The Ultimate Blog Podcast - 129. Unlocking the Possibility of What a Membership Can Add to Your Blogging Business

Episode Date: June 4, 2024

Have you ever considered starting a membership? We are joined by Jen Matichuk from Memberful, as she shares more about creating and managing memberships for content creators. We discuss the origin of Memberful, Jen’s work, and the importance of building a community and providing value to your audience. We dive into the membership components, such as exclusive content and community platforms. Jen emphasizes starting small, listening to feedback, and the technicalities of Memberful, underscoring the platform’s role in creating intimate audience connections. If you have ever considered starting a membership, this episode is for you!Thanks for listening! Let us know your thoughts on Instagram: @sparkmediaconceptsThank you to our sponsor Memberful for sponsoring this episode! Check out Memberful HERE!Check out the show notes (link below) for more information including links and resources mentioned in today's episode!SHOW NOTES: www.sparkmediaconcepts.com/episode129

Welcome to the Ultimate Blog Podcast with Amy Reinke and Jennifer Draper. We are on a mission to empower women who want to start or grow their own blog. This podcast is for women who want to learn blogging basics and who crave inspiration and encouragement. Whether you are just getting started or have been a blogger for years, we are excited to welcome you into this space where we are passionate about creating community over competition. We are bloggers who want to encourage you to believe in your potential, step outside the norm, and step into a life where you create your own schedule, your own success, and your own story. Join us for weekly episodes as we navigate blogging and work from home life,

all while raising a family and having some serious fun along the way. all while raising a family and having some serious fun along the way. Welcome back to the Ultimate Blog Podcast. Memberful has been a sponsor of the podcast for the last couple of months. And we are really excited to talk with Jen Matichuk, who works for Memberful more about what Memberful is and how it can help content creators and bloggers and people in this online space. So welcome to the podcast, Jen. Thank you so much for having me. Yes.

Well, Jennifer and I are big fans of memberships. We have our own membership. It's called the Ultimate Blog Membership. And we really like the word ultimate around here is what we've decided. And we have just found that when we incorporated a membership into our business, it really allowed us to connect more with our community and understand their needs and understand how to support them. I know that you have not always worked for memberful. So I would love to hear how your story kind of evolved from your own content creation, you know, business and then now into working with memberful.

Yeah, definitely. I can talk a little bit more about my past and how I got to memberful. So when I first graduated from college, I moved to LA and my goal was to kind of get into the film industry because I studied film in college and I ended up kind of falling into the world of YouTube and content creators on YouTube and this is in 2013. So it was kind of like when the YouTube Renaissance was really kicking it into high gear of, okay, all of these folks are part of the partner program, they're making money on AdSense, and they're making full careers out of it. So I kind of fell into it at that point.

And I worked with these guys named Rhett and Link, and they have a really popular YouTube show called Good Mythical Morning. And across all of their YouTube subscribers, they probably have like over 40 million followers. At the time, they didn't have that many, but they hired me on as their fifth employee, fifth or sixth employee, as their brand coordinator, which was actually just social media manager, but it was before that term really existed. So I was brought on to kind of build out their entire social presence. And I did that for about five years.

And as that progressed, they were growing exponentially. So it became like a pretty big job. They became a pretty big company. And at that point, you know, I knew their audience really, really well. Their audience knew me. I knew a lot about their community and what they wanted and how, you know, I would interact with them, how they would interact with our content. And they decided they wanted to build out a membership. So Ret and Link wanted to build out a membership. So I actually built out Ret and Link's membership on Memberful and that's kind of the path

that got me to Memberful. So pretty crazy that that's how it all happened, but I knew so much about their audience and what they wanted that I could build out something that really, really resonated with their audience. And memberful felt like the perfect fit because it was white label and all that good stuff. But yeah, that's kind of how I got into memberful. I love hearing people's origin stories and like how where their journey has come because I think a lot of people who listen to this podcast are

