[00:01] two things that basically everybody thinks you need. A big audience so that thinks you need. A big audience so that you have members and a lot of content because you never want those members to get bored because then they'll cancel
[00:13] their membership and stop paying you. But when I started my membership site, I didn't have either of those things and yet it was practically an overnight success. And when I say practically an overnight success, what I really mean it
[00:25] overnight success, what I really mean it was an over week success. One week I making any money from it. A week later I'd launched the membership site, I had 300 members and it was bringing in $10,000 even per month. And that's a
[00:40] stream of revenue, money I get in the bank every single month today, now 7 years later. So, let's talk about how I did it because nothing has changed my life more than going from barely scraping by to having an extra $10,000
[00:57] every single month. So, first of all, the people. How many do you really need? Like how big does your audience really need to be to be able to successfully launch a membership site? Well, first you need to think about what it means to
[01:10] successfully launch a membership site. Like how many people do you need to have sign up to make this well worth your while? Because if you only have three problem. The problem will be that you have promised those three people that
[01:25] you're giving them new content month after month after month and they're only paying you 100 bucks a month or so and that's going to be a big problem. In shut down the membership because you can't afford to sell that much of your
[01:38] time for that low of a rate. It would completely handicap you, chain you down. It would be like a ball and chain on your leg that would tie you up so you couldn't spend your time working on any other projects or even just working to
[01:51] grow the membership to get more members. So, you have to make sure that before you launch your membership, you do have a big enough audience that you're going to be able to get enough members to sign up. And how many members is that
[02:04] threshold? Well, only you can be the judge of that and it is going to depend a little bit on how much content you're promising these people and the price of how much you're going to make from it per member. But I would recommend that
[02:18] you're confident you're going to be able to get at least about 30 members to sign up initially. 30 members at about $50 a month means that your membership site will be bringing in about $1,500 per month. And I'm pretty confident that if
[02:33] you do this right, your membership doesn't need to take you more than about 5 hours a week to run. 5 hours a week, that's 20-25 hours a month and $1,500 for 20-25 hours of work seems like a pretty good rate to me. Now, of course
[02:47] it would be way better if you could get a lot more than 30 members and I think that that's totally possible. When I launched my membership site, I didn't have a big audience. I had a small growing audience. I had 300 people on my
[03:02] launch list for the membership site and a big chunk of those people bought plus of my small audience. But at the end of my launch week, I was shocked at the
[03:14] number that had signed up because not only was it way more than I was expecting, but also it was it was just a weird number. Exactly 300 people, the exact same number of people who had been on my launch list for the membership
[03:27] on my launch list for the membership site, exactly 300 people signed up. 300 people at what was then $33 a month meant $10,000 in recurring revenue. So, don't write your audience off just because it's small. You really can do a
[03:43] lot even with a small audience. But going back to the question, how big does your audience need to be to be able to get at least 30 members to sign up? I'd recommend that you build your launch list to at least 300 people. Now, you
[03:56] could have an experience like mine where 300 people on your launch list ends up translating to 300 new members, but I wouldn't bank on that, especially if that's your entire audience. Now, if you do have an audience beyond that launch
[04:10] people on a couple of different platforms, you could get some pretty crazy results. But again, don't bank on it. Only expect about 10% of your launch list to sign up. So, if you need 30 members, build a launch list of 300
[04:25] If you're thinking you need 50 members, then build a launch list of 500 before on. Now, the other huge thing you have to have to be able to launch a membership site is all the content that goes into it, the content that those
[04:39] we'll talk about that in just a moment, but first let me tell you about the sponsor of today's video. It's called Transcriptor and it's a tool that makes managing your meetings so much easier. As an entrepreneur, you are probably
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[06:01] taking notes and organizing your recordings after your meetings, then definitely check out Transcriptor. And if you sign up with your work email using the link in the description down below, then you will get 300 minutes of
[06:15] All right. Now, let's get back to talking about how you can get a talking about how you can get a membership site launched in 2026. And now let's talk about the content problem because a lot of people think that they
[06:28] need to build an entire content library before they can launch their membership site so that when members sign up, they are impressed with what they see and they want to stick around and they don't get bored or run out of content to
[06:41] consume so they never have a reason to cancel. But the truth is that you do not need a huge library of content. In fact, having a big library of content can actually end up causing a problem. And the problem is that the members can feel
[06:55] overwhelmed. They can not know where to start. They can be distracted and they find that people will not stay members for nearly as long if they are not getting real results for that money that they're paying month after month.
