admin

The Transcript

The Membership Imperative and the Persistence of Audio Content

Voiceover: This is Rainmaker.FM, the digital marketing podcast network. It’s built on the Rainmaker Platform, which empowers you to build your own digital marketing and sales platform. Start your free 14-day trial at RainmakerPlatform.com.

Brian Clark: Hey, everyone, and welcome to another episode of New Rainmaker. I am Brian Clark, founder and CEO of Copyblogger Media and your host.

Today, in the co-host chair is a guy many of you know and hear a lot of on Rainmaker.FM. It’s his birthday, so I said, “What the heck? Let’s have Jerod Morris come on the show, and we’ll chat about some stuff that’s been of particular interest to us.” First of all, Jerod, happy birthday! How young are we?

Jerod Morris: Thank you very much. I am 34 years young today.

Brian Clark: Ah, still a babe. Just a child.

Jerod Morris: I don’t know, every year I’m starting to feel less and less like that.

Brian Clark: It’s funny because, when you’re 18, 34 sounds like the most ancient thing you’ve ever heard.

Jerod Morris: I know. Then you get here, and it’s like, “Oh.”

Brian Clark: The sprint from 18 to 34 is like, “Wait a minute!”

Jerod Morris: Yeah. “What happened?”

Brian Clark: Wait till you wake up and you’re 48. I still feel 20, so I don’t know. Except you tend to creak a little more.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. That’s already happening.

Brian Clark: Okay. Today, we’ve got just some stuff around the news that’s been interesting. I know we both tend to find stuff that we’re reading and share it with whomever it may be appropriate for, but especially among the Rainmaker group we’ve got going here. You actually found a really interesting article over at FiveThirtyEight. That was a dude at ESPN, Nate Silver, right?

Jerod Morris: Yeah, Nate Silver.

Brian Clark: Very bright people over there, very data driven. This was an article that was right up the alley of something we’ve been talking about, but it doesn’t surprise me because it’s a real issue. It’s a real problem on many fronts, from stats to marketing automation to web experience in general. Tell us a little bit about that article.

The Statistical Power of the ‘Logged In Experience’

Jerod Morris: Yeah. What if I told you that we have no earthly idea how many people are visiting websites, for the most part. Literally, we have some basic estimates. Some are a little bit better than others, but as the article points out, estimates that you’ll get from a comScore or one of those other big rating sites can vary vastly from what actual websites report, what their internal traffic reports are. It really just comes back to the nature of cookies. That’s what this article is talking about is how little we actually understand about how many people are visiting our website.

It even has some crazy stats about the proportion of traffic that is actually bots, which are mindboggling. The big takeaway for me was where the passage says, “Unless you have a serious paywall, and therefore have users who are logged in a 100 percent of the time, there’s just no way to know for sure how many individual real-life people visit your site in a month, week or day” — which struck me as just another huge benefit of what we’ve been talking about with this ‘logged in experience.’

When people aren’t logged in, you really don’t know who they are. You don’t know how many real uniques you have because it could be the same person visiting your site on four or five different devices. There’s all these different variables, but you eliminate so many of those variables when people are actually logged in.

It talks about the trends with Facebook now, basically presenting content from The New York Times, from BuzzFeed directly on Facebook, and publishers going along with this. For Facebook, the big benefit, of course, is they know exactly how many people are reading those articles. They’ve got actual logged-in people with faces.

We’ll see Google and Apple going down this road. It’s just further confirmation of the trend that we’ve been talking about — the power of a membership site and the information that it gives you — which is actually accurate, unlike the estimates that we’re basically relying on for traffic data.

Brian Clark: Yeah, when we say a membership site — and we’ve talked about those before — Facebook is a membership interface. You’re either in or out. A paywall is a membership interface, whether you charge money for it or not. We started using the term, when we’re talking to people who may not be as sophisticated, we just call it a ‘free paywall.’ You register. You get access to information, but then all of a sudden, you’re having an access-based, logged in experience.

As far as the particular focus here of traffic numbers, comScore or whatever, their estimates of Copyblogger’s traffic are way off as far as what we see internally, but this is exactly why. It’s not just stats, but that’s a pretty huge thing, obviously, for being able to do any sort of data analysis of what’s happening with your audience. We’ve talked about in the past before, the whole marketing automation and adaptive content experience, the problem with cookies. It’s the same thing, cross platform. You’re losing the cookie. You’re losing your automation because we live in a mobile to desktop to whatever world.

The ‘logged in’ aspect of it allows you to say. “Yup, okay. It’s you.” It doesn’t matter if you’re on your phone, your iPad, or your desktop. Now, we’re able to give you this more personalized experience, give you the content that you want instead of just trying to feed everyone the same experience and hope that it’s relevant to a certain percentage. It’s just another move towards having some incentive, something great that prompts people to register for access, as opposed to the old school, “Opt-in to our email newsletter,” or whatever the case may be. It really is interesting. You’re seeing more and more of this.

Speaking of publishers that are caving into Facebook, as an aside, I read this great article about Gawker, of all businesses, and Nick Denton. I’m not a huge fan, but I have respect for Nick and what he’s done. Obviously, I just wouldn’t want to be in that nasty business. But I do respect the fact that he’s standing up and saying, “You’re crazy to publish your stuff on Facebook. Are you a publisher? Are you in control of your business or not?”

It was a really interesting article. I’ll have to pull that up for the show notes. A lot of it has nothing to do with this, but I did notice, in the middle, he took a fairly principled stand against turning everything over to Facebook — of course, we’ve been warning that since 2007.

The Folly of Looking at the Wrong Metrics

Jerod Morris: Yeah, exactly. One other thing, too, that I wanted to point out about that article is it’s further confirmation of the folly of looking at the wrong metrics. Jonny and I answered a lot of questions about this with Showrunner with people asking, “What metrics should I look at?” “How important are downloads?” — and this kind of thing.

It’s similar to people who look at their site and just look at page views or just look at unique visitors. Obviously, you want those numbers to be growing. Trends can be important, but the actual numbers themselves mean so little. What really matters is engagement. Not just how many uniques are coming to the site, but how many you can convert to actually doing something and to getting them into a place where you can, as you talked about, use marketing automation. Or get them into some logged in experience where you can just learn more about them.

I hope that articles like this and people understanding just how little those big overview numbers mean and really dig in to the numbers and the kind of data that will actually drive results for you.

Brian Clark: I think the whole one-size-fits-all web experience is going extinct. It’s the membership interface that allows you to provide a truly rock-solid, personalized thing. I should mention that, if you’re interested in the intersection of the logged in experience or a membership interface, content, email, and marketing automation, Jerod and I are actually doing a webinar in couple of weeks, 10 days, something like that.

Jerod Morris: Yup.

Brian Clark: That will be in the show notes as well. It was announced on Copyblogger, but we’ll link that up for you. We’re going to — it’s half and half — explain the strategy of the intersection of all those things to build a really responsive and high-converting email list. Then Jerod is going to show you how to actually execute on that using the Rainmaker Platform if, in fact, that’s the tool set of choice that you would like to use. Of course, we’re rather fond of it.

Jerod Morris: Actually, the other day my dog woke me up at 3:00 in the morning, and I couldn’t get back to sleep. Do you ever have those times where you can’t get to sleep? So you either spend three hours just sitting there wishing you could sleep, but you don’t. You end up just wasting the time?

Brian Clark: All the time.

Jerod Morris: I said, “Screw it,” and just decided to get up. I was actually really excited. There’s some Rainmaker features that I wanted to dig in to and play with, so I got to spend the first three hours of the morning in total quiet, total seclusion, no distractions just playing with some of the new features. It was really entertaining, really educational. I’m excited to share some of the things I’ve learned and some of the different fun things Rainmaker can do on these webinars. Those are really fun.

Brian Clark: I would like to commend you for being productive. I do that, too. Sometimes I wake up at 3:30, and I’m like, “You know you’re not going back to sleep. Just get up, put on the coffee.” Those are always fun days around 4:30 in the afternoon — “Oh my God, I’m tired.”

All right, what else we got to look at today?

The Most Powerful Form of Media on Earth

Jerod Morris: I have a question for you because you used to live in Dallas. Did you ever listen to The Ticket when you lived in Dallas?

Brian Clark: It would be on here and there. The funny thing is, it’s my wife who listens to sports radio.

Jerod Morris: Really?

Brian Clark: She used to listen to The Ticket. She’s fanatic about listening to ESPN, and now, of course, she has satellite radio in the car and in the house. I’m just like, “Who are you?” In many ways, she’s the dude in the family, yet I have all the bad characteristics of a man as well. But, as an aside, yes, I am familiar with the program.

Jerod Morris: I’m not from Dallas, and when I moved here, I would always listen to ESPN radio. I’m a big sports fan. I would start to listen to The Ticket, but it’s very inside-Dallas type talk. They’ll talk about sports, but you have to live here for a while to get some of the jokes. I remember talking to someone who lived here for a while, and he’s like, “Just keep listening.” He’s like, “You’ll eventually get it, and you’ll become a dedicated listener.” I was thinking about it, and over the last two years, maybe three years, I bet I have spent more time listening to The Ticket than consuming any other type of media in total.

I say that to preface the discussion of this article that you sent, which is from The Observer, entitled Radio — Yes, Terrestrial Radio — Is the No. 1 Medium in Terms of Reach. We often here about how radio is dying. It’s just this dead medium, yet while it’s changing — the stations that are doing it right, and The Ticket is certainly one of them. They were first sports talk radio station that consistently wins Marconis. The ones who do it well continue to not just survive, but thrive. How is that when we’re supposed to be in this era when radio is dying because there’s so many threats to its existence?

Brian Clark: Yeah, it was a fascinating thing. It caught me off guard when I saw the headline and I read the story. Obviously, we’re very interested in audio from a podcasting, on-demand type approach, and obviously, this is a huge justification that people really, really enjoy audio content. I’ve got several interesting things about this that popped in my head when I read this. First of all, before you read this article and I sent it to you, did you know what the first video ever played on MTV was?

Jerod Morris: I did. That I did know, yes.

Brian Clark: For anyone who doesn’t know, it was The Buggles’s song Video Killed the Radio Star. There was a bit of irony that in 2015 no? Not yet? Okay, number one, people love audio. It is ingrained in our culture from a media standpoint. There’s a lot of reason for that. I don’t know about you because you just said you are a heavy Ticket listener, and I don’t know what the context of that is. But to me, it seems that radio continues to dominate because of the car. The radio in the vehicle is technology that everyone understands. Agree or disagree?

Jerod Morris: I think in part because that’s when I got into it, but what the smart stations have done is allow their feeds to be picked up by programs like iHeartRadio and, more importantly, create their own apps. I don’t drive that much because I work from home, and probably 95 percent of the time I’m listening to The Ticket is just on an app on my phone. I just have it on. It’ll be in my pocket. It’ll just be kind of around and on. I think, certainly, the car helped, but I think what radio stations have done to grow and evolve to make sure that they can be accessed the places where people otherwise access music I think has also really helped.

Brian Clark: Yeah, that’s valid. Now, does that qualify anymore as terrestrial radio once it goes into an app or into podcast format?

Jerod Morris: That’s a good question.

Brian Clark: I mean the way they’re quantifying it.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. I think of podcast format as it’s already done, they’ve got it posted, and you’re not listening to it live. On the app, you’re actually streaming it live. I do think of that as still the terrestrial format because I suppose I could just turn a radio on. It’s just so much easier for me to use my phone as the radio instead.

The Future of Independent Audio Content

Brian Clark: Yeah, of course, the rise of the smartphone and smarter options within cars for streaming Internet radio — all of that good stuff. You can’t ignore that. That’s where all the growth is in media consumption, yet I still think of all these people in their normal car. I think of my parents, you know? My parents are not tech savvy, but I guarantee you they’re listening to the radio. I think we’re at this intersection of the advancement of audio streaming and formats for on-demand and all that kind of stuff. But there’s this entire legacy population out there who the radio is the stand by.

It just makes you wonder — which we’ve commented on several times — that podcasting took a long time to catch on because the tech was too damn hard. It’s still probably too hard for a lot of people, but it’s better. Now, new vehicles are getting podcast functionality and all of that stuff. It’s interesting.

You extrapolate into the future, and you hear all the talk about self-driving cars. They’re coming faster than anyone thinks. The changes in attitudes with Millennials about sharing as opposed to ownership — all these kinds of stuff. When you don’t have to drive the car anymore, do you opt for video at that point?

Jerod Morris: That’s a good question. What I think will be interesting, I was thinking about this last week actually, because they’ll do something on The Ticket. When the regular hosts are on vacation, they’ll have the other guys in. Part of what has allowed the really good terrestrial radio stations to stay successful is the people — their actual talent, their ability to tell stories. A lot of these guys have been doing it for 15, 20 years, and they’re still able to succeed in this new era because our desire for stories and for good storytelling to be ‘in’ on an ‘in’ crowd conversation is never going to go away.

I wonder as the new crop of people comes up, not just on The Ticket but on radio stations all over the place, if they’ll have those same sensibilities and the same long-standing connections that make the guys right now so good. It will be interesting because that could present another shift for radio as you move forward. I don’t know the answer to it. It will be interesting to watch.

