Internet Marketing With David Risley From Blog Marketing Academy

In this episode of LMSCast, David Risley from Blog Marketing Academy talks about how his online business has changed over time.

David switched to a service-based business after realizing the difficulties of growing his company only via content and courses. Through the recurring subscription service Concierge, which he founded, his team offers WordPress site owners continuous technical and webmaster help, addressing difficulties with plugins, performance optimization, and upgrades. He was able to create more steady, predictable monthly earnings instead of pursuing particular jobs thanks to this technique.

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Episode Transcript

Chris Badgett: You’ve come to the right place if you’re looking to create, launch, and scale a high value online training program. I’m your guide, Chris Badget. I’m the co-founder of lifter LMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. State of the end, I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show.

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of LMS Cast. I’m joined by a special guest, David Risley. He’s from Blog Marketing Academy. Blog marketing academy.com. I’ve seen David on the internet for probably over a decade, and I finally gotta meet him in person at a conference. We’re gonna get into internet marketing, David’s journey, what he does now.

But first, welcome to the show. 

David Risley: Thanks for having me. Good to talk to you again. 

Chris Badgett: Tell us about the birth of Blog Marketing Academy. What year was it and what drove you to do this thing? I. 

David Risley: It’s been a while, so it, it starts even before that. I, before Blog Marketing Academy, I had a technology blog talking about computers and like building computers, PCs, back when people still built them.

And, that space changed a lot. It was becoming something where I was getting tired of it. That started by the way, in around 98, I think it was like way the heck back there before WordPress, all that. And so by the time 2008 came around, 10 years later, I was like, I wanna do something else. I was starting to, research the internet marketing space and all that.

And so I started what. It was not Blog Marking Academy then, but it became that started in 2008 and I ran both for a little bit of time. Eventually sold off that tech site. And and then Blog Marking Academy is pretty much what I do now. And what was that? So it’s, I guess it’s been 17 years.

Wow. Time flies. 

Chris Badgett: That was a fun, that’s when I got into the whole internet thing too, around 2007, 2008. Yeah. I feel like internet marketing kind of had a golden age of around that 2008 to 12. Yeah, it was like early days and there wasn’t that many influencers and people, you could get into the space and get big pretty quick.

It seemed but what was your experience? 

David Risley: It was, I never was one of the big guys, but it’s funny, the, at that time in the heyday of it, you had the celebrities of that space. Frank Kern, Jeff Walker you mentioned Evan Pegan earlier. Those guys, they were like, they became like.

The guy, and those spaces. And I don’t know if that happened so much anymore, just because the space is so much noisier and things have matured quite a bit. But yeah, and I know I went to some other conferences and all that and bought the courses and the whole thing.

Nice back when you could still sell a course. I don’t know how well it is now. I’m a little outside the space now, but I remember the what, 1997. That was like the, I always sold the courses. I always ended with a seven, which I thought was funny. 

Chris Badgett: Yeah, it’s really fun looking back at that time period.

And people still do sell courses for that amount, but it’s gotta come, I’m sure they do coaching and a lot more support. It’s not just the videos. That’s the 

David Risley: thing. Back then, you could primarily rely on content, not so much. Now, 

Chris Badgett: what does Blog Marketing Academy do today? What do you guys offer? 

David Risley: The reason it’s called Blog Marketing Academy is because it started off doing online courses and and some of which are not even there anymore.

But I, it was, but it was more toward the new media, like the blogger type, traditional blogger type, but trying to teach them some online marketing skills and it was trying to bridge that gap a little bit. So that’s how black marketing got start. Black Marketing Academy got started.

I’ve never changed the name of it. I still have those courses. It’s just that they’re under a membership now that is really super cheap because that’s not really the how I make money now. Now even though I have a service aspect to the business, which is the majority of it, I just haven’t changed the name just ’cause I didn’t want to go through all the work to do it.

And it’s got some traction obviously. 

Chris Badgett: Tell us about the transition from content and courses to services. It seems like some people are trying to go the other way. Yeah. And you’re going this way. So what, how does, how’d that play out and what, tell us the story. 

