How to Launch & Market a Membership Website In 2025
Learn how to create a successful membership website with WordPress in 2025. Step-by-Step Guide with Plugins, Pricing Strategies, and Launch Tips.
Are you ready to turn your passion into a profitable venture? In this informative show, we guide you through the essential steps to create and launch a successful membership website using WordPress. From choosing the right plugins to designing engaging content, we cover everything you need to know to attract and retain members. Don’t miss out on valuable insights.
How To Have a Successful Membership Launch in 2025
#1 – Have You Built a Pre-Launch Audience
#2 – Do You Have a List of Influencers In Your Course Subject Area?
#3 – Build Your Email List With a Passion
#4 – Develop Some Powerful Lead Magnets
#5 – Build Your First Course With Powerful Problem-Solving Hook ( DO NOT BUILD WAR & PEACE COURSE)
#6 – Market To Your Social Media and Email Lists: A Simple And Clear & and Powerful Early Bird Offer
#7 – Be Honest With Yourself: Are You Prepared To Slightly Get Out of Your Comfort Zone?
#8 – What is Your Contact Marketing Strategy?
#9 – Do Not Market to the Top of the Funnel (the 5 Stages of Awareness). In a World of Google AI Overviews
#10 – You Will Need a Budget For a Paid Advertising Campaign On Either Google or Facebook
This Week’s Sponsors
Kinta: Kinta
LifterLMS: LifterLMS
The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:01.480] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to the Membership Machine Show. This is episode 138. In this show, we’re going to discuss something I’m passionate about: how to launch and market your membership partnership website successfully in 2026. It’s never been a better time to get into eLearning. It’s still a growing market. I think we’ve got some really good points here. I’ve been thinking about this for a while. I’ve got my great co-host with me, Kurt. Kurt, would you like to introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers?
[00:00:56.240] – Kurt von Ahnen
Certainly, Jonathan. My name is Kurt von Ahnen. I own an agency called MananaNoMas. We focus on membership and learning websites as well as work directly with the WP Tonic team.
[00:01:07.240] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. As I mentioned, in this episode, we’re going to discuss a set of steps that, if followed, can help you achieve a successful launch of your membership website. I’m still amazed at the number of people who don’t really think about what it takes for a successful launch. It’s something that should be at the top of your mind when you’re thinking of building a membership-based business on eLearning. But before we go into the meat and potatoes of this show, I’ve got a message from one of our major sponsors. Three, two, one, coming back. I also want to point out that we have a fantastic course, developed by Kurt himself, that shows you how to build a membership website from start to finish on WordPress, utilizing the most modern WordPress technology. It will save you a ton of time and hassle. You can get this great course at half price. It’s normally around $49, but you can get it at half price. And if you purchase the course, you’ll receive a coupon code that offers 50% off a starter hosting package from WP Tonic, making it a great deal. You can obtain this by visiting WP-Tonic.
[00:02:46.600] – Jonathan Denwood
Com/deals, Wp-tonic. Com/deals. There’s also a variety of other goodies available. What more could you ask for? I don’t know, really. Before I start rambling, I’ve given you the show notes, and I ask, ‘What are your initial thoughts on all this, Kurt?’
[00:03:15.200] – Kurt von Ahnen
I’m going to sound all crystal and pyramids today on you, Jonathan. I’m going to, instead of saying, Oh, first this, second that, third this, fourth, I give you a list of things to do. The research you conducted for the show notes was great because many of those topics are similar, such as how to create a membership, how to do this, and how to launch. Folks, it comes down… I hate to be like this because I’m not naturally this person, but it’s a mindset. It really comes down to mindset. Where are you at? Are you willing to do the work? Are you prepared to do the work? Are you open to suggestions? You must have the right mindset to find success in this marketplace. This is more difficult than it sounds, and especially when there are these really scammy ads that come to you directly to your phone or your computer that say, Set it and forget it. Let us show you how to create a course and then count the money afterward, because that’s not really how it works. I think that if you have the proper mindset and follow the steps and instructions, you have a much better chance of finding success.