Brian Clark: No, it’s all fascinating. We’re seeing the way things have been done change and change more rapidly than it seems like things have changed in the recent past. I think the main takeaway here is, as a content creator, people love audio. If you’re not producing audio content, you’re missing out on a huge segment — maybe the largest segment of the population.

Jerod Morris: Those align in there. It’s the same line I think I used in my Authority Rainmaker presentation and I’ve used on several episodes of The Showrunner. “Audio is right there in your ears, and it follows you around. It gets inside and changes you.” That’s a quote directly from the article from Laura Walker. It talks about how part of the reason why radio has endured is because you can take your radio with you to places where other content can’t go. It’s the same thing with podcasting. When we talk about the connection and the benefits of podcasting and why it’s getting so big, that is why.

Brian Clark: Yeah, without a doubt. I’m loving it as a content creator. It’s interesting. It took us a while to really commit, and then when we did commit, we way committed with an entire network. I just have launched a new show. I’d love to do more, but I don’t even know how you keep up with your podcasting schedule in addition to everything else you do. That’s the one thing. You get excited about it. The format is really amazing because people do really connect with you at a different level than even the best writers can do in text.

How Jerod Produces Multiple Podcasts

Jerod Morris: You know what’s interesting, you ask how to keep up with the schedule. I’ve actually found that by increasing my output by getting on a regular schedule has helped. There were a couple of side projects I was doing where it was very irregular when I was putting out episodes. But I found that it really weighed on me — just the planning, thinking about when, and scheduling. It took up a lot of time and mental energy. Actually just getting it down to, “Okay, new episode goes out on Wednesday. We record on Tuesday come hell or high water,” actually simplified it, has made it a lot easier, and made me more efficient.

Somehow, I get more done just having it scheduled like that — even though I was producing fewer episodes before. I think it’s more of a mentality thing, but it just goes to the whole idea of treating a podcast just like the radio show. You know if you tune-in to radio at noon, here’s the noon guys. There’s the afternoon drive guys. Being at a certain place at a certain time when the audience expects you, not only does that help the audience, but getting on that schedule can help you, too, and help you produce more and produce better.

Brian Clark: That brings to mind, read an article and it mirrored what I’ve been trying to do over the last year or so. I think it was called Millionaires Don’t Use To-Do Lists — which I think some people would argue with. The gist of it was that you don’t make to-do lists. You use your calendar as your to-do list. You just schedule out every part of the day. I’ve started doing that with regard to podcasting. Even if I don’t have something lined up, there is that air time.

It hasn’t worked perfectly because you have to change an old dog. It’s harder than changing a calendar but in practice, the calendar, the editorial calendar, and then just the, “Here’s what I’m doing today. Here’s when I’m doing each thing. I don’t have time to goof around,” has been helpful to me. I agree that the busier I am, the more output I actually produce. You’re definitely more exhausted at the end of the day.

Jerod Morris: Yes. Speaking of output, I was on Rainmaker.FM earlier and scrolling through the list of shows, and I saw this show with really cool art but a great name. It’s Unemployable. Can you tell me about that show?

A Brief Intro to Brian s New Show Unemployable

Brian Clark: Yeah, that was the new podcast that I eluded to, but it’s also more than that. It is a show on Rainmaker.FM. I also own the domain Unemployable.com. It is a great word. The story behind the title is that I did this exercise when working with a speaking coach actually. It was weird because it wasn’t about presentation skills. It was about story telling.

The first exercise was, “What’s the one word that sums up your life philosophy?” I ended up coming up with the word ‘further,’ which you know is a project I started about six months ago just to do an email newsletter about personal development and stuff that I’m reading and just sharing it.

But the immediate word that came to mind, which was met by a room full of laughter, was ‘unemployable.’ I was like, “Dude, no, I’m not kidding. I can’t have a job.” That resonates with people. It’s mainly aimed at people who are out there — freelancers solopreneurs, startups. I’m not trying to convince anyone to quit their job. I’m sure there will be people that tuned in that are thinking about it or thinking about making the leap. I’m not going to try to convince you. If you’re truly unemployable, you’re going to do it. At that point, I’ll be there for you.

Basically, 17 years ago, the first success I had on my own was as a freelancer, for better or worse. They call them solo attorneys when you’re a lawyer. It’s the same job, right? You got to get clients. You got to serve clients. You got to collect the money. You got to keep your sanity.

Then I evolved into more of these entrepreneurial type, although I was really bad at processes. Then, the Copyblogger years, then the Copyblogger media years, so it’s basically solo to CEO. I think I’ve seen almost every situation. That’s really my passion. Everyone thinks of me as a content guy or marketing guy, and yeah, that’s all part of it. But I love anyone who just feels like I really would prefer or just have to be on my own. Now, I know Chris Garrett is like, “No one in the company can listen to this show. We’re going to lose everyone.”

I’m like, “No, this is why we work so hard to make a non-standard employment.” You work where you want, when you want. As long as you get your work done, you’re fine. It’s been amazing to me that we’ve been able to find people like that because, certain people, they won’t fit in. It’s not enough structure. We’re almost like the anti-job job. That’s my saving grace, but I feel like I’m going to have to talk several of you down off the ledge.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. I was going to ask you about that, if you’re worried about what you might create or inspire because you’re the CEO of a company with 50 plus people, many of whom are self-starters who have done their own projects. That’s what’s interesting about Copyblogger, though. It’s almost a place where unemployable people can be employed in a strange way and still feel comfortable.

Brian Clark: Yeah. On one hand, we try to create that environment. Therefore, we have to hire certain types of people. I do worry about that. If we had to scale up to a 100 pretty quickly, and we might, you’re not going to only be able to find ‘unemployable types’ that actually fit in. Otherwise, no, I don’t worry about it. If someone comes to me and says, “I’m leaving,” I’m going to try to keep you, very hard. If that doesn’t work, I’m going to help you, and I’m going to encourage you — how could I not? I would be the ultimate hypocrite. I’m always prepared for the eventuality, but I’m also top of mind that I hope we can do everything we can, so no one splits.

Jerod Morris: Yes. Well, I listened to the first three episodes, and I really enjoyed it. I highly recommend it to everybody to listen.

Brian Clark: Cool. All right.

Jerod Morris: It’s good.

Brian Clark: That’s Unemployable.com. In addition to the podcast episodes, there is going to be a webinar series for registered members only. There’s this really cool function for members that you can record a question with audio software, and then I’ll pick several of these to answer on the show. It’s cool because I get to play the person on the show, which is what I love about … what’s his name on ESPN, Colin?

Jerod Morris: Colin Cowherd.

Brian Clark: Cowherd, yeah, that’s it. I like that guy’s style. He’ll just rant for a long time, and then he takes his long pauses and then just starts talking again. Have you noticed that about his style?

Jerod Morris: Yes. Oh, he definitely does.

Brian Clark: It’s interesting. Anyway, he’ll have people call in, and I guess that’s more or less live. He’s got a studio team, production team there that screens calls and all that. We do the next best thing — get people to leave recorded messages, listen to them, and then pick those that we’re going to answer on air. I’m really looking forward to that. That, to me, sounds more like the classic radio that we all come to grow up on and love.

Jerod Morris: You went ‘.com’ instead of ‘.FM.’ Does that suggest that it’s bigger than just a show? There’s something bigger going on there, or it’s just because the .com was there?

Brian Clark: .com was not there. There’s not a single dictionary word .com in the world.

Jerod Morris: I didn’t think so.

Brian Clark: I did have Unemployable.FM because I wanted to do the podcast. Then I started thinking of it as a bigger project with the webinars and the Q&A and maybe community going forward. The site is built on Rainmaker, of course, so it shows you that membership functionality even with free content.

It’s a case study for the ‘logged in’ experience as well. I paid a decent chunk of change for the .com, but it was way less than I thought it would have been. Further.net cost me more than Unemployable.com. I think this guy was just sitting on it, and he accepted an amount that I thought was a steal. That’s all I’m going to say. All right, well, I think that’s good for the day. Again, happy birthday. By the time this airs, you’ll be 34 and two days old, but that’s okay.

Jerod Morris: Thank you very much.

Brian Clark: It’s been fun having you, man. I may have to drag you back here again. I still can’t believe we let Robert just … the poet becomes a production and operations guy. That’s all he wants to do.

Jerod Morris: I know, I know. I’m getting more comfortable sitting in his seat even though the voice can’t compare. I get a little more comfortable each time.

Brian Clark: It’s not bad, but no one compares to Robert.

Jerod Morris: No, nobody.

Brian Clark: Not even Sonia, who has a fantastic voice.

Jerod Morris: Yes.

Brian Clark: All right, man. Take care. Everyone out there, I will see you again next week. Thanks for tuning in.

The Transcript

Darren Rowse on the Intersection of Blogging and Digital Commerce

Voiceover: This is Rainmaker.FM, the digital marketing podcast network. It’s built on the Rainmaker Platform, which empowers you to build your own digital marketing and sales platform. Start your free 14-day trial at RainmakerPlatform.com.

Brian Clark: Everyone, welcome to another episode of New Rainmaker. I am your host Brian Clark, founder and CEO of Copyblogger Media.

Today, my extra special co-host, and my revolving co-host chair, is a gentleman who I’m quite fond of. He’s been an inspiration for me in a lot of ways to even begin this crazy journey that began in 2006. He’s a friend. He’s been a business partner. He’s an all-around great guy, Mr. Darren Rowse.

Let’s go ahead and ask. Darren, how is it in the morning over there in Melbourne, because it’s nighttime here in the States?

Darren Rowse: Yeah, Monday morning here, so I thank you for a Sunday night podcast from your side of things. Well, we’re heading into winter. We’re in winter. It’s the school holidays day one today, so it’s gray and noisy here, although I just sent the kids out for an hour.

Brian Clark: I’m actually awake more on Sunday night than Monday morning, so I figured it was not too bad. It is winter in Australia. I just dropped my kids off at summer camp. It’s just completely opposite experience, but more of the same in many ways.

Brian Clark: All right, so you’re up to a lot of stuff, which always makes for a good podcast because we have plenty to talk about. One thing that I want to kick around with you, because it has been, for me, nine and a half years — I can’t believe that — that I started Copyblogger in January of 2006. Some people may get or know, but Copyblogger was a play on, or a complement of another term that had been established fairly recently back in those days. That was ProBlogger, which of course many people know you as ProBlogger. You’re that guy. Wait, did you start in 2005 or before?

Darren Rowse: ProBlogger was September 2004.

Brian Clark: That’s amazing. We’re working on 11 years for you for that site.

Darren Rowse: Yeah, it’s hard to believe. I think I started blogging in 2002, so it’s coming up on 13 years now.

Brian Clark: It’s been all right to you, though, right?

Darren Rowse: Yeah, it’s just changed my life.

Brian Clark: Radically. All of us, right?

Darren Rowse: Radically.

Brian Clark: I’m curious, because it has been a decade or so, what do you call the state of blogging today? When I put the spin on it with Copyblogger, that was basically just saying, “Hey, this is a way to look at it that’s a little different in that you sell products and services instead of advertising.” Now that’s known as content marketing.

The world has changed amazingly from back in the day when we were trying to convince kumbaya bloggers that it was okay to make money, which you took on, head on. Then I came along and said, “Let’s sell stuff.” A few people thought I was evil to say that. Now, you look at today, and it’s not like we live on the same planet. Blogging’s still relevant even though not everyone uses that term I suppose.

The State of Blogging in 2015

Darren Rowse: I guess that’s the main thing that I usually talk about. A lot of people are still doing it, but they may not even call it that or even know they’re doing it. But it’s still central to a lot of businesses today. I don’t think it’s going away any time soon. There’s certainly a whole heap of other things you can be doing with your time now as well. I guess it makes sense to look at it as part of a mix rather than just the only thing you do these days.

Brian Clark: It is odd. As a medium, the Internet was text heavy right from the beginning. That’s what search engines could see. That’s what people could produce. The people that were drawn, as creators or producers as opposed to consumers, were a lot of writers.

Now, obviously, video is huge, just like offline. Audio is huge, which we’ll talk about in just a bit. More people consume content visually or auditorily than we’ve got readers in the world. Yet, it persists. The whole idea of being able to repurpose audio, or even start with text and then go visual with it, that’s been a major theme that I’ve seen really come on strong — the whole idea of making your content really work for you.

The Long-Term Power of Evergreen Content

Darren Rowse: Yeah, for me, I heard Tim Ferriss speak recently. His argument is that long-form evergreen content is still probably the best investment that you can make for a business today in terms of building your platform and growing rates. I think that extends across the different channels, whether it be video, audio, or text. That’s certainly been my story. Long-form evergreen is what I spend 99 percent of my time trying to create.

Brian Clark: That’s what got me here. I remember when I started blogging and broke some of the, not your rules necessarily, but the Scobles and the other old-guard type, Steve Rubel, you know, those guys — 250 words max. Blog every day. It’s your personal opinions — so I wrote 1000-word evergreen educational articles. To me, that was where the value was at. Both of us differentiated and succeeded with that type of content, and it’s still incredibly valuable.

