How to Build a Podcast Membership: Looking at the Creator Crew

Sponsor:This episode is brought to you byOutgrow. We always talk about great tools on How I Built It, and one great tool isOutgrow. It’s a growth marketing platform that enables marketers to create intuitive, no-code tools, such as calculators, chatbots, assessments, and quizzes.Outgrowco-founders started by designing a mobile app cost calculator and quickly saw the power of interactive tools. So they built a SaaS tool calledOutgrowso that any marketer or entrepreneur can build calculators and interactive tools to improve their customer acquisition.

Now, recently, over on my YouTube channel, I talked all about: are chatbots worth it andOutgrowhas given me a simple solution to test out whether a chatbot is worth it for me. But because they do so many other things, if the chatbot doesn’t work, maybe I can build out a quiz or a calculator instead. TodayOutgrowis used by over 5,000 companies, and has a powerful builder with a wide range of embeds, over one thousand templates, along with the analytics and integrations every modern marketer would want.

You can sign up forOutgrowatoutgrow.co/joeto get a special 30 day free trial no strings attached. Take action today, and tryOutgrowfor your business over atoutgrow.co/joe. Thanks so much toOutgrowfor supporting How I Built It.

Joe:Hey everybody, and welcome to Episode 206 of How I Built It. Today’s sponsors areOutgrow,TextExpanderandRestrict Content Pro. You’ll be hearing about them later on in the episode. This week you have just me again. Last week I told you about my failed Patreon experiment. This time around, this episode I should say, I want to tell you about How I Built the Creator Crew, the tools I used, the decisions I made. And I want to share some resources in Build Something More, The Creator Crew exclusive podcast, which is basically this episode with no ads and more content.

I will talk about how I evaluated membership tools, how I almost went with WishList Member, I’ll talk a little bit deeper about choosing Slack over Discord, spoiler alert, and I’ll share some other resources in the show notes there like handwritten notes and things like that. So if you’re interested, you can sign up over atbuildsomething.club.

I’m still running that founder’s promo. So instead of $5 a month or $50 a year, you can sign up for like 3.75 a month or 37.50 a year, which is a 25% discount. And you will have that price for the lifetime of your membership. So really great way to support this show as well as get extra content and resources. Plus, you will get a member chip. It’s a poker chip that says “Creator Crew”, has the how I built it logo on it. I’m really excited about these. Every member will get one. So there you go. Sign up over atbuildsomething.clubif you want to get more content now. If you want to hear how I built it first and then sign up later, feel free to do that, too. So let’s get into this episode.

First of all, again, I told you last week how I failed miserably… not miserably. I would say miserably is nobody signed up. But it was pretty bad because a couple of people signed up but I definitely under-delivered for them. And I carry that guilt to this day.

But there were a bunch of reasons why Patreon did not work for me. The main reason being I overpromised and I under-delivered. I also didn’t really understand how the Patreon platform worked. I understood it in the sense of the technological level or the philosophical level, right? People pay me and then I post stuff to Patreon that they get access to. But their fee structure was a mystery to me. Last week in Build Something More, I actually went through and figured out how much money I made and how much they took in fees. Between credit card fees and the Patreon fee, it turned out to be like 15%, which is a lot.

I also didn’t understand the community aspect of Patreon. So I didn’t understand why I should be offering certain things or how I should offer them, the delivery aspect of it. I was definitely in someone else’s playground that I was like half blindfolded playing in that playground.

So this time around, I wanted something I had more control over. Something that I could understand more implicitly. And since How I Built it is built on WordPress, a membership plugin made the most sense. Now, I’ll tell you the membership plugin I decided to go with in a minute. I suspect based on the sponsors for this episode, you’ll be able to figure it out.

But there are other platforms likeMemberful.Memberfulmakes it super-duper easy for you to set up a members-only area not on your website. They handle the fees and things like that and they offer a private podcast feed, which is the number one thing I need for my membership. Because that’s the main benefit is the private podcast with the bonus episodes with the ad-free extended episodes and things like that.

