In episode 161 of our podcast, I chat with Evan Medeiros, founder of The Trade Risk. Evan runs a membership site that grew from an interest of his blog readers. He also sells downloadable products. As a back-end developer, he is a true do-it-yourselfer.

Creating and Running a Membership Site

Evan gets into his decision to start a membership site and how he has recently restructured it based on member feedback. We also talk about how content has played an important role in the growth of his site, how he has learned to manage and create content while still finding time for the membership side of the site, and the challenge of maintaining that content level.

The talk moves into his challenges of producing the content and marketing his memberships and products while being in an industry where there are limitations of what he can say— or even imply.

We dive into the tech side of things and learn why he chose WordPress. He shares the plugins he uses, including Paid Memberships Pro, Beaver Builder and WooCommerce. 

Lastly, I ask Evan to give us his own tips for starting a membership site based on his 5+ years of experience.

The Transition to a Membership Site

I had people start to reach out to me and say, Hey I like what you’re doing. What else do you do? Like, can I get more insights from you? Can I get X, Y, or Z? At that point I said, okay, this is kind of naturally turning into something here. That I think I have value. I have people asking me for something. And that’s really where my membership product came from.

It seemed natural at that point to go down the membership route. And the reason was because of the nature of the business and what I was doing is basically providing technical analysis or information about the stock market, doing pattern recognition. And looking at opportunities in the stock market.

When people reached out, the primary interest was can I get more from you on a day-to-day basis? Can I get more content? Can I get more real time? I don’t want to wait for you to publish a blog post at the end of the day. I want more instant access.

The membership model seemed to be the right fit. I didn’t think twice about it. In 2014 I had no real vision. I didn’t launch the blog to start a membership site or anything. So when someone started to come up and ask, Hey can I pay you for this content? I thought to myself, well, what do I charge them?

Changing your model

As of just this month, I’ve flattened the membership to just a single model. I’ve gotten rid of the tiers and I’ve run a monthly plan and an annual plan. It’s the same plan, but one membership. Part of that decision is that I’m not going to teach you how to trade anymore.

One of the things that I am working on now, when I was thinking about still keeping the two tiers, is the person who wants more. There’s always someone who wants more handholding or wants more access or wants more information. I’m going to do a standalone research report product which is going to be for people who want to know more about how the system was made.

Listening to your members

Getting feedback is important. Have a survey that goes out. I always survey everyone: either myself reaching out or a Google form that goes out shortly after they join, getting them to give me feedback on the features that I’m offering in the membership.

Some of the some of the features I was putting into the membership people didn’t really care about. I thought they cared about it and I was spending a lot of time on these certain things. I started to realize that I could probably kill this off tomorrow and I wouldn’t lose anyone, because nobody really cares about this. It would free up 10 hours a week for me.

Industry limitations and transparency

I’m not a financial advisor. I don’t have any designations, I’m not reg