In my interview, I ask him a variety of questions about how he grows his membership base, what works in terms of free and discounted trials, his conversion rates from the $1 trial to a regular monthly membership, and how he sets pricing.

As usual, 4 ways to watch/listen/read:

1) Listen to the audio here:

2) Download the mp3 file here
3) Read the transcript (below the video)
4) Watch the video:

Transcript:

MemberCon.com: Hi, Tim Bourquin here from membercon.com and thanks for joining me for another interview today. Today, our guest is Perry Lawrence and you may have seen his website, it’s a very popular one called AskMrVideo.com that talks about using video for your website. We’re going to talk to him a little bit about that and how he uses video and suggests that membership site owners use video to promote their sites. He’s also got an eBook he’s written called Membership Site Bible, which I understand a new version is coming out shortly this year. So we’re going to talk to him about that too. So, Perry, thanks very much for joining me on the phone today.

Perry Lawrence: Tim, thanks a lot for having me. It’s a pleasure.

MemberCon.com: Well, I always like start with a little bit of background to give our listeners some idea of the context to where you’re coming from. So, when did you first decide to get into the membership site business and create revenue that way?

Perry Lawrence: Well, I’ve been doing websites for other people for quite a while and really helping other folks make money online, but it never really occurred to me that I could use that for myself. So, a friend of mine, a good friend of mine, Rich Farina, dragged me to a membership site conference hosted by actually the developer of the platform I’m using. His name is Bill Myers and his associate, who now owns the company, Tim Kerber. So, it was I guess a three-day conference and really what they spelled out was really intriguing to me and it really made a lot of sense because they talked about it being a true business, a true sellable asset, the continuity model. They didn’t use the word continuity at that time, I think we called them subscription or membership sites but it all appealed to me but even more of the point that the type and caliber of people specifically Bill and Tim, but the people that they gathered to them was just outstanding. The people who had successes in other businesses who are now porting their knowledge to a membership or continuity website and I just for like, “Wow, I’ve found my calling, I found my people.” So, I went home. I really just studied the model, studied the systems, really got very familiar with the platform, started building membership sites for other people using that platform and others and just shortly, in a short matter of time, just really put my thoughts down to paper and came out with a book called “Membership Site Bible” that did extremely well and we pulled it off the market at the beginning of this year, while we’re rewriting it, and we’re coming out with Membership Site Bible to the New Testament and things have radically changed as you know even in the past two years. So, that’s kind of the story. After I wrote the book, I was still trying to figure out my niche. I thought, well there are other people such as your self and at that time Tim Kerber and Bill are both deeply involved in teaching folks the membership model. So, I knew that’s not exactly where I wanted to end up, but finally it dawned on me, “Well what have you been doing for the past 20 years, Perry?” And so I came up with a site called AskMrVideo.com. I’ve been here for so long, I’ve forgotten all the questions and so I figured, well let’s just have people ask me and I can tell them because I either know the answer or you find out the answers very fast and that’s kind of how the AskMrVideo.com site was born.

MemberCon.com: Yeah. So do you have a background then in TV production and then you just translated that to the web video?

Perry Lawrence: I did. I spent 20 years in commercial production, producing commercials for an ad agency, a little ad agency called Ogilvy & Mather. They hold the IBM account, 900 billion dollars or something like that, and a hundred million dollar account. And they got a great, great education there in branding and just really short form video which I really, really, really like and from there went on, about 10 years ago I work for a nonprofit in Philadelphia where I’m currently residing and that nonprofit has sent me all over the world doing short documentaries for their work, and so I was developing documentaries for them and developing their web properties and I helped them go from a five-million dollar organization to a 15-million dollar organization. So, that’s kind of my background. I’ve been in video forever, brief stint in audio and in my head, it’s a video very fast, and I have never looked back. I just really love video and know ins and outs of it and I really have been applying what I’ve known to the web for quite a while. It used to be just merely impossible if I get video on the web. And nowadays, it’s just incredibly easy so that’s what I really teach people is that, “Don’t be afraid, it’s easy and you can use it in marketing to great success.” So, yeah, my background is video production. I’ve been doing that since, man 20, 20 almost 25 years.

MemberCon.com: So, OK, so you took some knowledge that you had…a lot of knowledge you had from video production then translated that to the web. Your timing was great because, of course, web video has exploded over the past five years. But how did you initially promote your website to try and get members and how did you decide, “Well, let’s start with that. We’ll get to pricing in a minute.” How did you first promote your site?

