In today’s episode of GSDdaily, we’re going to continue our conversation on membership sites. Specifically, we’re going to talk about how to create valuable content. Now, this whole create the valuable content thing, we’ve talked about many times before, in past dailies. There’s a lot of different types of content that you can create. There’s a lot of different ways to create content. And just to kind of back up a minute, so your membership site is a collection of material.
A membership site, largely, is the simple fact that your shit is kind of locked behind a membership login. Anything you sell online is probably a membership site to some degree because you’re always going to be protecting and create valuable content. Most of the time, like if you buy any book online or you buy a set of videos or something, then you have to log in to get to them. That’s just kind of how things are protected, so you don’t want people sharing your stuff.
Your membership site, like your subscription website, the only fundamental difference between a subscription website, a membership site, and just kind of everything else, is that you’re delivering content regularly. As I said Monday, a very simple subscription site. Netflix, or even Apple news, deliver news to you every day. And then you pay the 10 bucks a month or whatever. So they consistently feed and create valuable content. It’s up to you whether you want to log in and read it, consume it, love it, whatever.
Your members are going to be the same way, your subscribers. It’s up to them to log into the membership site. Now you can do all the things you need to do to help them consume that content, because if they don’t consume it, they’re not going to continue paying, of course. I mean, if they go for a month without logging in, chances are they’re going to unsubscribe pretty quickly. So you can send them emails and you can send the texts, but truly the material inside the membership site is the thing they’re paying for.
That’s the thing that they need to be getting value from. Now, today, we’re going to talk about a couple of different modalities of stuff. Bill wrote in and had a great, great bunch of questions that I’m going to answer today, too. He was commenting the last couple of days, cause he’s putting together a membership site right now. So first, let me start by talking about the modalities, then we’re going to talk about sourcing material. And then from there, we’ll talk about creating material if you decide you want to create the material yourself.
Modalities of Membership Site Content
First of all, the modalities. There are three forms to create valuable content that you’re going to end up putting on your membership site.
1. Written
There’s written content, so that is anything… At a very elementary level, it’s a blog post. It’s a blog post of value, or it’s a newsletter that is maybe emailed to somebody. Think of somebody like Agora. You know, financial newsletter publications. They email once a week, their picks of the week, or whatever. Whatever it ends up being. It’s written and create valuable content that somebody can go through, learn from, they can choose to open that email or log in for that day or not.
The next kind of iteration of that is a PDF, so like creating and packaging maybe one professional report a month, or one professional report a week. We’ve had quite a few lower dollar membership sites over the years, where we have delivered that. It’s a new report for a month.
Then when somebody signs up, they get access to blog posts, they get access to webinars and calls, and they get access to some sort of like an industry insider kind of report. So great membership sites, it’s a great membership site structure. In that material, create valuable content for the membership is a PDF, and then we’re doing some on-demand stuff, like webinars or live streams or whatever, whatever it ends up being.
2. Audio
The next iteration of that used to be audio. So where you would have an audio program or audio snippets, and you had MP3s that people would download and listen to, or, way, way back, way before ClickFunnels started, Russell Branson kind of made a name for himself in doing these six part continuity programs called the Micro Continuity, and he would actually mail a physical CD, and then you would pop it into your CD player and listen to it.
This was probably 10 years ago. I remember buying it and then also implementing it way, way a long time ago, way before sales funnels were even a thing, like five years before ClickFunnels was born. But audio used to be a thing. Audio is not anymore. Now, audio is consumed by podcasts. Most of the audio that is created is a rip of a video. So this video that we’re creating right now is a perfect example of it. We’re creating the video, we can take the video and the video can be the membership content, but then we can also separate the audio track from the video, save it as an MP3 file, and then that is its modality.
3. Video
The best way to do it is to create the video, which then you use to create the audio. Do you know what I mean? It kind of goes text and writing, and then video, and in the middle is audio. But it’s more just a rip of the video now. So it doesn’t have to be a full-motion video like this. You can do screen recorded video. I’m going to show you some tools after this. We’ve talked about them quite a few times. So you can use a screen recorded video where you do a PowerPoint presentation, and you just speak through the PowerPoint presentation, and then that becomes your content. It’s kind of like learning from a college or an institution, like the voiceover PowerPoint presentations.
