Why Membership Sites Work to Make You Money – Part 2: It Takes a Village to Help People Change

June 27, 2013

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Why membership sites work – it’s more than just teaching.

Before I left on my European odyssey, I started a blog post series called “Why Membership Sites Work to Make you Money.”  The theme last time was “increased client retention.”  

In this blog post, Part 2 in that series, we’ll explore WHY membership sites provide improved client retention.

To retain the clients you have, you must provide top value.  But how can online membership sites provide value with so many members and so few coaches?

Let me ask you something first.  When you learn something new, and you decide that you want to make a change and do that new thing (such as regular posting to social media or exercising for 45 minutes every day), do you just…do it?

The answer 99% of the time is “NO.”  I know I don’t!  

If we all changed as soon as we found out how to change, we would all be perfect.

If you’ve learned something complex (such as writing a book or learning how to build an online business), it takes much, much more than being taught the facts to help you change.

In addition to teaching, we need these “change factors:”

• Repetition
• Answers to our questions
• Role models
• Hand holding
• Reminders
• Encouragement
• Support
• Examples
• Role playing
• Instruction in how to change
• Praise
• Guidance in how to take each step toward change.
• Praise for attempting the small steps needed in changing
• Being picked up off the floor when we fail
•  And much, much more.

Guess what?  It’s difficult for one coach to provide all of the above!

Enter, the membership site.  

More than one coach

As the owner of a membership site, you can hire other coaches and train them in your theories, content and techniques.  So you don’t have to do all of the work.  Or any of the work, if you’re like me.

The village

It takes a village to help you change.  Ideally, your membership site offers multiple ways for your members to interact with each other.  

Fellow member of a group can be more powerful as change agents than the coach.  When you relate strongly to someone, they become a powerful influence, role model and support system.

The group as a whole has a mystical magical power.  I’m not talking woo woo.  Many books have been written about the power of the group.  The first psychology book I ever read was Sigmund Freud’s, “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego.”  (I loved it, and shortly after changed my major from Russian and French to Psychology.)

Continuous connection to your materials and practices

My good friend and a colleague that I admire greatly, Amethyst Wyldfyre, made a comment on my last membership site blog post.  She wrote, “it’s…the continuous connection to the same potent and powerful material and practices” that makes membership sites powerful (as compared to, say, a one-off teleseminar series).

In order to change, you need continually deepening repetition of the material, and practice applying what you’ve learned to your particular situation.  

It’s very exciting to see how you, as a coach with a membership site, can schedule fewer individual coaching sessions, while helping more people make important changes in an environment where they can thrive.

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