[00:04:22.020] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes, it can’t be guaranteed 100% because no business, and no endeavor in life, is guaranteed. However, I think that if you really listen to this episode and are interested in a consultation with either me or Kurt, you can visit the WP Tonic and book an initial consultation with me. Some of the work will also be done by Kirk. We can guide you through the process and help you achieve a successful launch. Sorry, I interrupted you. What else were you going to say?
[00:04:57.020] – Kurt von Ahnen
I was in the middle of interrupting you, actually. What gets me about what you just said, there are no guarantees, there’s no… That’s absolutely true. I get this one ad that keeps coming to me, and it infuriates me. I think that’s why it comes to me so often. It’s four. It states that you need a mobile app to access your course and all these features. And it basically says, ‘You get this app, and we guarantee your success.’ And I’m thinking, you cannot possibly… You have no idea what the content is, what the thoughts are, or who the audience is. There’s no way to guarantee success. This idea that, oh, just If you have an app on your phone and you’re going to make money is ludicrous. You need to have a plan and a content structure. All of this is extremely important, and you must follow the steps to achieve success.
[00:05:43.560] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m going to be quite controversial here, folks, to start off with. I don’t think it really matters what platform you’re going to choose to build your membership website when it comes to this particular subject. There’s a lot of SaaS platforms platforms out there that really… I don’t think they directly say it, but they almost get there, that say, If you choose our platform, what I’m going to outline in this episode happens automatically, and nothing could be further from the truth. They really pushed the envelope in their wording to They give the impression that you use this particular platform, that particular platform. It could be WordPress, it could be some of the leading SaaS platforms out there. I’m not going to name a particular one in this particular section of the show. But they really do say, Choose our platform, and that guarantees you’re going to have a successful launch. It doesn’t. You could choose whatever platform, or the majority of them, some of them are better than others, and having a platform. This applies to WordPress as well. What’s your response to what I’ve just said, Kurt?
[00:07:19.420] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, for the most part, I agree with you, Jonathan. Again, I think it comes down to preparation, mindset, and work. When I say work, I mean putting in the work to build the audience, to build the content, to follow through, to pay attention, to be cognizant. Whether that’s in Mighty Networks, Circle, Podia, Kajabi, or a wonderful platform built by WP Tonic and WordPress, the tool isn’t as important as the message and the effort behind the message. Yeah.
[00:07:55.540] – Jonathan Denwood
Let’s go. A lot of people, when they get the idea, we’re going to build a course based on our experience, on our knowledge, which is a fantastic idea, they then get sucked into what platform are we going to use? And then a lot of the people that we talk to, decide that it’s going to be WordPress, which is an excellent idea. But then they get sucked into what are all these plugins and which ones are best. A lot of them can spend a month, three 12 months, 6 months, 12 months, looking at all the tools out there. At WP Tonic, we’ve chosen all the best tools for you, and we supply them all. So first of all, you don’t have to waste all that time. But then they waste a lot of time, and they normally try multiple WordPress solutions. Then when they’ve chosen their stack, they then worry about the way the course will look or the way the website. Now, don’t get me wrong, you need a decent-looking website in 2025, but WordPress has a load of themes and starter websites that can help you. At WP tonic, we’ve got a whole library of them, plus you’ve got the power of AI now, which we will show you or we can help you get it set up very quickly.
[00:09:27.260] – Jonathan Denwood
There’s no real excuse not to have a really decent-looking website. Should you at this stage spend ages on the button size, on the most minute element of your website, the spacing between form elements? No. That will not, at this stage, be where you should be spending a lot of your energy. But on the other hand, you do need a good-looking website. What should you be worried about? Not worried, but your aim should be on. Are you building your own tribe? Are you building influence? Are you building credibility online? There’s no excuse. You could be making videos, you could be joining forums. There’s a lot of things, Reddit. There are a lot of different online platforms platforms, Facebook groups, LinkedIn. It’s all over the internet where you could be influencing and building a audience for your upcoming course. How would you respond, Kurt?
