Ep 65 How to Earn Income with an Online Membership with Liz Wilcox

In episode 65, prepare to be super inspired when you learn How to Earn Income with an Online Membership with special guest Liz Wilcox. 

Let's dig into today's episode. Well, thank you for coming back, my friend. I hope that you're enjoying all of the episodes in the series this month, all about how to earn income with digital products and services. Now if you've missed any of the episodes so far, go back and start with 62 and then you can binge listen or read the show notes to catch up.

Now, today I have a special guest for you. Okay? I know I say that with every guest on the show, so let me clarify. She is an extra. Extra special guest. She's known as the Fresh Princess of email marketing. Her name is Liz Wilcox. She is an email strategist and keynote speaker. She shows small businesses how to build online relationships and make real money with just emails.

She's best known for selling a blog and turning a $9 offer. Into multiple six figures without even running ads. And she also helps you figure out pop culture references. She loves the nineties headbands and the beach. She's one of my best business friends and really one of my best friends in general. So let's dig into the episode.

Hey Liz, welcome to the show. I can't believe this is the first time that you're coming on this show, so welcome. Oh, my word, Camille and I have known each other since the dawn of internet time, I feel like. So, I feel like I finally made it. Camille has me on the show, so yay. I can't wait to talk about memberships.

I'm so excited that you're here and you're right. It's weird that you've never been on this show because if I were to talk about our history, which would take up the entire episode, so I won't, you should have been on this show on episode one. That's, that's how much we know each other, and we've talked about you coming on many, many times.

But this is the perfect time because we're going to talk more about memberships. Today and you are the queen of email marketing, but you're also actually like, you're the fresh princess. Let me back up. Really. You're the fresh princess. Yeah. I need to get the branding right, right. Um, but you also run a really spectacular membership and all month long on the show, I'm covering different digital products and services and I think memberships.

Would be of interest to a lot of listeners to this show. So, we are gonna talk about that. Before we do, however, would you like to share anything about yourself, or do you have a highlight reel for us about Liz Wilcox and what you do? Yeah, sure. So, I'll, I'll keep it Camille Atel adjacent. So, Camille and I met in what I think 2017.

We had both started RV travel blogs and everybody and their mother, you know, listening to awesome shows like this send, oh, you gotta start an email list. So, I started an email list and I remember. You know, then it was, oh, you've got, you've gotta sell a product. So, um, if any of you are in the travel, uh, lifestyle, RV travel lifestyle, I wrote a book called Tales from the Black Tank, a collection of hilariously crappy RV stories, and it made something like $7,000 in the first 90 days.

It got picked up by an international sponsor, and I told Camille and our mutual friends like, hey guys, you gotta, if I'm selling a book about poop, surely you guys are way smarter than me, like way smarter. We can figure this out. And it just kind of went from there. And when I realized after a few years that people were doing what I was doing, they were blogging, they were creating products, building an email list, but they weren't making the money that I was making or they weren't seeing the results, the conversions.

I thought, oh, I gotta. Sell this and I gotta go all in on teaching people email marketing because it's fun, it's lucrative, and we should all get a little piece of the pie, so to speak. So, I sold that business. I went all in on the email marketing, and now we're gonna talk about my membership and uh, why.

It's been perfect for me and why I think it'll be perfect for retired or semi-retired people as a business model. I love this. Oh my gosh, I wish I, I gotta have you back on because you just set a mouthful of gold and I really wanna dig into each and every little nugget, but let's dig into the membership side of it.

So, can you tell us a little bit about what a membership actually is? Yeah, so a membership in simplest terms is recurring revenue. It's something that people subscribe to, kind of like Netflix or your Costco membership, right? You pay a yearly or a monthly fee, and you get access to all the goodies, right?

I pay Netflix. 17 bucks a month, I get access to, you know, their whole video library and anything coming up for as long as I continue to pay it. So, when you're thinking about building your own business, you can create that sort of membership where you have weekly, monthly content, quarterly content, whatever it is, or even just access to you.

Um, and people will pay it monthly, quarterly, or yearly, depending on your model. And it's great for. More predictable income. That's such a great description. Thank you for sharing that. And your membership specifically does what and for whom? Yeah, so my membership specifically is called email marketing membership, and that kind of explains it all for $9 a month, uh, you get access to email newsletter templates, and you know, it doesn't matter what kind of business you're in, if you own a local business, you're a realtor or you're doing the online content creation.