they can be like on the front end of their journey and kind of wonder like how is this going to serve me later and it clearly it clearly served you well because now you're actually working for memberful and so memberful has actually been around for a while then. Yeah memberful I believe was started in 2013 founded by our guy Drew Strogny and it has been around since then obviously it still exists. It was acquired by Patreon back in 2018. So you know, it was acquired as like a place for creators who didn't want to have, you know, Patreon as their main, like, go

to my Patreon. They wanted something that was more white label, more branded, could fit on their website, felt more them. So Patreon wanted to cover a larger part of that market. That's awesome. So this is an example of someone who was building an audience, they had this YouTube channel, and they decided that this membership could benefit not only their community, but them as well. And so can you talk a little bit more about like just the basics, like what is a membership

and why would somebody that's a content creator want to create a membership? Yeah, I think there's a lot of different reasons why somebody might want to create this. Usually the best reason and the way that it will be probably the most successful is that you're not just doing it to make more money. You're doing it because you want to also

benefit your audience in some way. If you're just building a membership just to add another revenue stream, and that's the only reason why, then you're probably not going to have the heart in it to build something that resonates really, really well with your audience. So if we talk about the example of me building it out for Rhett and Link specifically, I mean, obviously I knew their audience really well. I cared about their audience. They cared deeply about their audience. That's what's

allowed them to be content creators for their entire careers. Being able to understand what their audience might want that is outside of the content that they're already creating is a really, really big, big, big thing. Because you know, you can't just put out free content constantly and rely on ads that go with that or brand deals that go with that. I mean, some people can make a great career off of that, but it isn't always incredibly sustainable. And I'm sure you've talked about this with your audience a lot, but diversifying your revenue is really important as independent creators, because, you know, we look at the pandemic that just happened, and ad deals and brand understand when this was going to end. So a lot of folks turned to membership at that point. Like Patreon and Memberful both saw huge spikes to, first of all, create some community when it felt like people didn't have one because, you know, we were going through a global pandemic. And then also for a place for those folks to continue to do what they needed to do to stay alive.

So while there might have been a hint of I just need the money, at the same time it was, I wanna create a place for my audience that is a community and I want a place to put more content that I wouldn't necessarily put out wide that I know that this core group of folks is going to love and appreciate and get value out of it. I agree with so much of what you just said. And I think when I think of a membership, what I want people to hear and just reiterate what you said is that it's about a community. And as the person who's running the membership too, you get kind of like this inside scoop

on what that, like what your avatar really needs. So like, what are their pain points? How can you serve them? Because when you get that kind of inside scoop for these people that you're engaging with on a more intimate level, essentially, you can also learn how to serve people that aren't in that community and how to serve them better. So becoming an even more of an expert in their eyes outside of the membership. So while the membership is one source of revenue and one source of connection, I actually think

it also helps us serve the other people who maybe aren't in that funnel yet within our business. It gives us a different perspective, I think. And I think that's been something that we've been able to do and really understand. For us, it's blogging. So what are bloggers actually really frustrated with? Well, they're frustrated that they can't make money faster. It's a hard thing to kind of get off the ground.

And it takes a lot of patience, it takes a lot of motivation and determination and pulling up the bootstraps sometimes. Being very patient in that process. But we've learned that because each and every month, we are able to connect with our members and so we know, what are you doing? So we have that inside scoop. I think that I want to make sure that people hear that part of it to know that it is more than about the money. It's also gaining this inner perspective that can be really beneficial and other aspects of our business. Yeah, exactly. I mean, if you think about, you know, talking on social media versus talking

to a more intimate, like your core engaged fan base. First of all, on social media, you don't even know if what you're saying is going to get to the people who are following you because we're in an algorithm crisis right now. So that's the first thing. The second thing is that even if they do see what you're talking about, they don't necessarily feel the need to engage because they're like, oh, you have X amount of followers, so somebody else will do it. Whereas this core engaged group, like you're saying, they're going to talk to you in this very specific community. They're going to voice what they are having troubles with

or what they want to talk about, depending on the type of membership you're running. And they're going to feel dedicated to it because they are that core group and they're paying money and they're creating a community. So it means something more to them than just talking on social media. I really like that. Yeah, it's that opportunity to get to know them at that deeper level and create something that serves them in a new way,

