Posted on January 29, 2023.
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Marketing a subscription as an author is hard. Will readers want to sign up? How will I even get the word out about my subscription? We are here to help. From launching your subscription to building your reader community, this episode serves as your guide to going from 0 to 1 on your author subscription :).
#21 Episode Outline:
0:00 Introduction to Subscription Marketing
2:11 Marketing Your Subscription as Serial Fiction Author
4:07 Marketing Your Subscription as KU or Wide Author
5:58 How Emilia Fosters Trust in Her Readers
10:46 Community is Your Superpower in Subscriptions
13:30 How to Build Relationships with Your Readers
20:19 Why Barnes and Noble is Growing Again
24:12 Five Stages to Subscription Marketing
27:58 Phase One: Pre-Launch
34:42 Phase Two: Beta Launching
37:40 Phase Three: The Launch
40:46 What Authors Can Learn From Ticketmaster
43:15 How Lifetime Subscriptions Made This Podcast $300k
45:55 Phase Four: Post-Launch Marketing
51:27 Phase Five: Marketing to Your Existing Subscribers
54:40 Our Final Advice on Marketing Your Subscription
1:01:08 Conclusion and Outtro
#21 Relevant Links:
Join Ream: https://reamstories.com/
Join our community of 2400+ subscription authors: https://www.facebook.com/groups/subscriptionsforauthors
Get the Subscriptions for Authors Starter Guide and 2022 Subscriptions Report Delivered to Your Inbox… for free… on January 30th: https://subscriptionsforauthors.com/
#21 Episode Transcript:
[00:00:00] Michael Evans: so I think the most important thing about subscriptions, or at least the biggest question we get, is marketing subscription, which makes sense. It feels a little bit sad to spend all this time creating something and then have no one inside of it and not making any money.
[00:00:15] Michael Evans: So today we’re gonna be talking about like the real root of probably what all of you are thinking about when starting a subscription, which is like, how am I going to make money from this? Like, how actually will I get my readers to pay from this?
[00:00:27] Michael Evans: So I wanna start it off just by asking you, Emilia, if you had to describe the reader journey that happens in your subscription for someone to get to your subscription, what does that look like?
[00:00:38] Michael Evans: If you had to map it?
[00:00:40] Emilia Rose: Yeah, so I’ll preface that by saying that there’s two main models are business models for subscriptions at least for authors right now. And that is doing early access in bonus content. And I do early access and the kind of like reader journey is they start reading for free on either through my [00:01:00] newsletter or through a free PLA platform called Wattpad.
[00:01:03] Emilia Rose: I use a couple others as well, but Wattpad is my main platform that I use. And they’ll read the chapter, get to a cliffhanger, and then I’ll basically say, Hey, if you wanna read the next chapter, you can come over to my subscription. And that’s kind of like the journey from where they start reading to where they get to the subscription aspect of it.
[00:01:26] Emilia Rose: For me and for most people who do early access,
[00:01:28] Michael Evans: Okay. That makes sense. I think we’ll definitely cover this as we go through it, that the business model that you have overall for like your overall author business does affect how you will market your subscription and where you will market it and also probably connects to what you’re offering and your subscription.
[00:01:45] Michael Evans: So you’ll notice that we’re not gonna give like a step-by-step, this is the formula to marketing your subscription. Because the beauty of subscriptions is that we all can have different things going on. Mm-hmm. , but that does make at least the marketing kind [00:02:00] of fall into these different paths. But let’s talk about early access first, because this is one that a model that a lot of people do.
[00:02:06] Michael Evans: And what would you say are some best practices for marketing and subscription If you’re coming from the world of serial fiction and you wanna provide early access?
[00:02:15] Emilia Rose: Definitely. So one of the best. like practices is giving your chapters away for free. And that might seem like counterintuitive, like you want people to join your subscription where they’re reading monthly and paying monthly, but it’s really helped a lot of authors, especially on Royal Road with the R ppg, they give their chapters away for free to a huge audience and a portion of that audience pays to read early access to those chapters.
