If you want to achieve a lifestyle-friendly business and build a multimillion-dollar empire, then you need a recurring revenue. For me, this has always been a monthly membership program. To enable you set up this system as well, I am going to show you the essentials below.

Design a Recurring Revenue Model with These Essentials

The only way you can have complete personal, lifestyle, and financial freedom is to generate a recurring revenue system. Whether you’re a new coach, a speaker, or someone who’s been in the business for a long time, I promise you can benefit from it.

After all, with recurring revenue, you don’t need to keep chasing your clients — which can take a lot of time and money. You can also be more strategic with your marketing strategies since, by now, you already have targeted customers. Best of all, you can focus on the activities and tasks that generate the most income for you.

However, above all else, the main purpose of a recurring revenue is to implement our elevation model. This is a strategy where our customers should move from low-tier products to mid- and high-tier ones. A monthly membership program is a mid-tier product. With it, we hope to inspire clients to become more serious customers so they can get a deeper transformation.

You may say, “Oh my god, I have to create another program?” Well, yes, it’s another program, but there’s not a lot of legwork in terms of creating the product, as you’ll see later on.

Besides, the concept isn’t difficult. I’m sure you’ve bought programs like Netflix or subscribed to a yoga membership. These are all examples of a recurring revenue.

As another example, we launched a monthly membership program for one of our other brands. We packaged it at $97 a month and made $100,000 in sales during the launch. Now, we can continue to promote this program to bring in monthly earnings as long as the customer continues to pay.

Another great thing about recurring revenues is price points don’t matter much. Instead, it’s the essentials you should focus on. I have 7 of them here:

1. Multiple Offers

For your marketing or sales funnel, you need to give multiple offers, and you have to present them successively.

The formula I use is this:

• Create my marketing materials, like Facebook ads or videos, to bring my leads to my opt-in page.
• Get their email addresses from my opt-in page in exchange for my free gift.
• Send the free gift to their email address while I bring them to my first offer after they opt-in. This offer is in the low tier bracket, usually around $37.
• Then I immediately upsell them to my second low-tier offer at $97.
• After that, I give my mid-tier offer, which is a membership program, for only $97 a month.

With the first two offers, you should be able to get the money you spent on marketing leads back.

You might be thinking, “Wow, those are a lot of offers.” Yes, and the system works. We choose to do that with our funnels. Adding the membership is a little bit more advanced.

Here’s a scenario, though. Let’s say I get somebody onto my list, and they don’t buy any of my offers initially. They just want the free gift.

One of the positive things about having a mid-tier offer like this monthly membership program is, once they’re on your email list, you can make that offer anytime you want. Just send them an email saying, “Hey, I’ve got this special offer for you.”

That’s why it’s important for you to learn how to build and grow your mailing list. Once you’ve got a healthy list, there’s absolutely no limit to how many offers you can make.

2. Mid-Tier Product

The second essential in creating a recurring revenue is the product itself. Whether it’s a coaching program or a video series, you have to remember two things:

One, your customers should feel it’s truly a mid-tier program. You, therefore, have to give more advanced lessons here. Two, it should still be related to your low-tier offers.

3. Content

Struggling to enroll clients? Make sure you’re clear on how your product or program delivers what THEY want. pic.twitter.com/clsoPyI34D

— Ted McGrath (@ted_mcgrath) October 11, 2017

It’s not enough you have a product. You need to couple it with good content.

The advantage of using the recurring revenue model is you don’t need to create a lot of content month after month for every subscriber that comes in. In fact, there will come a point when you don’t have to make 90 percent of your program content.

It’s only in the beginning that you have to sweat it out. As for me and my team, we make videos for the programs. Depending on how many modules or lessons, it may take me a day or two to complete everything. Then I upload them and share them with my subscribers.

These are the same materials I use for my program day in, day out unless I feel they have to be updated.

To create an amazing recurring revenue system that makes your customers want to pay, it’s best to complement your pre-made content with at least one live session per month.

This ensures that they don’t feel like they’re only getting rehashed material. Moreover, live sessions are a good time to connect and understand the needs of your customers further.

The live sessions can be good for 60 to 90 minutes. You can do some Q&A or teach a strategy. Then, you’re in the game.

You can also incentivize people to join your membership programs with bonuses.

4. Delivery

At this point, I am going to talk about how you can deliver your content to create a recurring revenue.