besides just putting out that free content and kind of wondering what happens with it. You're putting out maybe content that's really specific to them, or you're engaging in a forum or something like that. I'm wondering if you can talk about the different components of a membership so we can get like a picture of what that could look like. Like, what are the different things that could be a part of a membership? And I know that's a pretty broad question, but I'm guessing there's probably

some more typical things that people do when they set up a membership for their community. Yeah, definitely. I mean, all of it kind of boils down to what vertical you could consider yourself as being a part of. And then, you know, there are really specific benefits that kind of fall into each of these verticals. But speaking more generally, I would say, you know, if we're going to talk about community specifically, offering a place for folks to gather in some way or another. Like for instance, Memberful, we offer two direct integrations with community focused platforms.

One of them is Discord and the other one is Discourse. They're very similar. They just end differently at the end of the word. But the actual products are a little bit different. Discord is more of like chat focused. I say it's like a version of Slack almost for folks who are more familiar with Slack. You can have different channels that people can chat in and you as the creator of this Discord server can determine the names of the chats and who can be in the chats based on what level of membership they're in, et cetera. Whereas Discourse is more forum-based, so like a traditional internet forum, and you

can completely brand it for what you want it to do. Those both integrate directly with memberful. If you signed up with memberful, you would be able to directly put that server or that discourse forum into memberful and then change access based on the level of that person's membership. Those are two ways that are kind of more external. But then the other way that a lot of folks are a forming community still,

and this is probably really relevant with bloggers, is still in the comments section of posts or pages or anywhere that there could be comments. We're still seeing that happen, like a few launches that I've had. They've been really specific about, you know, people live in the comment section and they're replying to each other in the comment section and getting to know each other down there. So it's really important for us to have a great commenting tool, so to say. So that's honestly a benefit that you could list out there. When it goes to like other specific pieces of content, other benefits that make sense, it's taking a look at what you're already doing for free

and seeing if maybe you could expand on those free pieces of content. So for a podcast or for example, it would be a bonus episode or an extended cut. So depending on the type of content you're doing, if you're a travel blogger, it's okay, here's where I'm going and here are a few things of what I've done and what I'm excited about. But if you want this full itinerary, you're going to have to join my membership and I'm going to list out day by day what I did, how I booked it, and you're going to get the inside scoop. And I'll also throw in a couple of discount codes with these certain hotels or whatever that you can book because you signed up for my membership and

you viewed my itinerary kind of thing. So it's just giving people maybe deeper access as like a very specific key point too. I want to say that if you're a content creator, it's okay to have the free stuff and it's okay to like add a level deeper and start requesting that your audience, your community, the people that you've gathered, there might be a paywall, there might be content behind a paywall. I think that that can be like a hard shift for people in the content creation space. They're like, well, I've given stuff for free

for a long time, but what I wanna remind you is if you've given away quality, valuable content for free, you've kind of primed your audience as a way to say, hey, this is what I've given away for free. Can you only imagine what I'm giving away paid? Yeah. Yeah. And so just a reminder of your worth, I think is important because I think that that can be a hard shift in this space too. I mean, the word worth, it comes up a lot in talking about membership and like making sure

that folks understand their worth as a creator and the type of content they're putting into the world means something to a lot of folks. And sometimes it's hard to take a step back from what you're creating and understand the impact that you are having on a certain number of folks' lives. Because you get so in the grind of creating, creating, creating, and creating for the algorithm just so you can get bigger and bigger, but you're not actually creating something that could go a

little bit deeper, or you are just so stuck in creating that you feel like you always have to do this free content over and over and over again that is serving the algorithm. Whereas if you take a step back, you evaluate what level of content you've given away over these years and what you could put behind a paywall. It's crazy because you have to just evaluate what you've been doing. At the same time, a lot of folks come in and they undervalue what they're going to put behind the paywall as well. They say, oh, you know, I have, if we go with a food creator, I'm putting out one brand new recipe a week. And I see New York Times and they put out 12 recipes a day.

