Hosting your membership site on a third-party marketplace – like Udemy.com and SkillShare.com
On Udemy, it is free to create a course. And whatever price you end up charging for it, if you do the marketing and send buyers to your own course page on Udemy.com, and the visitor buys your course using a coupon that YOU have provided them with, then you keep 100% of the revenue from the sales. Of course, they deduct about 3% for processing fees, but still, that’s 100% of the actual revenue. If Udemy sends you customers via their own marketing efforts, then they get 50% of the sale. They have other service add-ons to help you with marketing, and opting in to those would net you less on each sale, but you can reach a wider audience because of the increased exposure your course would get from Udemy’s marketing efforts.
There are a number of other course-creation platforms, and each one has its own place in the industry. But probably the most popular one, that I myself have purchased a course from in the past, is Udemy.
Digital Sharecropping
Sharecropping, by definition, is “a system of agriculture in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on their portion of land.”
And building your business on a third-party platform, where they own the platform, they control the sales, and then they pay you a portion of the profits, is generally referred to as Digital Sharecropping.
It can work for many businesses – like my book SubscribeMeBook.com is being sold on Amazon Kindle and will probably make the most sales on that platform. However, that doesn’t stop me from selling this book on my own web site, or through other eBook platforms. And that is why my book sales will not get entirely shut down if Amazon decides to not allow my book to be sold there. It is not the end of the world. However, if you are building your membership business on a third-party platform, and something goes wrong with your account or your product, or the platform itself shuts down or gets bought out by another company that maybe absorbs the talent and shuts the business down, then all of your content, your members, their recurring billing profiles – everything disappears overnight.
That thought makes most membership site owners nervous, which is why a building your own self-hosted membership platform using WordPress and a membership plugin like DigitalAccessPass.com (DAP), is a great idea for most people.
Links mentioned on the show
All this and more in today’s episode #16. Listen to the show via the player above.
Or if you want all of the 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/ .
Creating a membership site is hard work – no question about that. If you have been listening to my podcast, you already know the number of different components involved. Your own WordPress site, hosting account, membership plugin, other plugins, your theme, payment processor, email system, upsells & downsells, creation of your funnel, your squeeze page and sales page.
And you know what can help you with all of that? Having someone like me – or my wife, Veena Prashanth – who is the other co-founder & co-developer of DAP – having us in your corner. Working on a call with you 1-on-1. Answering your questions and concerns. Getting help from us with setting up your web site. Getting questions answered via our ticketing system, having a ecosystem where you get software, and setup and support – to build a successful web site that will help you quit your job, work for yourself, have an amazing lifestyle business, be home when the kids come home, go for movies in the middle of the day, do whatever you want, whenever you want. If you want me and Veena in your corner, then check out our Concierge service at DigitalAccessPass.com. I promise you, you will be amazed.
Thank you for spending your precious time listening to this show. I know you have a lot of choices when it comes to podcast. And thank you so much for spending time with me today.
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Thanks for listening.
Cheers!
– Ravi Jayagopal
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