Darren Rowse: It pays off over and over. A lot of the content that I created in 2004 on ProBlogger is still the best-read content on ProBlogger today — 11 years later. It’s forced me to go back and update it. The same on Digital Photography School. To this day, I guarantee you that there’s 10 articles right now that are in the top 20 articles being read on Google Analytics, and they’re old, long-form evergreen content. That two or three hours I put into creating that post 11 years ago is paying off today many times over.

Brian Clark: That’s amazing. I always say that building an audience is an unfair advantage as long as you continue to serve them. You just continue to reap the rewards. The content that you created in the first place to get the audience is bringing you new audience. That may be the truly unfair part, but in a good way — a fantastic way if you’re a long-term thinker, I would suppose.

I do want to talk about Digital Photography School. You know how fond I am of that business. A lot of people know that’s kind of your main gig. A lot of people just know you for ProBlogger. It’s interesting. I do want to touch on that.

Speaking of audio, you’ve stopped your holdout against podcasting. It’s 2015, and Darren says, “Yeah I think it’s ripe now to go ahead and launch a podcast.” Tell us a little bit about that. Why’d you pull the trigger?

Why Darren Is Getting into Podcasting

Darren Rowse: There’s probably two or three reasons that all come together. One, I became a fairly avid podcast listener myself. That all happened because I started to take walks in the afternoons. I was bored on my walks, but I had to start exercising. That was a part of a whole health kick for me. I filled up that time with podcasts. It just dawned on me — like it’s probably dawned on millions of people before me — how effective they are, how personal they are, and how fantastic they are for bringing about change in people.

A lot of the podcasts I’ve listened to have been more health-related. They’ve really inspired and motivated me to make huge changes in my own health journey. As I’m listening to them, I’m thinking, “I could do this.” That’s what I’m all about. I’m all about bringing change in people’s life. What more effective and personal way to do it than to speak one on one, in some ways, to them through auditory? That’s been the big part.

The other part is my first love with communications has always been speaking and presenting. Podcasting is just doing that into a microphone. It gives me an opportunity to exercise those passions for communication that I had only really been able to do two or three times a year when I get to travel and speak at conferences. They’re the big parts. There’s also been a little bit of a nagging from a few friends as well, who all have said, “You know you really should start a podcast. It’s been four years since they’ve taken off.”

Brian Clark: And you’ve got that great accent, Darren. You’ve got to factor that in. I know you take it for granted, but the rest of the world is like, “Wow, he sounds really cool.”

Darren Rowse: I’m not sure about that.

Brian Clark: Oh, no, trust me. That’s what everyone says behind your back. But yeah, it, it is. It’s so personal. You touched on portability and on-demand. The ability to do something else without looking at a screen. This is a personal thing, but I am just over staring at screens. We’ve been doing this for a long time. They talk about the Millennials being digital natives. Some of us, we’re older, but we fit that profile because, for whatever reason, we gravitated toward online.

Audio to me has been somewhat liberating in my quest to keep my phone tucked away somewhere, not looking at it constantly. I love to go for walks and hikes as well. I’m a reader, but I’ve become an audio consumer as well because it just makes so much sense.

Tell us a little bit about the new podcast and where we can find it. We’ll make sure to put a link in the show notes, but let us know what it is and what it’s about.

Darren Rowse: It’s simply called ProBlogger. You can search in iTunes, or I’ve added it to Stitcher and all those other directories. It’s gradually being approved across a lot of those. In many ways, it’s taking a lot of the ideas and content that we’ve got on ProBlogger, the blog, and putting it into more of a discussion format and a presentation as such. It’s kicking off with my 31 Days to Build a Better Blog series, which has been participated in by 30-40,000 people over the years and turned into an ebook. Really taking those challenges every day is a little bit of teaching and little challenge that you can go away and do on your blog.

So it’s daily for the first 31 days, starting Wednesday of this week. By the time this podcast is live, I presume it will be live. After that, I’m not really sure. It’ll at least be weekly after the first month, possibly couple times a week depending on how inspired I am by podcasting. So far, it’s been just amazing. I’ve loved the producing of it. Not so much the editing. I think I might get someone to help me with that. The producing of it and the creation of it has been something that’s just given me heaps of energy.

Brian Clark: Absolutely. I’ve been watching on Twitter, and I went over to iTunes and left a review and all that. It’s cool because your existing audience is excited — even though I think perhaps your crowd is similar to ours in that they’re predominantly readers. They’d like to scan an article and figure out if they want to dive in deeper. Sometimes, those types of people are not a fan of audio because it’s not the right context for them.

Your existing audience is coming along. They’re your base. They’re your catalysts. They get you rolling in iTunes and get you that great start in New and Noteworthy, which is really cool, that you’ll see over the next two months.

But the real cool thing is that you’re going to reach people that may have never heard of you because it is in audio, and that may be their dominant consumption preference. Was that a big part of your decision, or is that more just a nice thing to have?

Darren Rowse: It probably wasn’t a major motivation for me, but it’s certainly something of, in talking to plenty of people who have podcasted before, that’s been their story. I’m interested to see that. In fact, I got an email this morning from someone who fit that category. I wasn’t even meaning to have this launched by today — iTunes put it in so quickly. It took 12 hours to get approved. It got found, and then I thought, “I better share it on Twitter.” It’s already found one new reader, which is amazingly quick for me. That’ll be something I’ll get to measure over the next few days particularly.

Brian Clark: It is fairly fascinating. It’s an audience expansion technique, even if you’re not thinking about it. We preach, again, relying too much on someone else’s property, but iTunes as an audio search engine can be hugely beneficial. Of course, you’ve still got home base, which is point number one of any good blogging strategy. Well, best of wishes with the new show. I know it’s going to be fantastic. The series itself that you’ve been doing for years, it’s 31 days for it?

Darren Rowse: Yeah, 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.

Brian Clark: I remember when you first launched that. I thought it was brilliant. It’s become an institution at this point. You do it over and over. There’s always new people coming in, and some people actually want to revisit the whole process.

Darren Rowse: Yeah, a lot of the people who bought the book do it on a monthly or bimonthly basis. It’s about creating habits. In my first episode — great bloggers are action takers — they’re also the actions I take that are normal, small things, so a lot of the 31 things are things that you can build into your daily or weekly rhythm of blogging that can bring a lot of life to what you do.

Brian Clark: Cool. Let’s shift gears just a little bit. I’m correct, I assume, in that Digital Photography School is still the bulk of your business?

Darren Rowse: Yeah, it’s about 10 times bigger than ProBlogger to this day.

Brian Clark: Do you still find people that are somewhat surprised that they don’t realize that ProBlogger’s not the main jewel in the crown?

Darren Rowse: Always, always. Then again, I always come across people who go, “I just discovered ProBlogger, what’s this other thing?” It goes both ways. I get a lot of, “My wife reads Digital Photography School, and I never realized it was the same person.”

Brian Clark: To me, it’s just a great business period. It’s admirable and amazing what you’ve built over there. The thing that gets me about it, the old business opportunity style, Internet marketers, always had the same pitch: “Turn your hobby or passion into a business. It’s easy. We’ll show you how for $97.” A lot of people got burnt by that because it’s not that simple. Yes, it can be done, but that’s what you did.

You weren’t even a professional photographer. This was your passion. This was your hobby. Now, this is a formidable business that continues to grow year after year after year. Take us back a little bit, and give us the history. I still love hearing this story, so I’m sure everyone else will.

How a Hobby Became a Multimillion Dollar Business

Darren Rowse: My first commercial blog was a photography blog. That was a reviews blog. It was on a horrible domain. I made so many mistakes with it, but it still got to the point where I was bringing in a full-time living from blogging. The thing I didn’t enjoy about that blog was that it was very much a reader’s come for one day, they research which camera they buy, and then they never come back again, or at least don’t come back for three years until they buy their next camera.

I always wanted to have something that had an ongoing relationship with those readers and that aligned more with my passion. My passion is taking photos rather than just talking about cameras. It was very much about, “Let’s take the model from ProBlogger, which is teaching people how to do something, and apply it to photography.”

I started Digital Photography School, I think it was 2005. It originally was me answering the questions that my friends used to ask me about how to use these digital cameras they had. I really took the frequently asked questions — What’s this aperture thing? What’s shutter speed? Really basic things, how to hold a camera — and just wrote what I knew about those topics. It was probably two or three articles a week on a horrible, free template.

There was no StudioPress or anything like that back then. Got it out there. It very quickly took off. A few readers came across from ProBlogger. A few readers came across from the other photography blog that I had already started. That was probably enough to seed it out there. It grew from there. It became a daily exercise for me. Then, gradually, over time, went to two times a day as well in the early days.

Gradually, over time, I began to monetize it, largely through advertising to start with. That certainly transitioned around the same time that I created the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog ebook. I wrote an ebook for that blog as well, which was really just re-purposing the content on the blog and putting it into a more logically ordered, up-to-date ebook.

Brian Clark: It’s interesting that — I’m sure at the beginning, it was more of a blog feel to it — but if you go to Digital Photography School today, again this link is in the show notes as well, but it’s Digital-Photography-School.com, but separated by hyphens between the words.

Darren Rowse: Right, because that’s catchy.

Brian Clark: Those were a different time, Darren. You can’t say it’s not keyword rich, right? If you look at it today, there’s nothing about this that says ‘blog.’ This is a hard-core entertainment, no, not entertainment, educational center — tips and tutorials, cameras and equipment, post production, and then you get down to books, courses, and forums. This is a destination for the digital photography hobbyist, or beyond actually. I know you guys have various levels of sophistication that you cater to. That’s a natural evolution, I suppose.

Much like when we changed the Copyblogger home page away from the normal blog format. Everyone had a conniption, but it was a business. You had to evolve in line with the business, not staying true to some sort of blog philosophy, right? How much did that play into the evolution of DPS?

The Evolution of a Digital Commerce Community

Darren Rowse: It’s just chalk and cheese in some ways. Our readership could care less whether it looks like a blog or not. That’s the beauty of it. If I change ProBlogger, I get a lot of feedback about, “It’s not a blog anymore.”

Brian Clark: That’s such a generous term.

Darren Rowse: I always say, Digital Photography School readers are real readers, and ProBlogger readers are largely bloggers. They’re a different kettle of fish in many ways. It was definitely an evolution, though. Like I said, I started out very much on focusing on beginners, two or three tips a week. Now, it’s become a lot more sophisticated in terms of our publishing rhythms, promotion, and the whole production of what we’re creating now. A lot of people come to a blog like DPS and think, “That’s what I need to create,” but you can’t start there. You’ve got to start somewhere simpler.

Brian Clark: That is such an excellent point. Often, I’ll be talking about a certain strategy or tactic and then use Copyblogger as an example, but then I have to say, “Hold on! Don’t look at it the way it is now. Look at it the way it was and how we got here,” because that’s year after year after year of, as you mentioned, evolving blog content into higher value content — whether that be a PDF ebook, a free ebook, a paid ebook, or a course, whatever the case may be. That’s the, I won’t say luxury, but it’s the benefit of consistency and putting in the time. You’ve developed these assets that, all of a sudden, you’ve got something that the beginner doesn’t have, yet we were all beginners at one point.

Darren Rowse: That’s right. For us, we’ve taught our readers how to go beyond being beginners. Then it forced us to create intermediate content and then more advanced content as well, and to expand the topics from just being how to take photos to how to process those photos. We’ve really focused on, “Where are the bulk of our readers now, and where do we want them to be next?” By identifying that change we’re trying to bring, it forces us to expand and make the site more sophisticated in terms of the kind of content and the way we deliver that content as well. It’s definitely been a journey, but that journey’s very much based upon where we’re trying to take our readers.

Brian Clark: It’s interesting. A couple years ago, if I remember correctly, it was ebooks that were the paid products that you offered. Now, you’re offering a selection of courses — little bit higher price tag, a little more intensive value — is that fairly recent?

How Ebooks and Online Courses Drive Revenue

Darren Rowse: Yeah.

Brian Clark: Okay. Tell us a little bit how you took that step.

Darren Rowse: Ebooks have always done really well for us. We’ve always been open to the idea of doing a course, but we wanted to see whether our readers would go there. One of the ways we’d been monitoring it is through affiliate promotions. Every year at Christmas and in the middle of the year, we do a seasonal promotion. At Christmas, it’s 12 days of Christmas. We promote a different deal every day, and they’re a mix of our products as well as other people’s products. We do the same thing in the middle of the year. In fact, it starts in two day’s time.

That’s partly a money-making exercise, but it’s also a testing exercise where we test different products we’re promoting of other people’s. Partly to make money, but also to see is this format relevant to our audience. So we’ve promoted courses probably for five or six years now at Christmas time.

Last year, the courses took off. That was a signal to us — we need to start getting into courses as well. We created our first course the start of this year. It did well, not as well as ebooks, but it was certainly enough that we thought there was a growing market there for us. We’ve just commissioned two more, and they’re in development at the moment.

We also noticed this year, presets, Lightroom presets. Little plugins for Lightroom and Photoshop have worked well, so we’re working on our first preset collection, too. The same thing happened last year when we promoted some printable stuff. Last year, we created printables. So, very much using affiliate promotions to test what we should publish next.