David Risley: Yeah. Some people do go the other way, but it’s, it’s one of those things to where there’s always been this thing about the time for money idea, and people will try to avoid it, and and but so they try to avoid service work. They don’t wanna work with clients. And then there’s this almost attitude out there with some of the grooves and ah, you don’t want to get into that kind of stuff.

And so for a long time, that was the mindset that I have. I didn’t want to get into that kind of stuff. I didn’t wanna work with clients as the online course space, especially in my niche specifically, was just getting more and more noisy. I was like the friction is there. I could either sit there and fight it.

Or I could listen to what my students were telling me for years, and I was avoiding because they would go through some videos that I did and go that’s really cool. Now how do I execute? How do I build it? I didn’t really get into the techie part of it so much at the time. But eventually I just started listening to them.

I’m good at, I come from a background where I know how to do that stuff really good. And they, and then even just looking internally with me, I realized I really liked working on my own website. I enjoy getting in there and working on it. I’m like, I need to listen to this. And so it’s, it turned into a pivot.

It was. Maybe four years ago, and it was much more official about three years ago where I was like, I’m just, I’m going into client services and downplayed the courses and haven’t looked back and I leaned into recurring revenue really early on. And so it’s been a good thing.

Chris Badgett: Tell us more about the recurring revenue aspect. ’cause a lot of service work, you think of one-off projects and things like that. 

David Risley: Yeah. So I didn’t first for one, I didn’t want to get into the whole, Hey, contact me for an estimate. And it, I, it’s just a pain in the butt. Most people end up really overestimating how long things are gonna take.

So what I did, I, and I also didn’t want to always be project chasing. It’s just why would I leave what I was doing in order to get into chasing project work? And I had a recurring membership program before, but it was just more content driven. So obviously I knew the beauties of recurring revenue, I knew how it re removes a lot of the stress out of things.

And so with the service work, I opened up what I call concierge now, which is basically, you could call it a maintenance thing, but it’s actually a lot more than that. It’s basically. I’m gonna hand, I’ll be the, their webmaster for all things that come up. And it starts off with a recurring program right off the bat.

And and then just over time, that grows to the point where, yeah, I’m ba at a point where I don’t worry about where the money’s gonna come from every month and the project works still happens. It’s just instead of doing the estimate type stuff, I have a credit system on the side. It’s a unique way of doing it.

And but almost everybody who’s doing that. Is also on retainer through the concierge. So it works out pretty well. 

Chris Badgett: Think back to the internet marketing. I can tell you are a good copywriter. Like the headline on your homepage is be on a first name basis with your web guy, which is like a really good headline that speaks to what people want.

They want, like somebody who has their back, who ha has a face and a name that they can talk to and stuff like that. Tell. Tell us how your experience with copywriting and maybe some pro tips, and I think a lot of good internet marketers, like it just becomes second nature and you forget about it and you just do it well.

But what’s been your journey with 

David Risley: copywriting? To be clear, other than some of those online marketing courses I went through in the past, it isn’t as if I’ve done professional copy. I would not consider myself a copywriter. I will say that I do have a lot of experience in writing, ’cause I’ve been doing it for so long.

And so with time and practice you get decent at it. But the other thing too is. N knowing, developing a skill of being able to get inside their head of the, of your target market and knowing what they really want. And one of the things I’ve always found important in any business is the importance of survey now but not survey, which is I’ll fill out this form is really impersonal.

’cause the survey can come in a lot of different forms. And that includes talking to people in person, which is one of the things that so many people try to avoid is they’re like, eh, it’s awkward to talk to somebody. But I, even now, I do what’s called roadmap calls where people can book a short call with me and they don’t pay anything, and I.

A lot of it’s, a lot of it is to look, see if we’re a fit and see if they wanna work with me. But sometimes I’ll do those calls and they don’t convert and I don’t view that as a waste of time because I’m still learning what they’re looking for. And so the more you do that, the more writing you do in general, you get to where you can write and you’re envisioning that person you’re talking to as you’re doing it and you’re just trying to, to.