I have another program where I don’t show up live, but I release two brand-new videos every single month. I film those videos in advance, and then we release them to the members roughly every few weeks. That’s what they get for $97 a month.

When they join, I already have some modules and content pre-loaded into the members’ area. This allows them to dive right into information. After all, you don’t want to keep your new clients waiting.

The most important thing is people are getting your latest and greatest strategies that are relevant to them. Having that up-to-date information is what’s going to make your program worth subscribing to.

5. Pricing

The price points for your recurring revenue are up to you. That’s the beauty of having a lifestyle-friendly business. You have the power to make the best decisions.

If there’s one thing I’d like to remind you, it’s to know your worth. Some people, including new coaches and veterans in the business, feel scared when they start charging their clients $97 or even more a month.

They keep on thinking, “I don’t think people are going to pay this much for my program.”

If you believe you’re giving them something valuable, and you have the expertise to help them, there’s no reason to be scared at all. However, to help you overcome this doubt, I suggest adding bonuses to your offer.

As an example, I have a $97 monthly membership program. To encourage them to sign up, I may add an e-book with a value of $50 or more as a bonus. I may also give two or three bonuses depending on my desired price.

You want them to feel like they’re getting their value in advance, so they become more inspired to make a purchase decision faster and easier.

6. Dollar Trial

Another essential for generating a recurring revenue is a dollar trial. What is it?

It’s actually a free trial! For about 10 to 14 days (sometimes a month, it depends on you), your customers can have a chance to access your modules and other types of content for a very cheap price — like a dollar.

You may wonder, “Why would you offer a dollar trial?” It’s an easy decision for people. Its purpose is very similar to the free gift on our opt-in page. We just want them to get into our mid-tier offer.

That dollar offer is a really simple offer that people won’t struggle with. When it’s just a dollar, they won’t have a hard time making a decision, especially if they’re going through a sequence. Instead, they’re going through like, “I bought this, bought this, and, oh, one more easy step.”

When people are hot, get them while they’re hot. I want to give them my dollar trial while they’re hot. It makes it more likely that they’ll continue to pay every single month after that.

Another thing about the dollar trial is you don’t have to be great at sales to inspire somebody to take you up on it.

What I usually say is, “Since you’re already a client of mine and you just enrolled in XYZ program, I have a special offer. For just a dollar today, you can try out my membership program. My clients who are more serious and want a continuous education from me throughout the year tend to take my offer on this. If that sounds like you, just click this button. You’ll try it out for 10 days, and the end of 10 days, and you like it, we’ll bill you $97 a month. If you don’t, you can cancel at any time, and we won’t bill you anything at all. Go ahead and click the button to join my membership community.”

The catch here is when they sign up, they need to give their payment information and know if they don’t cancel, they will get their first billing. Then, they’ll be in the membership program until they decide to cancel completely.

Know, though, this strategy works more effectively if you already have substantial content in the membership area. That’s what’s going to give value to their payment and encourage them not to cancel.

With this strategy, I can have about 40% of the subscribers proceed with the rest of the program.

7. Five-Day Mini-Campaign

My last essential in my recurring revenue model is a five-day mini-campaign.

What happens is within five days, I am going to send different types of emails to my mailing list to promote my monthly membership program.

I like to pair this with the dollar trial to encourage them to take action right away.

You may be asking, “What should the emails be about?” Well, they are usually filled with my life story or different forms of inspiration.

I love doing this campaign because it’s not hard to sell. I don’t have to show up on a teleseminar or a webinar to sell my program. It takes only five days in my calendar. I write seven emails and send them to this dollar trial. In fact, I can even automate the process to save me more time.

To be more specific, I usually send 2 to 3 emails on the last day. I make the emails sound urgent like “I’m closing this special offer, so act now while you can.”

You can repeat the five-day mini-campaign as many times as you like during the year, but I like launching this during the holidays. When I did this, I got 108 subscribers over the course of 5 days.

A recurring revenue is a great way to expand your business and bring in that cash flow every single month while serving your clients deeply and giving them the transformation they need. However, if you still feel like creating a monthly membership program may be a bit over your head, make sure you continue to read my blog posts. As you continue to read my guides and tips, I can promise that I’ll help you get to the point where you can build your own program and succeed.

What are the challenges you face in creating a recurring revenue model such as a monthly membership program? Let me know in the comments below.

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