[00:02:44] Emilia Rose: So giving it away for free, at least for romance author notes, work very well on WPA, I’ve found. And then also communicating with your readers and responding to them and letting them know where they can read the next chapter. I feel like [00:03:00] that’s a huge one because a lot of people will sometimes read my authors note and be like, Hey, you said I could read early access in this specific place, but can you give us a link?
[00:03:10] Emilia Rose: That’s something else kind of big that you, you wanna just be aware of and just making sure that you make the transition as easy as possible.
[00:03:18] Michael Evans: That makes a lot of sense. You’re basically trying to like feed people in cuz the main benefit you’re giving when you’re providing early access is early access.
[00:03:26] Michael Evans: So to want early access to something they have to first want the thing. Yeah. And the best way to give that or to create that kind of desire for your stories is to start kind of drip feeding. Yes. Yeah. I like that. Yeah. So what would you say, because let’s say we have this early access serial fiction model and if I had to guess like around maybe half to a little bit more, like maybe a majority 60% of authors in subscriptions are using this model, but then there’s plenty and especially lots of new authors who are entering [00:04:00] subscriptions who are not using this model.
[00:04:02] Michael Evans: What do you think coming from the world of, let’s say can unlimited or ebook retailers, that’s where the majority of your readers come from. You’re not publishing serial fiction. What do you see those authors typically providing and part of their subscription and what do you think’s different about marketing that kind of subscription?
[00:04:20] Emilia Rose: A lot of people who are in KU who wanna just not do early access at all and wanna do mostly bonus content they’re offering, at least in romance, they’re offering a lot of artwork or not safe for work art pieces merch as well. And they market a lot different because they have a physical good.
[00:04:40] Emilia Rose: So they have a lot of backend stuff that they have to do in order to like get the artwork. So they have to find an artist, they have to collaborate with that artist, print the workouts. But they also market different because. They’re not giving any free chapters away. It’s mostly like, Hey, you read this book, you love this book.
[00:04:59] Emilia Rose: Here’s [00:05:00] artwork from this book. So they have to market it to their audience that they already have for the most part. And when I say that, it’s like people who have already read your book, and a lot of times, especially if you’re doing artwork, people promote on Instagram, which is huge. Instagram, like post or reels or even TikTok.
[00:05:20] Emilia Rose: That’s what I’ve seen at least.
[00:05:22] Michael Evans: That makes a lot of sense. And I think you’re kind of hitting us thing key that I’m seeing for both these models that I think is good for people to keep in mind, which is that when your marketing subscription, it’s a bit different. But this is so like fundamental in everything you do that subscriptions are less based off of a single transaction.
[00:05:40] Michael Evans: It’s mm-hmm. , literally recurring payment. So a lot of it’s. based off of trust. And yes. How you market your subscription is oftentimes by fostering trust in your readers. Yeah.
[00:05:53] Michael Evans: And I’m curious for you, Emilia, what you would say has worked for you in being able to foster trust with [00:06:00] readers on your subscription and even off your subscription, just in the broader world of Emilia’s stories.
[00:06:07] Emilia Rose: One of the big things is just showing up consistently. People really appreciate that and they also appreciate that I like respond back to them when they comment on things. I think those are the two big ways that I gain people’s trust especially being consistent because the worst thing ever is like you join a subscription to somebody who says they’re gonna update once a week and they don’t even update once a month.
[00:06:32] Emilia Rose: And that was me, that was actually me in my previous subscription. Under my real name because I just like didn’t like writing the content anymore. And so I was falling behind and people were leaving and that was one of the big reasons why it did fail. Or if I say it fails. But yeah,, I hope that answered your clear
[00:06:51] Michael Evans: question.