Know, make your message meet where they’re thinking already. That’s that’s the 1 0 1 level thing with copy. I don’t have any, courses on that topic or anything. 

Chris Badgett: Some markets like it becomes an echo chamber so internet marketing with internet marketers or tech with tech people.

But some of the most successful agencies, their target audience is very different from them. Who’s. Yeah. If you were to like, tell us about the avatar or the type of people that are a perfect fit for Blog Marketing Academy Services, who’s, who is this client? ’cause you obviously have a feel for what this person is.

I. 

David Risley: Yeah, my clients come from all kinds of different niches, but the base, but at the core, they are solopreneurs. And some of ’em are in the very early stages, so I don’t even know if they would call themselves a solopreneur yet. They’re trying to become one, and so I’ve got that too. But most of ’em are, they’re working for themselves.

They might have one or two other people working for them. They’re basically in that idea. They’re using WordPress to run the business. And so that’s mainly who I’m speaking to. And I also know that a lot of them are, they’re tackling WordPress and they deal with the frustrations we all deal with.

They’re not they have some light level tech skill, but enough to get themselves in trouble, and I also know with me, because of the content with YouTube and all that and the content that I’ve been putting out there a long time I have built up a level of trust. With a lot of these people.

So that was part of the genesis for that headline to be on a first name basis with your web guy. And but yeah, that’s who they are mainly. They’re small time solopreneurs businesses of different scales, but they don’t have large teams, frankly. You have to know who you work with the best.

And if some big company was coming at me, I probably would straight tell ’em, I don’t think I’m the right fit. I don’t think I would want to do it. So how do you get these clients? Most of them are coming to me. I really don’t do any overt promotion outside of content. It’s the site. I would say in terms of lead sources right now, YouTube is probably the top one of people finding me on YouTube, but a lot of people were on my list.

For quite some time to begin with. I do have a weekly newsletter that I send out, so even people who are not doing business with me now I’m I stay top of mind and when they’re ready, they sign up or they book a call. 

Chris Badgett: I’m a big fan of YouTube for content marketing. What’s your approach to making videos or deciding what kind of content to make?

On YouTube specifically, 

David Risley: some of it’s just gut feeling. Some of it’s frankly, what I’m in the mood to make. If anything, I need to become more regular about it. Ideally I’d be putting out something every week but sometimes that’s the balance. When you’re doing client work, sometimes you get so busy with stuff you forget to do it.

But it it’s really. I guess it’s the same mentality that would come up when I’m writing my copy. I think about my target market and what they’re looking for. I know people on YouTube are looking for how to do stuff, how to fix problems. They the typical listicle style stuff does work on YouTube.

You also look for reviews. I’ve talked, I’ve had a video about. Buddy boss hosting, how what’s, because that can be a little bit of a demanding platform, and so I get people on that or talking about Buddy Boss talking about the fluent line of products. People are looking for that stuff.

So I just go and I make it. And I and also my videos are pretty informal. How I’m talking to you right now is how I record a YouTube video. I don’t script them out. I don’t do double takes on anything. I just let it rip. 

Chris Badgett: Awesome. And going back to your services. Sometimes it’s, when you’re helping a solopreneur, like you have to set up a scope of work, like there’s the website, but then maybe there’s an email list tool and hosting and other things.

Like what’s in your scope of service that you do for these business owners?

David Risley: For the most part, I will go where they need to go. That being said, I do have my limits for one thing. With my service work, I tend to stick with the same tools. Most of the time. I can work with other ones, but if I have any say in the matter, I’ll try to get them into the same ones because I’m so quick with them.

When it comes to email, I’m a big proponent of fluent CRM myself. I love using that product, and I, on my site, some people they know me because I talk about what I call digital sovereignty. I like the idea of having things in house and not relying on an army of third party services all over the place.

And so a lot of, some people, they do join with me because. That’s my philosophy and I’ll work, I’ve got some clients using Active Campaign and stuff like that, but most of my clients are using fluent CRM and we put it all inhouse and I just provide, I, my idea with concierge is to provide the platform so they don’t have to worry about all that stuff.

