Making Subscription Models Work

In this episode, hosts Dixie Carlton and Brad Hauck dive deep into the intricacies of setting up effective subscription models. They discuss the importance of delivering ongoing value, pricing strategies, and software options. 

The conversation also covers planning with the end goal in mind, growing a subscriber base, and how to avoid common pitfalls. Whether you're a speaker, author, or entrepreneur, this episode offers valuable insights into building a sustainable subscription-based business.

The Expert’s Journey podcast is dedicated to empowering authors, content creators, experts and professional speakers worldwide.

Join hosts Brad Hauck, author of AI Powered Profits: Use AI to Automate & Accelerate Your Business in 90 Days, and Dixie Carlton, author of Start With the Draft: How to Easily Plan and Write a Non-Fiction Book, as they share practical insights to elevate your speaking career.

Each episode delivers actionable strategies to grow your audience, sharpen your skills, and increase your impact through speaking, publishing, and smart marketing.

Whether you're looking to boost your influence or explore new ways to share your expertise, The Expert’s Journey gives you the tools and direction to succeed.

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Brad Hauck Proficlix.com.au
Dixie Carlton Indieexpertspublishing.com

Transcript

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Welcome to the Experts Journey podcast, where we're all about creating your path to impact. Join your hosts, Dixie, Mary Carlton from Indie Experts Publishing, and Mr. Web Marketing, Brad Howe, as we look at how you can grow your business and influence by leveraging your knowledge for profit. Subscriptions look simple, charge monthly, deliver value, build a recurring income. But if you look closer, the real challenge isn't setting up just the payment link. It's proving that what you offer is worth coming back for again and again. Because the payment is ongoing, people expect you to deliver more. Before you even think about formats or pricing, you need to ask yourself a tougher question. Why would someone choose to stay in your world every month when they already have more content than they can handle? In this episode, we're going to dig into some of the decisions that shape a subscription model that actually works and maybe get a little bit deeper than surface level advice. The real choice is to decide whether people trust you enough to stay. If you're thinking about turning your expertise into a monthly program, this conversation will push you to design something that lasts. Good morning, Dixie. Good morning, Brad. What a fantastic set of questions to be contemplating at this time of the year. Yeah, subscription models, I've always loved them. For me, it's always been my way of doing business, mainly because the work that I do requires ongoing work, certainly within digital space. If you do something once, that's great, but most often it needs to be adjusted and added to and built on. So subscription models have always been the basis of my business, but for a lot of people, they've never worked that way. And if you're looking to create ongoing income, having a subscription, whether it be for a service like a mastermind group or a training platform or whatever it is, can be a really powerful way to build money that comes in every month. And there's a saying among many that both sell and buy subscription models is that when there's a low amount going out of your bank account every month, you don't really notice it. So people are very slow to rethink their subscriptions if it's a minuscule amount of money. So price plays a huge part in this thinking. But I'm interested in what you have to say about the methodology of setting up and creating a good subscription model. Price is definitely a good one, and we will talk about that because there really is a lot of different thoughts on that and what you're trying to achieve. But look, setting one up, it really comes down to the software in a lot of cases. So depending on what you're doing. If you're doing say a monthly call where you have a hundred people come into the call as like a group call and you deliver some training and then you break them off into breakout rooms and they talk about that, how they're going to implement it in their business and all that, that can be done pretty simple. You can literally put up a PayPal subscription link that people click and pay. And then each month you send out an email to that group from your email system that says, here's this month's link. Log in on this date at this time and join me. You can really start very simply, but you can step up into a whole range of other products. So you can look at platforms like Job and those where you can have login sections where people automatically each month get an email reminding them that it's on. But they log into the website and the stream is inside a member protected area and the software won't let them in if they haven't paid their subscription, which is the next sort of step. Yeah, I guess that. I know I sound like a stutwicker when I'm saying this, but you've got to start with the end in mind. You've got to start with a plan about what it is that you're actually wanting to achieve throughout the long term. It's not just trying to sell something that's going to be an ongoing monthly thing that stands alone every month. Well, I think it depends on what you want to do. If you're just delivering training or consulting or something where people normally you do it one on one, you want to do it one to a group, you can do it that way. But yeah, look, there can be a long term plan. It can be part of your ecosystem. Maybe people join up at a low entry cost. They join you each month for an hour and that's 50 bucks. And that's nice and simple as an entry. And from there you might upsell them to a more VIP group or something, in which case you're going to deliver more content or more specialized information. It's really hard to know where to start. Most people where they actually stick is knowing what to do first and that you talk about the end being in mind. But it's okay. I deliver this information and it's really good information. So should I just set up a $30 group and just get as many people