But it’s also a pretty limited feature set. WhileMemberfulmight be great for connectors or people who are just looking to have a private podcast, it didn’t quite offer everything I wanted. I believe they do offer WordPress integration. I don’t know if that means single sign on or if it just means you can embed stuff in WordPress. It says, “Website integrations allow you to integrateMemberfuldirectly with your website through WordPress or another provider. WordPress with a lowercase P.

I know that’s like a hill that’s not really worth dying on. I don’t know. I feel like anytime I see somebody say we need not potential clients, but like people who are like, “We integrate with WordPress,” if you’re like really paying attention to everything that you need to do to properly integrate with WordPress, you should probably capitalize the P. Again, I know that’s a silly thing to whatever. That’s not a hill I should die on. But it’s a red flag in my brain that I can’t stop having. But in any case, that’s neither here nor there. So embed content into your WordPress site or other provider. So it sounds like maybe they just have a generic way to do that. That’s not necessarily like a WordPress plugin. Again I don’t know. I haven’t done the research that deeply but I would love some single sign on thing.

But their fee structure seems like a bit much to me. It’s 25 bucks a month plus 4.9% credit card processing fees. And they use Stripe according to their website. And 4.9% is 2% more than Stripe standard credit card processing fee, and there’s no way they aren’t getting a volume discount. Stripe has this group model where if you are someone likeMemberfulor I think Easy Digital Downloads maybe does this, you can more easily integrate Stripe with their platform so that it’s easier for the end-user. They don’t have to sign up for a Stripe account and everything goes through your account.

Again, there are volume discounts and things like that. So there’s no wayMemberfulis not using Stripe’s volume discount. And they’re still charging 4.9% plus 25 bucks a month for unlimited plans. I guess there’s no limit on the number of members which is nice. But sell group memberships. Even paying 25 bucks a month it still says “powered byMemberful” badge on it, which is like…I don’t know. Do I really need to pay 75 bucks more per month to get noMemberfulbranding.

This is me the technical guy not liking some of the things. But it’s easier for non-technical guys. So anyway, that was more time than I intended to spend onMemberfuljust to tell you I didn’t go withMemberful. And I should say, if you’re less technical, maybeMemberfulis the way to go for you. Their fee structure just seems very high to me. I feel like there are better options out there. They’ve been making a big play in the podcasting space specifically. But with someone likeCastos, you can offer that private feed for free with their paid plans. So you know, I don’t know. I’m not sure. People who loveMemberfulwill probably love it. I’m not a big fan.

Really long, meandering way for me to say I knew I wanted to use a membership plugin for WordPress and I decided to go withRestrict Content Pro. Full disclosure.Restrict Content Prois a sponsor of this podcast. That’s not why I decided to go with them. They were always on my shortlist. I loved the work that Sandhills Development did. And then iThemes boughtRestrict Content Pro, iThemes, a parent company of Liquid Web who has long supported this podcast. Again, full disclosure. But it works really well.

It’s very easy to use. It integrates directly with WordPress. It gives me the ability to make specific posts, pages, or custom post types, members only. It even allows me to make taxonomies or specific post types… I should say it this way. It allows me to make single posts or pages members only, it allows me to make full custom post types members only, or it even allows me to make certain taxonomies like categories or tags members only.

This is perfect for me because all of these regular ad-supported episodes are posts in WordPress. I’ve been doing that for a long time. Because before I switched over toCastos, I was using Castos and Seriously Simple Podcasting the plugin for WordPress. I was using PowerPress by Blubrry. And the way they architected their podcast was you would basically select a category of the post type posts. So you would say, “I want the episodes category to be the podcast category.” And then you would just make posts.

So your podcast episodes were living with your blog posts if you were doing both. With Seriously Simple Podcasting andCastos, they actually have a separate custom post type called Podcast. So the way I’m able to divvy up the members-only episodes versus the free public episodes is I put the free public episodes in posts like I’ve always done because Seriously Simple Podcasting is flexible enough to do that. Shout out to the Castos’ migration team for helping me make sure all of those things were done properly, all the T’s crossed and I’s dotted.