Smart Market Research for Creating Digital Products

Brian Clark: That is such an excellent point. I want to go ahead and point it out again even though you said it twice. That is so important. Some people think of affiliate marketing as a way to make money — and it is. It can be very lucrative. Some people, that’s their entire model. For me, I always used it to see what people would buy. That informs your product development strategy in a way that goes well beyond pray and guess, and hope for the best.

We talk about, in the startup world, minimum viable product and everything — well, selling someone else’s product to your audience and them buying it, you’re missing out on acquiring a customer, which is huge.

But if you’re finding that your type of people buy that type of thing, that is incredibly valuable information. Please take that away with you today and think about it. I know a lot of you are working on developing, specifically, digital products and services, but you don’t know exactly what’s going to work. Well, that is a very, very effective way to go about it because what someone will actually open up their wallet and pull out a credit card for is better market research than any survey, any questionnaire, any amount of listening, observation whatsoever. Darren, thanks for that.

Darren Rowse: Can I just make one more point on that?

Brian Clark: Yes, please do.

Darren Rowse: There’s two other things we’ve learned from this. One, it’s the type of products, or courses or ebooks or printables. Two, it’s the topic. We’re testing products on a whole heap of topics. The other one is, who’s producing those products? They can become potential collaborators. We have another site called SnapnDeals, which is where we do two or three affiliate promotions a week. They’re all photography related. It’s been interesting. Of those deals and the affiliate stuff that we do, the people who we’re promoting, if they take off, that’s also another hint for us. Some of those have turned into ebook authors or course producers or presets producers as well.

Brian Clark: Cool.

Darren Rowse: It’s just great on all kinds of levels.

Brian Clark: The collaboration angle is also gold. Being able to figure out, “Hey, looks like we can make some money together in a more meaningful way than just affiliate and merchant,” that kind of thing.

Darren Rowse: Yeah, we’ve certainly. With the presets, for instance, we promoted a guy’s presets. He had created a great product, so we were like, “Well, can you create one of those for us? We know if it’ll have our name on it as well as being a great product, it’ll sell even more to our audience.”

Brian Clark: Yes. Absolutely. I wanted to close with your advice for starting or would-be digital entrepreneurs. I think you gave some, but can you pull something else here to close this off?

Why the Success of Digital Entrepreneurs Depends the Ability to Change People’s Lives

Darren Rowse: I’ve spoken about this quite a bit lately. You’ve got to do something that’s meaningful for your audience. I know people have said that for years, “Do something that changes people’s lives.” It’s just so true. I’ve seen it with what you’ve built. You’ve literally changed people’s lives in giving them tools and teaching to build businesses. When you do that, they’re just so grateful for it. I see that on ProBlogger and Digital Photography School all the time.

People who, if you change their life in some way, you give them something that they didn’t have before, then they not only buy from you, but they tell others about you as well. Very much that’s been our focus across both of the businesses that we have. Change people’s lives. Do something meaningful to them. Do something that matters. Out of that emerges all kinds of opportunity.

Brian Clark: Yeah, it may seem trite or flowery, but if it’s just about money, there’s a good chance you’re just not going to make it. It can’t just be that. When you’re thinking about money, you’re thinking about yourself. The people who make the most money are thinking about the other people more — or most fanatically. Excellent advice.

Darren, I’m going to let you carry on with your Monday morning. I guess I should probably wind down so that my Monday morning has something productive about it. I want to thank you again for joining us. Do look for the podcast, everyone. That’s ProBlogger podcast on iTunes. I’m sure there’s going to be a mention on ProBlogger I hope this week as well. Of course, ProBlogger.net. Are you still doing the ProBlogger.com community?

Darren Rowse: That’s just changing at the moment. In fact, I just saw the new front page, which is coming along. The front page has become more of a portal. The community, we ended it about three or four months ago, but there’s new stuff coming there, too. If you go to ProBlogger.com, you’ll find all the different properties now.

Brian Clark: Cool. Then also Digital Photography School. Check that out if you have any interest whatsoever in photography. Also, though, if you just have an interest in seeing a very fantastically run, community-oriented, but highly profitable business, Darren does it right.

Darren, thanks so much for joining us.

Darren Rowse: Thanks, Brian.

Brian Clark: All right, everyone, we will see you next week. Take care.

The Transcript

Three Subscription Revenue Models for Digital Content and Services

Brian Clark: This is Rainmaker.FM, the digital marketing podcast network. It’s built on the Rainmaker Platform, which empowers you to build your own digital marketing and sales platform. Start your free 14-day trial at RainmakerPlatform.com.

Brian Clark: Hey, everyone, and welcome to another episode of New Rainmaker. I am Brian Clark, your host and the founder and CEO of Copyblogger Media.

We have a really cool episode today because I have a really cool co-host, as has been our practice lately. Instead of having to listen to me ramble on monologue-style, we get smart people to join us and talk about smart things.

Today, we’re talking about subscription revenue models. Last week, we kind of set the stage for the perfect online business model, which would be a combination of recurring revenue and digital products and services. We’re going to continue on that theme today with a guy who wrote the book on the topic of the power of subscription models in general.

Today, we’re going to focus on three models in the digital realm that are extremely powerful for any entrepreneur or business person looking to create a recurring revenue stream. Today’s guest is John Warrillow. He is the author of The Automatic Customer: Creating a Subscription Business in Any Industry.

John, thanks so much for joining me today.

John Warrillow: Thanks for having me, Brian. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Brian Clark: Yeah, absolutely. I know you currently run a successful subscription-based business, and I know that you had one prior to that, which is pretty good credibility, I would guess, for the book that you wrote. Tell us a little bit about how you got started as an entrepreneur, and take us through to how we got here to today.

The Only Business Model Investors Want to Talk About

John Warrillow: Yeah, sure. I used to run a subscription business. I sold it to a Fortune 500 company in 2008. I wrote a book called Built to Sell back in 2011, and the idea was, how do you structure a business and make it more sellable? One of the themes in the book was the importance of recurring revenue as it drives up the value of your business. With this book, I really wanted to do a deep dive into that idea of recurring revenue and how important it is to the overall value of your company.

Brian Clark: We talked last week. I had either the privilege or misfortune of having two months of conversation with private equity investors. It’s gotten to the point where all they want to hear about is recurring revenue. That, to me, is a remarkable shift given that most of the world still operates on a transactional basis.

The Priceless Value of Online Recurring Revenue

John Warrillow: Let me give you an example because my day job, what you mentioned, my current business, is called The Value Builder System, where we estimate and help business owners improve the value of their company. It’s a subscription business, but we have now 14,000 users that have gone through and filled out our questionnaire.

What we see is that the average business on that questionnaire gets an offer that’s around one times top-line revenue, but if you’ve got recurring revenue, you can get as much as six times top-line revenue. It’s a huge impact on the value of your business. Why? Because acquirers want to know, “Well, what’s this business going to do once the owner hits the beach?” They want to know that the revenue’s going to continue to go on.

How to Start a Bidding War for Your Business

Brian Clark: Yeah, absolutely. Of course, we’ve seen scenarios where that gets up to 10X revenue, which is amazing. If it’s the right company in the right market with recurring revenue, you can get into a strategic acquisition bidding war if you have more than one suitor, which of course is ideal. Still, five to six times revenue compared to one or two — huge difference in the capacity of that beach house that you end up in.

John Warrillow: The size and square footage, exactly.

Brian Clark: All right, as promised, I want to talk about a few different models here. We’re speaking specifically about digital products and services and with the advent of things like Netflix and other recurring models, based on purely, now, digital distribution. Of course, Netflix, at one point, did ship — or I guess they still do, but who does that anymore? — the actual DVDs, which was a smart play. They were in it for the long term, but I recall an interview with their CEO that says if you look at the brand itself of Netflix, it was always going to end up pure digital.

John Warrillow: It’s a very good point. The logistics of managing shipping stuff in a subscription business, you just have to ask the guys at Dollar Shave Club how difficult that is to actually ship a physical product on subscription. So they’re moving in the right direction making it digital.

Brian Clark: Now, I know one of your other models — and we joked around about it last week — not that it’s not amazing and viable, but the stuff in a box thing, I find this amazing that you have all these businesses popping up serving relatively affluent people with everything from a collection of cosmetics to an outfit for a guy.

John Warrillow: Right, yeah. BarkBox is one of my favorite. This is the one for dog parents where they send the dog parent — the dog owner, but they call them parents — a collection of dog treats. What’s really interesting about those models, Brian, is that the key to making them work is less the subscription and more the sales on the back of the subscription.

At Birchbox, as an example — $10 a month and you get a box full of cosmetic samples, mostly women who subscribe — half of their subscribers have now bought a full-size version on their website. The real opportunity that a lot of people are chasing is the back-end sales on the website, on the back of the subscription. The subscription in and of itself is a bit of a Trojan horse.

Brian Clark: Yeah, and that’s something we’ve been preaching forever, whether you call it a gateway product or acquiring a customer. It’s the continued sales, whether in a recurring model or on a one-off transactional model, but yeah, I did note that about Birchbox. I thought it was brilliant. It’s old-school direct marketing, but brought forward into the digital — the world we live in today where you have to be much more trustworthy and transparent in our marketing. Yet it’s still the same principle. When you acquire a customer and you take care of them, you’re going to get the opportunity for more revenue.

John Warrillow: Absolutely, yeah.

Brian Clark: Okay, so let’s talk about our first model today. This one is the first one that pops into many people’s minds when they think of the combination of digital and recurring revenue. That’s the tried-and-true membership website model, probably pioneered by people in the porn industry in the ’90s, but much more legitimate these days.

Why don’t you walk us through the model in your mind and, also, if you’ve got some off-kilter examples. Everyone knows that training people in marketing and these very meta business models are using the membership model, but there’s really just a broad range of people who are benefiting from the model.

How to Make a Membership Subscription Model Work

John Warrillow: You bet. To define it, the membership model is where you take your expertise, what you know better than 99.9 percent of the world, and put it behind a pay wall and charge people a subscription fee to access that.

A couple of good examples that are a little bit out of the ordinary would be DanceStudioOwner.com. If you own a dance studio, they’ll give you the templates and tools and insight on how to make that a profitable business. They were acquired recently by Revolution Dance, who are one of the fastest growing dance apparel companies, because it was a gateway product for revolution. That’s one example.

Another good example would be Mark over at The Wood Whisperer. At The Wood Whisperer, they teach hobby woodworkers how to build cabinets — again, very deep passion for a lot of people — and Mark delivers a great membership website over there for them.

The key is that you’ve got to find something that people are passionate about. The best membership websites, the ones with the most longevity, are actually helping you make money. It’s like RestaurantOwner.com, how to run a successful restaurant. Joe Crisara at Contractor Selling is helping plumbers and electricians be better sales and marketing individuals.

The ones that are a bit harder to make go are the real consumer-like ‘everything you wanted to know about Italy.’ Maybe there aren’t enough people that are really passionate about that topic, but it’s very hard to get them to break out their wallet if they don’t see a direct line to revenue.

Brian Clark: Yeah, and I think you’ve made the point that the membership site model works when you’re solving real problems, which is usually in a business or financial context, more or less. Of course, in any market, it’s either passion or a true problem, let’s say weight loss. Of course, there are many programs that do really well there because that’s a serious problem. You can at least keep the customer until they reach their goals and maybe even maintain beyond that.

The other side of it, like the woodworking thing, is passion. It’s got to be intense. You want to master whatever it is. I think maybe that’s the ingredient that separates something that’s going to work with that model and something that’s probably not going to go over as well.

John Warrillow: Yeah, and the degree of complexity of what you’re teaching and also the visual nature of what you’re teaching. If what you’re teaching requires screen-grabs and video tutorials, and for people to get it, they got to see it — that’s the perfect circumstance for a membership website. Obviously, with membership websites, you can usually upload video and show people screen grabs. The higher degree of complexity, the more need they have for the information.

Brian Clark: Excellent point. Before we move on from this model, you touch on this in the book. This is something we’ve advocated since 2007 with our Teaching Sells program with online training specifically — multiple modalities of content in that you provide text, you provide audio, you provide video, or some sort of visual when it’s necessary to communicate the ideas, but more or less serving all the different learning styles.

John Warrillow: Absolutely. That’s very, very important in a membership website where you do have people that are better at watching, better at reading, et cetera, et cetera.

Brian Clark: It’s also odd — and we’ll talk about the psychology of selling these things in a little bit — but when you transform something, say, from text into video, all of a sudden people want to pay more money for it, which is odd, but it’s a truth.

Okay, the next one that I want to talk about is the all-you-can-eat library model. That’s an interesting descriptor, but doesn’t that describe what we opened with, with Netflix?

What the ‘Netflix’ Model Can Do for Your Business

John Warrillow: You bet. Basically, the all-you-can-eat library model is where you take your digital content and you put it in the Cloud. You put it behind a pay wall, and you say, “Here it is. It’s in a library format, search for it, and use it.” It’s evergreen information, while Netflix is always adding new content, the base of its database, its library is these thousands of titles they have access to and that you get access to in real-time. Netflix is the ultimate all you can eat.