Maybe you're trying podcasting, YouTube, or a traditional blog like how Camille and I started. Uh, you get newsletter templates and samples to show you how to connect with your audience via email, so you too can sell anything the same way. I sold a book about poop to men in their sixties. Oh my gosh. I haven't laughed that hard on a live interview in a long time.

You just crack me up. Oh, good. You crack me up. So, let's pause here and talk a little bit about email, because even though we are here talking about memberships, it's really important to also consider email no matter what business model you do. And since this month I'm talking about, you know, all kinds of models, coaching models, consulting, uh, I had Isaac Smith on talking about workshops.

I'm gonna have another person talk about eBooks and printables and things like that. No matter the business model, you always need an email list. This is really important, and I wanna spend just a minute here on this because the email list is what keeps the business alive. Right. Would you agree?

Absolutely. All of those people, Camille, uh, just talked about. I guarantee you, if you look them up, you ask them, hey, how do you actually sell your workshops or your eBooks or, uh, you know, your services? They'll say, well, I have an email list, or I wish I had an email list so I could sell more. So, the email list is your direct.

Contact, um, channel to potential or current customers. It's a way of gathering your leads so you can convert them because you know, people don't buy. When you're selling, they buy when they're ready. So, if you continuously follow up with them, they're gonna be ready at some point. I liken it to my sister and myself.

We get gas at different times. I get gas once a week, doesn't matter. She gets gas when she's on E. The seven 11 on the corner is always there, but we only buy when we're ready. So having an email list owning, uh, you know, those email addresses, you can follow up over and over again and convert the maximum amount of customers, um, over in your business.

Hmm, that's so good. And it, I'm always amazed when I'm talking to people who either are starting businesses, have businesses or thinking about businesses, one of the first things they say to me is, I need to get on YouTube, or I need a website, or, you know, I gotta do TOS or whatever. And I'm like, do you have an email list?

No, I don't. And I'm like, don't do anything. Until you start an email list, because as you and I both know, when we got started, email was really the game changer in just being bloggers, throwing content out there on the internet to suddenly having a business. So, absolutely, and even if you don't, you know you wanna be a sort of content creator and you don't plan on creating your own products or you're not sure yet, having that email list allows you to evolve with your followers and your potential customers.

We don't own YouTube. We don't own TikTok. Raise your hand if you were alive in 2022 and you saw, uh, some billionaire buy a social media platform. And then that social media platform, uh, proceeded to implode upon itself. I won't name names. You can Google it if you haven't heard of it. Uh, it's a little blue bird.

That is suddenly now an X and people are leaving in droves. If you built your entire platform on social media and someone comes and buys it and changes things, that could change your entire business at for the worse. So, it's very important to gather your own leads, to take those people off social media, off of YouTube so you can follow up with them.

You can create an intimate, for lack of a better term, connection, um, and sell or, you know, drive traffic to those other channels you're creating. Nice. Excellent. That's hilarious. That story with the little blue bird. Yes. We all like raise your hand if, if you were alive last year. Yeah. So, let's talk about, let's get back onto memberships then.

So, you've got your email marketing membership. You said it's $9 a month, which I think if people are listening, and they heard that they might be shocked. Like what? Cheaper than Netflix, baby. It really is. I mean, more than half almost. It's like, mm-hmm. What? So, $9 a month. Why? I mean, I think some people would go, Liz, raise your price.

That's just ridiculous. So, tell us about the $9 a month by some. People. She means herself. Guys, if you're listening, I've moved on from telling you that. Well, I was gonna say, if you've never hired Camille, which you should, she's an amazing coach. One of the things she's gonna look at is your prices, and she's probably gonna tell you, well, you know, you could probably get away with doubling that, and maybe you should try it anyway.

So, for the $9, for me, Camille and I, we started our journey at the same time and. But I didn't have, you know, I'm a little younger than Camille and so I didn't have anything from a corporate job to, you know, allow me to purchase anything. So, I was seeing a lot of these colleagues and peers, you know, joining programs and I was just sitting in my RV feeling sorry for myself googling until the cows came home about what I was gonna do.