[00:10:47.660] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, I go back to just a line of thinking. It’s a lot like when you were dating. If you were dating somebody and you didn’t tell your parents about them, that was pretty much a sign that you were on the wrong track. If you have an idea to launch a membership site and it’s the best kept secret and you don’t share it with anybody and you don’t prebuild an audience for it and If you think you need to build it in secret and then release it, it’s the wrong path. Most things that we want to keep secret, we’re keeping secret for another reason. We’re embarrassed It’s not ready yet, it’s whatever. But you have to build that audience before you get moving on it.
[00:11:37.380] – Jonathan Denwood
But on the other hand, it doesn’t have to be enormous, folks. No. This is an audience that you’re going to do a pre-launch to.
[00:11:48.000] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, an inkling of a concept.
[00:11:52.140] – Jonathan Denwood
Do you have a list of influencers in your core subject? Let’s say you’ve chosen your subject, and We could talk, have a whole show about… It’s really finding the key subject of your first course is helped by developing an audience because if you’re involved in these forums, these Facebook groups, the Reddit, LinkedIn, YouTube, you then should be writing down what are the consistent problems and worries of your target audience are having. And your course should be not what I call war and peace. It should be laser focus. Your first course in solving one or two main problems that you observe in your target audience. What do you reckon, Kurt?
[00:12:51.320] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, I agree, but to focus more on the actual question that you led with, and that’s like, do you have a list of influencers in your core subject area. When I am consulting with clients, I’ll ask a question that’s very similar to that. And invariably, they’ll be like, well, no one’s doing what we’ve done, or we’re totally new, or ours is a little bit different. And it’s like, I’m not asking you to tell me why you’re different. Do you know who the experts are in your space? And that is a super important question, because once you identify who the experts are in your space, yes, it’s great to know how you are different from them, but you need to identify who those experts who their audience is, and if that audience is potentially part of your audience. How did that person build that audience? How did they attract that audience? And you’re going to be looking for certain ways to duplicate those efforts because you have to build that same audience for yourself.
[00:13:45.680] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. And why I’m saying this? Because fundamentally, you wanted to do outreach to these influencers before you’ve even built the course. You need to say to them, I’m thinking of building a course. I’m thinking I’m ‘Do a podcast, invite these people on your podcast, ‘ or you got a YouTube channel and you’re just going to invite them to your YouTube channel for interview, or you say, ‘I’m just looking for some advice. ‘ I’m thinking of doing… Some people won’t respond. They’re not interested. But a lot of people, if you just arrange a quick Zoom with them and give them an outline, a lot of people are really happy to give you some quick advice. There’s a way to do outreach. One tip, if you’re listening to a lot of influencers and there’s something they say in a particular video on their podcast that really relates to you and you implement it, give them a shout out through x, I still call it Twitter, or whatever social media that I listened to your podcast, I learned from what you suggested that I implemented it. That’s a great icebreaker that will get you on their radar. What do you reckon, Kurt?
[00:15:14.960] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, absolutely true. I’m thinking of a story from just today. I’m part of a networking group in a slack channel, and one of the new members of that slack channel was having difficulties in setting up bricks. And so he jumped in the slack and said, where’s the expert for WordPress in this group? Everyone said, talk to Kurt. He DMed me, and I spent 40 minutes DMing him and training him how to set up his bricks properly. There are tons of people in the space whatever space you’re in, there are tons of people within that space that are generous, that’ll recognize, oh, here’s another professional, here’s a peer in the space. I can share a little information with them. And it’s good to get to know people, both if you’re established or if you’re new in the space. And so don’t assume everybody is your enemy. A lot of times you can forge relationships with people, and you can leverage those relationships to further propel your success through the launch process.