Perry Lawrence: Well, like I said, I was trying to find what my niche was. Sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees. Like well, duh! You’ve been putting videos, you do that. And really, I think part of the issue there is you really have to be passionate about your topic and while I’ve done video for so long, I had to really tap into that passion again because some folks out there have been a dentist or a lawyer or groundskeeper, you name it and it becomes “a job” to them and then, and somehow the passion gets lost when it becomes a J-O-B. So I really had to tap back into that passion and once I did, then the light bulb just started going off. Like well, “I could talk about this, I could talk about this, I could talk about this.” So what I did is I was involved in a number of membership sites because of the Membership Site Bible and I just put up a squeeze page that it just had a caricature of me and an opt-in box. I knew at least I needed to do that and kind of a “coming soon” type of thing. And I just started adding my signature, my URL to my SIG file in the forms I was posting on. I didn’t know them but that’s called the expert posting, so I just was very helpful on the forms, just started talking to people about what I was thinking about doing, what I wanted to do and what I was going to do. And I just started really building a list, very slowly, very methodically, went to Yahoo Answers, I went to a bunch of places and wherever I want just kind of left little breadcrumbs and crumb trails to AskMrVideo.com and generated a few names, few hundred names, and then when got ready to launch really encourage those people to join as charter members and that’s a great strategy that I really think worked well. And I just promised them, as long as you’re charter member, you’re low, low charter membership price is guaranteed for life and I do have some life as long as askmrvideo.

MemberCon.com: Yeah, what was that price initially for those charter members on a monthly basis?

Perry Lawrence: I believe the lowest has been 9.95.

MemberCon.com: Well, that’s great incentive to stay subscribed obviously because if they cancelled then they’re going to be coming at a higher price, so that has probably helped–

Perry Lawrence: Exactly.

MemberCon.com: –some unretention. What do you currently charge for new members now?

Perry Lawrence: New members now are 19.95 and we’re getting ready to rollout in August our new, I don’t know if we have a name for it, but our new membership level has got a couple of other platforms that were rolling into AskMrVideo.com and I guess I can talk about him now. They’re going to have a full blown editing platform built right into AskMrVideo.com. So, we’ll get editing, hosting, plus a lot of marketing content that they can incorporate into their website, so we’re extremely excited about that and now probably I rollout of the 47 a dollar price point.

MemberCon.com: Did you use some testing with the 19.95 and try different levels or is this something you just kind of picked out of your head and went with it?

Perry Lawrence: I kind of picked it out in my head and went with it. I mean I’m talking to people subsequently. A lot of folks say, “Well you know 17 would be easier, we’d better, blah, blah, blah…” You know what I think the pricing is a pricing…Granted they’re, if people are in the buying frames and they had to buy the pricing they may have something to do with that 19 versus 19.95, I don’t really know, I don’t do a whole lot of testing. We’re getting addition to do a lot, but I have never done a lot of testing. And again, going back to my point, I don’t think the price is going to, a couple of bucks here and there are going to make or break it. However, I do believe that you have a lot of value and you do offer things that people want. They really don’t care what the price is. So that’s what I try to focus on is like, “What do my constituents want, what does the audience demand, what are they looking for, what’s going to get them to say, yes, to sign me up quicker?” And so we had a dollar trial for over six months and that’s been extremely well received. So they do a dollar trial, try to set up for 21 days and 19.95 after that.

MemberCon.com: What percentage or if you’re willing to share that with us are people converting over to the regular membership after that trial?

Perry Lawrence: Seventy-five percent.

MemberCon.com: Really? OK that’s fantastic.

Perry Lawrence: Yeah. We try to manage the consumption. I think consumption is a huge topic. It could be a whole another call, but I think consumption is really important when you’re talking about new members. And the best way to think about consumption is when you are at a restaurant. If they brought you four appetizers, five entrees, 16 desserts and 57 drinks all at one time, you’re not going eat any of it. You’re going to get up frustrated, unsatisfied and leave. But if you can start with an appetizer, let them finish that, start with the drink, maybe an entree.

MemberCon.com: Right.

Perry Lawrence: Dessert perhaps…People then can consume what you’re offering and be satisfied, be happy with the rate. So we’re really looking at ways to re-engineer AskMrVideo.com and make it a little more navigatable–

MemberCon.com: Right.

Perry Lawrence: –and a little more consumable especially for the beginners. You know, we’ve got so much stuff there, and some broad topics that we really want to now, take that, consolidate it a little bit better and make it available for people as they need it and when they need it so it’s easy to find and so they don’t get frustrated.

MemberCon.com: I’ve heard about that, that in fact if you do offer too much, in our minds, as the side owners, you think it’s a good thing because the more you offer, the better value it is but that being, that overwhelming feeling for the user sometimes can work against you.