as I can in there? Because if I get a hundred people at $30, that's $3,000 a month easy. I think that maths is correct, but like, it's a relatively simple number. It's not a huge sell. On the other hand, then people start questioning themselves because they go, actually, if I was to sit in a room with someone like this, I would charge them $200 an hour for this. So am I undercharging? Should it be $97? The answer is yes to both. What it comes down to is how you deliver the value in your advertising. If you write your sales page and you say you're going to deliver this and this, and it's exceptional value, $97 may be cheap. If you write a poor landing page that you're selling from and you just say, we're going to meet up once a month and we're going to talk about marketing, then $97 is going to sound expensive. So that makes a big difference. And I've seen both. I've seen people charge thousands of dollars every month. And I've seen people, people charge $50 a month for exactly the same product. Yeah. All comes down to how you pre sell and set up that funnel of content to get people in and then the sales page. And also I think it depends somewhat on the confidence, but also reputation that you already have with the people that you are wanting to become your subscribers so that they understand that you have this value or you have this spectral, unique or particular formula for what you do and how you do it. But also then from the perspective of that, having the confidence to know that you have the ability to do that. Because one of the things that's held me back, for example, when I thought about doing these in the past, was, do I have the confidence to know that I can set something up that is sustainable over several years versus several weeks? And I think that's something that you grow into with time. Over the years that you do this, I don't think you can suddenly start being an author for the first time and a speaker and in your first year or so expect that you're going to be able to command that kind of attention and those kind of fees. But 10, 20, 30 years down the track, obviously that's a much easier thing to justify to yourself and to the people that you're wanting to market to. Exactly. So what I say to people is, why not just start a small group at a reasonable cost, say under$50 a month, and for an hour every month they can log in and sit with you. And some people can bring problems. You deliver some training specifics, then you take some questions and answers and then you record that and you put it In a membership area where people who are paying can log in and see it later. Relatively simple, no pressure. The biggest problem I've seen most people make, and I do this myself, is I start thinking about, so in a year's time, am I going to be able to keep doing this? In six years time, am I going to be able. That's not what you should be thinking because you're overthinking it. What you want to do is look at what can you do now? And if it runs for six months and people get value out of it, great, then you've delivered something over that six months. You'll impress some people who are members of that group who might move into something else. But don't put the pressure on yourself of this is a lifetime commitment to this. And this is where most people fail. It doesn't matter whether it's a mastermind group, a training program, a challenge, whatever, they just put this long term pressure on themselves instead of saying, look, I'm going to have fun once a month, If I get one person, I'm going to have fun. If I have 50 members, I'm going to have fun. Yes, and that's really important because if it's not fun, I absolutely guarantee you will not be able to keep your membership going. That's the thing. Ideally, you want to deliver something that is fun and engaging enough that people do want to not only stay in it for a long time, but also recommend others to come in and join it as well. And that's how you grow it. But I think then you also need to think about what is the pricing point, how do I marry up the fun content, the idea of what it is that I'm wanting to share, and then build that into something that is there's the whole concept of one to one versus one to many. And how do I price that? How do I make that a value proposition? Yeah, absolutely. Sitting down and really thinking about what are you delivering is the first thing. And one way you can do that is you can sit there and record a video of yourself talking about what you're going to give people. So talk through all of the different things you give them and then feed it into some AI and get it to transcribe it and then come back to you with a list of value, a list of benefits and features, and it will actually pick out a lot of stuff that you miss. Alternatively, you can sit there and just write it yourself, of course. But what you're looking for is all of the really good benefits that people are going to get out of what you're doing and then you can start to look at the price. But I think it depends on the market that you normally work with or the market that you want to go to. So if you normally only work with CEOs, then charging a thousand dollars a month to have a one hour call with a group would probably be very acceptable for those people because of the value of the networks that they will build as a member of that group. So they've got you giving some information, but also they've got other people involved in the group who they can connect with as well and form these little tiny groups as well. So you're giving value in the connection you're providing, not just the content you're providing. Alternatively, if you're launching into a new market, you might want to run a six month membership subscription or a challenge or something like that at a much lower cost and see how it goes. You can always put the price up later. Grandfather. The people that started paying at the start, keep them at their original price and then as your reach grows, then go, okay, look, all the people who joined originally, it was $37. All the new members are going to be 97 now. That's it. Because the value is so good. We've got so much feedback. I've got so many testimonials from people who are already members of the group. You can now add so much more to sales copy. So much more proof that you're