Barrett Brooks of Fizzle: Membership Sites and a Cautionary Tale (GPP07)

Once I (stupidly) tried to convince a potential client NOT to launch a membership site. I was really out of line, especially since I didn’t know her business very well, but fortunately she forgave me after I worked hard to pull my foot out of my mouth.

 

Here’s what I was thinking at the time: membership sites where you have a monthly charge on your credit card are a really hard sell. And just because someone signs up for the first month doesn’t mean they’re going to stick around very long.

 

Before I completely crush your dreams, however, check out this interview with Barrett Brooks, the Director of Growth at Fizzle, possibly the best membership site I’ve seen so far. They’ve tried out different pricing strategies, free vs. paid trial offers, and have tweaked their onboarding sequence to help reduce churn, or the number of people who cancel their membership each month. A membership site can work as a business model, but make sure you know what you’re getting into and don’t expect it to be smooth sailing just because you’ve launched.

In this episode you’ll hear:

-- Why the pricing model that the Fizzle guys started out with didn’t last very long.

-- The one thing that will keep a company from being profitable, even if you’ve built a strong brand and a significant audience.

-- Seth Godin’s 2 lines of advice to Barrett on how much he should sell his pre-Fizzle startup for.

-- The one thing that got me hooked on Fizzle, and why I expect to keep paying them for a long, long time.

-- The change the Fizzle team is looking at making to the free trial they currently offer to new members.

-- How much revenue Fizzle has brought in since launching (plus a little reverse-engineering to get to their annual gross revenue numbers).

-- The #1 thing people report as the reason they cancel their Fizzle membership.

-- Something that’s been missing from Fizzle for a long time that they’re just starting to roll out.

-- Ballpark figures of how much the members of the Fizzle team get paid.

-- Why Barrett was arrested (twice) despite his brainiac background.