[07:08] Honestly, this has been one of the biggest challenges that I have faced as my membership has continued to exist over the past 7 years. We've kept adding gone on. When I first launched the membership site for those first couple
[07:22] of years, the content was really focused. It was essentially a curriculum that I was guiding the members through over the course of a year. But beyond a one-year scope, it didn't really make sense to keep like building on the end
[07:34] of the curriculum so we started adding in more kind of like secondary resources, more bonus resources, more extra trainings and extra classes and extra courses. And there is so much incredible content inside Startup
[07:48] Society today, but we actually have a lower member retention rate than we used content was actually not as good, but it was a lot more streamlined and focused. I've been working on solving this problem and making the content in my
[08:03] membership site streamlined again and making sure that the members know exactly where to start and what their next step should be at every stage of their membership. But when you're starting your membership, this won't be
[08:15] make it a problem, unless you try to make a massive amount of content before you launch. The truth is you only need to make enough content before you launch to keep your members happy for the first month and then you can just add to it
[08:30] about that in a minute though because you actually don't need to add a whole lot of content every month or not even necessarily every month at all. But going back to how much content you need to have to launch again, one month's
[08:44] worth of content is great as long as you set the right expectations. Now, what I mean by that is if people sign up for your membership expecting a Netflix-style library of content and they come in and they find three modules
[08:58] of an online course, they're probably going to be kind of disappointed, it and they probably won't stick around. On the other hand, if you've set the right expectation, if you've laid it out for them, if they understand that they are
[09:11] going to be getting access to this program that is going to be being delivered over the next 3, 6 months or even year and that when they get started, they'll get instant access to the first three modules plus a group
[09:24] coaching session with you every month or whatever else your membership is going to include, then they can come in and be beyond happy to get access to those first three modules that are more than enough to keep them busy for that first
[09:37] all just comes down to setting the right expectations and then of course making sure that the content itself is actually good quality and is helpful to the members. Now, the last main thing I wanted talk about in today's video is
[09:50] how much more content you should plan to add to your membership site every week should look like, how you can plan that all out, and how much time this is actually going to take you to run this membership site. But, before I get into
[10:06] have a lot more thoughts about how to curate, how to plan the content in your content should be. So, tomorrow I'm going to be hosting an hour-long class
[10:18] over on Zoom, where we're going to deep dive into that topic and even start to make some decisions to plan out your membership site if this is something that you are really serious about doing. So, if you want to join me for that free
[10:31] 1-hour class, it's called from zero content to paying members, just check the link in the description down below, or you can type it into your browser or you can type it into your browser gillianperkins.com/free-membership-class.
[10:47] going to be tomorrow, which is Wednesday, March 25th at 9:00 a.m. Pacific, which is noon Eastern, and then I'll also be doing it again on Thursday, I'll also be doing it again on Thursday, the 26th at 1:00 p.m. Pacific, which is
[11:02] 4:00 p.m. Eastern. So, if you could join me for either of those times, either on Wednesday morning or Thursday afternoon, I would love to have you there and help you get your membership content all planned out. Okay, now the last thing
[11:14] we're going to talk about today is how much content you will need to be adding to your membership site each month, how long that's going to take you, because I think one of the biggest reasons that people hesitate to start memberships is
[11:26] content hamster wheel. They don't want to constantly be having to make new course after new course after new course, or constantly be working with their members, be hosting office hours multiple times every week, or group
[11:40] coaching calls every single week, or anything like that. But, honestly, nobody's got time for that anyway. Your members will not want to that much content from you. They're going to want just a couple valuable things from you
[11:52] each month. Maybe one workshop and a group coaching call, maybe a community and a group coaching call, maybe one mini course each month. When I first course every month. Then I switched to just doing a 1-hour workshop each month.
[12:08] And now today, we have a huge library of content built up, like I was talking about earlier. Honestly, more content than we need in there, so there's plenty of educational material to keep the members quite occupied. And so, the only
[12:21] new content that I create is I do once a month a group coaching call with the members, and then my team does a once-a-week like mastermind and co-working session with the members. So, it's really quite minimal in terms of
[12:34] how much content we're creating today, but honestly, it always has been. Even at the height of it, I was making one mini course a month. So, I would record literally five lessons each month. Each one would be like 5-10 minutes long, and
[12:48] through how to get the next like specific tangible result in their business. So, each of those mini courses would take me about 5 hours to like plan and record. Then I would send it away to my video editor, and we'd pop it onto
[13:01] the membership site. So, it really was a very small time investment, especially brought in and still brings in today about $10,000 a month. All right, well, that is everything I have for you today,
[13:14] but I do hope that you decide to join me tomorrow morning for that 1-hour class your new membership site. Again, it's called from zero content to paying
[13:26] members, free class at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow, and then again on Thursday at 1:00 p.m. Pacific. So, there's the link down in the description where you can go to sign up so that you can get that Zoom link, and I hope to see you there.