And then for the members-only episodes, I use the nativeCastospodcast post type, which throughRestrict Content Pro, I was able to say, “This is members only.” So that’s a little peek behind the curtain already. But that was a big benefit for me. And it was easy.

Again, I’ll talk more about this and Build Something More. But when I tried to use WishList Member, which was the one I was really leaning towards because they have private RSS feeds built in, it was really frustratingly confusing trying to figure out what would be private and what will be public. So I’ll talk about that more later. But it was frustrating.

Restrict Content Proalso hasConvertKitintegration, it supports multiple payment gateways, and it has a few other features, coupons, and things like that. That just made me want to use them. I think that they offer a really fantastic product. I’m happy. And it’s simple. It’s not like overbearing. It’s customizable. There are tons of add-ons depending on what you need. As I record this, I’m told Zapier integration is coming soon. It’s not quite here yet, but I’ll talk about how I integrated Zapier anyway. But I’m excited to see that come natively.

Sponsor:This episode is brought to you byRestrict Content Pro. If you need a fast, easy way to set up a membership site for yourself or your clients, look no further than theRestrict Content ProWordPress plugin. Easily create premium content for members using your favorite payment gateway, manage members, send member-only emails, and more. You can create any number of subscription packages, including free levels and free trials.

But that’s not all, their extensive add-ons library allows you to do even more, like drip out content, connect with any number of CRMs and newsletter tools, includingConvertKitand Mailchimp and integrate with other WordPress plugins like bbPress. Since the Creator Crew Rolled out earlier this year, you can bet it’s usingRestrict Content Pro. And I have used all of the things mentioned here in this adread. I have created free levels. I’ve created coupons. I useConvertKitand I’m using it with bbPress for the forums. I’m a big fan of the team, and I know they do fantastic work.

The plugin has worked extremely well for me and I was able to get memberships up and running very quickly. Right now, they are offering a rare discount for how I built it listeners only: 20% off your purchase when you use RCPHOWIBUILTIT at checkout. That’s RCPHOWIBUILTIT all one word.

If you want to learn more aboutRestrict Content Proand start making money with your own membership site today, head on over tostreamlined.fm/rcp, that’sstreamlined.fm/rcp. Thanks toRestrict Content Profor supporting the show.

And now let’s get back to it.

Joe:Okay. So now that you know the membership plugin I’m using, there are other tools I’ll be using. But first I want to tell you the master plan. The way I did this is I do everything on paper first and then I moved it over to Things. Just an aside, the Things is the task manager that I’ve been testing out for the last month or so. I’ll talk about that on another episode or maybe even a very special Build Something More for members only. But I’ve been a longtime OmniFocus user and I’ve just had to try Things. I feel like I tried to do this every 18 months, but it’s actually six months this time.

You can see all of this stuff in Build Something More. I will include links to everything that I talked about over atstreamlined.fm/206. But the planning document for this episode, some of the pictures of the paper, and screenshots from things will be available in Build Something More.

My membership implementation plan was set up a staging site, of course, install and configureRestrict Content Pro, and then connects to some of the other tools I’m using.Uncanny Automator, for example, is what I’m using to connectRestrict Content Proto Zapier, which I need to do in order to set up theCastosmember feeds, then connects the payment gateways implement to quote-unquote, “plans.” I’ll talk about the reason for the two plans in a minute.

And then I wanted to make sure everything was protected that needed to be protected. Protect the members-only series by setting the podcast content post type to members only. You know, I want to create a live stream page. Right now the live stream page is unlisted YouTube video. But I haven’t done any live streams for members yet. Working on that.

Deals. I want a deals page. I have members navigation. Now, I’ll also say that most of the pages on streamlined.fm right now are powered by Gutenberg. Or I’m at least trying to do more just native Gutenberg stuff. Man, I set up a members navigation area, like a navigation menu called “Members Only” and I could have sworn there was a navigation and Gutenberg block, and there is not. And I was so annoyed by that. I think it’s coming in 5.7. If I read that correctly I think it’s coming in 5.7 which is imminent. But, man, when I set up that page, I was like, “I got to create buttons with these links now.” It was very frustrating.