Perry Lawrence: Yeah. I think there’s a real balance there because you obviously want to show them some goodies that are going to entice them. I think a folk like Jim Laube of restaurantowner.com does it extremely well. I think Tim Schmidt over at the usconcealedcarry.org does it extremely well. What are you going to get and make that such a value that you’d be stupid not to sign up and that’s kind of what we tried to do over at AskMrVideo.com and here’s what you get and if you went out and did this yourself, it would cost you arm and leg money and time wise, in that three to five typically great, great products or content pieces, assets we call those, after that you wanted then to be able to trickle it in. It’s like the blue plate special. Here’s the special to get you in the door and then be able to offer people up-sells, french fries, whatever it is that they happen to be hungry for once they get in. So, it really is a balance on some real key assets that they’re going to come for then deliver them some great other assets while they’re there that they can make use of. In a dual phrase, it’s always been, people come for, they come for the content and they stay because of the community, is typically true. I mean if you can migrate your folks from the content, get them involved in the community, your stick rates are going to be a whole lot higher.

MemberCon.com: Do you find that you get more conversions from your email list than you do from the website itself?

Perry Lawrence: Yes and no. I think up to recently, it’s been more from the website itself. I think recently what we started to do is, in our newsletter, have a members-only section. And I was hesitant to do that for a while but recently just added it and it’s just at the bottom, it’s just a little blurb that says, “Here’s some content that only members can get to and we’ve really made that valuable.” We have industry expert interviews, called us the video pros and that’s been received really well and we’ve also done some website strategy sessions that we’ve recorded and are delivering those every week. So every week, there’s a new interview. Every week there’s a new website strategy session that both of us are video-driven and it’s great, great content and that can only get accessed by members. So, now we’re starting to see more folks come from the list on, as members and as you grow your list, you can grow membership. It used to be that you could get 20% to 25% of your list on as members. I think that members dwindled down a little bit to below 20 for most folks just because of the industry landscape of membership sites. So it’s a lot harder, everybody’s finding it’s a lot harder to just, what we call lead with your membership site. You can’t just say, “Hey, you got a membership site, join here now, you get all these good stuff.” It’s really difficult to do that. I think there’s a lot of other ways to drive members and those ways are a whole lot more effective than just hanging up a membership shingle and expecting a lot of people to join.

MemberCon.com: I like the idea of a members-only section in the newsletter because it’s a constant reminder to everybody who gets it, that there is a member’s area and the more stuff and more kind of teasers you can put in that area, it’s a great sales to all I think for the members.

Perry Lawrence: Absolutely. Yeah I wish I’d done it a little longer but it’s working out really well now.

MemberCon.com: I’ve been hearing a lot about it and I’m kind of researching how long members stay members on certain sites and it seems for the internet marketers, the people that talk about making money online, 45 months is about the lifespan of their membership, I mean, they’re constantly having to get new people into their sales funnel. What has it been for you? Do you know kind of your average stick time for members who stay members?

Perry Lawrence: It’s about eight months but obviously some are shorter, obviously like I said to any other call, there’s some that have been on for two years, our charter members. So, I think a lot of it has to do, like I mentioned before, is getting them involved and getting them involved in the community and I learned a lot of great things from Jerry Minchey over at artisticthreadworks.com. He’s a genius when it comes to member retention and really community building, and so we’re doing a lot of things like that getting ready to do another contest. One of our first contests doubles our list so we’re getting ready to that again. Just had a member-only promotion this past July 25th and we called that “Christmas in July” and so we said, “If you’re a member, you’ll get a free DVD, if you’re member on that day, on Christmas Day, July 25th.” So, I’ve had a ton of people request that free DVD and I covered shipping and everything is totally a free gift if you’re a member, and so we even opened that up to people who are trial members. So we say, “For a buck, you can get this great DVD that’s got a lot of great content.” And so, there’s all kinds of ways to promote the site and to incentivize people to stay and that last promotion, I’m very happy about because I think it did both. It was a great way to say thank you to the members who had had stay and who were members and it’s a great way to drive new members to it. So, we’ll definitely be doing the stuff like that again.

MemberCon.com: Yeah. I’ve noticed that even if your content is the best stuff out there, the best online, the best you could find anywhere, without some sort of time-sensitive incentive or some kind of offer that’s going to be taken away at a deadline, it’s really a lot harder to get people to sign up just for the content alone. It’s almost like they need that push no matter how great the content is for them to get on board. Have you felt that to be true as well?