It’s very no fluff, no-frills. There’s very little to get wrong, truly. You know, it’s not like you have to be worried about being in front of a camera, cause you’re not in front of a camera. It’s just your voice and the text. Do you know? So those are just some of the modalities of what makes up the membership site content. Text, audio, video. There are some other things that you can add-in. You can add coaching programs. You can add a group coaching, you can add like a little mastermind, you can add a Facebook group.
People find incredible value in that kind of stuff. And oftentimes, we add those additional mediums to increase the price of a membership. So the membership, like a text video-based membership, that has some monthly content, might be $37 a month or $67 a month. But then if they want to have a virtual coaching piece, it’s maybe $197 a month or something like that. So, there’s a lot of ways you can play with the material of the membership site to generate the revenues you need or to put that offer wherever your kind of have a hole in your product mix. Do you know what I mean? So a lot of different ways you can cut that up.
Sourcing Content Materials
Now that we understand the modalities of membership, here are some ways to the source material, and this kind of got into Bill’s questions quite a bit. So one of his questions was, is there a way to outsource video content? Or is there a way to outsource the material? Yesterday we talked about putting together a woodworking membership site. If you remember, we kind of detailed this woodworking course DIY. The first month was tools. The second month was like introductory projects, where we talk about maybe DIY shelves, gallery shelves, bookcases.
We get over into medium difficulty projects. End tables, picnic tables, kitchen tables, and then month four, some of the more complex stuff, entertainment consoles, cupboards, cabinets, credenzas, some of the more complicated things. So the question was about that, and it was, can you outsource that material, so that somebody else creates it? And the answer is absolute. You just need to find that person. So there are lots of ways to find that person.
1. Upwork
You can search on a site like Upwork, where they would create your how-to articles. Maybe it is a picture based article. We talked last week actually about getting paid to write. So you’re just looking for the woodworking enthusiast who wants to get paid to write. Literally. So you could post a project on Upwork and say, I am looking for five 2000 word articles with pictures, on how to make a shelf, a bookcase, what were some of my other ones? So how to make shelves, gallery shelves, bookcases, two by four projects, and pilot projects. And maybe it’s one tutorial per, and then you just know that you’re going to be spending $200 per tutorial or $100 per tutorial, or even 50 bucks.
I mean, it just depends. You have to put the project out there and see what people bid, and then you can choose whoever bids the project well, and you’re happy to spend the money on their skill and talent, and so that it’s done for you, or you can choose not to, and then you can create the material yourself. That’s where you own the content. So you own the contents, you can package the content, you are a product creator at that point.
2. Fiverr
Another way to do it is, and it’s not where they come to you, but it’s where you go to them. Is going to a Fiverr, and you can type in woodworking articles, and maybe somebody here can write woodworking tutorials for you. And it’s going to be more than five bucks. It used to all be five bucks, but it’s going to be more than $5 now. Fiverr has become a pretty big operation. And again, you are the content creator, or you’re paying for the content to be done. So it’s your content, you’re the content creator.
3. Youtube
Now, another idea is where you go to YouTube and you embed blog posts. So you can go here and type woodworking shelves. And we have all kinds of plans here. Easy DIY floating shelves, DIY floating shelves with hidden storage, easy DIY floating shelves, no bracket. So if you just click on this, most of these videos are supported by ads. So they’re given away for free on YouTube. They’re supported by ads.
Most of them, you can disable this inside the settings inside YouTube, but if you hit share, and then embed… You can embed this video right on your page. So from a very simplistic standpoint, you can embed it as blog posts on your site. Your content creators encourage this because they make money through ads. So if you’re giving them more views, then they’re able to make more money. That’s just how it goes. Now there’s nothing that says you can’t put this inside of a membership site that people are paying for. So you could go in and have four, five, six, 10, 20, 30 simplistic DIY videos, all on YouTube, all by different creators. And that is what they’re paying for.
They’re paying for the curated experience of a DIY woodworking channel. They’re not paying for you to create the content but for the duration. It’s no different than walking into a museum. I can’t say I’ve been to like a ton of big museums in my life. But when you pay to get into a museum, you’re paying the entry fee. And then there’s usually the curator who is sourcing everything that is in the museum, and hangs them and displays them and makes them all nice and everything. You are the curator of your membership site. So in this way, you’re not creating the content. You don’t own the content, but you own the museum. So you own the real estate, which is where that material is displayed. So it’s a quick way of getting content for your membership site, that doesn’t cost you anything.