How could I possibly value my work as being $5 plus a month when I'm only putting out four new recipes. In New York Times, you're paying $5 and you get recipes and games and XYZ and you're paying $4.99 or whatever. How could I possibly say that I even compare to that? I'm going to have to price mine at $2 a month and then people will buy it. Well, you know, you already have a following that are invested in what you're doing, and they're excited about what you're doing. And it's probably more than just the content you're putting out if you're putting out your personality in there too. So they're not just going to say like, Oh, yeah, I'm going to compare you

to New York Times. New York Times is a media conglomerate that is more like a subscription. If we're going to define subscription versus membership, it's a tough definition between the two right now. But subscription feels more like cool, cold, separate. Membership feels closer. You are part of something and people don't care if the New York Times is sad that they cancel their membership. They would probably care if like a more independent creator would be upset if you canceled their membership, you know? So it's just different levels. I jumped on a lot of different things in that answer. I love that you said that though, because I've never thought of it in that way that

a subscription to me feels a little bit more hands off. Yeah. And a membership to me feels a little bit more intimate. And it's not just with the person who's created the membership, but it's also with the others who are part of the membership that you are. You're kind of in this group, you know, it's not every day that like, I'll use blogging as an example, because that's easy. But like, it's not every day that you know a bunch of bloggers. Like, it's just not. It's not like, you know, teachers or something.

They're not like, you know, you don't have like 10 bloggers on your street generally. You might have 10 teachers, you know, but you don't have that many bloggers. And so to be part of a community that understands your pain points, who knows what you're doing to know what's important to you, it helps you feel less alone. And I think that that can go with anything. I think it can go with like a particular medical diagnosis if there's a membership that's for people with a medical condition. It can go for like homeschooling moms.

It can go for people who want to learn how to do like auto repair, really thinking outside the box here. But I mean, I think you can have like a membership for just about anything because we're all very diverse. And I think we've come to this like point that when we find something that we're interested in, we kind of want to immerse ourselves in it. And I think that that's a little bit how our human nature has changed a little bit over the years is we want to be surrounded with people who are excited about the things

that we're excited about or doing things that we're doing. And the membership really does give them that community that they might not otherwise have. Yeah. We all ultimately just want to belong to something. And we want to feel like we're part of something that's a little bit bigger. And I think about what I might want to be a member of. And it goes, I mean, I am a member of many things, but it goes to, you know, what you're sharing on social media. Even if you look at, like, okay, I shared, you know,

my favorite tennis player played the other day and I shared their win on my social account. I just want people to know that I support this person and I'm part of what this person is doing and I want everybody to know that and I want other like-minded people to also comment and be like, oh my god I also love that person. And so that membership just takes it to a deeper level of where you can be a part of something and you can bond over that as well. Yeah.

bond over that as well. Yeah. health and wellness or travel blogging, you can monetize your blog by adding a membership with memberful. Trusted by some of the web's most prominent bloggers and independent publishers, memberful allows you to connect with your audience while building sustainable recurring revenue. With content gating, in-house newsletters, private podcasts and tiered membership access, memberful is the ultimate membership software design with independent publishers and creators in mind. Memberful gives you the flexibility to create your ideal online presence, deciding which parts of your website are accessible to everyone or only visible to paying subscribers.

Plus, Memberful seamlessly integrates with all of your favorite tools, including ConvertKit, Discord, Google Analytics, and your existing WordPress website. Whether you choose to utilize the built-in integrations or you decide to use Memberful's in-house features, it's never been easier to start a membership. And the most important part? With Memberful, you will always maintain complete control and ownership of your brand, your audience, and your business. Visit memberful.com slash ultimate blog to get started with a free trial. There is also a link in our show notes to learn more about Memberful

and how it can support your online blogging business. Yes. Yeah, I can just see that even from the content creator perspective because a lot of us get burned out with like what you mentioned. You're creating for the algorithm. You're creating for Google. You're just trying to pump out content that matches like search intent. It's very impersonal and it kind of starts to strip away at your creativity a little bit. But if you can find a way to get to know these people that are interested in what you're creating, it almost gives you the opportunity to reignite that passion and creativity and share things

in a different way that is just like directly to the people. It doesn't have to meet any, you know, like keyword research criteria or anything like that. I think it could just really fire you up as a creator to, you know, remember what why you're doing this and who you're wanting to connect with and give you the opportunity to connect with those people on an even more personal level than even what like your email list might be. So I think it is a really just an exciting opportunity if we can just keep our minds open to be hearing the feedback from our people. I know you've done that. You've been able to say, okay, this is what people are wanting. So, you know, just keeping our minds open to that and, and the ideas and being inspired by it.