[00:16:14.900] – Jonathan Denwood
Build your email list with a passion. It’s something that I filled out. I’ve got to admit, I’ve got a small list. It should be a lot bigger than what it is. I don’t think it’s that easy. Somebody that we both like a lot, Chris Badger, he’s got a list of over 10,000 people. I wish I had that list, because that list… But you don’t need a 10,000 list, folks. You just need a list of people that I’m going to be utilizing this term quite a bit in this episode, that are at bottom of funnel. I will explain what that term means a bit later on, But you need a list of people, a couple of hundred maybe, that, like I say, are at bottom of funnel. How do you identify people bottom of funnel? Well, you do that through a couple of landing pages, having a lead magnet that really resonates with the target audience and then promoting it through your social media and that. Preparing a small but a list that might convert for your first course. Is this making sense, Gert?
[00:17:38.420] – Kurt von Ahnen
It’s making sense, but I think for people new to the space, we might need to give a little more context. You already admitted mail lists. It was a little painful for you. It was really painful for me, Jonathan. I had to learn the hard way. I grew and assembled my mail list to over 6000 people, and it was from all walks of life. People I went to church with when I lived in Colorado, and that was over a decade ago. I had all these people on this list, and people would email. Sometimes I’d get a response, Oh, thanks for the email. It’s very nice, blah, blah, blah. I’d look at who sent it back and I go, Oh, my God, I haven’t talked to them in 12 years. And it was like, why these people have nothing to do with my business? Nothing. I had different industries and just a collection of all these emails that I was sending out. And a very painful decision I made was, let’s just delete the list and start over. And I did that a few years ago. And it was, I mean, I was shaken when I pushed the button, but I deleted it.
[00:18:43.020] – Kurt von Ahnen
I started over. And now I’ve got a mail list that’s really maybe just a little less than a thousand people on it. But my open rate is consistently over 40 % and very often is over 50 %. And when you have that engagement on your mail list, that’s an indication that you have created it with the proper passion, the proper focus. You don’t want to just send an email list out and have three % open it. You want to make sure that you have a list that is engaged with what you are proposing, what you are promoting, what you are putting forward. You want to make sure that people are with you on the journey.
[00:19:20.360] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, my experience is similar. I had a list of about two, two and a half thousand, but there were people from all over the place. I cut it down and now I’ve got a list of about just slightly under 500. I don’t get the opening rates you are, but I still get about 30% opening it, 20% to 30% opening it, which I think is quite good.
[00:19:43.140] – Kurt von Ahnen
Anything over 10% is a blessing.
[00:19:45.140] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. But you don’t need a massive list. You just need a list. I’m going to explain this concept of bottom of funnel soon. How are we doing the time? Let’s go one more and then we can go for our mid-break. Like I said, develop some powerful lead magnets because fundamentally, that’s the only way you’re going to build your email list. It doesn’t have… One of the blessings of AI is it’s become a lot simpler to build decent lead magnet PDFs. We have discussed it on this show, some really quite impressive AI tools that are very powerful in building lead PDFs, white papers, that type of documentation. If you listen to some of the other previous shows, all the links there, and you can go to the WP tonic website, and there’s show notes on all the episodes with all the links. But that is the area where AI clearly makes it easier for people. Canva, I think, has a PDF creator. But we have discussed some really quite attractive tools in that area, haven’t we, Kurt?
[00:21:08.980] – Kurt von Ahnen
We have. There’s tons of tools out there, and I think the trick is to find the one that suits you well and also suits your budget because there’s tons of choices, and some are really, really great.
[00:21:21.600] – Jonathan Denwood
I think it’s time for us to go for our middle break. We got a load of other great points to discuss and hopefully help you on your journey in launching and building a successful membership or community-focused website. In 2025 or the beginning of 2026, we will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. We’ve had a feast, a feast of knowledge. We got a lot of knowledge from Kurt. I’m not sure. But no, I don’t think I’ve done too bad. I’ve kept on point, I think. Before we go further, I want to point out a fabulous free resource. That’s the Membership Machine Show Facebook Group. If any of the questions that come up during this show, you could always join that group. There’s a load of people on there that will help you with your questions. Or you could go to the WP Tonic website and you can book a chat directly with me, and I can consult you initially about anything that’s coming up during this episode. You find all the links in the show notes. On we go. It’s another one. It’s very understandable, but I think you and me have seen this a lot.