For example, fluent crm. But you need to tap into a, an email service for that.

I have one. It’s that type of thing. And then they don’t have to think about it. That’s how I’m approaching it. If they get too far out of my wheelhouse or if they’re, they want something completely and totally custom coded, I’ll probably be like, yeah, that’s not me.

Chris Badgett: Your let’s talk first is like a primary call to action on your homepage. Some people, a lot, some agencies like it’s gotta go through a contact form and there’s all this stuff. You go straight to book a 30 minute call. What’s your structure for those calls for talking to clients and figuring out if it’s a fit?

And what do you guys talk about on a 30 minute call? 

David Risley: So there, so there’s not a lot of stress. It’s not like I go in there with a, an outline or anything. It’s definitely not. A salesy thing at all. It’s really we’re just having a conversation. I, when they go, excuse me, when they book, I do have some questions on the form that makes it clear that it is a thing where we’re exploring working together.

So there is that intention when they book, I forgot the questions that I have there, but it’s, these are not people, they’re just gonna come ask me random questions to get a free consultation. They know why they’re there. Once they’re there we’re just having a free flowing conversation. I, it’s not like I’m running the show.

I, I, they we both know why they’re there to begin with. I have the summary of what they’ve typed and then we just go to it. Sometimes they don’t even take 30 minutes. Sometimes they go a little longer than that. I don’t worry about it that much. 

Chris Badgett: Is, are a lot of people starting with an existing site or they’re starting fresh, or what do you prefer?

David Risley: Most are have an existing one and when when they’re talking to me about concierge, most of them have an existing one and they’re probably just tired of dealing with it with. With it. That’s pretty much what it comes down to. But I do have some who come in and they’re, they have a new concept and we’re starting from scratch.

And usually with concierge, I’ll make it clear to them right off the bat, Hey, look, you’re getting into concierge, but it’s early and there’s no traffic. So there’s a little overkill there at the beginning, but they think it’s going to. Put light of fire under their butt, so to speak. I was like, I’m, paying every month.

I really want to utilize it. And so we go at it. Plus they get a discount on the credits with me if they’re in concierge. So some people do it for that. But most of them, they came in with an existing site like buddy boss element, mentor setups, things that have a little bit more complexity and they’re just tired of squashing little tech gremlins and that type of thing.

Chris Badgett: How do you manage the relationship? Like particularly with a recurring plan? Are they, like you said, they wanna get the most out of it. Are you also following up with clients every month or making suggestions or how do you get, how do you keep the recurring situation healthy?

David Risley: It really hasn’t been any issue at all. I, we have a communication area in Basecamp. We use Basecamp for project management super user friendly. And it, and then of course there’s the core services that they’re getting, whether they’re. I have a lot of requests or not. There’s the hosting, I use postmark for email delivery.

There’s, the malware stuff, all the standard stuff. And then there’s all the plugins. I have agency licensing to the plugins that I put on their site. So there, that is one of the things too, is that they don’t have to go and buy all those things. I’ve already done it. And so all those things are part of the core services.

I have a few clients that don’t contact me that much, honestly. Others are more active, and that’s fine. You just balance it out over time.

Chris Badgett: And the ones that are more active, they’re also in addition to the monthly, they’re buying credits. Is that right?

For actual project work on top of the monthly? 

David Risley: They 

Chris Badgett: are, 

David Risley: yeah. If for, if I’m just answering messages for them I don’t bill for that. It’s part of concierge, but if we’re getting there and we’re, getting more. If I’m having to go on there and do something on their site more regularly, that’s where we do use the credits.

The concierge, I have a higher level of concierge called platinum, which does include time. And then we don’t have to use the credits unless we really start using a lot of time. But for the core people, we’re using credits a lot more frequently. 

Chris Badgett: How do you stay organized with all this? It’s been a growth 

David Risley: curve 

Chris Badgett: for 

David Risley: sure.

Chris Badgett: You mentioned Basecamp for getting the projects in Basecamp, which helps. 