Perry Lawrence: Absolutely, absolutely. It wasn’t until two years ago was a little different, but nowadays that is 100% true. And so what a lot of us are doing is leading with launches instead of leading with the site. And leading with launches, what I mean with that, have a new class or new product, have a time, a time-sensitivity to that, a deadline and have also a class size limit and then we bonus in the continuity. So we’ve done that three times now that’s worked very successfully over the past six months, six to eight months, and extremely successful every time it has built my list substantially and increase membership substantially, plus sold a ton of products, and another way is to do a promotion like we just did with Christmas in July. That was a one-day only event and really did well for me. I did not push it at all. It wasn’t a hard sell whatsoever but a lot of people really dug in and we’ll have up-sells on as a free DVD, but we’ll up-sells on the back of that, added a bunch of new members, and so we’ll see. But there’s…I’ve talked to one membership site owner who closes his membership site for three months and has an event every quarter, so that’s really scarce. I mean you can only get in once a quarter and so it’s all about scarcity. I’m a big fan of Cialdini and his book Persuasion, and there are a lot of great tips that I try to follow from that and I try to implement in everything I do?

MemberCon.com: Now, you mention one site just before that that I meant to ask you again to repeat the site, it was artistic something.

Perry Lawrence: Artisticthreadworks.com.

MemberCon.com: Threadworks.com?

Perry Lawrence: Uh-huh.

MemberCon.com: OK. All right, I’ll have to check that out, we’ll link to that as well.

Perry Lawrence: Absolutely. Yeah, he’s a great interview to be there, crashing it in their niche it’s a woman and her husband who she designs little patterns for mechanized embroidery machine, sewing embroidery machines. And they’re absolutely crashing it.

MemberCon.com: It’s definitely a niche.

Perry Lawrence: Absolutely a niche. Not one of the most beautiful sites on the planet, but they’re absolutely crashing it. So a lot of these membership sites where mom and pop run. She does the content site and he does the management site if you will in the community building site, it’s been really good.

MemberCon.com: Do you offer a money back guarantee on your site as a sales tactic?

Perry Lawrence: Yeah, we do. That plus a dollar trial is no real…There’s no real incentive that’s for your money back, we feel it’s a great content, a lot of ton of downloads, so we’ve not had anybody take us up on that.

MemberCon.com: All right. We’ll I’m going to get a little selfish here and ask about the video side of things because I try to use that a lot in my site. What one of the things I do is I take the audio, make it a podcast, but then I also make some PowerPoint slides and make a video by putting just the audio over the slides. I noticed some people superimposed the people talking through Skype or what not, am I missing something by not having the faces of the people while they’re talking almost in kind of a TV sense or am I OK doing these slides with the audio?

Perry Lawrence: I definitely you’re OK doing the slides with the audio. The things that I try to teach everybody is just do it. Just whatever is what you’re doing continue to do, if you’re not doing start, and where you’ve start there you start. So you’re way ahead of the game. Most people will just throw up their audio. I think you’re way out of the game by throwing up, adding some slides to it because now that becomes even a more valuable asset. People learned different ways, they consumed content different ways. We try to make our content available three different ways, video, audio and text. Especially our classes, so yeah I think you’re way ahead of the game. Now what I will say though and what I do teach a lot is that people definitely need to be adding videos of themselves to their membership site. Membership sites typically are personality-driven and if you’re not hanging your personality out there through video, I think your competition is going to be where already are. And you’ll attract people, whether you do video or not, just by the way you write, by your personality and by what you talked about, you’re going to attract people who are similar to you and, you know, that’s exactly what you want and you can leverage that even times 10 when you do that with a video. So becoming an authentic authority what I call in your niche by doing a series of videos, doing an about me video, doing a live video, all those things are going to be very powerful on your membership site. Don’t stop what you’re doing because that seems to be working for you, but I will also get you to do videos of yourself, introducing about me, video doing a why video. Why you’re doing this? What’s your passionate about either that’s in business or in charity or, et cetera, because your kid needs a new pair of shoes and just doing video blogs about some things that you’re having fun with or passionate about. I carry my Flip with me every where because I’m always looking for a quick interview with an industry expert and it’s just so much fun and so easy to do.

MemberCon.com: That’s a good point that you brought that up about the Flip. Decent quality, it’s getting better but not the greatest. It used to be that you could put up a pretty crummy video with so-so audio and as long as the content was good, people got something out of it, they tolerated that. But I sense that that’s starting to change as well. People are expecting a little bit better production these days, am I right on that?