[00:22:49.160] – Jonathan Denwood
Somebody spends an enormous amount of time building out a massive, massive course. Tens, 20, 30, 50, 80, 90 lessons plus spending six, eight months, a year on it. Understandable because I need to provide fantastic value. You need to solve a problem. You need to identify a powerful problem. And your first course doesn’t need to be 100 lessons. It should be a lot smaller than that, but it really does have a laser focus in solving one or two major problems. What do you reckon, Kurt?
[00:23:43.320] – Kurt von Ahnen
I’m trying to put this in the terms that make more sense for me. I’m a very direct communicator, and so I struggled for the longest time making making stuff that was longer format income. Like the first book I published was only 100 pages. The second book was, I think, 120 pages. I’m not as verbose as a John Maxwell, but I’ve worked with a ton of clients that have come to me with a hundred lessons for an opening course to sell, and that is just not appealing to the average consumer. And so it takes a lot of coaching to get people back on the ground about stuff. In In most cases, we end up separating the content into three or four courses, and then bundling them together as one membership if they really want to sell everything at once. But this comes down to strategy, folks. I mean, for me, simple as best. Do a minimal viable product, sample something simple, and then in the back of your mind for expansion, over time, you can build that really big profile piece that you want to build from a position of self-pride, but you don’t need that to launch.
[00:25:02.260] – Jonathan Denwood
This course is going to, in the end, be a paid lead magnet in its own right. It’s going to be what is called a low-price trigger wire, leading to the infamous next course, which will be 499. And that 499, you could do very well depending on how you’ve implemented everything we’ve discussed, or it can lead to the next level, which is the $197 course. If you’re new to this and you got no track record, unless you’ve got a massive audience for some reason, because you’ve been in television radio, you’re not going to sell a 1,997 course. But if you build your first course at a much lower price level, you’re using it to build up your email list and your relationship for these people for the next course. That is what you should be doing with this first course, and that’s why you shouldn’t be building more on peace, as I call it. Market to social media and email list with a simple, clear, and powerful early bird offer. Well, if you’ve done the lead magnets to help you build up your email list, this is where you’re going to get the benefit, because then you can then market your early bird offer.
[00:26:50.320] – Jonathan Denwood
If you’ve done it, you’re going to get a successful initial launch. If you haven’t done any of the things that we’ve outlined in the first half of the show and the second half, you’re going to have problems. What do you reckon, Kurt?
[00:27:07.700] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, I want to agree and expand. When it comes to this social media and email list stuff, simple and clear is really cool, but you want to try a couple of versions. You want to have an A version and a B version, and you want to sample some things. So maybe you separate your mail list into two sections and you send one One section gets version A, the second section gets version B. You do some A/B testing and see what gets you the best results. And then you fine tune with those ads, that ad copied content and imagery looks like that speaks to your audience best. This is the time to really start doubling down and figuring out what is the branding behind your package. Is it logo? Is it color selection? Is it font selection? Is it the way the videos look? But that’s all part of branding. This is the time where that’s really going to start to solidify for you if you pay attention properly.
[00:28:07.620] – Jonathan Denwood
I want to make it clear. Some people would disagree with me. I think you should do this before you even made the course because you’re not making War and Peace. If you are listening to anything we’re saying to you, you’re making a course that gives them a result, but it isn’t War and Peace. You need to offer the I propose to launch this course. It will be about this. It will be coming up. Whatever the verbiage, I’m offering this early bird offer and see if your research through talking to influencers, by listening to what people are saying on the forums and the Facebook groups, have you identified a hook, a real problem? The early bird will identify very quickly, have you been successful? If you’re not, you just need to change the verbiage and relaunch again and then see if you get a response, then build the course. What do you reckon?