[00:06:52] Michael Evans: No, it definitely does. I think that hits like a key point that I know you’ve shared plenty of times, but we should remind everyone [00:07:00] under promise. Overdeliver Yes is great advice in business in general, but it’s especially great advice when you’re trying to cultivate, you know, specifically trust with an audience that you want to be there for an extended period of time.
[00:07:12] Michael Evans: Because this kind of goes into one of the, big like framework advices. I want to kind of give to some of y’all out there who are listening cuz you might. Be not selling on an ebook retailer. You might not be doing serial fiction. You might have like your own unique situation, which is amazing.
[00:07:28] Michael Evans: And we’re not saying subscriptions can’t work for you. Subscriptions can really work, but in order to make them work, I think you have to ask yourself a few key questions just before you get into marketing, trying to make that marketing plan. As boring as that could be, it’s, it’s very important and essential.
[00:07:45] Michael Evans: And I would say that you have to figure out before you launch, right, before you maybe even set up your subscription, where do you have connections to your readers?
[00:07:57] Emilia Rose: I always tell people who wanna start subscriptions [00:08:00] don’t market on social media.
[00:08:01] Emilia Rose: And I say that because a lot of people. It depends on the social media platform, but a lot of people aren’t connected as connected to their audience on social media compared to maybe a newsletter where they can have direct access to them. And social media, it’s really hard for people who are doing early access to promote there because early access is, you give chapters away for free and people read the chapters and get invested in your stories and wanna read more.
[00:08:33] Emilia Rose: And so that’s why marketing on like social media for like artwork for people who already have huge fandoms or who are connected really, really well on social media, that’s why they market there and they do really well marketing there. Yeah,
[00:08:49] Michael Evans: I think that’s, that’s a huge like gr great insight because a lot of times I see people be like, oh, well, should I post this on Instagram?
[00:08:56] Michael Evans: And it’s like, well, How not, how many [00:09:00] followers do you have on Instagram? Cause that’s the wrong question. Cause I see a lot of people who go, I have a thousand followers on Instagram. But if we’re gonna be honest with ourselves, where did you get those a thousand followers? Were they like in follow for follow loops with like fellow authors?
[00:09:11] Michael Evans: That’s totally cool. But that’s also not like your, your readers, your audience all the time. Some authors really could be your readers and that’s mm-hmm. Beautiful and awesome. But a lot of times I’ve seen follower counts aren’t always representative of actual connections. So email list could be more representative.
[00:09:31] Michael Evans: But I also wanna add a caveat to that in the sense that, I’m not saying don’t contact your email list, but when trying to bake in your expectations of what can an email list do if you’ve gotten 10,000 subscribers, which sounds. awesome and it is awesome. But if they’re all from like book funnel or promos and and swaps and things like that, those will be less high quality, less intent subscribers on average than people who are probably from [00:10:00] elsewhere.
[00:10:00] Michael Evans: So that doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing to have people like it’s a good thing. But I think then before you hand someone your subscription like, Hey, I know you’re a stranger to me. I don’t even know you and you’re just on my Instagram profile. It’s better to think about how can you begin to cultivate a relationship with ’em so that then they might be interested in your subscription.
[00:10:21] Michael Evans: Because asking someone upfront who isn’t really familiar with your work, but you just can reach to start paying you monthly is probably not something if we put ourselves into the shoes of a reader that we’d all be interested in doing as readers. Yeah, I agree. And the hard work like this spade work, and I think this is where.
[00:10:41] Michael Evans: The tough reality comes about subscriptions. We see authors blow up overnight, or at least that’s what we always hope for and think on can unlimited on these serial fiction platforms and that’s great, but subscriptions is something that comes a little bit after that because yeah, [00:11:00] if there was an easy way to like game a subscription and get a ton of people to trust you and just hand over their credit cards, start paying you monthly, I mean I think people would be doing that rather than just selling books one off if that was possible, because that’s a way better business model.
