Membership Site Secrets: How To Turn Your Passion Into Recurring Revenue

·21 min·2 clips

Anna Runyan reveals how a membership site saved her business as a mom of three, offering balance and freedom.

Anna Runyan introduces Stu McLaren as the go-to expert for building profitable membership sites. Anna shares her personal experience, stating her membership site has been a lifesaver for her business and family life. Stu emphasizes that people often delay starting a membership site unnecessarily, thinking they need a large audience or lots of content. He argues that starting sooner allows you to learn from members and refine the experience. Stu provides the example of Jennifer Chamberlain, who launched an art membership with 30 founding members and grew to over 2000 members in three years. He advises against creating too much content upfront, as you might guess wrong about what members want. Stu shares the story of Paul Evans, who ran Teen Life Ministries and found his members only wanted PowerPoint presentations, leading him to remove 75% of his content. Anna notes that if she feels overwhelmed, her members likely do too, highlighting the balance a membership can offer. Stu discusses how to identify membership ideas from passions or skills, using his wife Amy as an example: she excels at creating experiences for their luxury Airbnb, which charges three times the average rate and is always booked. He explains that what feels easy or like common sense to you may be valuable to others. Stu mentions other models, like partnerships where one person handles marketing and another handles teaching, as with Scott Paley and Joan Gary in the nonprofit space. Examples of niche memberships are given, such as Holly George's balloon animal membership and Casey Hope's calligraphy membership with physical boxes. Anna conducts a lightning round where Stu defines good membership ideas as those that help people experience progress or create convenience. He states setup doesn't have to be expensive, citing Cheryl Hatch who used just email and Facebook for two years with over 600 members. Stu differentiates blog content (random) from membership content (structured), using Michael Hyatt's book as an analogy. He describes how to launch quickly with a founding member launch, like Anna who generated $5,024 in 36 hours from a Facebook post. Stu previews his free workshop, covering market fit and membership types, and teases a step-by-step launch process. The episode concludes with mutual appreciation and a call to action for the workshop.

As heard by us

A practical case for membership sites as a long-term business model.

Ana Runyon and Stu McLaren present membership sites as something that can grow into a durable business model rather than a quick win. Runyon links that idea to her own life, saying the membership she began when she had one child has since become a lifesaver now that she has…

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Why you'd press play

If recurring revenue sounds better than starting from zero every month, press play.

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