And listening to anything Camille told me about what she learned behind a paywall. And so, when I started my membership, I wanted to serve those that were like me, that were really. Interested in the online, uh, business thing and, you know, they believed it was possible, but maybe their budget, uh, is too tight or their partner thinks they're in a cult and doesn't want them to spend any money, or, you know, simply, just is very skeptical and I thought, well, nine bucks.

Hey, you'll get in for 30 days. You'll try it out and you know, you'll see that it actually is pretty good and hopefully you stick around. And so now, uh, it's been two and a half years at the time of this recording since I launched the membership and I now have over 3,500 people in the membership. So, if you do the math, uh, you know, pause.

Give Camille a five-star rating on iTunes and then go ahead and Google, or, you know, uh, do the math on 3,500 times $9. It's over $30,000 a month. That's more than enough money for me to support my family as a single mother. Uh, you know, uh, hire my sister full-time and give myself a salary and pay Uncle Sam.

Oh my gosh. Your story is amazing, and it's been. Like, I don't even know. Honor isn't even the right word. It's been awesome, exciting just to have the littlest part of it and see it and watch it because she's right. Everyone, like when she was like, I'm gonna do a $9 a month membership, I was like, no, no.

Like a hundred dollars a month. At least like because she delivers so much value. I am in your membership. I've been in it for a really long time, and the amount of value. You deliver is bar none. Like there's nobody else I know of who charged double, triple, whatever. I had done programs that have been thousands of dollars that don't deliver the value that you deliver for $9 a month.

So, I think it's amazing what you're doing. It's amazing for your family and yourself, what you've been able to accomplish. I know you take care of a lot of people. They depend on you and the community of 3,500 people. Growing every day. You serve them so well, you're, you're literally making businesses. Be real businesses and grow.

I think that's incredible work that you're doing. So, Aw. Yeah. Well, you guys can't see me, but I'm like tearing up Camille. This is why Camille and I are friends. It's find somebody who can support you the way Camille supports me. Hopefully I do that in return, of course. But I, I won't gush about Camille.

You guys are already sold on her. Um, but as far as the membership and to Camille's point about. Me having a lot of responsibility in my life to my family. Uh, I knew I was a service provider at first. If you need money right now, go figure out a service and go charge somebody for it. I am sure Camille has told you that over and over again.

But if you can think long-term, that's what this membership was all about for me. When you know, Camille and lots of others. My business coach, every, everybody and their mother, Liz, you should maybe even $10, you know? What do you think about $10? I had a long-term vision. I knew I didn't need that money right away.

Um, but I knew if I gave it even two years to get to a thousand. Uh, subscribers, a thousand members, that would be $9,000 a month. That was more money than I could ever dream of before I started my online business. And you know, as someone who's semi or fully retired, that's probably more money than you need also.

And so, I thought if I could give myself two years to find a thousand people, when you think, you know what O over half of the population is on the internet, I can find a thousand of these people that will say yes to Liz Wilcox, right? If I give myself two years, that's 9,000 bucks. That will be worth the work I can do the service providing on the side, or, well, really, that was the full-time thing.

I can do that. That's how I'm gonna feed my family and then I'm gonna work on this membership on the side. It turns out I really only needed nine months. I gave myself two years. Uh, you know, the only time anything has happened quicker than I thought it would. And uh, you know, now I have this 3,500-person membership.

It's got that recurring. It allows me to feel that security that everyone is always, you know, talking about. And I just love the membership model for that reason. As someone who owns their own business, you know, security really isn't a thing. One of the first conversations I had with Camille was her saying, when I quit my nine to five, I, you know, I was saying goodbye to security.

And I thought, well, I've never had a job, so I've never been secure. So welcome to the club. You know, grab some Xanax or something. Um, and, but now I have that security that I've never had before and it's so amazing if you're the type of person that likes security. If you are the type of person that has or can have a long-term vision, you know, the membership model is a great, great path for you.

I love it. Okay, Liz, you, I think everyone's listening and probably is very, very inspired, so we are gonna start to wind down. But first, where can people find you if they wanna just connect with you, learn more about you, join your membership, et cetera. Yeah, so of course I'm an email marketer. I would love for you to join my email list, see what I mean by connecting with your audience, uh, see how I promote my membership.