Yeah, definitely. I mean, if we think about why somebody might be skeptical or averse to starting a membership, it's just, it's usually because they feel like they don't have the content to put that behind the paywall, or they're thinking in a way of, okay, I actually need to take this content that I'm already putting out for free and I need to take that and put it behind the paywall. But if I do that, then my audience might turn on me. And that is a valid point, because if you're putting something out for free, that's your most popular thing. And then you all of a sudden you put it behind a paywall, your audience probably

is going to be a little bit upset about that. Like no question about it. That is probably not the way to kick off a membership. If you're going to kick one off, you don't want to take something that's been traditionally free in what maybe you built your brand on and just paywall it completely. That's ostracizing a whole section of your audience that might not be able to pay for membership, but still want to support you and consume what you are putting out there. So it's always best to start with something that's expanding on what you're already doing and then grow from there. So really, the biggest thing that I say when somebody's starting a membership

is to start small. You don't want to launch something that is 12 different benefits that kind of spreads you thin and so you feel angry that you started a membership. You want to start with something that is small, doable, you're excited about, and that you can produce and people can get excited about it. Even if people don't come running in hordes to join the membership, you are going to have a handful of people that are going to start and then you can grow from there. Like we said at the beginning of this conversation, it's listening to your audience too. So those small groups of people that are going to join up front are going to give you the best feedback. And then you take

that feedback and you continue to grow and you just put that effort back into your membership and you grow and you grow and you grow from there. But the biggest thing is you have to be excited about that first benefit that you're launching with. Otherwise, this is going to feel more like a burden than something that is adding to what you're already doing. Excellent advice. Coming from someone who started a membership.

That is excellent advice. I think that Jennifer would agree too, that, you know, what we started and we're slowly and we're two and a half years in, we're just now asking ourselves, how can we show up better and differently for our students in there, but knowing in the beginning, like we're going to commit to what we can commit to instead of feeling like we're stretched really thin. And that's just excellent advice, I think. Because I think a lot of times, going back to the value and the worth, we tell ourselves, well, I have to have this and this and this and this and this in order to, quote unquote, convince someone to join my membership. But a lot of people, what I've realized, I've been part of a lot of like different coaching programs and things. What a lot of people like is just accountability. Like for whatever you're talking about, a lot of it is just accountability to whatever, you know, your thing is. And so they want that accountability, they want a place to show up. And so a lot of people will pay just for

accountability to like, keep that in the forefront of their mind for, I mean, just think about, you know, as you're listening to this, think about your own niche and your own website or your own content and what you're creating and what do people want accountability for or what do they want to be reminded of often or their pain points, like I've said, but knowing that sometimes that's just one small, simple thing. I think we wanna like over deliver, but then I think sometimes that can overwhelm them too, because then it's so much. And so I don't wanna say take the easy way out, but kind of like start very simple

in a way that you can just see like, how are they engaging with this? Is this working? Is this something that my audience actually does want? And then you can refine it from there. I think that knowing that it can change and it can shift and it should change and shift as your community grows, I think would be advice that we would give as well.

Like, how can you continue to refine it? And it's okay when you do that too. Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's perfect advice to give because, you know, as you're starting, you might feel, like you said, that you need to put out all of this content and you're spreading yourself thin and you think about what people are consuming on the internet, think about the amount of content we are bombarded with every single day.