You don’t have to be Netflix, though, to use this. There’s an example in the book about New Masters Academy, and they’re an interesting business. They help people learn how to acquire a new skill in art, so if you want to become a watercolor painter or a pottery maker, et cetera, you can subscribe to New Masters Academy. I think it’s $30 or $35 a month, and you get access to literally hundreds of tutorials on how to learn a new discipline in the world of art. It’s all you can eat because the library is up there, and you can pick and choose like a Chinese menu. People are buying access to more content than they could ever possibly consume.

Brian Clark: To give another example of something we’ve been talking about quite a bit lately since LinkedIn spent a billion and a half, Lynda.com is this model as well. Do you have any behind-the-scenes insight on Lynda? I’ve been tracking that site for a decade, but I never quite figured out what their model was for paying contributors.

John Warrillow: I don’t. At New Masters Academy, for example, their model for paying contributors is interesting. There’s a pool of revenue that goes in that basically gets split up between all the contributors, but most people do that on a number of usage basis. So the people who have popular programs are getting paid more in the payout model than those that have obscure ones.

With New Masters, what they were interested in was depth of content as opposed to really just three really popular things. They wanted to be able to have lots of content, so they pay out based on number of submissions, number of tutorials you, as an artist, upload.

That’s the key point about these models like Uber and Facebook. They don’t necessarily own the content. They’re providing, basically, a platform. At New Masters, they don’t hire or employ all the artists. They’re hiring artists that are teaching at community colleges and so forth today and saying, “Hey listen, let me come and record you for a day or two. We’ll build out the tutorial, and then we’ll do a revenue share on the back-end.” That’s how they’ve accumulated lots and lots of content very, very quickly. They’re not buying it. They’re doing rev-share deals.

Brian Clark: Nice, and I suspect Lynda did something similar. What we’re talking about here with this all-you-can-eat library is massive amounts of content really beyond feasibility for a single person to create or even to hire a bunch of employees or even freelancers to create.

Going back to Netflix, that’s obviously a licensing situation. Now, of course, Netflix has gotten into original content, which I think is brilliant, but they laid the groundwork with a vast library of licensing deals. Give us some insight on how the everyday entrepreneur can use licensing in this model.

John Warrillow: What you want to do is first pick a very small and niche where you can own it. Like Lynda.com and the rest, the big, broad categories I think are already taken. You want to pick a very small niche. As New Masters did, go find the thoughtful contributors in that space who don’t necessarily have the same depth of knowledge around digital assets.

What you, as an entrepreneur, listening to this program being part of the Copyblogger community, you’re obviously knowledgeable of that digital marketing, digital assets, and how to structure these. You can bring that talent to the table. Let those individuals who have a unique expertise, but not necessarily the knowledge to sell information products, to market.

Again, the structure of the deals is typically a revenue-sharing agreement where you put their content into an all-you-can-eat library. Then on the back-end, you share a portion of that revenue. Then depending on the philosophy of the site, you can share revenue based on number of downloads, number of views, or as New Masters did, based on number of assets or number of tutorials uploaded. Again, that gets back to what you’re trying to achieve with your all-you-can-eat library.

Brian Clark: Just some insight, in another approach, there are content producers out there — let’s say you want to create a membership site for freelancers and you want to provide legal forms, checklists, documents like that. We know there’s an entire market out there of sites that sell that type of product. But you can also find a supplier where you could do a licensing deal. That becomes part of your content, which is somewhat stock. Then you augment it with your original content, and you’ve got quite the lucrative offering. Keep that in mind. Licensing can be powerful as long as you make the economics of it work.

John Warrillow: Well-said.

Brian Clark: Let’s move on to the third. This one is fascinating, and it’s tricky. We’ve got some examples here of people who created subscription models with network effects that just made ridiculous amounts of money coming and going. I’ll let you talk about that one, but the network model, what is this?

The Growth Power of the Network Subscription Model

John Warrillow: Essentially, the network model is a subscription model where the defining characteristic is the more people subscribe in your market, the more powerful the subscription becomes for everybody. To get your head around this one, go back to when the telephone was first introduced in the 1800s. At the time, when you first launched the telephone, the only people who had a telephone were the sheriff, the doctor in town, and maybe the post office. The utility of a telephone was somewhat minimal.

As people started to buy telephones and you could call not only the sheriff, but you could also call your neighbor or your mom or your kid, it started to accelerate the benefit for everybody to a point where it grew like wildfire because the benefits, the best sales people became the users of the system.

A more modern day example of that might be World of Warcraft, the online video game series, where you can game individually, but it’s way more fun if you get your friends and contacts to game with you. There’s an acceleration or network effect that happens when the more people opt in, the better it is for everybody.

Brian Clark: Yeah, the fax machine is my favorite example. One fax machine is worthless, two is interesting, but two million is something. That’s exactly what happened until it got replaced by digital.

John Warrillow: My co-host, you’re sounding very old by saying that kind of stuff.

Brian Clark: Oh I know. Fax machine? What’s that?

John Warrillow: Exactly.

Brian Clark: You talked about the telephone.

John Warrillow: Right, exactly.

Brian Clark: I got this computer in my pocket that also makes calls, so I don’t …

John Warrillow: Touché.

Brian Clark: We think about network effects a lot these days in terms of free things that spread, such as, of course, Twitter, Facebook, same concept, but there’s no money being charged. Talk to me a little bit about WhatsApp, which went with a nominal subscription fee that added up to a whole lot of money and a gigantic acquisition.

John Warrillow: Yeah, WhatsApp is probably the poster child for this network model where, as you know, before they were acquired by Facebook, you could subscribe to WhatsApp, and after a year of using it for free, they charged you $1 per year subscription. You think, what on earth do they care about a dollar? Well, the dollar helped them create the platform that would actually get rid of all the cheesy ads that were on all the competitive messaging platforms who chose to monetize their platform by advertising.

The guys at WhatsApp said, “You know what, we’re going to create a clean app, no ads, but you got to pay $1 a year.” Well, they were, at the time of the acquisition, acquiring a million new users a day — a million new users a day. More pictures were being exchanged on WhatsApp than were on the entire Facebook platform, and as you know the story ends, Facebook acquires WhatsApp for I can’t remember the number off the top of my head.

Brian Clark: $19 billion.

John Warrillow: Yeah, I was going to say $18 or $19 billion dollars. At the time, WhatsApp had about 50 employees.

Brian Clark: That’s the size of my company. I’m feeling a little inadequate at the moment, but it’s amazing because 250 million $1 subscriptions, is still $250 million dollars. Did Facebook end up killing the dollar subscription?

John Warrillow: To my knowledge, they have. They certainly said that that was part of their intent at the time.

Brian Clark: That means the original deal — Facebook is great at this — is going to be killed because they’re going to pollute it with ads.

John Warrillow: Right. Yeah, it wouldn’t be surprising. I haven’t followed the latest implementation.

Brian Clark: I don’t use it, so I don’t know. Anyway, still a fascinating story. The network model is intriguing. I think it’s the trickiest of the three that we’re talking about, but it’s always fodder for creativity to start thinking about these models.

John Warrillow: That’s what we try to do in the book, Brian. I say this in the section. I lay out these nine models, and I say, “Do me one favor. As you read these, don’t put your feet up and say, or put your hands up and say, ‘This would never work in my industry.’”

My hope is that when people read them, it’s go with an open mind, and they’re saying, “Well, what could I steal from this guy in this industry and apply, be the first to apply it to my business or my industry.” I think with that open mind, you can steal ideas and be the first to innovate in a different industry.

Brian Clark: Absolutely. That works almost for any business model. I love the stories of how Henry Ford created the auto assembly line by visiting a Chicago meatpacking plant. It’s always what the other person is doing in a non-competitive industry that sparks the most creative and innovative ideas.

John Warrillow: I’d never heard that example. That’s great.

Brian Clark: Oh, it’s a great one. There’s another one about the printing press was actually inspired by the grape press for creating wine. It’s always the weirdest place. I always tell people, “Go, get outside of your little world, and you’ll get a better idea than just staying inside the box,” to use a cliché.

John Warrillow: Yeah, well-said.

Brian Clark: Few tips here. I don’t want to keep you too long, but I’m having a lot of fun because this is one of my favorite topics.

John Warrillow: That’s great.

The Psychology of Selling a Recurring Subscription

Brian Clark: ‘Psychology Is Selling a Subscription’ is an entire chapter in the book. You also have some very useful chapters in the book about the math that you have to do to make it viable, so obviously, people, pick up the book. It’s a bargain.

Let’s talk a little bit about this. I love how you open the chapter with, “Selling a recurring subscription is different than selling a stick of deodorant,” which I thought was the understatement of the year, if not the decade. Let’s talk a little bit about it.

What are the primary considerations that you have to take into account when you’re trying to get a person to say, “Yes, it’s not only worth it for me to open my wallet, but for me to be charged on a periodic basis.”

John Warrillow: Think of it as the difference between a one-night stand and a marriage. One-night stand, both consensual parties go off and have a good time for an evening. Neither party is committed to the other and both can go their separate ways at the end of it, whereas a marriage arguably has a lot bigger benefits, a bigger value proposition for both parties over the lifetime — but it takes a bigger commitment.

A subscription is akin to a marriage. You’ve got to build trust and make a case that you’re going to look out for that person’s best interests. Unfortunately, I think, we’re getting a bit of subscription fatigue setting into the market, where all of us look down our credit statements now — I don’t know about you, but when I look down my credit card statement, instead of seeing my two or three lumpy purchases, I see 50 $10-, $20-, $40-a-month charges now from Netflix, Salesforce.com, and all the other folks that we subscribe to in our business.

How to Overcome Subscription Credit Card Fatigue

John Warrillow: The credit card statement is causing a bit of subscription fatigue, which increases the need to overcome this fatigue. One of the strategies I talk about is the psychology of selling a subscription. One of the strategies people should think about is thinking 10X versus 10 percent. Nobody is going to subscribe to what you do by offering a 10 percent discount.

I was having this conversation with a dentist the other day. I was speaking, and a dentist come up to me and said, “Well, how does this work in dentistry? Could I have people subscribe to dental cleaning?” I was like, “Yeah, absolutely you could.” So he’s like, “Well, maybe I could give them 5 or 10 percent off.” I stopped him. I said, “Nobody’s going to subscribe for cleaning just to save 10 percent. What you’ve got to imagine is, ‘How do I make this value proposition 10 times better than just buying on a one-off basis?’”

At New Masters Academy we were talking about earlier, for $30 a month, you can get access to a library of content, which each one of those courses might be $600 or $800 at a community college. There’s a 10X value proposition. You get Netflix, you could make a really strong argument that Netflix is a 10X value proposition. For $10 a month, you’re getting access to hundreds of thousands of titles. So think 10X versus 10 percent.

Brian Clark: Yeah, and I think it also goes back — because you’re right — about credit card fatigue. Now, in my business, I don’t think twice about it because the value is evident. Can I do without this and still deliver the same experience? No, I can’t. Okay, it’s good.

On the consumer side, Spotify, Netflix, I’m an entertainment junkie when I have the time, so those are definitely worth it to me to have access to pretty much any song or any movie that I’m really looking for, but the more superfluous stuff is where people might get into danger with churn and things like that.

John Warrillow: You’re absolutely right. If you look at the churn rates of B2B software, business-to-business software, where it’s mission critical, and particularly industry-specific software, the churn rates are less than one percent a year. They’re infinitesimal, which drives the huge multiples you’re seeing for those industry-specific recurring revenue businesses.

Whereas, I think you’re absolutely right. Some of the more consumer-oriented, take it or leave, discretionary, those are the ones where you’re seeing lots of very high churn rates. Again, speaking to the importance of sticking, if you can, into a business-to-business model where you’re going to get lower natural churn rates.

Brian Clark: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, value, obviously. Any language or copy tips? We’ve got a lot of copywriting people who listen. They’ll be interested in what are some of the points that you really have to get across to get people to rationalize and improve the purchase. You start with the emotional response, and then you got to justify it logically.

Copywriting Tips for Selling Recurring Subscriptions

John Warrillow: Right. Like any good copywriting, you’ve definitely got to make both a very rational, but also an emotional connection. On the rational side, ironically, Microsoft’s doing a pretty good job with Office 365. One of the rational value propositions is, “Look, when you subscribe, unlike when you install a set of CDs on a computer, you’re instantly, the moment you install them, you’re susceptible to viruses. Unlike that situation, with our software, as a subscriber, you will get instant patches and instant downloads for virus protection.” That instantaneous value proposition is always on.

Words like ‘instant access’ and ‘always on,’ and those sorts of words that imply a real-time connection — ‘On-demand,’ ‘as you need it’ — are all words that connect for sure. The emotional side of it is painting the picture of what it means to be a subscriber.

At BarkBox, I mentioned them earlier, they’ve got two, last time I checked, full-time employees whose only job is to drop happiness bombs on their subscribers. A ‘happiness bomb’ is when they send a spontaneous gift to a subscriber who has had a bad situation. Usually, it’s a dog owner who’s had a dog who’s gotten sick, and so they send a spontaneous gift. Now, why would they hire two full-time people to do that? Because that breeds a sense of spontaneity and romance into the relationship, which is what drives the lower churn.