[00:11:15] Michael Evans: But the problem is there isn’t really an easy way to do that. And this comes back to think there’s not really an easy way to have a long-term career as an author. You have to do the hard work to build relations with your readers. And a lot of times authors think subscriptions might take a lot of my time.
[00:11:31] Michael Evans: But Pia Foxhall actually, who’s an incredible author, who built a following on a oh three and other kind of fan fiction platforms and now for her original fiction has. A really immense following on her subscription. I think somewhere around like $800 per chapter last time I checked. She’s doing great and huge accomplishment.
[00:11:48] Michael Evans: Wonderful human being. She posted in the Facebook group just this week, which reminded me of this, that what people Sam don’t understand about like promoting a subscription is that not all of the time, like of actually managing a [00:12:00] subscription is actually inside of the subscription itself. Meaning that a lot of times managing a subscription is managing your relationships with your readers.
[00:12:08] Michael Evans: Yeah. Which might be you’re interacting with them in Instagram, dms over email that you are connecting with them the comment section of your serial fiction on wpa. But doing that work, building those real relationships is what creates a community and is what makes a successful subscription.
[00:12:24] Emilia Rose: I actually agree with, I didn’t see she posted that, but I agree with that.
[00:12:27] Emilia Rose: Like the majority of my time that I spend is not actually creating like the subscription or dealing with like, People or like comments or, oh, uploading my chapters. That is a big portion of it, but like the biggest portion and the most like, valuable portion of creating a subscription and creating a community of readers who wanna be in your subscription.
[00:12:50] Emilia Rose: Is that, that other work? Like D like you said, DMing. I spent a lot of time on Wipa, responding to comments, responding to comments on radish. . And so I really love that.[00:13:00]
[00:13:00] Michael Evans: She’s amazing, honestly. Yeah. one big reason to join the Facebook group if you’re not in it is that me and Emilia know, know a few things.
[00:13:06] Michael Evans: Emilia knows a lot of things about subscriptions, but I will say there’s people in the group who have incredible insights and are beyond generous in sharing it. And of course, joining the Facebook group is completely for free, so you could check that out in the LinkedIn description. It’s like facebook.com/subscriptionsforauthors.
[00:13:20] Michael Evans: But enough of that. Pia, you’re wonderful. I hope you are listening to this. If you’re not, you’re still wonderful.
[00:13:25] Michael Evans: But when it comes to building those relationships, cuz now we’re, we’re talking about relational marketing. What is your advice to someone like building relationships with the readers, especially, I wanna first talk about the se scenario where, and I’ve seen this really often, where if readers are commenting on your Wattpad, they are emailing you, then it’s like, okay, I’ll just email them back.
[00:13:48] Michael Evans: And you could have that conversation and that. I’m not saying isn’t hard, but I feel like that’s a bit of an easier problem to solve. The harder problem to solve, the one I see a lot of authors have is, [00:14:00] oh, I have 2000 people on my mailing list, but no one responds to my emails. Like they open it but they don’t respond.
[00:14:05] Michael Evans: I don’t actually get interaction with my readers. I might be getting page read, people might be buying my books, but I’m not getting anything outside of a few Good reads reviews, which you probably shouldn’t be responding to. Good reads, reviews people. That’s not the best idea. So when it comes to actual engagement in conversation with your readers, if that’s not naturally happening already, how do you begin to like foster and nurture that?
[00:14:28] Emilia Rose: I think you, you like what I’ve seen, at least for me and I know like other people we’ve talked to have also mentioned this, it’s a lot of, you have to start it yourself. Mm-hmm. . So if people aren’t engaging with you in your newsletter, ask them to engage with you. Ask them to email you back and tell you what they thought of.
[00:14:47] Emilia Rose: Something that happened. I know, I know. Like that’s why author’s notes do so well on Webpa is like, you’re literally talking to your readers at the end of every chapter and you’re like, Hey, so I just wrote this chapter. What did you [00:15:00] think of it? Please let me know and I’ll respond to you. ,if you liked it, just leave.
