The Blog of Lisa Morosky

Some of you may know that I’m currently creating and working on launching SpendLessOnLife.com.

Just a brief overview about what the site is about:

• It’s a blog and membership site.
• The main blog is, of course, free content.
• The membership portion will include more, premium content, videos, forums, SpendLessOnLife.com Guides (i.e., eBooks), access to a weekly UStream broadcast, giveaways, and some other stuff.
• The site is all about ways to save money on your everyday life (daily expenses, travel, etc). It’s also about how you can make a little bit of extra money on the side without having to get a second job or commit to something extremely strenuous. I think there’s a population on the Internet that a lot of people are missing: the people who actually enjoy their day jobs, but just wish they could make an extra couple hundred dollars a month for whatever reason.
• The purpose of this site, and my real passion, is to show people that you can cut your expenses, make a little bit of extra money on the side, and it doesn’t have to be painful or tedious. Doing both will help you have more freedom to live your dreams and meet your own goals.

We’ve all been hearing how membership sites are one of the best options if you’re looking for a regular, recurring income. It’s the way of the future, so it’s the way of my future.

I haven’t launched yet. I’m planning to do a “quiet launch” this month (let the site go live, but not necessarily broadcast it so I can continue to work out the kinks). I’ll “loud launch” in December. Though I haven’t launched yet, I’m already learning a lot about the process through my own trials and tribulations. Here’s some of what I’ve learned thus far.

• Don’t plan your launch right around the time of a new WordPress version release. Yeah, I’m doing this anyways. WordPress upgrades are just a necessary evil, and there’s no need to wait to launch my site because of it. But it is going to be a pain in the ass to “quiet launch” everything, then have to upgrade and make sure everything’s functioning before I “loud launch”. In retrospect, I would have launched this site a couple months ago. Just more headaches I don’t need.
• Have about two months worth of content there before you launch. I heard this mentioned at a session at BlogWorld. I don’t think this necessarily is the rule for regular blogs, but for the membership portion I certainly want there to be substantial information available when people sign up. I wish I had accounted for the time this would take to create before I set up my timeline to launch.
• Don’t underestimate how much your content is worth. This is something I’m still struggling with in all aspects of my business, knowing my worth. Luckily, I went through some pricing ideas with not only knowledgeable people, but normal people who would be likely to join. I think I’ve found a good price point to begin with.
• Honestly, don’t even try to launch a membership site on your own. I was doing this all myself up until a couple weeks ago. I’m super happy to have a Contributing Writer onboard. And it just so happens to be my extremely knowledgeable and helpful sister. So while I’m dealing with technical aspects of the site and creating premium content, she’s helping out with creating some of the free content for the blog (and she’ll be helping going forward too). It’s nice to be in this with someone else. At the end of the day, I don’t mind paying people to do work for me as long as it helps me reach my end goal.
• Stockpile a bunch of content ahead of time. I am over my head in content for both the free blog, and the membership portion. My goal is to create like crazy so when the site launches, I can “relax” for a couple weeks and just see how it goes, while dripping out the content I’ve already created. I learned the importance of doing this after I launched LisaMorosky.com and my husband’s blog, LifeOfAChiro.com.
• Map out exactly what your program will look like monthly for you. I didn’t do this at first. I just went at it. But I got really overwhelmed and felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere, so I stopped and planned out exactly what will be offered on the free blog, and for members, each and every month. This has kept me more focused.
• Be brutally honest with yourself about whether or not your market will pay for your content. I spent a lot of time thinking about this. If a site that’s geared towards telling people how to spend less offers a membership program, will people sign up for it? I think yes, because not only am I showing them how to spend less on areas of their life, but I’m also showing them how to earn more in other areas. I would pay to be a member of a site that gave me consistent information on how to reduce my expenses and make some extra money on the side, especially if it was chalked full of resources and practical, how-to information.
• Get the branding right before you launch. For me, that means separating everything that’s related to SpendLessOnLife.com out of my own personal brand. That also means I’m paying attention to things like avatars and Twitter backgrounds and colors and stuff like that.
• Do your research, but don’t become a stalker of your market. I literally drove myself near the line of crazy by researching and paying attention to my market. A lot of that obsessing was a waste of time because it just stressed me out. Will I be as good as they are? Will people respond? And so on. I’m over it now.
• If you’re a perfectionist, this is going to kill you. Seriously. I’m a perfectionist, and all of the details and having them be, well, perfect, has been driving me nuts. I’m trying to lay off that area of my personality so it doesn’t inhibit my productivity. I’ll let you know how that goes.
• This is hard. Sure, the concept of a membership site is easy. The setting it up and the details and the preparation, certainly are not.

Surprisingly, for as much as I’ve done so far, I’m actually quite a ways away from the “quiet launch”. I’m sure I’ll have more “duh” moments to share with you after I do launch.

One of the sessions I attended while at BlogWorld was entitled “How To Make 60K A Month With A Membership Program”. The panel included Timothy Sykes and Adarsh D. Pallian talking about how they built TIMalerts.com into an extremely profitable membership site. The session was moderated by Jim Kukral.

Frankly, I got nothing out of this session. It’s not because they aren’t knowledgeable or successful (because they definitely are), it was because Tim’s personality is just so distracting and hilarious. He just says whatever he’s thinking, while he’s thinking it. And he has zero problem telling you if your idea sucks (as some who asked questions found out).

Did he provide practical advice I can put into practice as I currently create my own membership site? No. Was he beyond entertaining? Yes. Jim did a good job trying to rein in his craziness.

So without further ado, here’s a small portion of his session. You’ll hear me and those I’m sitting next to laughing and making some comments as we’re watching. Also, I’ll tell you right now that I held the Flip Mino for this, so it’s shaky at times (and really shaky at other times).

Enjoy.

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