Coaching Portal, Credit Store, Offline Product
Welcome to episode #29 of the SubscribeMe show from SubscribeMe.fm.
I’m your host Ravi Jayagopal. This is the podcast to listen to, if you want to learn about creating digital content, marketing it, selling it, and then delivering it.
I am the co-founder & co-developer of DigitalAccessPass.com, easily the best membership plugin in the industry, fondly known as DAP.
In the last 3 episodes, I have been discussing Membership models 1 through 5.
So if you didn’t hear part 1, 2 or 3, which was covered on Episodes 26. 27 and 28, I recommend that you start with episode 26 by going to subscribeme.fm/26/ . Or you can just go to the home page where you’ll see a playlist with all of my episodes.
Alright, let’s get into the final part of this series, where I cover membership models 6, 7 & 8.
Membership Model #6: Coaching Portal:
In this model, you sell coaching and consulting.
When it comes to a membership plugin like DAP, even a service is basically created as a “Product”. So just like you would sell a digital report, or a software program, a service is sold the same way: Create a Product, give it a price, and use the membership plugin to configure what content they get if they buy your “Service”, and that’s it.
Now, with a service, you don’t always have to provide an online member’s area, because you may be delivering the actual service offline – like SEO or Web Design services, Accounting services, Lawn Maintenance services, etc.
However, it can be very useful to create at least a couple of member pages where they can log in and see a summary of what they purchased, change their Profile information (like name, and email and password). And any supporting worksheets and documents that you create during consultation, can be added to this member’s area, so that the member can log in later and download meeting notes, or special documents you created for them. It doesn’t even have to be custom stuff – even the standard documents and videos and follow-up lessons and refresher videos can all be added to the member’s area.
If you have a service that requires them to schedule a 1-on-1 call with you, then you can embed an online calendar from a service like Calendly.com – which is what I use myself to schedule interviews for my podcast, even though I’ve brought on only one guest so far), and then there are other services like ScheduleOnce.com , doodle.com/meetme or SimplyBook.me
And after you embed it on a page, you can then protect that page with DAP, and now only members can book an appointment with you for a private coaching call.
Or if you are doing group coaching, you can embed a Google Hangouts video or a Webinar Registration form on a DAP-protected page and allow only certain types of members to sign up for the webinar.
7. Credit Store: Credits & Rewards
Imagine you’re at a restaurant, ready to order food. And you tell the waiter, “I would like to start with some ice-cream“. The waiter looks at you squarely, and says “I’m sorry, but you must first order something to drink, then eat the salad, then the entree, and only then can you order dessert“! Not cool, right?
So, back in 2008, when I had just launched DAP, I had a customer give me this idea. She wanted to be able to offer points to her members, which they could redeem for stuff she was selling. And that gave birth to what I called the Self-Service Store or SSS, at the time. And then we totally abandoned it for a while. Then fast-forward a few years later, Veena Prashanth took it up again, completely re-imagined and re-developed it from scratch, and create what has been a game-changing plugin, and she gave it the name Credit Store.
I talked in detail about this in 2 of my past episodes: Episode 12, which was titled “To Drip or Not To Drip Content: That Is The Question“. And Episode 13, which was titled “Why You Should NOT Drip Content In Your Membership Site Or Online Course“.
Check out both of those episodes at subscribeme.fm/12/ and subscribeme.fm/13/.
Finally…
Membership Model #8: Online Billing for an Offline Service
You may have an entirely offline service – like web design, accounting, or even lawn maintenance! You can accept payments one-time or on a monthly basis for your service. You can optionally add an online member’s area and give them some online tips, send service and billing reminders, etc. It can be online billing for a purely offline service. You can use DAP for such offline services as well. You would basically set up the buy button in such a way that it simply logs them into a one- or two-page member’s area, where you can address them by name, thank them for their purchase, and show them next-steps and explain how the service will be delivered.
You can also add an “Online Report” for an “Offline Product” – for example, if you are selling a Blender, then you can deliver a “How to Lose 10 Pounds in 3 Months By Juicing” report, and deliver it to them securely online via the member’s area. You can add videos and audio to the member’s area showing how to use the blender, give them recipes, have videos that show how to create different types of juices with the blender, etc.
That brings us to the last segment of this show:
Tool of the Day
One of my favorite tools is Wunderlist. It is absolutely the best to-do list-creation tool there is. It works on your phone, on your desktop, and tablet. So I’ll be going for a run with my dog Vanilla, and I’ll suddenly get this idea. And I’ll just quickly pull out my phone, fire up Wunderlist, and there, I have many lists created – podcast episode, facebook post, blog post, grocery list, marketing ideas, etc. If it’s a podcast episode idea, then I’ll click on the podcast list, and start typing the idea. I can even click on a microphone icon, and start dictating, and Wunderlist is smart enough to transcribe it as I’m dictating. Super, super awesome app. One of my favorite tools that I couldn’t live without.
Thanks again for listening to my show. I really, really appreciate your time.
Until the next time, here’s a quick tip of the day: Download Wunderlist right now – right after you finish listening to this episode, and create 5 top-level lists – like Member content, Podcast, Blog, Facebook, Groceries. And you’ll figure out the rest from there.
Hey, don’t forget to join other SubscribeMe listeners and a network of folks all interested in the same thing: Membership sites and online courses. Join the group by going to subscribeme.fm/group/ and that will take you to my Facebook group.
Thanks again for listening. I’ll talk to you soon.
If you want future episodes to be automatically downloaded to your device as soon as they’re available, then subscribe to the show on iTunes at SubscribeMe.fm/itunes/ , or on Stitcher at SubscribeMe.fm/stitcher/ .
Cheers!
– Ravi Jayagopal
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