I would say that you want to make sure to include some of your stuff in here. It is your membership site. You should have your videos. You should have your tutorial. Your voice should be the voice in the emails that are going out. You’re still a business owner. You’re still the membership site owner, but you can use all of this kind of stuff as all of the YouTube videos, and embeds, and all that other stuff. You can link off the blog posts. You can use all that material to fill up the virtual shelves of your membership. So month one, they get… We can even look at here, let’s see if we go back to… I would say, well, we can do the same thing for tools. We can do the same thing for complex plans.
I mean, this was just shelves, but we could do the same thing for woodworking or bookcases, two by four projects, pallet projects. We can just literally have a category that is two by four projects and then just… It’s all YouTube videos. So, makes perfect sense for both the content creator and then also for you, because you’re curating the content. For this first month of tools, I would say, you’re going to want to dig in and do the research yourself, and then include your affiliate links. So you might even have somebody source the tools, whether it’s cutting, drills, sandpaper, you’re going to want to source all that stuff. You could probably just do an Amazon search, pick the top ones that show up, throw your affiliate link in.
Then that becomes the buying list that somebody gets in month one. And then you can link off to some YouTube tool walkthroughs, like maybe by Ryobi, or Dewalt might have some Dewalt specific tool videos on how to use their tools. So use and leverage the content that is already out there. A lot of times you don’t need to make more. If you do make more, you want to make sure that it’s branded to you, and you want to make sure that it furthers your brand as opposed to furthering somebody else’s. But, perfectly acceptable to do that. So, Bill, I hope that was good for you. Let’s see. All right, cool.
Let’s see, what else do we get? What other questions? Bill said museum analogy. Nice. Cool. So I hope that helps, Bill. It should give you a good start without having to get all kinds of crazy, without having to go nuts with the create valuable content creation piece. There are all kinds of people that create valuable content, all kinds of content and they want eyeballs, so it helps to give them eyeballs.
Another question he had was, does YouTube dilute and take away the membership’s uniqueness from our site? No.
I would say that people go to the museum to look at curated create valuable content or curated art, so they’re going to come to you because you have more of exactly what they want than going to YouTube and searching. Truly, we just searched YouTube and said, give me all of your shelf things, but this is where your brainstorming and thinking outside of the box comes in, because if they can log into one place and then they see all of your shelves and all your bookcases and all your boom, boom, boom, boom, then it has value.
But if it’s just shelves and they could just go to YouTube and just type in shelves, then that doesn’t have as much value. I would also vary the medium too, so create some text-based stuff with your YouTube videos or walk through and put it together… Do some of the projects and take pictures of those projects as you go through them, so you don’t have to create your material… So, you are creating your material, but you’re using that as inspiration and then kind of tie it to that YouTube video.
Let’s see, I will be doing PDF MP3s. Okay, cool. So Vimeo and a plugin player would be how I put them on the site. Yes. Well, or you could just do YouTube, but Vimeo has a Vimeo business. People can’t search and so it looks like you were set on all of that stuff.
Software and Tools
The last thing I wanted to talk about was just software and tools.
1. Google Docs
Google Docs is helpful when it comes to creating written material. The link is going to be drive.google.com. So you’re going to log into my account here or Google Docs. Docs.google.com is going to be your Google Docs. It’s an online text editor. You can do PowerPoint presentations, you can do all kinds of stuff from there. It’ll export to PDF, which is all you need to create written material.
Last week, we had an entire week on how to get paid as a writer. So this is an extension of that. And the only difference is, is rather than sell your stuff directly to end-users or sell advertisement, or making money indirectly through your content, you’re going to be just putting it in a membership site, which you get paid for. That’s the idea of a membership site.
2. Zoom
For writing, for creating written material, reference all of last week, for creating videos, so there are several ways to do it. What I have found lately, so, so many people are looking at… They’re turning on Zoom and then they’re turning on Zoom, creating a Zoom account, turning it on, and then literally just hitting record. And that is how they create valuable content, which is perfectly fine. So it’s a quick, easy way of creating material quickly.