David Risley: That helps a lot. It keeps it out of my email. I. Which is important. When I first started, everybody was emailing me and it I dealt with it for a while. I thought about having a traditional support desk on my thing, but it felt a little impersonal.

And so I didn’t go that route. And so Basecamp, for me has worked really well. I used it a long time ago, and then I, so I came back and revisited it. It’s just super user friendly. It doesn’t have a really overwhelming interface. They if they don’t want to go into base that often and they just reply to an email, they can still do it.

It’ll still show up base. So it’s just really easy to use. As far as managing clients, I’ve done a lot of stuff inside of WordPress admin to be able to manage them from in there. I’ve customized my dashboard quite a bit so I can see my client list and pop into different parts of their profile really quick.

So there’s a lot of time saving. And I have for passwords and all that, I don’t keep that in WordPress. That wouldn’t be a good idea. I’ve got a one password for all that type of stuff, but, over. I don’t know, I guess I’ve adapted to that system and when I find that there’s little hitches and I’m wasting time on, on stupid little things, I’ll try to think up some solution to iron out the constraint.

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What about work-life balance? What’s your approach there? ’cause we all struggle with it, when you’ve been in the industry for a long time, you figure something out that works for you. What works for you? 

David Risley: So far it hasn’t been a problem. Mean, so for one, I like what I do, so it’s not like I’m feeling like I have to escape from it.

But but people know I, I go out and in an RV sometimes I’ve got a family, I work through stuff on the house, so I. A, a lot of it comes down to setting proper expectations when people come in. I I think because a lot of people who work with me have been on my list for a while or what have you they already know little things because I’ll mention at the top of my newsletter, I always mention just little things that are not related to business, so people know about the RV and all those types of things.

I have never had anybody, if I go on a little trip, I’ve never had anybody. Freak out about it, and they’re like, have fun. They, they literally try not to be as needy while I’m gone, which is really cool. And and if something happens I’m still monitoring things. It’s just that it’s more if a site goes down, I, no matter where I am, I will try to get it fixed.

It’s just. I work with rocket hosting sites, just don’t go down. I, and so it’s it, you’re paying for security with those types of things. But so far I just enforce the balance that I want. And clients don’t raise a ruckus about it. And frankly, if they did, if I had somebody who was getting, who, weird about it, I would look at that as we weren’t the right fit anymore.

I’d probably cut them loose. Do you run all this solo right now? I do. I I had I had a developer it was through an agency, so it wasn’t like he was working for me. It was like a separate thing, but it was interesting. I found that I. Wasn’t using him as much as I thought I would. And so that’s probably my fault, honestly.

Outsourcing has always been a thing that I can’t say that I’m great at it. It’s I don’t, it’s probably something I need to get better at. I do realize that with the level of what the work that I have, it’s coming whether I like it or not. There are things that. I have a lot of systems in place that allow me to get a lot done, but if I have so many ongoing projects at the same time, people end up waiting.

And I’m aware of that, so I’ll have to deal with it. But so far it’s just me. 

Chris Badgett: Let’s imagine you got a client who doesn’t have a website yet, and I know this changes with time and there’s multiple options, but what are some of your favorite tools that you like to work with? You mentioned fluent CRM.

What else is like a go-to for you? 

David Risley: I use fluent most of the, I don’t use all their tools, but fluent CRMs. My favorite fluent forms is where I go to for forms for community stuff. I’ve been definitely looking into fluent community. I it’s true they’re developing that one’s fast. So it’s doing pretty well and I’m.

Even though I know Buddy Boss is such a powerful platform, it just comes with so much overhead. I don’t like working with Buddy Boss that much anymore. Yeah, as far as building it out I’m a big fan of the Cadence theme and cadence blocks myself. So that tends to be my go-to. I do have some people who are using Elementor and those types of things, and or Astra and Spectra.

If they really like their platform, I’m not gonna try to drag ’em over. But if I’m involved, I’ll usually go with Cadence. What are, I don’t know. I’ve got a bunch of, different ones that I use. I’m looking at my own list here, but those are probably the ones I use most often. Press player for videos, I got some performance stuff. I use WooCommerce, WP Fusion, Jax plugin. Use that one quite a bit. 