So set upRestrict Content Pro,Uncanny Automator, the payment gateways, create the member pages and the private areas for members only, then test everything. I also have a membership over a Creator Courses. That is not front and center on the site anymore because I’m shifting that site to be more ala carte courses. The ala carte courses sell much better than the memberships. But I do have some current members and some lifetime members, and I want to make sure that they are also getting some of the benefits because again, they’re paying for access to the courses, but I did promise some extras.

So I also wanted to make sure that I set up the members feed for Creator Courses members. And then for the lifetime members, I need to migrate them over to How I Built It. The lifetime members will have access to the How I Built It membership as well. Again, because I feel like I want to deliver a little bit extra for them. I don’t want to just throw another membership at them because they were the first people to kind of believe in what I was doing. And that means something to me. So that’s kind of the stuff I wrote down on paper.

I do have the community aspect I’m building out actively, which is bbPress for forums and Slack for real-time chat. There’s a list of deals to pursue. I want to reach out to a bunch of people and offer deals to my memberships. I want to add member posts to the main feed, but have them locked down. I think that sixcolors.com does this really well, where they have their members only posts to kind of tease and say like, “Hey, you can get access to this if you become a member.” I also had a club logo designed by Design Pickle—I’ll probably do a full episode on Design Pickle somewhere in the near future—create the pages again, the navigation, custom artwork for the podcast.

Then I had to do kind of a hacky thing. So let’s talk about this first. The other tools that I am relying on for the membership areUncanny Automator,as I mentioned, because they offer a way to connectRestrict Content Proto Zapier. They were gracious enough to provide me a free version of the plugin for me to test, and that free license has continued into the main site. So thank you toUncanny Automator. I will link to them in the description over at streamlined.fm/206.

The first version of the plugin they sent me only had it so that if someone signs up for a specific membership, trigger a zap or connect to a webhook is what you need to do. I’ll probably do a full tutorial on this as well. But they didn’t have a way for if someone cancels a membership. So they have added that since and I’ve changed this. But the kind of clever workaround that I did for this wasRestrict Content Pro.

And this speaks to how well made research content Pro is. They’ve been around for a while. They’re good developers; they anticipate the needs of their customers. So they make it so that if someone turns out of a paid membership, you can automatically downgrade them to a free membership. So that coupled withUncanny Automator’strigger, if someone joins a membership, I had it so that if someone churns out of a paid membership, they join the build Something Club free tier, which is not something anybody can sign up for. It’s a private tier. Another thing thatRestrict Content Prohad out of the box. Absolutely love it.

Then I hadUncanny Automatorhave the trigger when somebody joins the free tier, remove their private access. So the way everything works—I’ll do my best to describe this with words—is when someone signs up for a paid membership, that is the Creator Crew monthly or Creator Crew annually, which, again, I’ll talk about in a little bit, when someone signs up for either one of those tiers, the trigger is someone signs up for a paid membership. The action is “send the email and name to a Zapier Webhook.”

Zapier has this great feature called Webhooks where you can send any data you want. So basically, if you can send data to a webhook, anything can technically integrate with Zapier. So send the name and email to a webhook. Then I have a zap setup for that web hook. So Zapier says, “When data is sent to this webhook, add them to aCastosprivate feed.” So Castos’ Zapier integration has two actions: add someone to a private feed and remove someone from a private feed.

Again, when someone signs up for a paid membership over at streamlined.fm,Uncanny Automatorsends their name and email to a Zapier webhook. Zapier takes the information sent from that webhook and then sends it toCastosto create a private feed.Castosthen handles the email and all that stuff sending member the link.

BeforeUncanny Automatorintegrated a trigger for when someone cancels a membership, what I did was this: I set up a separate trigger that said, “If someone joins a free membership tier, send their name and email to a different Zapier webhook. That webhook is being watched by a zap that then removes that email from the private feed. Again, sinceUncanny Automatoradded the cancels membership, I updated that because now there is not any confusion on who is and is not a member, who does or does not have access to the private feed.