Perry Lawrence: It really depends on your niche. I’ll just agree with you on one point. The quality of the Flip…I used to lug around 20 pounds Betamax, Beta cam high end news camera with the lens cost more than the camera type of feel. When I was working in Manhattan and the quality of the Flip Mino HD far and above surpasses that. If you’d know a few tricks, the built-in microphone is the best built-in microphone on any camera period I think and so you can really…Now, you can’t have a lot of the flicks and volume adjustments that you can with one of these bigger more powerful cameras. But people ask me, “What’s the best camera?” And the best camera is the camera you’re going to use. So it’s brain dead simple, one button turns it on, one button hits record, one button plays back. It’s just dead simple and it just works. So for me, a lot of times, I get to leave my big cameras at home and just bring a Flip in my back pocket and just have some amazing content. And that’s what I teach people too. Now, if you’re worried about you look on film or how you’re coming across, you’re thinking too much about me instead of thinking about the content you’re delivering. People come to you for your content, for who you bring them, for the insight that you bring them so as long as you’re focused on giving, people will forget a ton of “quality issues”. I think you too, there’s a way to step up your game and now you can broadcast and widescreen HD, pretty incredible quality there. So the game is changing so yeah I think even with simple tools like the Flip and you too you can still have some good quality video if you pay attention to a few things. Don’t shot with light behind you and make sure you’re brighter than the background and get the camera close enough that the microphone doesn’t have to strain to hear you. So checks like that, making sure there’s catchlight in your eye to increase the trust factor that we teach all of that in the classes over at AskMrVideo.com and just I have struggled over that point you make because I’ve been in the video industry for the 25 plus years, and here I’m doing Flip videos and wanting people to think that I’m a pro is like, well pro is a relative term. You know, professional is a relative term. Now, we have done for our higher end clients, we have done high end productions. You can go check those out at barefootexecutive.tv and buzzprofits.tv and nicheology.tv. Those are web TV shows that we’ve put together for our high end clients, and they’re having some great success with that. And we have stepped up the quality there thus it is more of a “show” We just want to position it differently. So, yeah, I think there’s room for both. But if you’re just starting out or if somebody is just interested in leveraging what they do and incorporating video in their marketing bag of tricks. Don’t worry about quality, I mean there are some tips to pay attention to, but worry about delivering great content.

MemberCon.com: So, I’ll finish up with this, you said just put in the content up there as long as it was quality and great work to get membership than you see that decline, now it’s more of launch, you got to create some incentive to get in by a deadline, maybe even close to site, will that stop to work eventually or start to taper off and then what do you think is next? I mean what’s after that?

Perry Lawrence: I don’t think that the subscription or continuity model is going away any time soon. I think we’ve seen a dip a matter of fact because of the economy. I think as the economy bounces back people’s discretionary income and their “educational income” and their forgettable money is going to bounce back and as that do I believe the continuity of starting things will continue to grow. So, as far as how people go into market on internet in the next five years, it’s hard to tell. I think everything that has worked offline has since now working online, so I try to follow the rule of thumb that success leaves clues. Look at what some of the bigger companies are doing with their promotions. Look at companies like Sports Illustrated and what they do to incentivize you into their continuity program. Look at what your cable company does. I know Ryan Lee watches a few interesting sites and checking out what some other industries are doing online. So just, success leaves clues, follow what other successful people are doing, what their bundling, what their offering and look at the content that they’re delivering and how they’re delivering it. And I’m finding is people’s attention span gets shorter and shorter, smaller bunch work even better. So the future of the web, I think the future of the web is video. I happen to biased, but I think web free data will be an immersive video experience. You can find things like that over at who really are already doing stuff like that. I use a player called Veeple which is kind of an immersive interactive player that we’re having some fun with and so as video gets just that easy it’s rarely changing the phase of, it has changed the phase of internet plus companies like Live Stream, Justin.tv, Ustream, they’re all going to a live streaming model and offering that up to users so we’re going see people streaming their life 24/7. Kind of a scary spot, I’m not particularly interested in doing that but and as kids come up they want to be…Have what one pundit is called arm’s length intimacy and that the Justin.tv and the streaming media, streaming live video definitely does that.

MemberCon.com: You said Veeple, spell that for me so people are going to know what site to go through their.

Perry Lawrence: Veeple.com.

MemberCon.com: Got it. And, of course, anyone listening make sure you check out AskMrVideo.com for great tips on adding video to your own site and then what will be the site name for Membership Site Bible when that’s ready?

Perry Lawrence: They can just go to membershipsitebible.com.

MemberCon.com: All right, easy enough. We’ll link to that as well. Perry, thanks very much for your time today. I appreciate your sharing…