Chris Badgett: You mentioned what was it? It’ll come back to me, but what was it?

You, you said rocket, you meant rocket.net, is that right? rocket.net. Yeah. And I remember what I was gonna ask. You mentioned you, you like to get lifetime licenses, I think, or unlimited, so there’s always this question with the agent when they’re available. When they’re available, yeah. There’s always this question with the agency of do I get the license or does my client get it, or whatever. What’s, it seems like you’ve figured it out. Like how do you think about that? 

David Risley: So I think about it in terms for one, it’s one of the value adds of concierge is that they don’t have to go and buy all these plug Yeah. They don’t have to go shopping.

And the shopping is not just a matter of expense, it’s also all the time of evaluating, trying to figure out which ones worked, so I’m trying to save them all that hassle. So I acquired the support licenses. If an unlimited is available, that’s usually a good idea. There’s a few that I’ve got on Lifetime that’s even great, but but some of ’em are not, and I just pay for them and, my thinking too is that if I’m gonna call myself concierge, it’s one of those things to where sometimes I have to contact the support people. Like I’ve done it with cart flow several times. I’ve had to do it with Presto. Sometimes I can’t figure something out. I’ll just go to the support people.

That’s what I’m paying for, worth the license. And so it’s really, I, the way I look at it, I wouldn’t really be able to provide the. Full level of service needed for concierge. If I couldn’t deal with the support people, if I I was hanging out with Jack at the conference, but for WP Fusion, but if I didn’t have those relationships with these people, I how I’m a little bit stuck on how far I can go with the support.

Chris Badgett: Yeah. And that’s a huge value add to just to have all those relationships and be able to, basically get the best support on behalf of the client. That’s awesome. Yeah. You mentioned you worked with a lot of different clients but is there like a main kind, are they kind of content people or are they main street businesses or like what’s the.

80 20 of who is the majority of the clients? Are they doing digital, most digital 

David Risley: products, retail? What? What is it? Mostly digital, mostly in the content business. Most of them have membership sites. That’s probably majority of my clients are running a membership site and, if it was just a standard blog, they probably wouldn’t even need concierge.

But, mo, most of what I do with concierge is for WordPress sites that actually do work. They’re selling things, they’re, they got plumbing involved and so that’s the average. I do have a few that sell physical product. And let’s see, I’m trying, do I have any, I. Yeah, actually I do have a few locals I’ve got a chiropractor over in the uk.

I’m managing three sites for him, and so his sites are actually pretty, no, he is got one that actually is a content driven membership site. Then he is got two first his practices, so there’s all over the board, but definitely the large majority of them are selling like membership content. 

Chris Badgett: What’s the.

I’ve been obsessed with membership sites. As long as you have yeah, whatever, 17 years or whatever, and it’s changed. It’s evolved. There’s never been more options like now, and like you mentioned, it’s also much more crowded than it used to be. But. What’s working in membership sites with your clients now?

There’s courses, there’s community, there’s premium content or digital files, like what is, what does SU successful membership sites have going on these days? 

David Risley: Most of mine are selling courses. I do have a few that have communities. Buddy Boss, I think there’s one. She’s launch getting ready to launch up on fluent community.

But most are selling courses. But the interesting thing is they’re not in the most crowded niches in the world. Most of ’em. I’ve got one who she literally does handcrafted toys and the membership site is about how to. Craft these toys. I, it’s not something I would know anything about, but that’s there I got somebody who’s selling training on how to play the saxophone, I guess so it’s markets where there might be noise.

Honestly, I don’t know that much about the markets, but it’s probably nothing like internet marketing or anything like that either. These are niches where. They tend to be pretty niche, actually. I’ve got one who’s in the doula space, working with family members who are, or somebody’s, on their deathbed.

I have those types of people who are running membership sites. I don’t think I’ve got anybody trying to think off the top of my, I don’t think I’ve got anybody in the really big niches. Weight loss or internet marketing, they tend to be in these smaller ones and they’re still doing pretty well, actually.