And if you're sending, let's say your membership, you're sending an email every single day, and that's the membership. Somebody might not read those every day, and at the end of the week, they'll have six emails from you piled up in their inbox that they're like, okay, now let me try and read these. And then they try and read them and they're like, I'm getting good information, but I

just can't consume all of the content that you're putting out. Therefore, I don't think that it's worth it for me to pay this right now because I'm not getting the use out of it that I should. So, you know, putting out too much content can also shoot you in the foot too. You're describing something that literally just happened to me and it is just now dawning on me. And that is exactly what happened. I have to share this story because I think it's important. So there was a program I joined membership, there was a monthly cost to it, and it literally

felt like I had to spend 30 minutes to an hour in it every day. And I did not feel like I was getting my use out of it at all. I felt very overwhelmed and almost stressed about it. And I finally was like, I need to stop this. The stress of not doing it is too much. And what I did instead was I found a more simple, it's a membership program too, a more simple and it's for like an eighth of the cost. So it was, it was cheaper, but it was actually less about the money and more about the content.

I'm like, I want as simple as I can possibly get for that to be attainable and effective in my life. And so that's what I did. I left something that was very robust and had all the information I could ever need. And I went to something that was extremely simple and I felt like it was approachable. So there you go. I love that I've had this realization on this podcast today, Lise. There you go. If you think about it, I mean, that's not to say that having a membership where you are sending out that amount of content can't work because obviously they probably

have the membership that you left. They probably have a good amount of people that want that amount of content. Oh, thousands. Then that works for them, but it doesn't necessarily always work for everybody. And they might have somebody that is, they might have like a team of 10 that are working on that, and that's awesome. Good for them. I'm so glad for them. But if you're an individual content creator, or like you have a team of two,

having that sort of content schedule is not attainable most of the time, because this is just one revenue stream that you don't want your membership to take over your entire life, because then it's going to make you hate that membership, and then people are going to feel that when you are putting that out, and you're not going to share about it, and it's not going to grow, and then you're just going to close it. So you need to have something that, like I said, going back, something that you enjoy, that you know that other people are also going to be able to consume.

I really hope this episode serves as that encouragement to all of the people out there who are like, I want to do something more because you've essentially given permission to start simple, start small and just serve that audience in in a way that's attainable for you. Like for anybody who feels a little overwhelmed with just the technical aspect of starting a membership Can you talk about what member full is and like how they could utilize it to help them in those early stages to get started? Creating a membership. Yeah, definitely I mean what I will say is that there are so many different membership programs platforms that can serve all different types of creators. So, where Memberful might not be able to help you, there are a lot of other platforms that could. Memberful is in the business of making sure that folks land where they're supposed to land. Sometimes, Memberful isn't perfectly right for them, and that's okay. I just want to make sure that a creator can make their living in a really successful and

positive way coming from the area of me creating as well. But Memberful in general as a place to start works really, really well with folks who already have a website. I will say it does also work if you don't because we have our own hosted platform as well that you could build off of and still feels very white label. But if you wanted to build something in the way that memberful was originally built for operating in, if you have your own website, preferably a WordPress, which I'm sure if you're talking to a lot of bloggers, there's a lot of WordPress

users, and you would just plug memberful into your WordPress site and the I'm sure if you're talking to a lot of bloggers, there's a lot of WordPress users. And you would just plug Memberful into your WordPress site in the simplest way. In the backend of Memberful, there's a lot of different things that you can jump into, but in the simplest fashion, you could create a plan or two plans, monthly and annual, set your prices, and then really put those plan links on your website on a sales page. So you can fully design the sales page however you want to design it. If you would need any help with designing the sales page in terms of best practices, our team is always there to help out. Also, there's tons and tons of resources online if you would prefer to go that route on how to build a really successful sales page.