[00:15:04] Emilia Rose: Leave an emoji. Like it’s super simple, just one little emoji. Let me know what you think. And once you start getting people to respond a little bit to you, then they’ll start like responding. Like if you’re posting on serial platform, they’ll start posting or commenting throughout all of your chapters because they feel comfortable in your community and they feel comfortable talking to you.
[00:15:26] Emilia Rose: And then once they feel comfortable talking to you, they’ll feel comfortable talking to other readers in your community as well.
[00:15:33] Michael Evans: And it’s a virtuous cycle because once that starts to happen and other leaders who might not be as comfortable yet start to see that, yeah, then it’s like, oh, it’s easier for them to join in.
[00:15:42] Michael Evans: And the more and more conversation that’s happening, the less friction there is for someone else to participate. But in the beginning, it’s like breaking like a glacier, not just breaking ice, like breaking a glacier. So I know it’s difficult, but I’ve had this kind of problem myself because I nurtured an audience of readers on my newsletter that [00:16:00] basically just bought my books and it was about 200 people who were from the back of my books, and they were, I had like maybe two or three who would like regularly contact me, which of course, like, I love you.
[00:16:11] Michael Evans: I know them by name. I, I feel like I know their life stories, which is always nice. But having a relationship with two or readers, which a lot of people might be listening to that situation. That’s like, cool, but let’s not like, What I was totally looking for. I wanted to have Alicia with more readers.
[00:16:25] Michael Evans: So what I did about two weeks ago is I sent out a newsletter because people might be thinking, well, I’m not on wpa. I can’t do authors notes, but you actually can. So I sent out chapter one of a new book that I was writing called The Lost Ones. And literally like, there was nothing but just the description I wrote before it.
[00:16:43] Michael Evans: And then like the thing, there was no fancy graphics, no cover. I don’t have time for that. Like literally don’t have time. So I just was like, let’s copy and paste this in. Cool. And then in the end I said, if you liked reading this, please respond and let me know and I’ll send you the next chapter. It was that simple.
[00:16:57] Michael Evans: And I got like seven or eight [00:17:00] responses from that, which for me was like, that’s awesome. More than I’ve ever had in an email. So I was like, wow. And then to continue this experiment because I, I’m just experimenting for the sake of y’all at this point. I then said, let me not do an author’s note at the end of the next chapter that I follow up with them with.
[00:17:14] Michael Evans: Let me not do one. I’m just gonna say, Hey, thank you for reading this. I’ll send you chapters in the future. I didn’t actually prompt them to connect. I got zero responses. Well actually I got one, but that was like from one of those existing fans who like always respond. I’m like, whoa, like that. I’m not saying that was the difference.
[00:17:31] Michael Evans: This isn’t, it’s a small experiment, everyone but I, it maybe made it.
[00:17:36] Emilia Rose: Yeah, I’ve actually seen this too because for a while I was just super busy and I wasn’t even writing author’s notes on my wet pad. I was just like, I’m just gonna post a chapter and just leave. But then I realized like engagement dropped so much and I wasn’t getting any comments on my chapters.
[00:17:53] Emilia Rose: And so recently I’ve been like, every day I write an authors note, I force myself to do it just even if it’s [00:18:00] something small. And I’ve noticed that people have started commenting a lot more with each other and just with like the chapter in me. So it’s been really cool.
[00:18:09] Michael Evans: It’s, it’s funny cuz. It’s like the culture of reading was never that you could actually connect with the author.
[00:18:15] Michael Evans: We were some of the most distant creative people. Like you didn’t know anything about the author, you couldn’t see them, and readers wanted to connect with the author, but maybe you sent in fan mail and maybe they responded like a year later, which iss nothing wrong with that. There’s authors who, Brandon Sanderson for instance, like he physically cannot respond to all of his comments.