So that’sUncanny Automator. It works really well. There were a couple of things that confused me a little bit. I provided feedback and their development team is just like all ears. Absolutely love it. Because they really take the feedback to heart, and it’s really important to them to make a good product. And that is what matters most to me. So really happy to be on teamUncanny Automatorfor this. So that’s one of the tools. That’s the tool I’m using for automation.

Also, I should say before I move on thatUncanny Automatorhas a lot of other integrations based on the plugins you’re using that I really need to explore. Because using this plugin to do one thing is kind of using like a Lamborghini as a cup holder. I want to explore this more. I love automation. So I think it’s a really good plugin.

Castosis the core of my podcast. With their private feeds, they’ve made it super easy to offer memberships that have access to a private feed. I’m not sure how I would have done this without Castos’ feed integration. I think I probably would have had to go with a WishList Member because I’m not sure how else I would offer a private member feed. ButCastoshandles it and I love it.

And then Convert Kit. Again,Restrict Content Prohas someConvertKitintegrations where when somebody makes a purchase their information is sent toConvertKitwith the purchase information so I know who has purchased a Creator Crew membership. I’m mostly using that to add a custom field that says they’re currently a member so that they can get the members-only newsletter.

And thenRestrict Content Prohas a specific field or action when someone churns out, when somebody… Sorry. If you’re unfamiliar with the term “churns out” it means if somebody stops paying for the subscription that they were previously paying for. But when someone is no longer a paying member,Restrict Content Proallows me to tag them as such. So I have an automation that says when a user gets tagged, there is this update there—custom field.

Shout out to Brennan Dunn for sending me what was a very long and thoughtful article. I’ll be sure to link that in the show notes as well aboutwhy tags in ConvertKit are bad and why you should use custom fields more.The main argument he makes is that tag management is crazy. Like you can have somebody tagged as member but also churned. Where if you have a custom fields called “membership status,” say, I can change that to “Yes, they are a current member” or “no, they are not a current member.”

And you’re not adding like technical tag debt to your users. Perhaps a better way to use tags to categorize your subscribers. But if you’re using real-time data, tags are not great for that. I’ll link that in the show notes as well—to Brennan Dunn’s tag article. So those are the three main tools I’m using outside ofRestrict Content Pro.

Sponsor:This episode is brought to you byTextExpander. It’s a new year and you can start off on the right foot by reclaiming your time. WithTextExpander, you can save time by converting any text you type into keyboard shortcuts called snippets. Say goodbye to repetitive text entry, spelling and message errors, and trying to remember the right thing to say. WithTextExpander, you can say the right thing in just a few keystrokes. Better than copy and paste better than scripts and templates,TextExpandersnippets allow you to maximize your time by getting rid of the repetitive things you type while still customizing and personalizing your messages.TextExpandercan be used in any platform, any app, anywhere you type. Take back your time and increase your productivity in the new year.

And let me just say that snippets is not all it does. With advanced snippets, you can create fill-ins, pop up fields, and much more. You can even use JavaScript or AppleScript. I can type out full instructions for my podcast editor, Hi, Joel, in just a few keystrokes. Another one of my favorite and most used snippets is PPT. This will take whatever text I have on my keyboard and convert it to plain text so I’m no longer fighting formatting. Plus, if you have employees or contractors, you can useTextExpanderto manage and share snippets with them so you all get it right every time. I’ve recently started sharingTextExpandersnippets with my virtual assistant.

This year, How I Built It is focusing on being productive while working from home.TextExpanderis the perfect tool for that. Plus, they’re providing resources and blog posts to help you make the most of their tool and be productive.TextExpanderis available on Mac OS, Windows, Chrome, iPhone, and iPad. If you’ve been curious about tryingTextExpanderor simple automation in general, now is the time. Listeners can get 20% off their first year. Just visittextexpander.com/podcastand let them know that I sent you.