Brian Clark: That’s brilliant. I love it. In the post-Zappo’s world, delighting people is what you have to strive for, not just adequately keeping your promise. That’s a challenge. That’s a great example. I like the Microsoft example, too. We found, from our standpoint with the Rainmaker Platform compared to WordPress, the fact that we update, manage, security, all of that was more of a selling point than we originally thought at the beginning. You just have to look where the pain is and adequately communicate that.

John Warrillow: Absolutely.

Brian Clark: All right, people. I highly recommend The Automatic Customer. It’s very concrete, yet I consider it an idea generation book like John mentioned. “How do I take bits from here and bits from there and create something new?” It’s not creativity that comes from staring out the window. It’s from observing what others are doing and then seeing the connection with what you’re already doing.

John, I’d like to thank you for joining us today. If I might be so bold, I’d love to have you back as a co-host from time to time, if you’re interested.

John Warrillow: Yeah, I’d love to do that, Brian, any time.

Brian Clark: Awesome. All right, everyone, take care. We will be back next week with more. As always, if you can find the time to head over to iTunes and leave a rating and review for us, I would greatly appreciate it. It definitely helps.

In any event, I will be back next week with more. Take care, everyone.

The Transcript

Two Components of the Perfect Online Business Model

Voiceover: This is Rainmaker FM, the digital marketing podcast network. It’s built on the Rainmaker Platform, which empowers you to build your own digital marketing and sales platform. Start your free, 14-day trial at RainmakerPlatform.com.

Jerod Morris: I’m recording as well.

Brian Clark: Right, Jerod’s got it because I can’t get out from under this towel. That’s staying in.

Jerod Morris: I’m multi-tasking under a blanket and recording.

Brian Clark: I’m in a closet. I’m under a towel held up by a robot piece of bound material art.

Jerod Morris: There is no glamour in podcasting.

Robert Bruce: Wait a minute. I thought this was a phone call. We’re recording this?

Jerod Morris: I ve been recording.

Robert Bruce: You re recording? I retired two episodes ago. And now you drag me back in.

Brian Clark: Nice work.

Robert Bruce: This is ridiculous.

Brian Clark: I knew you couldn’t stay away.

Robert Bruce: Oh I’m staying away. I’m here for, let’s see, 20 minutes. And then I’m retiring again.

Brian Clark: Which means 45.

Robert Bruce: Yeah, if I know anything about you.

Brian Clark: You never ever, ever accurately predicted the length of the podcast.

Robert Bruce: Right, right. Jerod’s here with us too, right?

Jerod Morris: I am. I’m here.

Brian Clark: All right. So this is what I’ve resorted to only one week into my revolving co-host thing. We make Robert come back and the drive poor Jerod in as well.

Robert Bruce: Yeah, nice work there.

Brian Clark: Whatever it takes, you know. You leave me on my own — I really can’t be choosy.

Robert Bruce: Brian, if you could have any business/revenue model going in the world, what would it be?

Brian Clark: The one I have.

Robert Bruce: And?

Brian Clark: Oh, would you like me to elaborate?

Robert Bruce: Maybe, since this is a podcast, that might be — yeah, please do.

Brian Clark: I would say, sitting here in 2015, that a recurring business model selling some form of digital product or service is the Holy Grail. Now, I’m not the only one who feels that way. I’ve spent the last six weeks talking to various people with large amounts of capital who don’t even want to hear about something that’s not a recurring subscription model. Which is odd, because that’s not — think about the history of business: someone has something, you’ve got some money, you give them the money, they give you the thing.

All of a sudden, that is completely unacceptable. Even though that’s still the vast majority of business as it’s transacted today. But that’s what people are obsessed with. Because recurring revenue is so much more stable. It’s predictable. You can extrapolate into the future. You’re not hunting and gathering constantly each month just to try to meet or exceed where you are at.

But think about it, this wasn’t a thing. Now we all pay for Netflix recurring. And maybe you’re a member of Dollar Shave Club and you get your razors that way because you’re too lazy to go to the store. What do you think about this?

Because when I was a kid utilities were the big recurring things. If you didn’t pay your water bill every month, you didn’t have water. I think the biggest shake-up in my childhood in my childhood years in this regard was cable TV. Not only did you go from paying for something that was free, but you paid for it every month or you didn’t get your MTV.

Robert Bruce: Jerod, I know you’re only 19 years old. We were talking earlier today about the Columbia House CD subscription business.

Brian Clark: Jerod, do you remember that? You know, when you were four?

Jerod Morris: I do actually. Yes, I do remember that.

Brian Clark: That was the irresistible offer, right?

Robert Bruce: It really was. That big fat catalogue —

Jerod Morris: It was like 10 CDs for a cent.

Brian Clark: Or 10 CDs for a penny. And this was pre-internet, so you had to tape a penny to a cardboard thing, find a stamp, drop it in the mail and you were never more excited than that. Because you were just cleaning up on Columbia House. Of course, that’s not how it turned out.

Robert Bruce: You were too young to read the fine print and the 25-page —

Brian Clark: Well, no, I knew the deal. What I was not old enough to have a feel for was my own lack of follow through. So you were committed to buy x amount of CDs in the future and I’m a music junkie so “Hey, no problem.” But then they send you that card in the mail every month and you had to open it up and look at it and see that it was Debbie Gibson and say, “No, hell no,” find a stamp and send it back.

Robert Bruce: It’s all right, you got the Debbie Gibson, it’s fine.

Brian Clark: That’s later. If you dig through my CD collection — “What’s with the Abba and Debbie Gibson,” and I’m like, “I didn’t return the card, okay?” And you know, contractually, if you didn’t return the card and it showed up, you had to pay for it. Now I’m sure there were people, just like there are now, who would send it back anyway. But that’s even more work than sending back a postcard.

But that wasn’t recurring revenue necessarily, it was a recurring obligation. Even then, the whole idea we kind of thought of as somewhat shady. It just wasn’t the norm. And now that’s the first thing — whether it be a fellow entrepreneur, a VC, or a private equity person they’re like, “Recurring revenue? No? I don’t want to talk to you.” As if there aren’t other valid business models. But I do have to say, it is one half of the Holy Grail of business models.

Robert Bruce: So back then — Columbia House, you’ve also got newspaper subscriptions, you’ve got magazine subscriptions, cable — it was not a prevalent model. Then we move in to the early days of the internet where it’s easier and easier to distribute digital goods, namely like ebooks.

The Legitimization of Subscription Revenue Models

Brian Clark: Yeah. So that’s the second half of digital, but before we leave the recurring thing, it really was the internet that exploded the concept. All of the sudden the precursor of what we now call the sharing economy was kind of predicted. I read this great book called “The Age of Access” that totally called all of this. The end of ownership and the rise of the Age of Access which you would pay for one-off or on a subscription basis. And now we have Uber, and we’ve got bike sharing and all of these things the kids are into these days. I still like to own my car.

Robert Bruce: It’s a pretty natural shift because you think back to the Columbia House, we had to have a lot more patience back then. We were willing to wait on the mail and send them back postcards. With the internet, it’s like our expectations have shifted. So we want access and we want convenience, which is why we’re willing, I think even as consumers to pay on this more recurring model. Because I want stuff when I want it and I want exactly what I want. So the trade-off is instead of paying one off, you’ve got to pay on a recurring basis so it’s there when you need it because you can’t predict when you’re going to want it.

Brian Clark: But think about Columbia House. It was such a fantastic deal that I got 10 free CDs so I could buy bad CDs on accident. Now, for ten bucks a month, I get pretty much every song in the world on Spotify and yet it’s still hard for someone my age to just … The first time I think, “Hey, I used to have that CD or LP or 8-track.” Robert, how’s the extensive 8-track collection of yours going?

Robert Bruce: It’s somewhere in a box in some storage unit.

Brian Clark: I still have that. I shifted, obviously, to iTunes early on. But my first impulse still, and I’ve done this many times, is I’ll say, “Man, I haven’t heard that Ramones album in forever,” and I go buy it. And then I’m like, “That’s on Spotify, oh my God.” It’s hard to shift, but the millenials in our company are like, “What are you doing?”

Jerod Morris: So both of you are still buying files? For music?

Brian Clark: I’m weaning myself of it. It’s just tricky because that’s your impulse that you’ve always — and I buy a lot of music, I buy a lot of books. I can’t train my brain. It’s not like I’m not paying for Spotify, I am. I just forget.

Robert Bruce: Jerod, are you buying files?

Jerod Morris: No, I stopped a couple of years ago and it just became all on demand. In fact, I had a really extensive collection of songs on iTunes and I was recently cleaning up my computer because I had memory issues and that was one of the first places I went to save room. I just said, “Well I paid for these, but I don’t really need because I don’t really come here and — ”

Brian Clark: You deleted your music? I could not do.

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Brian Clark: I just buy another hard drive.

Jerod Morris: That was another option that I might have considered, but I figured I’m never in there listening though.

Brian Clark: So did you miss anything? Did you find everything on Spotify then?

Jerod Morris: Yeah. I mean, for the most part. I’ve never —

Brian Clark: Yeah there’s only a few, like AC/DC, and even I think they gave in. There’s a few holdouts and they’re all kind of coming in. But the internet is made for recurring. I can remember, when I started my real estate business, I was paying recurring for my email service. Email software as a service — those were the earliest models of that, at least at our level. I remember I had to pay a monthly subscription to get IDX which is how you display MLS listings on a website.

Businesses today are built around APIs. Mine was built around these recurring subscriptions that were really — even if it was a hundred bucks a month, that was nothing compared to the revenue that you could generate from those tools. It’s really kind of extrapolated from there.

Anyway, long and short, before we shift over to the second part. If you can devise a recurring revenue model, whether it be a membership site of some sort, whether it be some other kind of innovative subscription — all these things now that you can buy in a box. What is up with that? “You can’t dress yourself because you’re a man so here’s an outfit in a box,” and they send you a new one every month.

Robert Bruce: But that’s it. You take the thinking out of the equation. Same thing with razors.

Brian Clark: It is convenient..

Robert Bruce: Who wants to go to the store and buy razors? Whatever, it’s not that big a deal, but —

Brian Clark: You have wine clubs, where you subscribe —

Robert Bruce: — coffee. Well now Amazon has developed — I don’t know if it’s even still going, but a few weeks ago they announced that push button thing. A literal — they’re giving you a button —

Brian Clark: I made three purchases in the last week where that was an option. They are things that you run out of — whether it be facial cleanser or shaving cream or whatever. And there was that, “Every three months,” you get to choose a recurring interval. I just didn’t do it because that’s just another thing I’m going to have to adapt to, but I guess it makes sense. I even bought oil changes on subscription, basically. Like you buy a certain amount of oil changes at a bulk rate. Does that count?

Robert Bruce: Yeah.

Digital Goods: from Dubious to In-demand

Brian Clark: All right, so we’re talking about a bunch — from Columbia House to ham in a box — we’re talking about physical stuff, and that’s kind of a hassle. Because, again, if I wouldn’t return a Debbie Gibson CD, then I’m not the type who wants to pack boxes. Of course, they have fulfillment services and what-not, but I have to say that the fact that we also deal in end-to-end digital products and services, that to me is the second part of the ultimate business.

Robert Bruce: So what does that look like then? What types of things are we talking about? We talked ham in a box and all that. What types of things are we looking at on the digital side?

Brian Clark: Ebooks, online courses, software as a service, downloadable software like the Genesis Framework plus the themes that work with it. Even our hosting division is an end-to-end virtual transaction. Nothing shows up at your house. No one comes by. There’s no physical aspect of it because it’s a web service. But those are the big ones. It’s anything that can be digitized and/or fulfilled online. Reflecting back on all of our various lines of business, they’re all digital.

So there’s two things that have happened that I think a lot of younger people may not really appreciate because they just live this way. They’re digital natives. And we were talking about this earlier, that all of us on this podcast are digital natives even though we’re of another generation, but because we were weirdos. In the late 90s — early 2000s when I’m online all the time, do you think my friends thought I was cool? No, they thought I was a crazy person. But I’m laughing at them now.

Here’s what’s changed. I’ve been talking over the last few episodes about how online education has gone from this thing that was an outlier, not really trusted and greeted with skepticism, and now it’s a $15 trillion a year — trillion, that’s not much of a jump from billion! You know, when you’re at that level —

Robert Bruce: Hyperbole …

Brian Clark: But still, $15 billion is quite impressive. It’s a mainstream thing. I think we’ve hammered that point home. But so are ebooks. I mean, back in the day, an ebook was a shoddy .pdf that some internet marketer tried to scam you with. That’s a generalization, but that was the perception.

Now, ebooks are a huge publishing industry sector that’s growing much faster than the traditional book industry. We’ve got dedicated file formats. The Kindle Store on Amazon is just killing it. You’ve got entire legions of authorpreneurs. So again, that’s a legitimate thing that used to be illegitimate, kind of like online courses. There’s been downloadable software forever, but it was a highly geeky thing about 10 years ago. It was only the devs, and the coders, and the hardcore internet people that would dare whip out a credit card and download a piece of software that didn’t come on a shiny little disc, or a floppy disc before that.