They are definitely making money. When I log into the site, I can see their income figures and it’s working. So 

Chris Badgett: yeah. That’s awesome and inspiring and honestly, that’s what excites me. Like I love finding these niches and I see a lifter lms, just like you mentioned, arts and crafts.

I can think of 20 different like art and craft things that I never even knew about. That there’s whole, this person has a whole following on. Yeah. Ear. Earlier you mentioned like the. 200 or 100 9990 $7 course or whatever. Sorry. A membership site. You said courses like the the art and craft hobby toys or whatever.

Are these membership sites doing like mini courses, like lots of little courses or what?

David Risley: Yeah. 

Chris Badgett: How do they get, how do they get the recurring revenue to keep happening in the membership? Or is it not always recurring revenue? 

David Risley: Most of ’em have recurring or if, or they were. Or they’re gearing up to do recurring.

There are some who were selling things one by one, but they’re like I want to have a cash all membership for recurring, which is a pretty common model. You can get a, it’s like the Netflix model, recurring or you could buy the one on one and it just costs more. So a lot of them do that type of a thing.

Most of them have several smaller courses, not so much one, massive one. And, personally I think that model works better mainly because of the amount of noise we’re all dealing with online. I don’t know if people have the attention span to go through some big multi-module washing hours of video anymore.

The people want the TLDR all the time and so I think shorter actually is a superpower these days. If you can get them from point A to point B and do it in the least amount of time, that’s ultimately what people want. Of the.

They’re just one pagers. It’s just, it’s literally we just set up a custom post type. It’s just, we just set up a one pager because they don’t even need all the structure. And and that was actually something with my site that I started doing a few years back, was getting rid of some, or restructuring them so that I could go more towards short form stuff just because.

People, even in the past people would buy these big courses and the rate of completion was pathetic. ’cause it’s like people just, they buy the promise and then they’re like, I’m tired of this. It’s too much work. You, so you try as a creator to create stuff that’s A, it’s easier for you to make, but B, it’s easier for them to consume.

And that’s the point. 

Chris Badgett: As a web guy on a first name basis, and if, first somebody who’s been in the industry for a long time, I imagine you don’t just get tech questions. People will ask you for business advice around, yeah. Things like pricing or marketing strategies and tactics and things.

What are you seeing with your folks? What are they coming to you for business advice? 

David Risley: Sometimes it’s just for a, somebody to bounce ideas off of. But yeah, sometimes we do talk about pricing. That, that type of one is always interesting to discuss. ’cause every, as I just was going over, I got people in so many different markets and I don’t know anything about those markets.

So how am I supposed to tell them pricing information? But we just we talk it out. And what I find for a lot of people is just talking with somebody else. Helps. It’s not oh, it’s like going to the, it’s definitely not that. It’s just more because I have been in the in business for a long time.

I’ve seen so many other types of businesses that I’ve had my hands on them. When people talk to me, I don’t think they’re looking for me to talk top down and give them the answers. I think they realize it’s a two-way conversation and things can come out of that. And I will give them my experience on certain things if I have any.

If I don’t, I’ll tell them that too. Like these people who are running, my clients who are running physical products, where they’re shipping things, frankly, I’ve never done that. I sold a few physical products back in my tech days, but I used an outsourcer thing and it just wasn’t the majority of what I did.

And I could give you what makes sense, but that’s all it would be. And I’m always p upfront with people about what my experience would be if I don’t have it. 

Chris Badgett: If your client asks you to help them get more clients, what do you tell ’em? 

David Risley: That type of thing. I don’t get into, I’m very, I know where my superpower is and that is the working I say working with the tech stuff, but working with the tech stuff, with a business background.

I’m the, I’m one of those kind of guys who can marry the two things together and create a site that’s actually gonna serve your purposes. But that’s where, what I like to do. I don’t wanna do people’s marketing. I don’t wanna run their social media. I don’t want to do SEO. I know enough where I probably could help them with that stuff.