Joe:There’s only one level. It is the build something club. There are two ways to pay for that level. One is monthly, which is $5 a month. One is annually, which gets you two months for free. But again, if you listen to Episode 205 about myfailed Patreon experiment, you’ll know that I offered too many levels over there. I think I had five ranging from like $1 to $100 a month. It was very confusing. I didn’t even really know how I would differentiate it. I was just kind of throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.

So for this, I wanted to simplify it. I wanted to make the choice a lot easier for people who want to support this show and get access to extra content. So there is one level with two different pay points, which is very common. Usually, annually saves you some money. Maybe in the future I introduce more levels based on feedback from the members, based on more things I’m doing. And I’ll talk about that in Build Something More as well. Because I do have some ideas, but I’m not ready to implement that yet. I want to see how this goes for a while.

I think the theme throughout the last two episodes is that I rushed into Patreon charging headfirst in this land grab to make money. I don’t want to do that now. I want to be way more deliberate about what I’m offering my members because I want to do right by them. And I want to do right by the sponsors, too because the sponsors are paying for a certain number of downloads, essentially. I want to make sure that I adjust appropriately. So that, you know, if a thousand people sign up for the membership, that’s a thousand fewer downloads per week. And I want to adjust accordingly.

Maybe my members still get access to the sponsorship deal on the deals page. Again, all stuff I’m currently working through I didn’t think they were stoppers to launch the sponsorship or to launch the membership, but they are things I need to kind of think through. So levels and rewards are… there’s the one level.

As far as the rewards go, the Build Something More podcast includes ad-free episodes, it has pre and post-show bonus content. Usually, it’s post-show, though I did have a really good pre-show episode with Michelle Knight coming up, where we talked about nerdy things. But usually, it’s the show after the show where the guest says something during the actual interview that I want to expand upon more in the post-show.

Those conversations have been really fantastic. As a member of the Creator Crew, I think there’s a lot of value in them. And even the solo episodes, right? I have some content that I’m ready to talk about with members only. I go a little bit deep. Again, last week, I gave you access to numbers and a spreadsheet. Like you could download the spreadsheet of what I made on Patreon and see exactly how it breaks down by month. So there’s pre and post-show bonus content.

There’s quarterly members-only episodes. I have a couple of ideas for the first one that I’m really excited about. It’s four extra episodes a year, but again, it’s stuff that I can kind of go deeper on and more personal. Member interviews is something that I added here again.

I think I mentioned this last week, but the name of the game is when you’re starting a membership, you want low effort, high reward. All of the things that I was doing most of the things that I was doing for the Patreon were high effort. Maybe high reward, but they were high effort. The pre and post-show bonus content for this membership, that is low effort for me. I continue to talk. I think of more content and more questions, but creating content is like my job now.

Ad-free episodes is another thing. I don’t record the ads live during the episode. So for my editor to produce an ad-free episode is really easy. He does all the processing, he saves the ad-free episode, and then he adds in the ads. So it’s not really extra work for him. It’s a little extra work, but he’s not creating two separate episodes.

So member interviews is something I added here because as I get more members, as I publicize this a bit more, talking to my members, about whatever they’re working on, what they’re building, because my members are called builders, thanks to Patrick Garman and his input. Because I’m like, “What do I call my members?” He’s like, “Why don’t you call them “builders” and I’m like, “Right? Forest for the trees.” So I want to know what they’re building and I want to highlight them and build that community. So a member interviews, again, that’s just 20 minutes of my time I talked to members. And it’s helpful for me too. So again, low effort, high reward.

Advanced look at the schedule. Because I use Airtable for my scheduling, I was able to create a view. That’s basically what are the upcoming episodes that haven’t been recorded yet. And then right underneath is a form that allows members to submit questions. So I have those questions before the interview and I get to ask them either in the main episode if it makes sense or in the members-only episode. There’s also the behind the scenes newsletter where I talk about some things that are upcoming and things I’ve been working on, and I usually have like a sneak peek at how I did something. Maybe that makes its way into my public content realm months from now. And then special deals and offers.