delivering. Yes, and this is really good timing because I'm currently in the middle at the moment of putting together a group coaching program. A mastermind group. Two mastermind groups actually. One for the conference and a book people. And one is a more generic one where what I've been asked for several times by authors is that once we start, once we finish dealing with you, Dixie, on creating this, how do we continue the relationship where it's a different model but still works for us? And so that got me thinking about group coaching, which I've not really done before, a lot of, but I know how it works and I'm confident with that. But how do I make it viable and useful for people to then make a decision about, well, do I want to come in at that level or do I want to come in at a mastermind level which is significantly higher? And then you start thinking about all of the moving parts. So as you said before, there is the challenge, there's the group coaching, there's the subscription. That's just access to the recorded information versus turning up for the live information, there's the different levels of Mastermind groups and then of course, that all feeds into or continues to feed into your VIP services. So you've actually got to consider it all as, again, part of an ecosystem of marketing, not just a, oh, now I'm going to do a subscription model. And again, coming back to, you've got to plan it. It's really interesting. I was reading an article recently from YouTubers and it was asking like, you've been a YouTuber for a while, what's the biggest issue? Why did you walk away? And it was really interesting. And the biggest feedback that I came across was that something that was supposed to be fun that they did. So for example, they maybe did videos about gaming suddenly became their job and it took all the fun out of what they did because they used to like gaming. And it was the same with other channels. The effects of having to deliver content on an ongoing basis can be very draining. There's a lot of pressure that you put on yourself. That's why I always say it has to be fun and you need to find a way to make that work. So I think for me, I overthink that. What if only one person buys it? Overthink that side of things. And I think a lot of people do that. They worry about will they sell enough. And I understand that thinking. But if you're recording the content and you think about those recordings, then become content you can use elsewhere. So there may be other value you can get out of that while you grow your numbers. And it might take a while. Like any form of business that you're doing, you need to keep promoting it. It must become part of a focus or part of your steps. So it might be that you're on stage and you're talking about a particular topic, say yours, talking about writing a book, and you say, look, I know you might not be ready to start writing a book straight away. Now you have the start with the draft book that you've written, but you might say, I have a small group that gets together every month and you can join us. And it's a really good start point. We can talk all about writing books and it might be a really good entry point in there. And that could be also inside your start. The draft book could lead to that, where you go from the free book to the paid course almost. And then from there they can either choose to become a private client or a trained client or whatever. So there is a range of options that come to you. If you have these things available, but you need a way to feed them. I think that if you could just recap what those platforms are, that would be really helpful for our listeners. Look, there's endless platforms. Personally, I like Systeme, but you've got Kajabi, you've got a whole pile more that are available. There's plugins for WordPress, there's also third party sites like Member Mouse, which is a piece of software. You put a piece of code on your website and it makes it a protected area. There's a lot you can do, but in its simplest form, if you go to PayPal and go into subscriptions and create a subscription button, people can pay and they'll be automatically charged every month. Now, when they want to cancel it, they can cancel it through PayPal, or they can come to you and you can log in and cancel it. But that's the easy place to start. Don't go down the road of paying $300 a month for a membership platform. When you're testing this, start out with something simple, but use an online payment system so that it's all automatically credited every month. Otherwise, if you suddenly get a hundred people, how are you going to run a hundred credit cards every month? Remember, you could hit the sweet spot and you could end up with a thousand members the first month. Who knows? So always automate things like payments and then you can put your content into your website and WordPress, which a lot of people use. Every page has a password protection thing on the side. You can put a password on the page and just lock that one page and that's all you need to do. So just to recap, decide what you're going to do. Think about the big picture of it, all of the moving parts, all of the different levels you could create. Test it, go to PayPal, set up a subscription model on PayPal and start rolling it out. That's pretty much it, right? Absolutely. Give it a go. Start with something simple and build it into your ecosystem so that you have a sales funnel that leads towards it, whether that be on stage or in your books. Absolutely brilliant. Thanks, Brad. That's really good and very thoughtful. And for me, very good timing as well. Excellent. Well, look, thanks for tuning into the Expert's journey. If you picked up some useful tips today, please take a moment to subscribe and share this episode with a fellow speaker or expert in your network. It really helps us to help more people. And don't forget to check out our books on Amazon. Dixie's. Start with a draft. How to easily plan and write a nonfiction book and a dynamic new conference in a book series. The first one being Connect, Lead Succeed, which is out now. And my book, Microcourse Profits Build a seven Figure Income with bite sized micro learning courses. Both are packed with practical tools to help you grow your business faster. We'll catch you next time. Thanks, Brad.