That’s another thing. What about the attitudes about using credit cards online? I don’t think my parents will do it — they’re in their seventies. And yet, we were talking to our resident millennial, Caroline Early earlier — our associate producer, “Hi Caroline” — and they never think about it. They are the true digital natives in that they don’t remember pre-internet. Do you guys have any reservation whatsoever about using a credit card online?

Jerod Morris: Slightly, but not really. Kind of like we were talking about earlier, not like on Apple, Amazon, the big sites. No, none at all. But then, if it’s on an individual site it really just depends on how they’ve built the trust within the design and how much time I’ve spent with them. If it’s my first time there, the design looks a little shaky, I might feel a little shaky about it. But for the most part, no.

Robert Bruce: Yeah I’m the same. And Brian you brought up a good point. If I find something I want, what I’ll do is usually go try to find it on Amazon or iTunes or whatever —

Brian Clark: Yeah, absolutely. This is why another rule to take away here is if you are selling a commodity product that can be found elsewhere … So let me give you an example. I almost feel bad about this. There’s this doctor, he’s an MD. He’s a content marketer. He gives fantastic non-scammy advice, solid stuff. I was doing research on a certain supplement, and there was a link to buy the product that I wanted through his online store.

Now, I should be showing appreciation to him for educating me, especially given the business I’m in. But it was a supplement that can be found anywhere, and it was on Amazon. And this is the truth — because I can hit one click, and my credit card’s already there and, my shipping and billing information’s already there. I’m just lazy. That’s terrible, but I am. So we never sell anything that can be bought exactly the same elsewhere. Unique products and services. Amazon can’t take that away from you.

Jerod Morris: And as to quote Chris Garrett, “Whoever gets the credit card stored wins.”

Brian Clark: That’s true, that’s absolutely true. I think we’ll see — even on our end on the Rainmaker Platform — everything from social logins to payment options. You have to work to streamline that on behalf of you guys, our customers. So that, as long as you’re satisfying the other criteria of selling unique products and services, the barrier to transaction is as low as possible.

Robert Bruce: One thing — it’s a side note, and it’s probably a whole other episode — but in the future too, as we move towards things like Apple Pay where it’s, as far as we know, secure place where your … I have not jumped into this by the way, because I m kind of a freak.

Brian Clark: I use it for Whole Foods all the time, I love it. It’s weird, but it’s cool when you get to do it.

Robert Bruce: Your payment, essentially, at least in the perception of it, is in one place, right? Yes, you’re being charged by Whole Foods, you’re being charged by Starbucks or wherever you go. But the actual vehicle for the payment is in just one place. Much like swiping a card, it doesn’t take that out of it. But if, for instance, your doctor that you were getting this information from in the future wrapped his product or payment system in with Apple Pay, you might not have cared. You probably would have just done it right there.

Brian Clark: Oh of course. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him, and it wasn’t that I didn’t want to buy from him because of course I would. It’s just that friction. And I think you’re right. Obviously Apple Pay at this point is a point of sale physical world type thing. But the digital solution for that should be certainly doable. With physical goods at Amazon, I still have to enter — I would imagine the payment technology would remove the billing address issue because they were being coded somehow in whatever it is.

Robert Bruce: Right, in that one place.

Brian Clark: So then it would come down to just, am I too lazy to enter my actual shipping address? It’s rough out there. I’m going back to the rule, which is “Don’t sell.” That’s the whole thing with advertising, AdWords, whatever. When you’re selling something that someone else is selling, it becomes a bidding war on two bad ends. Bid prices go up to AdWords, Google’s happy, and prices go down. I never want to be in that position.

I guess the whole point of all this is that, through the progression of time, things that were outliers like subscription business models and digital products and services, which were regarded as a little less trustworthy, are now actually the most desirable. That’s what people want.

Robert Bruce: Yeah it’s interesting that both sides want it. The bankers, as you mentioned earlier also —

Why You Should Aim for a Recurring Digital Model

Brian Clark: Yeah, that’s good business! If what people want is a subscription service that makes their lives easier, that gives you that amazing stability of income where your recurring revenue comes in every month. You get new customers. Some people leave, obviously, but you’re never just absolutely desolate the next month. So with that on one hand, and then of course we want instant gratification as we move more and more to a digital world.

I mean people are buying video game swords and gold. There are people getting rich selling digital goods inside apps and video games. What about Bitcoin? That’s a whole other can of worms that’s going to be something we all deal with. Can you poke any holes in my Holy Grail of business models?

Robert Bruce: Well I’m just looking forward to Bitcoin because that’s when I can truly disappear.

Brian Clark: Yeah, you keep talking about this and yet here you are.

Robert Bruce: I know, I know. I need a couple of years.

Brian Clark: You could be calling in from the Philippines, we don’t know.

Robert Bruce: You don’t know, you don’t —

Brian Clark: All right guys, thank you for filling the narrow seat of my revolving co-host. Mr. Bruce, it’s good to hear your voice again. I will trick you into coming on the show again despite your protestations.

Robert Bruce: Thank you, thank you for that.

Brian Clark: You’re Welcome. Jerod, you’re the man.

Jerod Morris: Thank you.

Brian Clark: Even though you’re only 19.

Jerod Morris: And even though it took two of us to not even equal one Sonia.

Brian Clark: Seriously, it’s a shame.

Robert Bruce: She’s smooth. She really is smooth isn’t she?

Brian Clark: Yeah, that’s why she always gets her way. Have you noticed? All right. That’s it for this week, people. Thank you as always for tuning in. If you’re digging what we’re doing here at New Rainmaker, a review or rating or both over at iTunes is much appreciated. Otherwise, we’ll be back next week. We’re going to talk more and more about subscription business models. We’re going to talk more and more about digital goods and services.

We’ve talked about it before, remember Robert? We did a couple of episodes on the whole digital commerce thing. It’s just kind of amazing to me reflect back on how things used to be — and I’m not trying to be nostalgic — I think this is an indication why getting in on something maybe before it’s a little too soon, or it is a little too soon, and yet you have a feeling. You can see that’s the direction things are going. Keep the faith. Stick with it. Build your audience. Do good things. Develop trust. And it could turn out to be a hugely winning situation for you. We’ll talk next week. Take care everyone.

Robert Bruce: Any of you are still listening here? This is Robert Bruce. I’m sneaking back on. Two new shows on the Rainmaker.FM podcast network. Check out MissingLink.FM, that’s Sean Jackson, our CFO. Brian, do you have any comments on Missing Link? I don’t know if you’ve gotten the chance to hear the first episode yet.

Brian Clark: Yeah, I did. And I called Sean today, no lie, and I said, “Sean, you’ve got quite the attitude on that show.” I think he’s expecting me to tell him to tone it down and I’m like, “No it’s okay, I like it because now the rest of the world knows what a jerk you are too.”

Robert Bruce: That’s MissingLink.fm, everybody. The other one we mentioned earlier: Jim Kukral is doing authorpreneur.fm. If you have a book, books, or want to write a book in the future. This is not about making direct revenue with your book — there is some of that in there — it’s more about what the book can do for your business as pure marketing and such.

Brian Clark: The ultimate business card, right?

Robert Bruce: The ultimate business card, as he puts it.

Brian Clark: Which I refuse to write.

Robert Bruce: Yeah, still. After all these years, nothing.

Brian Clark: At this point what am I going to do, backtrack?

Robert Bruce: That is a good point. One last note from Jerod, you got what from Sean on Missing Link?

Jerod Morris: Oh, a text message.

Robert Bruce: Sean’s shaking stuff up over there.

Brian Clark: He is. He explained how this works and it’s pretty cool. I’m not a big texter myself, but if we’re talking about a mobile world, what’s more urgent to you, an email or a text? I don’t know. I do know that because I don’t text a huge amount that I’ll notice and look at a text immediately, because it’s probably my wife with shopping instructions.

Robert Bruce: Right. Did you feel that way with Sean’s text coming up there?

Jerod Morris: Yeah. I checked it immediately. We were doing this so I couldn’t listen to the episode right away, but yeah, there’s an urgency to it. I’m the same way.

Brian Clark: It’s interesting. We are, as always, experimenting on ourselves first. Figuring things out. I’m not advocating that anyone leave email anytime soon. It’s still the transaction engine. It is where we expect for business to be conducted. This is not a transactional text, it’s a “Send a text to a certain number in order to receive a link to a private group that is made up of all my linked Missing Link listeners.” So I’ve got to give it to Sean. And I’m just joking about him, he’s a wonderful guy. He’s just got some attitude worked in. He’s having way more fun than he should.

Robert Bruce: He’s a classic AM radio host —

Brian Clark: He’s Rush Limbaugh.

Robert Bruce: He is Rush Limbaugh. That’s what it’s going to break out to, and it’s perfect. All right, sorry for hijacking things here. You can find all of our shows of course at rainmaker.fm and I’m going to shut up now.

The Transcript

Is Creating Online Training Programs a Viable Business Model?

Voiceover: This is Rainmaker.FM, the digital marketing podcast network. It’s built on the Rainmaker Platform, which empowers you to build your own digital marketing and sales platform. Start your free 14-day trial at Rainmaker.FM/Platform.

Brian Clark: Hey, everyone. Welcome to the show. I am Brian Clark, founder and CEO of Copyblogger Media. This week, instead of flying solo, I’ve decided to start at least a one-week tradition of having a rotating co-host. Today’s victim is Sonia Simone, chief content officer of Copyblogger Media, longtime co-conspirator way before we actually formed the company in 2010 — going back to Copyblogger, Teaching Sells, and all of that good stuff. Sonia, how are you doing today?

Sonia Simone: I am fantastic. Thank you for asking.

Brian Clark: It is wonderful to hear your velvety voice because you also have a great voice. That guy who also has a great voice

Sonia Simone: That traitor.

Brian Clark: Yeah. I don’t know how many weeks I’m going to keep talking about him ditching me, but it could be quite a few.

Sonia Simone: I think you could milk it. I think you are not even close to saturating that.

Brian Clark: Yeah, I feel that way, too.

Sonia Simone: Yeah.

Brian Clark: It’s evergreen really.

Sonia Simone: It is.

Brian Clark: All right, so as you know, your Copyblogger post today linked to my last podcast. I was honored.

Sonia Simone: It did indeed. Yes, it did.

The Prediction about Online Education That Came True

Brian Clark: Online courses, online education and training — obviously, we always love to tell the story that how we met was you were one of the first people with your credit card in hand saying, “Go ahead and sell me something already,” back in 2007.

Sonia Simone: That’s right.

Brian Clark: That was Teaching Sells, our instructional design meets direct marketing uber course. Do you remember that it was actually that course where someone gave us a review and they said it was ‘Internet marketing for smart people.’

Sonia Simone: I do.

Brian Clark: Not as a compliment, but we took it as a compliment because we were like “Yeah! Smart people only, please.”

Sonia Simone: You know what? You’re right actually.

Brian Clark: Instead of feeling shame and dumbing it down, we actually co-opted that, created another course called Internet Marketing for Smart People, which I thought was so us.

Sonia Simone: It is us. It’s a little offensive, but not very offensive — snarky.

Brian Clark: If you’re playing the populous card, like a lot of the Internet marketing crowd does, because, of course, they’re going, “You can do it.”

Sonia Simone: Right, and we’re like, “You can do it if you’re smart.”

Brian Clark: You ‘can’ do it — just like you can graduate from college — but maybe not if you can’t. It’s just amazing to revisit slightly to see the mainstreaming of this. I don’t like to sit there and say, “Hey, I called it.”

Sonia Simone: You did, though. You did call it, actually.

Brian Clark: It’s still one of those things where you’re right and you’re like, “Wow, I didn’t know I was going to be this right.”

Sonia Simone: I know. It’s true.

Brian Clark: It makes sense because on-demand — reacting to trends, to market, fluctuations, to disruptions — everything’s moving so quickly. I don’t think academia could keep up 10 years ago, much less now. That’s what’s really driving this, and it’s only going to accelerate. The whole concept in that Fast Company article — I don’t really like the terminology. I think it’s pretty weak. I think this futurist guy is dead on about this is a real gig. It is now, but only more so by the time we get to say 2020, 2025. The whole concept of the ‘freelance professor,’ how does that strike you?

Sonia Simone: I don’t love ‘freelance professor’ for a lot of reasons. I like your old term ‘entreproducer’ because I think you want to not forget that this is about a business. It is about teaching, but absolutely, equally, it is about business and about producing a result somebody else wants. Also, maybe because it’s just because too many people called me ‘Little Professor’ when I was a child. I have trauma from that, so that could be the source.

Brian Clark: Is that why you call me ‘Professor Clark’ when I get too esoteric?

Sonia Simone: It is. That’s right.

Brian Clark: That’s not a compliment, either — just in case there’s any confusion.

Sonia Simone: No, you have my story. That’s my story.

Brian Clark: Yeah, it is a business, and I did like that he said you need course materials, a plan, and a marketing plan. That’s what really set me off on this. You’re not going to get away from understanding the marketing component of it. The big thing about Teaching Sells, which was amazing to me when I was creating it, was that the intersection of direct marketing principles — which everything you sell online is direct marketing. Don’t think about junk mail. That’s not what it means. It means direct to the consumer, or customer, or client.