I just don’t want to do it. And I, so when people ask, I’ll just tell them I, I don’t do that. I probably need to come up with a list of people that I can refer them to. I haven’t done that yet, but yeah. I just don’t wanna do it. 

Chris Badgett: What are you seeing with the membership sites in terms of. Outside of content supporting their members, like with coaching or group coaching calls or email support or community, like what are people doing from the support side for a membership site to support their members in addition to content these days?

David Risley: Yeah, community is definitely one. But. I’m also a fan. As you can see, I basically 100% pivoted into it, but I am a fan of the idea of offering services on top of a membership anyway, because, if you’re looking at it at terms of a funnel, you want to have some higher ticket stuff. And I, selling, from what I’m seeing I’m sure that there’s definitely niches where you could sell high ticket content, but for the majority of my clients.

It’s not high ticket, the content part of it. And so to, to develop the funnel out, you need higher ticket stuff. That’s where the services, the done for you, those types of things. And you can build them into your membership to where they, maybe some things are included, but then there’s upsells and and I think that.

Will increase revenue quite a bit for a majority of memberships because most, even the client in the toy making space, I don’t know off the top of my head if she’s offering a service, but she could almost anything. There’s room for that type of stuff. You just gotta get creative with it, even if it’s just a simple phone call.

Chris Badgett: Do you see like any common pricing, and I know it’s a range and it depends, but $30 a month, a hundred dollars a month, $500 a month, what range are people doing these recurring membership sites? What are they charging their clients? 

David Risley: I’m trying to remember, I’m looking at my list of client sites right now, trying to remember what they charge.

I, but it’s all over the board. I will say it. Overall I’m thinking that recurring prices tend to be lower now than they were a few years back, but that’s just a broad level overview. I don’t have any numbers to back it up. And It’s just what I seem to be seeing. We’re not talking like. Single digit numbers.

We’re talking about, still respectable numbers, but the idea of charging several hundred dollars a month, you gotta be in the right business for that type of thing. It’s almost always under a hundred, usually, down to, 10, 20, 30 range. But again, it just, it depends so much on market.

Yeah. Yeah. 

Chris Badgett: Awesome. Thanks for nerding out with me, David, on membership sites. It’s it’s always fun to run into somebody who’s been into membership sites, into marketing, into WordPress and serving clients and helping. 

David Risley: I love membership sites. I’ve been a fan of it for even back in my tech niche days.

I was, I probably had one of the first membership sites in that space. It was a little harder space to do because it was so focused on reviews and all that kind of stuff, but. I went for it and I just, I’m a fan of the model. I’m a fan of recurring. It makes for a much more predictable business, 

Makes 

Chris Badgett: life easier.

And there’s so many great tools out there now to, oh, it’s so easy. That I get what you mean by I have fun building sites. Like it is fun. Yeah. And the tools just get better and better. It’s pretty cool. 

David Risley: Yeah. 

Chris Badgett: Thanks for coming on the show, David. Blog marketing academy.com. What’s the best way for people to get into your world?

Your YouTube channel book a call. What, where would you highlight people to go 

David Risley: check you out more? My home base is blog market academy.com. You could book a call if you’d like. That’s more if you want to possibly engage me for I. Some work on the site or look at concierge services.

The best way to, if you wanna just keep in touch, is to get onto my newsletter which is the WP Edge it sends out every Monday, and it’s basically the type of stuff we were just talking about. That’s the kind of stuff that’s in my newsletter. It is a, it’s, it is discussing WordPress of course, but with a business slant to it.

It’s not, we’re not talking about blogging with pet pictures. These are sites that do things and and that’s what I talk about. That’s probably your best bet. And then if the time is right for somebody, they wanted to come in on the other stuff, they always know where to find me.

Chris Badgett: Awesome David, thank you for coming on the show. Really appreciate it and keep up the great work. Yeah, appreciate it. Thank you.

And that’s a wrap for this episode of LMS Cast. Did you enjoy that episode? Tell your friends and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode. And I’ve got a gift for you over@lifterlms.com slash gift. Go to lifter lms.com/gift. Keep learning. Keep taking action, and I’ll see you. In the next episode.

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