But the beauty of Memberful is that it's very malleable and you can kind of do what you want with it. So if you decide you want this like really simple sales page, you can do that. If you want something incredibly elaborate that people have to scroll through things or click around or whatever. You can do that too, whatever you feel like you want to do. And then memberful, like I said, integrates in that backend. So you can drop your plans in and people can check out. It feels like an extension of your site. So it pops up with a memberful overlay pops up. When somebody clicks that link, they can put their name,

their email, their card, check out. You can ask them a couple of questions after they check out, like, where are you coming from? Or, you know, what's your favorite food creator? What's your favorite recipe of mine? Or whatever that gets funneled back into their member account. And then they'll land somebody somewhere on your site that you've determined. So a redirect link, probably somewhere where you're putting up posts or a specific member's page. And within the post section or within a page,

you can protect certain posts to certain tiers. So if you wanted to, you know, say, this is my post about my trip to Venice, this is for members only, you would just create the post at the very bottom of the post, not to get too technical, but you just check a little box that says,

this is for all members. And you post it, and now when somebody's signed up and logged in, they'll be able to see it. If they're not signed up or not logged in, they'll see something that says this is for members only, however you determined that you want to present that. So in the simplest fashion, Memberful works really well with WordPress and you can plug into a lot of different things. So really, if we're talking about putting your content behind a paywall, the way I just described is the best way to jump into that. If you want to plug in a community into

that, there's obviously the comment section. And then the two that I talked about, which was Discord and Discourse, which plug in really well. You could link to them from your site and yeah, people can check them out. So I would say that that's like memberful in the simplest way. Like I said, it's very malleable. So there's so many other things that you could jump into and build on. The way that I like to say memberful operates is it grows as you grow. So if you start really small, you can use a few different things that memberful offers, and that's great. But as you're growing your small, you can use a few different things that memberful offers, and that's great. But as you're growing your membership, you can use more and more and more features.

So it really follows you along your journey of membership. You're probably not going to outgrow it, not tons of people do, because it is so malleable and can fit in so many different scenarios. But it works for the small folks, it works for the huge folks and everybody in between. I love that it integrates with WordPress. That is what we recommend for bloggers to use. So I love that it has that integration and that it is malleable, like you've said, and you can kind of tweak it to make it your own.

Cause I think that that's important in this industry is to be able to use your own voice and show up in a way that doesn't look completely different. But I think you said it earlier, Jen, but it's just like an extension of what you're already creating. So it's just like this invitation to dive a little bit deeper and like having a platform that can help them do that, I, is really important, but also attainable. Because I think it can feel like this overwhelming thing. And you know, we've talked to lots of people at memberful over the last couple of months and I love the vibe I get from everybody that I've talked to is that you guys just really want to help people do this. You really want to help people start their memberships.

And also something I've noticed is you're all very like calm, cool, collected people. So when we can feel like very like overly excited or nervous about tech stuff, I feel like all of you are like, hey, we got it. We're going to be just fine. Like you're going to be able to figure this out. And I think in the this

industry, we can get a little excited about tech stuff and feel a little overwhelmed. So knowing that there's a strong support team, I think is just really important for people who might want to take this, take their blog, take their website up a level. And not only that, but serve their community in a different way. I mean, I think we're always looking for ways how can we stand out against somebody else who's doing something very similar to what we're doing? Like, what can I do to make sure that I'm standing out or that people who I'm meant to connect with

are able to connect with me? And I think just having that membership component is one way that they can definitely do that. Yeah, definitely. Being able to talk to your audience in that sort of intimate way is so key. Even before you start your membership, being able to try and talk to your audience before to understand what folks are excited about or what they want to get out of a potential membership can also be really, really, really helpful.

Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for coming on today and talking about Memberful, talking about memberships in general. I think it's been really helpful. I hope that we've inspired some people to kind of think outside the box with their blogging business and ask themselves how a membership could serve others. Jen, can you let people know where they can connect with Memberful and how they can get started? Yeah, definitely.

You can check out our website. It's just www.memberful.com. Or if you want to connect directly, you can definitely send me a note. My email is just jen at memberful.com. And we can talk about membership and figure some things out. Awesome. Thank you. Well, I will put those links in our show notes.

And thanks, Jen, for coming on today and sharing about memberful. Thanks so much for having me. It was a really great conversation. Thanks so much for tuning in today. If you'd like to continue the conversation about blogging with us, please find us on Instagram at Spark Media Concepts. You can also sign up for our weekly newsletter where we share blogging tips and inspiration. You can sign up by finding the link in the show notes. For

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