How To Build a Community and Get Subscriptions

Transform your membership site into a thriving community with actionable insights from my personal journey. Discover the secret weapon that took my Patreon from five members to 100 members. By offering something of real value, I was able to attract and retain members, setting an ambitious goal of reaching 500 members. Learn how an irresistible lead magnet can be the game-changer you've been searching for.

Follow Dr. Sheena Howards' socials:
@drsheenahoward | Power Your Research 

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:00

A lead magnet is like bait . It's the thing that gets somebody to pay attention and say , oh , I want that and I'm willing to join the membership site to get it . I'm willing to give the email address to get it . And so if you want somebody to join your paid membership site , you have to give them something of value . I don't want my work to be stuck behind an academic paywall . I want to leave a legacy , I want to reach my potential and I want to change lives . This podcast , power your Research , is my attempt to help the smartest people in the world do that very thing . My hope is that you use the lessons I share to make more money than what your higher ed job can ever pay you . I've done it , my clients have done it and so can you . My hope is that you'll apply what you learn here and one day join the Power your Research program where you can work with me one-on-one . For all of you out there that you're thinking about starting a membership site because you think it's going to be passive , consistent income , or you have a membership site and you're trying to get more paid subscribers and members into to this site , I learned something this year that really , really really increased the subscribers . I got to my membership site . So I have a membership site on patreoncom and I'm finishing out the year with about 65 people on my membership site , and last year at this time I'd had like five . And so I'm going to be scaling up this system next year so that I can eventually get to a thousand members . And I want to share with you what I learned , because I spent years trying to figure out how to get people into my membership site and I had a lot of false starts , a lot of things that didn't work . But you know what you water grows . And so here's what I figured out for me , and it seems so simple because people talk about this all the time and I guess you just have to have the right lead magnet . A lead magnet is like bait . It's the thing that gets somebody to pay attention and say , oh , I want that and I'm willing to join the membership site to get it , I'm willing to give the email address to get it . And so if you want somebody to join your paid membership site , you have to give them something of value . And so for me I figured out after a bunch of trial and error is that if I give my why Wakanda Matters book autographed to everybody that joins a paid tier of my Patreon . People want to sign up because they want that book and they want it autographed , and there's literally nowhere else to get an autographed book from me besides joining my Patreon , or or that's pretty much it , unless I do a special thing throughout the year where you can get an autographed book from me , which I very rarely do .

Speaker 1 3:06

Hey , everyone , real quick . I don't run any ads on this podcast , so I have to rely on word of mouth . If this podcast has helped you in any way , please share it with a friend and follow me , dr Sheena Howard , on LinkedIn , where I give more free content on building your brand as an academic . If you tell me you came to my LinkedIn from the podcast , I'll make sure I accept your request , and so this is something that people can't get anywhere else , and so if they like my work and they want this book and this is one of my favorite books they're willing to join the Patreon site for $7 a month or $12 a month , because they'll get the book mailed to them in a few weeks . Now , once you get them in there , obviously they're waiting for this book and they might leave after they get the book . So then the next trick is to make sure that you're giving them so much value inside the membership site that they want to stay . So for me , once people get in , they're going to get the book .

Speaker 1 4:01

The book takes like three weeks to come because I got to get them , order them , ship them all that stuff . But if they stay on for three months they get free merch . It's not free , they're paid members . They'll get merch .

Speaker 1 4:13

So , like this shirt that I wear , I don't sell this on any shop .

Speaker 1 4:17

You literally can only get it if you're a member of my Patreon , and you can get mugs and all those types of things , but only my members can get them , so it is exclusive to them , and so I wear my merch in a lot of my videos .

Speaker 1 4:31

People always ask me you know how do I get that shirt ? And the answer is on Patreon . So as you create engaging , amazing content , you can prompt people to DM you if they want the free lead magnet and tell them hey , you join Patreon , you get the free lead magnet and then make your stuff so valuable inside of the membership program that they will want to stay . You know , by creating engaging content and talking to your audience , asking them what they want , paying attention to the things that they keep asking you for over and , over and over again , you'll get a sense and feel for what they actually want , and so I hope this helps somebody out there . And again , my name is Dr Sheena Howard . I'm the founder of Power , your Research , an academic branding company , and I hope you have an amazing day you .