[00:29:17.440] – Kurt von Ahnen
I agree 100%. I don’t have much to expand on that, Jonathan, at all. It’s simple, easy, short, consumable. Remember that once you sell to these people, if you do it right, you have the opportunity to sell them, to upsell them again. Don’t think it’s a one and done proposition. The idea is to sell to them, build-The whole point is that low price initial. Exactly.
[00:29:47.520] – Jonathan Denwood
They will… As long as they get value from it, you are then building relationships with these people where they will talk about you when you got your next course, they will buy it, you can offer them a discount, another early bird, they will share it. This is how you get the ball rolling, folks. Be honest with yourself. Are you prepared to do some things that you’re not totally comfortable with? You are going to have to try and talk to influencers. You are going to have to go online and talk to people. You are going to have… But on the other end, I’m not saying that you’re going to have to run 100-mile marathon and half kill yourself or work 100 hours. I’m not saying any of this. I’m just saying to get this membership relationship initially going and getting… So you do your next course, and it’s a really successful course that really generates some real money. So you can do a couple of the things that I’m going to discuss pretty soon in this podcast, you got to get slightly out of your comfort zone. What do you reckon, Kurt?
[00:31:25.880] – Kurt von Ahnen
You got to get way out of your comfort zone. I talk to a a lot of folks. I do. And it’s amazing because a lot of people have what they believe is a great idea, and in some cases it really is a great idea, but they really operate from this position of I’m going to build it in secret. I’m going to build it to completion. I’m going to launch it and release it. And then I’m going to be able to quit my job and I’m going to be able to stay home. And it’s not reality. It’s not reality at all. And so what Jonathan is working really, really hard to try and lay out here, folks, is that you’ve got to go through these steps, build the audience, work on the mail list, come up with a minimal viable product, start to think about the branding. And then he says, we’re going to talk about top of funnel and bottom of funnel pretty soon.
[00:32:17.760] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, but it’s totally manageable. This is why you don’t want to spend a ton of time on building war and peace course, because that just sucks up a ton of time and people are so exhausted that they got no energy to do all the things that we’ve outlined.
[00:32:37.200] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, and the other thing on top of the war and peace comment is you don’t have to have something that is completely customized and besposed spoke, and special to just you. If you’re building a membership or a learning website, using these products out of the box and getting something that is functional for your people to use is your priority. Not trying to come up with some Whiz-Bang new invention of the wheel on the internet.
[00:33:01.200] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, the two I love. When it comes to WordPress, it’s Lifter LMS because it’s got the inbuilt subscription engine, which is… They got a free version, and you just have to pay $150 and you can take Stripe. And then the other one in the SaaS world is Podia, but you got to pay that 5% extra transition that you don’t do if you use Lifter. Lifter I think both. If you’re not going to use WordPress, I would look at Podio. If I was using WordPress, and I think that’s an excellent idea, I would use Lifter LMS with Cadence, which is your website builder, and you can be up and running pretty quickly. With Cadence, with what we offer, we offer some nice landing pages, blah, blah, blah. What is your content marketing strategy? That’s basically articles, but it’s much more now is about video with AI, With Google AI overviews, top of funnel stuff, you’re going to be hitting AI overviews quite hard. They’re taking I’m seeing it with my own marketing because I produce a lot of content. I come to the conclusion I’m going to have to adapt my own content marketing strategy to be more at bottom of the funnel.
[00:34:49.080] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ve been thinking a lot about it. What is top of funnel? I keep talking top or bottom. Well, top is There’s a thing called the five stages of Awareness. It comes a lot of these concepts from the world of bootstrap startups, but it totally applies to courses and eLearning. Top of the funnel can be something you really want to avoid. That’s a whole load of people that don’t even know they’ve got a problem or they’re looking for I think, and you’re going to educate them. Well, you haven’t got the budget, you haven’t got the time, and that’s the route to bankruptcy, so we can get that one out of the way. You don’t want to be in the education area I know that’s a contradictory statement because we’re talking about eLearning. But if there’s no awareness about or no clear sign of need for your course, I think you’ve got a bit of a problem. Now, Sorry.