[00:18:33] Michael Evans: But I understand that and there’s plenty of authors who might be listening who are far advanced, they’re here, they have hundreds of comments a day. Maybe this advice isn’t completely tailored to you, but if you’re not like completely overwhelmed, which most people listening like me, and you’re probably not completely overwhelmed with comments, responding and engaging people is something that can make a huge difference in your career because, When thinking about a subscription, one [00:19:00] thing that people always, I feel maybe don’t fully embrace is that subscriptions are not just packaging your books in a different way and then getting people to pay for it.
[00:19:09] Michael Evans: That is not something, as a reader, I would find very enticing for me as a reader. And it’s most important to think of yourself as a reader first, rather than an author. Sometimes as a reader, I want to know that I’m getting additional value for that. So early access is something that can be a piece of that.
[00:19:26] Michael Evans: As you think about it over the long time hall, as you start to write different books and create different series, early access can get someone in the door, but early access might not be what keeps someone there. It has to be something else. And that to me, I love being connected and a community that I feel I am belonging in and can make like friends in.
[00:19:48] Michael Evans: It’s like actually difficult to like make friends in the real world. I don’t have too many, most of my friends exist on online community areas and I’m not unique in that. And I think if you can provide [00:20:00] that space of belonging, interiors, a space where they feel heard, they feel special, not just like another widget being pumped out to them.
[00:20:08] Michael Evans: That’s a completely different experience than you get an e-book retailer. That’s a completely different experience than you get in most places.
[00:20:14] Michael Evans: And not to keep this rank going, but to keep this rank going. I’ve read a really good article about Barnes and Noble and Barnes and Noble, everyone. Is growing.
[00:20:24] Michael Evans: They’re opening 30 stores next year across the United States. Wow. Insane. They were about to go bankrupt in 2019. People thought, wow, it’s gonna go outta business. And their c e o he actually opened a very famous bookstore at 26 in London called Don Books or Dalin books. forget the exact name. I went there when I was in London.
[00:20:44] Michael Evans: It’s beautiful. I didn’t realize he was the c e o of Barnes Noble who started this. So he became the c e O of Waterstones and this is what he did. He stopped accepting any promotional money from publishers at Waterstones, and that’s a huge I stream for these [00:21:00] bookstore. He said, Nope, we’re not having you pay for placement in the front of the store, because oftentimes these publishers would force books onto readers that they didn’t want.
[00:21:09] Michael Evans: Instead, he let readers pick the individual bookstore owners in their local neighborhoods, pick what authors and what books they wanna display. No payment for any of it. and empowered again, let’s do what’s best for the reader. And Waterstones turned around. He did the same thing at Barnes Noble starting during the pandemic.
[00:21:29] Michael Evans: He got hired at Barnes and Noble basically in 2018, going into 2019 pandemic hits. And they opened up about a dozen stores in 2022, which were recording it like the last day of 2022. And if you’re listening in 2023, which is whether this will release, they’re about to open 30 stores this year because he did the same model at Barnes Noble.
[00:21:48] Michael Evans: Let’s take away the promotional space. Let’s focus on uplifting individual book sellers who are super passionate about the reader experience. They also stopped doing, and I remember this, they used to do [00:22:00] like a buy two books, get one free sort of giveaway. That was a big thing at Mars Noble. I remember doing that a lot as a kid.
[00:22:06] Michael Evans: Well, they stopped that because he said by giving discounts we actually devalue books. And he didn’t wanna do that because. He already thought that books were cheaply enough price, there’s no reason to devalue it further. And I’m not saying he’s right about everything, but I also am saying he’s doing a lot right.
[00:22:24] Michael Evans: And I think there’s something to learn for in that if Barnes and Noble and archaic, you know, bookstore chain that we all thought was gonna fall apart is at the moment seeing a revitalation. Just because they’re focusing on the individual reader and making their life better. And not by providing endless discounts, not by ripping them off either, but best by making their day an experience better.