The principles, especially of copywriting, are applied in instructional design because that’s what gets adult learners to pay attention, to retain information, to stick with it — all of these things. Even if you say, “I don’t want to be a marketer,” or “I don’t care about selling,” creating great training is a component of exactly the same elements of retaining an audience and their attention in order to actually get some value out of it. It really is doing a great job of teaching people that builds your business in the long-term.

Sonia Simone: Yeah, most, maybe all smart marketers and salespeople have known for a long, long time, well over 100 years, that in order to have something that is marketable or sellable, you need to have a transformation that you can offer the person you’re selling to, while teaching has the transformation baked into it. The whole point of teaching is to create a transformation. That’s one of the reasons it’s such a strong model. It’s very easy to explain to somebody, “I am going to teach you to do something you want to know how to do.”

Brian Clark: Also something we talk about a lot, ‘baking in’ — it’s not just knowledge. It’s the benefits.

Sonia Simone: The benefits of knowledge, yeah.

Brian Clark: Guess what? Those are the same benefits that go on a sales page.

Sonia Simone: Yeah.

Brian Clark: You really can’t separate the two. I always was proud of Teaching Sells and how well it integrated it together because humans just naturally compartmentalize things. “This is that, and this is the other.” No, it’s really one thing, and it’s all related anyway.

Sonia Simone: Yeah.

Brian Clark: You and I have created many courses together. I still remember that time we created that freelance X Factor course, and I had to rent a room in Durango, Colorado, because I was there for the summer. My kids were little maniacs running around the place we actually were staying in, so in order to have quiet

Sonia Simone: You were in a closet in an office building or something crazy.

Brian Clark: I know. But, hey, we got it done.

Sonia Simone: Yeah, that was a good course.

Sonia’s Move from Freelance Copywriter to Course Creator

Brian Clark: Many years of education courses and all that. I want to talk to you a little bit, because you created in the time that we’ve known each other — this was before Copyblogger Media, though — you created your own course called Remarkable Marketing Blueprint. Is that correct?

Sonia Simone: That’s right.

Brian Clark: Oh I got it. You did that all by yourself. I remember you just went off, and then a long time later it was done.

Sonia Simone: I did, yes.

Brian Clark: Talk about that process as tackling what was a really big project. That was a good-sized course.

Sonia Simone: It was. What I wanted to do when I left the corporate world — and I have talked to other places about my serious post-corporate traumatic syndrome — I left the corporate world. I needed to make money. My husband stays at home full-time with my son, so it was all on me. My idea was I was going to be a freelance writer. That was okay.

I did moderately well at being a freelance writer, but I hated the ‘you don’t kill, you don’t eat’ mentality. It was not emotionally a great fit for me where I had to close all these new clients, and I was always prospecting. It wasn’t well-suited to me, so I did take Teaching Sells. I was one of those people who messes up your server by refreshing the order page two times a minute trying to wait for it to open — don’t do that, guys. It’s annoying.

I put this course together to teach people some of the things that I had, had to teach myself in order to be a good marketing writer — how to market stuff, how to sell things if you’re not the $10 million marketing budget company. It was revolutionary for me. It completely transformed who I was as an independent professional. Instead of constantly prospecting and talking to people who weren’t ready to move forward and closing people and all this stuff, I said, “Here’s a thing. Here’s what it will do for you. Here’s what to do next.” A bunch of people bought it, and then they gave me whatever it was, $27 a month.

It was a great deal. It really changed my business. It really changed my relationship with my customers. They created this whole identity. They called themselves the ‘Remarkables,’ and the first group were the ‘Remarkable and Originals.’ That was an identity that they had that many of them carry.

There will be people listening to this podcast who’ll say, “I’m a Remarkable.” It was really a great experience professionally and personally in terms of satisfaction, in terms of my ability to help people. It was just cool, and fun, and awesome.

Brian Clark: I remember the community you built there

Sonia Simone: It was intense.

Brian Clark: was rapidly pro-Sonia.

Sonia Simone: As they should be.

Brian Clark: You have that effect on lots of people. You come across so nice, but behind the scenes

Sonia Simone: Brian knows how evil I really am, but I do get [inaudible 0:11:22] very nice.

Brian Clark: When Sonia goes on a rant, just duck. What was the hard part about it? Again, it seems to me the content was so right up your alley. Was producing it the biggest challenge?

Sonia Simone: Producing it was great. I had to get my act together, but that was fine. That was all good. The site was really tough. I’m still so grateful to this day for the wonderful developer who was able to help me out with it. But even so, I think it took us about two months to get the site together before I could make any money. I was spending money.

Brian Clark: This was WordPress plus plugins?

Sonia Simone: WordPress plus proprietary membership plugins was what this was.

Brian Clark: Yeah, we won’t name which one.

Sonia Simone: No, we won’t name. There were a couple at the time. They all had issues, and I encountered the issues. It took a long time to get it together. During that time, I was spending money developing the site, but I wasn’t getting any revenue. We had security issues. Some kind of creepy Russian hackers were putting porn into my member library. I don’t know why. To this day, I’m not sure why — “Why are you doing that?” — but they did. That was great. We were playing whack-a-mole with security.

It didn’t work the way I wanted it to work. There was a lot of manual work to make sure that, if people left the course, like stopped paying for it, that we would stop giving them access to it. Just things like that, that today we have some tools — you know, cough, Rainmaker Platform — that make that really easy. It was not easy.

Brian Clark: That’s such a familiar story. When it was just me and Tony — and then later you joined us with Teaching Sells — Tony was gluing together, duct taping. No one would ever tell me just how fragile these sites were. They looked pretty, but they were built out of all these different parts. Also, in the original version of Teaching Sells, remember how Tony had to try to teach people to build an LMS out of what was it, Joomla and Moodle?

Sonia Simone: Moodle, right.

Brian Clark: Later we could finally get it done with WordPress, pretty much with the stuff you use, but of course, there were issues. People were always asking us, “Oh my gosh, you’ve taught me things that I didn’t even imagine I could know about creating instructional content and about marketing it. Just give me the technology platform.”

Sonia Simone: Right.

Brian Clark: That’s going to take a while. In fact, it took, oh, I can’t even do the math, seven years.

Sonia Simone: Yeah. There have been platforms, and those platforms had issues because it’s hard. It turns out when we set out to build it, it’s like, “Oh, this is actually really hard.”

Brian Clark: It took a while. It either takes a ton of money or it takes time. We were bootstrapped, so it took some time. Anyway, I mentioned that last week. At least, at this point, Rainmaker takes care of those headaches, and now it’s become essentially a part of the Teaching Sells experience that we’ll be doing next month.

Sonia Simone: Yes.

Brian Clark: Anyway, I think one objection people have when they hear us talk about creating the marketing blueprint, or a Copyblogger course, or even the New Rainmaker training course that is a lead generator for Rainmaker.FM. Like, “Yeah, that’s fine. You’re selling courses, marketing about marketing, blogging about blogging, content marketing about ” — you know, very meta.

That is something we’ve been dealing with for a long time. Sometimes it’s frustrating to always feel you’re being self-referential, but the real opportunities, business is going to remain a very big on-demand training realm.

I remember back in 2007 when we talked about the three big areas. They were business, personal development, and technology. I think that remains the case today. There’s so many other topical areas that people are making not only money, but a living, a good living.

Sonia Simone: A good living, yeah.

Brian Clark: Yeah. You’re like the curator of online education and membership sites that shouldn’t work — or at least that they’re real topics for real people that don’t involve this meta aspect to it. Give us a few of your favorite examples.

The Improbable Sports Training Program That’s Killing It

Sonia Simone: One of my favorites, he was a member of one of our early communities, The Third Tribe. That was the first marketing thing he ever bought, so I claim all credit for his success. That’s not fair or reasonable. I’m just making a joke. His name is Will Hamilton, and he has a site called FuzzyYellowBalls.com.

The thing I love about this site is it was a long-time truism in direct response that you could sell all kinds of things to golfers, but there was no money in tennis. You could not do tennis education. You couldn’t do tennis direct response because tennis players didn’t spend money. Will’s doing unbelievable things with this site. It’s opened all kinds of doors. He makes a great living off this business.

Brian Clark: It’s always the one that I’m like really? Tennis?

Sonia Simone: Yeah. Since Will showed it could be done, I think that other people have come up as well in tennis, but really remarkable story with that.

Other Examples of ‘Non-Meta’ Training Programs

Sonia Simone: Another one was one of my Remarkables, a woman named Wardee Harmon. She put together a natural cooking site. She had a real interest in — very on-trend today, she was ahead of the curve at that time — organic food and respecting the dignity of the food.

Brian Clark: I wouldn’t be surprised if my wife was a member.

Sonia Simone: Yeah, and if she’s not, she should be because it is so up her alley. But she did this natural cooking class online, and we all thought, “Well that’s a good idea.” From the beginning, we were all a little startled at how well it did. People were waiting for it. She was an early presence, and she just destroyed it with that.

My friend Ruth heads an institute called the National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine, so straight-up, hardcore Internet marketing, right? They do extremely well with courses, and Ruth — I know Ruth, she’s a friend of mine — has a very businesslike approach to teaching courses in behavioral medicine. She just did a course on meditation with Tara Brach, who’s a wonderful meditation practitioner.

They just do really, really well with these courses with a businesslike approach to teaching. It’s a combination, in their case, of professional development for therapists, but also, a lot of non-medical professionals like me will take these courses because we want to know more about trauma or the science of the brain or meditation.

Membership Sites for Kids? (It’s All About the Parents)

Sonia Simone: I’ll wrap up with one that my son encountered that was very cool, which is a company called Youth Digital. They teach kids my son’s age — my son’s almost 10 — how to code in Java in order to make Minecraft modifications.

Brian Clark: Yeah, my kids, I don’t know if it’s the same course, it may be. But both of my kids all of a sudden have figured out that you can make the stuff that is Minecraft.

Sonia Simone: Right.

Brian Clark: They’re just fascinated by it. It’s like Legos in digital world.

Sonia Simone: Yeah. That’s a real case where people would tell you, “Oh, you can’t make any money with Minecraft education because there’s so many YouTube videos.” These guys, I don’t have any connection to them other than my kid is a junky for this course. He can’t wait to get home and start learning Java, but it’s very well done. It’s done for kids. It’s got great sense of humor. It’s comprehensive. They have good support, and they’re just selling the heck out of this course. I think it’s $200 a pop for something for kids, so kids can play with a toy.

Brian Clark: It’s educational and that type of purchase — this is valid actually because learning to code is awesome — but we all bought Baby Einstein CDs to make us feel better about parking the kids somewhere. You’re selling to the parents.

Sonia Simone: Yes, exactly. You’re saying, “No, it’s a good thing that they spend all day every day on Minecraft. It’s education.”

Brian Clark: I will say that out of all the games my kids try to play, Minecraft is actually probably the best for them.

Sonia Simone: Yeah.

Brian Clark: I’m telling myself that story.

Sonia Simone: Yes, I am, too. I’m right there with you.

Brian Clark: Alright, I don’t know, Sonia. You being on here made this very easy. In fact, easier than Robert. Now I’m going to just change my story and say good riddance to Mr. Bruce. I may just hit up Sonia Simone. You’re like, “Wait, what?! You’re giving me more work to do?”

Sonia Simone: Bring it, bring it.

Brian Clark: We’ll see. If I can’t find other victims, though, you’re going to be my default.

Sonia Simone: I’ll be the default victim. That seems congruent with my general role in the company.

A Free Webinar for Creating Online Courses

Brian Clark: So you and Chris Garrett have a webinar coming up. Is that related to

Sonia Simone: Yeah, the webinar, it is an educational webinar designed to give you what you need to know to become a customer. I’m not going to hide that. That would be silly. It’s a webinar about the things that we have seen — Chris also was an early Teaching Sells customer — but we have been teaching people for quite a few years now how to do this.

It’s a webinar-based on some of the things we’ve seen people do that slow them down — so mistakes people make when they’re trying to build an online product or an online service. The things people do that make it very unlikely that they’re going to be able to have this popular, successful, easy, fun, sustainable business. We’re going to be talking about the mistakes people make when creating products online. It’s going to be, well, it’s coming up, so it’ll be June 16th at noon Eastern.

Brian Clark: Well, we’ve got still a couple of weeks, but we will put a link to that in the show notes, so you can sign up from there. That sounds pretty interesting because the webinar, of course, is going to give you a lot of high-value content with respect to things to avoid, especially if this is your first rodeo in this arena.

Sonia Simone: Right, right.

Brian Clark: Whether you decide to go with Teaching Sells or not, it’s going to be solid, but of course, I’m sure that the benefits of the whole course will be demonstrated at some point.

Sonia Simone: Exactly.

Brian Clark: All right, Sonia, thank you so much for coming. Enjoy the rest of your day, and to all of you out there, thanks for tuning in. If you have a chance to drop by iTunes and give me a review or a rating, you can even talk about how much cooler Sonia is than me. I will take it as long as it’s on this show. Thank you very much, Sonia.

Sonia Simone: Thanks. It was fun. Thank you.

The Transcript