[00:36:01.360] – Kurt von Ahnen
No, it’s to be super, super clear, you want your audience to recognize they have a need as you release your product, which is the solution. If you have to take the time to inform them that they have a need, chances are your path to growth is going to be long, slow, very frustrating and difficult. And I speak that through experience. I’ve been through that. It took me five years to get some traction with a project of mine. It’s a passion project, and I don’t really regret having made it. But I came out with my project, I call it early to market. I put my product out, my training product out long before the prospective clients knew they had the problem. And that took me a long time to build up clients that would swipe a credit card and pay for it.
[00:36:57.560] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. So there’s different stages of awareness. The top one, you’re educating, so you want to avoid that. Then they’re looking, they are aware they got a problem, but they’re just doing general research, right? And then the third and fourth, they know some of the products, some of the courses. They’re looking for a course, looking for an expert, they’re looking for answers to their problems, they’re looking on YouTube. But people, if they’ve got a real problem, and they probably will buy a course that can offer a quick solution and hold their hand. You want to be an Then finally, they are looking for a course, they are looking for a solution, where in the bootstrap world, startup world, they’re looking for… They’re They’ve decided they’re looking at one, two, three actual SaaS products to solve their problem. Well, they could be looking at one, two, three courses or consultation people that they’re looking for eLearning around their particular problem, and they’re looking to find the solution that offers a solution to them, basically. I think there’s a lot of overlap between the bootstrap startup world and eLearning courses. What do you reckon about this, Kurt?
[00:38:42.720] – Kurt von Ahnen
Can you phrase that last part again? Because you lost me on the last sentence.
[00:38:46.260] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, it’s about that they’ve almost made their mind up that they’re going to buy a course or buy something that’s going to assist them. They’re looking at real solutions. They got close to getting the credit card out to actually buy.
[00:39:04.460] – Kurt von Ahnen
There’s someone that we both admire in the space, that’s Chris Badget. When I listen to Chris Badget talk in these terms, he keeps referring to product-market fit. Basically, where you’ve put yourself in the position through marketing, through social engagement, through community engagement, whatever. You’ve put yourself in the position where the customer is actually trying to pull the product out of you. You’re not making a product and forcing it on people. There’s a group of people looking to you as an expert and trying to pull the product out of you. When you can get to that point, then you’ve really hammered the messaging and you’ve got something that you could build, launch, and become profitable with.
[00:39:47.040] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s one of the things because having some nice statements from some influencers, they might not have bought the product or you might have shown them and they’re saying, Well, this looks a really great solution. You can put that on your landing page, and that can help enormously. The last thing, paid advertisement. Now, if you’ve done your initial launch and it’s been successful, you can then look at you and you’ve got traction. You’ve got your first group of students, you’ve got your feedback, you’ve interviewed some of them, you’ve got some good reviews, you can then look at your next course, which will then be your money maker. If you got the money then to invest, you can accelerate the process by paid advertising, or if you haven’t got the budget, and be truthful, you’ve got to be looking between 5, 10, $15,000 here, folks, because you’re going to looking at Google paid advertisement or Facebook. We can help you with this. I’ve got access to experts that work with WP Tonic, and we can help you with the whole process. I wouldn’t advise anybody unless they got a big audience at the start of this journey, but I wouldn’t deny using paid advertisement because if you want to accelerate the process, it will do the job.
[00:41:34.120] – Jonathan Denwood
But I would not advise anybody unless they’ve done their first course, and then you can look at paid advertisements. But we do have people that approach us because they’ve got an audience and they’ve got the money to invest and they want to accelerate the whole process. What do you reckon, Kurt?