So maybe you can get inspiration from that too. You can go directly to liz wilcox.com. In the top right-hand corner, you're gonna see a hot pink button. You can't miss it. Uh, click on that. It's. Gonna give you a bunch of like email samples, something called a welcome sequence, some newsletter samples, 52 subject lines, all for free.

But again, that's gonna get you on my list so you can see what I mean by gathering your own community, um, following up with them and how I sell the membership itself. Wonderful. And I'll also put the link in the show notes. You can check out Liz's website, which by the way is a ton of fun. You have one of the best websites as well, which is a hard thing to pull off.

Um, but if you go to her website, do not compare her website to yours, everybody, because I paid a lot of money. Paid a lot of money. Yeah. I did not build that website. I did write all the copy. Um, so, um, But I'm not for hire anymore. Sorry. So, I'll put the link to that. I'll also put the link to your email marketing membership if anyone's interested in that.

And one thing I just wanted to end with today is I wanna leave people with some ideas about I. What they could build a, a membership around, because some people are like, well, it obviously Liz has a membership. She talks about email marketing. That makes sense. But I don't do anything. I just wanna throw out some ideas for people so they understand what's possible.

For example, I know there's a lady in your, in your membership who sells succulents. She does like succulent cactus workshops. Yes. Hairdressers, um, therapists. What else? Who else do you, do you have? Yeah, I have a nun, a rabbi, and a pastor named Carlton in there. And so, you know, you can make money doing anything and you can, you know, if you think hard enough, you can think, what does somebody need every single.

Month. You know, you don't have to do weekly content like me. You don't daily that. Whoa, that would be too much. You could do monthly or quarterly. A lot of people have. You know, inspirational content, uh, faith-based content, and it's once a month. The succulent lady, I actually have two people that run succulent memberships in my membership, and they just, you know, they do tea parties once a month and, you know, they're just available to like, Hey, my succulent died.

Uh, can you, can you figure out why? And they're, you know, uh, if you wanted a help desk, right? Something like that could be a membership. It doesn't even have to be super content based. It could just be a help desk, or it could just be joining my membership and you get this curated, um, you know, newsletter of say.

I have a guy that does like discounts. He's a coupon guy, and so he has a membership. Pay me, you know, 10, 15 bucks a month and I'm gonna curate all these coupons for you. You end up saving more than $15. So, join the membership now. I do all the work for you. Stuff like that. There's really, I mean, it's limitless, uh, what you could do with a membership.

Um, and again, I just love it for the recurring revenue model. Mm-hmm. Uh, you know, say goodbye to the roller coaster. Um, yeah. That, that's all I'm gonna say about that. Yeah. I sound like, yeah, no, those are good examples. I don't know if you know this, and we'll end it here. I so we don't keep. Gosh, we could talk forever, but I have to find an end point.

Or my podcast producer will say, hey, I'm gonna charge you for some more minutes. So, um, no, not really. So, I have a membership, I don't know if you know that, but it's a back what's called a backend membership. So, after someone comes through remote work school, which is my course, Different than a membership, they do have the opportunity to just stay in and get coached with me, uh, ongoing for as long as they want.

And that's a type of membership. But I don't do any kind of content like you're saying, or extra stuff. I just let them go month to month if they want to, and that's just another option. So that, you know, people don't think that, oh, I have to create some new special whizzbang extra thing all the time.

Sometimes it's just access to you and that's enough for people. So, amen. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Liz, thanks again for coming on the show. One more time, I'll put some links in the show notes if you wanna connect with Liz. Is there anything I didn't ask you that you wanna say? I. Thanks for having me, friend.

Can't wait to see what everybody does. All right. Thanks so much, Liz. If you love today's episode and want to connect with Liz or even join her email marketing membership for just $9, I still can't believe that price point. Go to liz wilcox.com or check the links in the show notes.

Click here to check out Liz's website. (affiliate link)

Click here to check out Liz's Email Marketing Membership- Only $9 a month. (affiliate link)

Click here to join Remote Work School

https://www.camilleattell.com/remoteworkschool

If you want to start something new but feel a bit overwhelmed, I invite you to take my free remote work training:

https://www.camilleattell.com/remote-training

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