So those are the things that… Again, there’s a lot here. I’m part of a couple of memberships that offer less than this. But I think that for five bucks a month, this is worth it. Again, for the memberships I’m a part of, there’s ad-free episodes pre and post shows. One of the memberships I’m part of does member interviews, which I got to participate in. One of the memberships I’m a part of the special deals.

But all of these things combined, it doesn’t create… I don’t want to say this was easy for me because there are parts of the membership that are not easy like the technical stack. But the stuff I’m offering are things that allow me to actually deliver, which is the main and most important difference between this and my Patreon. I can actually deliver on the benefits for this membership. And I have been. I have been since before I even launched memberships. Starting the first episode in January, there’s an ad-free version of that. The second or third episode, we start to get into the bonus content and the post-show interviews. So there’s a back catalogue too. And I’m really happy about that. I hope my current members are too. So that’s levels and rewards.

Testing. For testing, I’m not going to dive into a whole test plan here. But I filled out all the forms, I tested each level and access, I made sure the zaps were working properly, and I tested theConvertKitautomation. There were a couple of snafus along the way. I’m happy I didn’t get 100 members in a day because I made a change to theUncanny Automatortrigger.

This was one of the things that confused me that Ryan and his team helped clear up. That made it so the information wasn’t being sent toCastos. They helped me fix that. It is fixed now. My tests worked. And then I made a change that I didn’t test because I thought I implicitly understood how something worked. But making sure everything works properly, making sure the access is turned on correctly. I had to delete cache a couple of times because something was weird. But testing went pretty smoothly. And again, that’s becauseRestrict Content Promakes things really easy. And they’ve been around for a while and I can trust there are things that work.

Then I launched it to the world and I’ve gotten some feedback from members already. One thing… this was something that I overlooked. The price that they paid was not in the invoice email. So I fix that. Really easy to do inRestrict Content Pro.

So that was the testing plan. If you want to know more about the testing plan, let me know and I can talk about that in another Build Something More episode. Or if I have a guest where we talk testing, I can get into it, or I can respond back to you. But I’m sure there’ll be a YouTube video as well about me kind of showing exactly how this works without the personally identifiable information of my members.

So that was testing. Now there’s the community aspect. Something in me really wants to make forums work. Like I love the idea of forums because it’s a nice place to find all of the information that you might want. It’s easier to use them Facebook groups. It is easier to use them Slack or some other real-time chat. You have a full searchable archive of topics.

So I’m building out bbPress for forums. This is another reason to useRestrict Content Proor maybe using bbPress is a reason… using bbPress because I’m usingRestrict Content Pro. Because I have tight integration. I can make specific boards members only. And that’s what I’m doing. I’m going to have public forums to really build that community and then I’ll have private forums for members only.

Some of those private forums are things like… Support is one. Questions for guests is another. So if users don’t want to fill out the form, they can… I’ll post the upcoming schedule there and they can submit their questions. You probably hear me turning pages because I have some more notes in my notebook about what I thought good members-only forums would be.

Suggestion box. That’s for members only. Ask me anything for members only. And then perhaps support forums. So what are you building? What are you stuck on? This could be free but for the members-only support forums, if I’m strapped for time and I can only do one, I will go to the members-only forum first. So there’s a benefit there too.

And I will just say I want to make the bbPress spots look better. I think on my live stream this week, I guess, as this episode comes out, I’ll probably do more of that. Forums to some people feel like early 2000s and bbPress looks early 2000s. Like there’s a hard-coded font size of 12 pixels for everything, which looks tiny. And I want to fix that. I want to make them look better. I really want them to look like Discourse forums. I love the way Discourse looks. That’ll be my pet project moving forward.

And then Slack. I wanted some real-time chat and I was going to go with Discord. But ultimately, Slack is more straightforward, it’s used by more of my audience. I did a social media poll, saying, “Slack or Discord?” And overwhelmingly Slack was chosen in both Twitter and Instagram. And while I think Discord is probably better for the community aspect of things, you can have rules, you can drop the ban hammer, things like that, it is a very overwhelming. It probably also has tighter integration for automatically creating members and things like that.