[00:22:47] Michael Evans: If that’s not hopeful, I don’t know what is. Cuz that gave me a lot of hope.
[00:22:51] Emilia Rose: I love that. I think that’s amazing actually.
[00:22:55] Michael Evans: It’s really, really interesting. And he said the superpower is loving books. Yeah. [00:23:00] And loving readers. There’s nothing, there’s no other secret. And I think that when it comes to like subscriptions and relational marketing, The beauty of it is that it takes the algorithm outta the equation.
[00:23:10] Michael Evans: Algorithms are supposed to mimic human behavior, but as authors, we get so caught up in talking about this algorithm and focusing on these algorithms when in reality, all that really matters the other day is the reader. We’re not gonna make it unless we focus on the reader. Yeah.
[00:23:25] Emilia Rose: And I think that’s, that’s actually one of the reasons why I’ve sh I, we talked about it in one of the podcasts previous, but I’m shifting like my whole like outlook and whole all of my goals to I don’t care about how much money I’m making after I like, am able to make a decent amount to like support myself and my family.
[00:23:44] Emilia Rose: , but I wanna focus a lot on just the reader experience because it’s so important. Just to have those connections is like incredible. Just , even moving forward, like goals might change in the future and you might wanna like start thinking about numbers more often [00:24:00] again. But if you can have that solid base of readership that you are constantly connecting with, it’s gonna be super helpful for you.
[00:24:07] Michael Evans: Yeah, no, I, I couldn’t agree more, and I think this is all a really good foundation to talk about what I’m gonna call five Stages to subscription marketing. And I don’t know if this will be useful to people, I hope it is, but I want start to divide because this is a lot to think about everything with your subscription from Day Zero before you’ve launched to post-launch and how you continue growing it and divide this into five phases.
[00:24:34] Michael Evans: I’ll just share the five phases off the top and then we’ll individually kind of analyze and talk about each one. But the five phases I have are the pre-launch, the beta launch, the hard launch, post-launch marketing, and then marketing to subscribers, which that’s a lot. So let’s just dive in and talk about pre-launch marketing, the pre-launch.
[00:24:57] Michael Evans: So we talked about this earlier in [00:25:00] terms of like where your connections are to your readers, but this is a lot of beginning to what is oftentimes in business called like demand validation. So you wanna to see is there something that readers want here? And at the same time, to do that you need to know where to connect with your potential.
[00:25:18] Michael Evans: Future members, because remember, for pre-launch marketing, it’s pre-launch. You probably haven’t launched your subscription yet. So like we mentioned earlier, I think this is really key. You have to draw out a map of where your connections are to your readers. And I don’t mean this like, oh, I have a thousand powers on this platform.
[00:25:34] Michael Evans: I mean, where does your warm audience and super fans exist? And where does your cold audience exist? And each channel, each marketing channel, Facebook, Instagram, your newsletter list probably has different percentages of each one, but it actually goes through and try and map that out. Like my mailing list contains maybe 20% of a warm audience, 10% of my superfans, 80% or more of a cold [00:26:00] audience.
[00:26:00] Michael Evans: And maybe your Instagram only has a few of your warm audience and a lot of people who are a cold audience. I know this is all like guessing, but oftentimes all of this is just. educated guesses in terms of being able to reflect on where these sort of things lie. So when you map out where these connections are, my first thing would be to ask your readers what you’re thinking about for your subscription, if that’s something they would be interested.
[00:26:28] Michael Evans: Yes. Yeah,
[00:26:30] Emilia Rose: I completely
[00:26:30] Michael Evans: agree. If you’re in the serial fiction world I don’t wanna say it’s a bit easier, but I think that if you haven’t built an audience yet, if you’re going, wait, I don’t have readers. One thing to think about the description is that this is like an asset. It literally is an asset because.