3. ScreenFlow
Another way that has some built-in editing capability, so we have ScreenFlow. ScreenFlow for Mac. I don’t believe they have a Windows version of it yet. So ScreenFlow is what I use for all of our screen recording stuff and even some of our full-motion video, I’ll pull it into ScreenFlow and then edit it out.
4. Camtasia
If you are on a Windows machine, Camtasia is going to be the one you want to use. I think it’s pretty much the best and only Windows… I haven’t had a windows machine probably for eight or nine years, maybe 10 years now, but Camtasia works nicely. Does the same thing. You can record your camera, you can record your screen, you can record your voice, and then you can edit all those things together to create your material.
Zoom helps to create a video a whole lot easier than it ever used to be. It’s a software which you can control easily enough. The nice thing about your membership content doesn’t have to be perfect. Usually, people are okay with screw-ups and restating yourself and not saying that you don’t want to have something very highly unprofessional out there, but at the same time, you’re expressing your true you. That’s why membership sites and courses and all that stuff, have a less rigorous form of editing than what a public side, the public-facing video would.
But, the other side is live streams have just been so prevalent lately that people are okay with fuck-ups. So they’re all right with mistakes. They’re all right with the genuine stream of consciousness kind of video because it is truly authentic to the person. There isn’t an editor. Like this video, there’s not an editor who… Well, there is one, when you see those little vertical videos, obviously an editor goes through and puts all those together. But these live streams, it’s just you and me hanging out, talking. They’re just authentic.
Your membership content should be just stuff like this. It should be very, very simple. You can tie it into a PowerPoint presentation. Sometimes we do. Other times, it’s just a full-motion video. So really, it depends on what you want it to do.
5. Final Cut Pro
I’m a Mac, like I said, I use Final Cut Pro for any complex video editing. Final Cut Pro is a fantastic piece of software that is very similar to iMovie but an upgraded one.
6. iMovie
But if you have a Mac, you have iMovie already, so you can do a tremendous amount of editing inside iMovie, and then basically edit your stuff, put it out there, put it up on your membership site, and then you’re good to go. You can get the audio of your video once you use Screenflow or Final Cut Pro.
7. Rev.com
Rev.com is who I use to transcribe all of our videos, and you can see just a ton of files in here, but Rev is $1.25 per minute, or you can use Otter.ai, which is getting very good with free transcription, it’s a machine based though.
8. Otter
Otter works great if you have shorter videos or your videos are highly edited because you don’t have any of those connector words in there. However, if you do, like me, do a stream of consciousness live streams, then it’s much more advantageous to have a human editor go through and transcribe and take out all that shit. So it’s well worth the $1.25 a minute to have them do that, so you don’t have to spend the next 45 minutes or an hour taking out all your stupid shit, in the words, which for me is ridiculous.
So some of these live streams, it’ll be 4,500 words. The first, probably, 10 of these I did, I thought Otter was a good idea. I was like, it’s going to be fortunate getting all this stuff transcribed, and it would take like an hour, an hour and a half. It would have been shorter for me to write the article than it was for me to edit the article. And I started looking at all of the paragraphs and every single paragraph was like, “So, um, so, um, so, um.” Down.
I was like, wow, there’s a lot better ways to turn this into a good intelligible transcript that isn’t machine-based, so that’s why we went with the human transcriptionist at Rev. So ideally, you create the video, you pull out the audio, you get it transcribed, which turns into your blog post, now it is your membership content. In a nutshell, you do a couple of those a month. Then you have something that you can charge monthly for. So I think that’s about how to create valuable content for your membership site.
For Questions and Guide
Does anybody have any questions? If you have any questions, go ahead and hit the comments, just throw it in there. I’ll stick around for a couple of minutes and just answer the comments. If you would like to talk about putting together a membership site or optimizing a membership site or running traffic to a membership site, go to doneforyou.com/start, fill in the application, and then schedule a time with my team to jump on a call and just talk about sales funnel, automation, traffic, set up, creating offers, all that stuff. I’d be happy to lend a hand, and I will talk to you tomorrow. I think we’re going to talk about maybe sales copy. I’m not 100% sure what our topic of conversation is going to be, but we will find out. So I will talk to you soon. All right. Thanks. Bye.