Slack doesn’t really do that well. At least it doesn’t do that well across the board. Like you can’t do that in Zapier, which is insane to me. Whatever. That’s not really a thing I want to talk about. But yeah, you would think that you could invite somebody via Zapier to Slack or resend an invitation or remove somebody via Zapier. But that’s not what Slack was built for.

Slack was built for teams, for people you probably don’t need to automate. They have the feature where if they have an email adjust for your organization, then they can automatically sign up. Whereas discord was built for the community aspect of it. But ultimately, Slack is more straightforward. I’ll get into this more in Build Something More. But I did choose Slack because that’s where most of my audience lives. And it’s a little bit easier for me to use it. All right. So that’s the community aspect.

Again, future plans. One of the things thatRestrict Content Prodoesn’t do because it’s a digital membership is collect the address. There is a way for me to hook intoRestrict Content Proand add some extra form fields. Right now it’s just kind of in the onboarding email. It’s like, “Hey, send me your address so that I can mail you things.” So I want to collect the address upfront when the member signs up. In my head, I’m like, “I want the signup form to be as easy as possible.” But I also want to send them their member chips or like random stuff hopefully in the future. So collecting the address upfront is important.

Maybe I do that some other way where it’s not necessarily upfront, but I email them and I say, “Hey, if you want free stuff, fill out this form so I can have your address.” I also need to nail down deals for members. I haven’t done a lot of that outreach yet. I’m offering a deal for Creator Courses, my brand, but I’d like to find tools that help small business owners and offer discounts to them.

So I have a short list. Actually, it’s a pretty long list of people I need to reach out for. But I also want it to be a good mix of digital and actual physical products and services. Because just like 10% on every WordPress plugin ever is one thing. But like 10% off for a flat fee for consulting with an accountant or whatever or a lawyer. Maybe that’s super-valuable to certain people. I want to make the bbPress boards look better. And I want to explore other communities like Circle to see what popular platforms are doing.

And then in the future, like in the next few months, I want to create a YouTube video that’s like how to recreate Circle on WordPress and I need to actually use Circle to understand what they’re doing well. So I definitely want to do more of that. But that’s everything.

I talked about the tools I’m using to build the build something club. I got into the nitty-gritty a little bit, right? I didn’t have to do any custom coding, I don’t think, besides some CSS to get the bbPress forums legible. That sounds like a knock on the development team, but it’s not. It’s just they probably need to have some amount of CSS to make the forums not look completely broken if a theme doesn’t support things like that.

I would love to see themes support more. Like add more bbPress support. I’ve heard Astra has it. I’m currently using the Genesis theme. Maybe I’ll explore using Astra. I know there are themes specifically for bbPress. But that means I would have to set up a separate forum or a separate WordPress website for bbPress only and synching between two WordPress sites. I want the single sign on experience. I don’t want my members to have to sign up for yet another WordPress site. Just use the forums. So I definitely want to go through that more. It’ll probably require some custom code, but I haven’t written a whole lot yet.

I talked about the other tools I’m using,Uncanny Automator,Castos, andConvertKit, why I have one level with two different payment levels or frequencies, testing and future plans. I hope you liked this episode. If you did, let me know. And you know what? If you did, give us a rating on Apple podcasts. A rating and review. It really helps the show go a long way. I will link to that and everything I talked about over atstreamlined.fm/206.

I want to thankTextExpander,Restrict Content Pro, andOutgrowfor sponsoring this episode. I really appreciate it. I really appreciate your support. I want to thank you for listening. If you want to sign up for the build something club now that you’ve learned all about it, you can go tobuildsomething.cluband sign up right there. As I record this, the founder promo 25% off is still going on. So you can get in the door for $37.50 a year, which I think is big value. There you go. Build something club. Everything will be linked over atstreamlined.fm/206though.

If you are listening to this over on the Build Something More feed, stick around, we’re going to go deeper. For everybody else, thanks so much for listening. And until next time, get out there and build something.