about here. But how do you be consistent or how are you consistent, I should say with delivering digital products and making sure that you are giving your members what you've promised each month?

That's a great question. Everybody needs to know about this. Well, I have hired a VA that helps me. Before I was doing everything myself and I would create three months worth of products ahead of time because one if I get sick because like back when I started the membership Covid was really going around strong and people are getting sick, you know, So I thought if I were to get this like what am I going to do? So I would create three months ahead of content and I then I hired a full time VA once membership started bringing lots of income and I met her on Upwork.com and now she works for me only she's off of UPWORK and that we work exclusively, exclusively together. She's full time and she helps me create the content and the membership like the done for you digital products that you receive. And, and, and then I mostly create the courses for the membership because I was like releasing one course a month to the membership but now I've kind of relaxed doing that. Like now I release a course every quarter or so in the membership is already so much. There's probably over 20 courses in it, right now, so you just got to be consistent. You know, it's just create like three months worth of products, you know, and always have three months of products at all times in case you get sick or need to go on vacation. And be upfront with your members, like, let them know, like when, if you have to take, you know, some time off because you're sick, you know, just be upfront, transparent. Like, don't just leave them hanging. Like they're expecting content and that could make them leave like that because they're expecting content that you're not delivering. So of course they're going to leave. Like, I would.

Yeah, I think that's a good point. And I think, you know, I loved how you mentioned in the beginning you were doing all this yourself, and then once you had built up your membership, you actually was able to hire somebody off of upwork. And I've. I love a work. I've used it a lot in my business also. Becky, before we wrap it up here, any last minute tips for the audience that you would like to communicate?

Oh, sure. Well, like a great way to. I recently grew a membership that was kind of a unique way was I offered like, like a, like a scholarship for the membership. So I would. I'd let everybody sign up to the form to get to enroll in the scholarship where they get like a free, you know, month of the membership. I think it was like, like a free quarter of the membership in my case. And you can even do like a free year membership for some people that sign up. And then it gets eyeballs on the membership. So people that never really checked out my membership before, we're looking at it because I was giving away a free, you know, quarter or year of the membership. So I got a lot of people signing up for this scholarship and I ended up picking like three people. Then after I ended the scholarship, 15 people signed up.

I think that's a really good tip is think about different and innovative ways that you can promote it and talk about your offer that are a little bit unique and kind of, you know, out there that'll get those eyeballs on it. Now, when you and I were talking before we started recording, you mentioned that you wanted to make sure that people know that they could do it, even if they have some challenges in their life to get over. Can you talk a little bit about more about that? Because I think that's important for the audience to hear.

Oh, yes, Destiny. Well, I suffer from a disability. It's actually like anxiety disorder and depression. So I suffered from that Since I was 8 and I used to let that stand in my way to be successful. And I would say, oh, I can't do this because I'm disabled. You know, I have anxiety, like, especially social anxiety disorder. It's hard for me to be around too many people. Like, I start getting, like, really stressed out. And I. And I would make that stand, I'll have that stand in my way of success. But then I was like, you know, I can't let this control my life. I have to get out there and meet others even if I'm battling this disability. So I started getting on medication, you know, and going to therapy, and it's really helped me. And I just don't let that stand in my way of success. And now I earn multiple six figures a year and I've earned like over a million dollars worth of. A million dollars of digital products. I've earned. And I just don't let this stand in my way. And if you also are disabled too, like, it could be a physical or mental disability. Like, don't let that success, you know, you can, you can get over it and become successful. Don't let it, you know, control you.

And I'm so glad that you brought that up. And I just want everybody out there to know, and I know you do, too, that you there, don't let things like that get in your way. You can do this. You can keep going. You can make a business out of this and selling these digital products. Becky, can you let folks know where they can find you? Learn more about your membership. I'm definitely going to check it out here. And also, I believe you have a free gift for them also.

Oh, yes, my membership is businessbeachclub.com so just go to businessbeachclub.com to check it out. And the free gift is one of the courses in the membership so you get like a taste. And it's called four Facebook Secrets for Sellers. And this course shows you four secrets that you could use on Facebook to sell your products and get leads without running any ads. And you can get to this free course by going to BeckyBeach co. That's co dc free. So BeckyBeach co dc free to pick it up.

And we'll make sure that all of those links for that free gift and also for your membership and for your website are in the show notes so people can find you. And Becky, thank you so much for joining me. I loved our conversation and hearing a little bit more about your story and some of the innovative things that you've done in your membership.

Oh, thanks. This has been amazing. I appreciate it.

Thanks for listening all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed this episode today. If you love the show, I'd appreciate a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform. Have a great rest of your day and bye for now.