[00:41:55.760] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, you’re hitting so many elements that need to be in place for this. Paid advertising is one of the things that I’m really cautious about with my internal clients because a lot of people go to paid advertising too early and they don’t see the benefit from it. And there’s all these experts in the periphery talking about, all you got to do is make these ads and you put in $10 and you get $15 back. Why wouldn’t you do it? And that’s not the way that it really works.
[00:42:28.070] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s very… Sorry, I’m sorry to interrupt. It’s very unlikely that you’re going to be able to… Unless you got the audience there, and I would still go through this, but you can do it. You can pay us to get all this set up for you. So the whole process is serrated, but I would still go through this process, and then I would look at the 499, the 497 course, because the reality is, depending on which industry, which sector you’re using paid advertisement in the days where you could make a profit on a $49 course or $29 and then advertise on Facebook, those days are gone. If you partner with some of our partners, you likely break even and avoid losing money. However, the goal is to encourage people to buy, allowing you to collect their email addresses and names, which enables you to market to them. You can probably only afford courses that are around $ 497 and more expensive, where you’re going to… However, you will need either us or our Facebook experts to assist you. I totally agree with you. If you have no previous audience and you’re not going through this process, and you just think you can just jump into Facebook, I don’t really see that working for you.
[00:44:34.620] – Kurt von Ahnen
No. The flip side of that is if you don’t have that, if you don’t have the foundation of everything that we’ve talked about already, and you’re like, I’m just going to jump to paid ads. That’s where Jonathan was saying you need to have a budget of $10,000, $15,000, or $20,000. You need to really pursue it. If you have only a $500 budget and no pre-existing audience or energy in your project, you’ve just burned $500. You have to be very careful about how you make those decisions.
[00:45:04.140] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, but on the other hand, it will accelerate the process. It’s timing, folks. However, if you have a reasonable audience and a budget, we can design the entire website landing page, assist you with the copy, and create the Facebook advertisement for you. But you have to be at a certain stage for that to be really worth that investment. But on the other hand, when you compare it, if you were to start any other business or venture now, you could easily blow through $ 20,000 on any physical unit, van, or burger van, or anything else, and splash out $30,000 really quickly, can’t you, Kurt?
[00:45:51.980] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, I see it in the speaker, author, and coach arenas a lot, where someone will pay to be a speaker at an event. Typically, speakers get paid. And so, if you author a book and someone says, ‘Oh, for $1,000, we can give you the stage for 20 minutes to present to this audience,’ that is a really bad idea. It’s like if you’re trying to promote your course or your website or whatever from the speaker, author coach perspective of paying to get an audience, that is a really hard road to go. You’re much better off doing the grassroots approach that we discussed earlier in this show, and then building up some momentum in your project, and then possibly implementing some paid ads.
[00:46:39.480] – Jonathan Denwood
We’re going to wrap it up now, folks. If you have found this useful and you’re listening on iTunes or Spotify and you’re on your phone, you can leave us a review really quickly. Both Spotify and iTunes, the apps, make it really easy to leave reviews. That really helps me and Kirk. It promotes the show to a whole new audience, and we would be really appreciative if you could leave a review. So, Kirk, what’s the best way for people to find out more about you and what you’re up to?
[00:47:15.060] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, for business, it’s Manana Nomas. Anything Manana Nomas. So X, Manana Nomas, Facebook, Manana Nomas, manananomas. Com. If it’s personal, it would be on LinkedIn. I’m on LinkedIn almost every day.
[00:47:27.780] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. As I mentioned, we will return next week with either a focus on WordPress or marketing information. We cover a lot, not only WordPress, but also marketing, SaaS. We examine it all to help you achieve greater success in 2025 and beyond. We will be back soon, folks. Bye.
WP-Tonic & The Membership Machine Facebook Group
Why not sign up and join the Membership Machine Show & WP-Tonic Facebook group, where you can access the best advice and support for building your membership or community website on WordPress?
Facebook Group