[00:26:45] Michael Evans: Your books, your IP have assets. It is an asset that could be potentially bought one day if you had an estate. And you’re going to the story world forever sad day, but thinking long term like that, your subscription also is an [00:27:00] asset that makes recurring revenue and recurring revenue as an asset is valued at a premium compared to any other business revenue stream because it’s recurring revenue.
[00:27:11] Michael Evans: That’s a nice thing. And when it comes to building this asset of your subscription that isn’t just monetary value, but is also this incredible space of experience that’s able to be translated to that monetary value, you have to think about, okay, maybe on day one, if I’m starting serial fiction, I’m gonna launch my subscription just to have it there so that that asset can begin building value.
[00:27:35] Michael Evans: But it’s like having a plot of land. And in a theme park that no one comes to at first. Yeah. Which is totally okay, but you have to expect that and not go in with the expectation then that if you don’t have readers, you’re gonna start your subscription and magically have a thousand readers in your subscription.
[00:27:52] Michael Evans: Yeah.
[00:27:53] Emilia Rose: I was actually talking to somebody who asked me a very similar question whether they should start their [00:28:00] subscription now when they don’t have anyone or later on. And I was like, you should start, you should probably start it now. Just so like you start getting comfortable with being consistent on this platform.
[00:28:10] Emilia Rose: And when people come to your subscription and think about subscribing, they’ll see that you were consistent over, like even if it was like a few months, you’re publishing a few months worth of content consistently, and they’re gonna trust you. They’re gonna be like, okay, so she’s done this for the past three months and she hasn’t had many people on her subscription, but I know she’s going to do it this month and next month and the month after.
[00:28:35] Michael Evans: That’s, that’s great insight. And I also think as well, and I know youth face this yourself, that when you start to get those first people in, which if especially we’re talking about the world of serial fiction at the moment, if they’re coming in from your stories and getting through chapter by chapter, seeing your calls to action at the end of the chapters to go read ahead, then they finally get to the last chapter of your book and they’re like, Hey, maybe I will [00:29:00] subscribe.
[00:29:00] Michael Evans: And you already have it ready for them. When those first people come in, you have an opportunity mm-hmm. to build an incredible relationship with them. That would be basically impossible to do at scale. I think it’s a number it’s like 150 people is the max that we’re able to have a relationship with at once.
[00:29:19] Michael Evans: That number’s been debated a lot by sociologists, so take it with a grain of salt. But the point is, if you have a thousand readers, you’re not going to be able to have the same kind of relationship with them. Where if you had 10, you could have very close relations with your first 10 readers and basically convert them to be like super fans for life.
[00:29:37] Emilia Rose: Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s very difficult once you get to a level that you have thousands of people on your subscription, it does take a long, either a longer time and it, and it’s much harder. And that’s why I always like, tell people, they’re always looking for like, how do I get more, more people into my subscription?
[00:29:55] Emilia Rose: How do I just like get more people into my interested in my work? And it, [00:30:00] I just like, am so envious of people who don’t have that many people on their subscription. It sounds so crazy, but like I can’t connect with as many people on a deeper level, like as many of my readers as they can. They can.
[00:30:13] Emilia Rose: individually, talk to people and actually have a conversation and learn about them. And that’s what I used to love when I started, but now I’m just like, I have so much to do. I don’t have time to make those connections as deep anymore. And it’s, it kind of makes me sad, but Yeah.
[00:30:34] Michael Evans: Yeah. No, I, I understand that, but the beauty of it though is if you get to that point, you’ve now built a lot of relationships with those core readers that they can be the ones who build relationships with new readers.
[00:30:43] Michael Evans: So it’s not that it, it’s not that it’s more disadvantage to, to your subscription than it can be just a disadvantage to in general. But if you have a thousand people coming onto a subscription who you’ve never built a relationship with, so you’re a big author who has a big existing [00:31:00] audience and a big mailing list, or going to launch a subscription that’s a completely different kind of, I don’t wanna say prom, but a different kind of situation.
[00:31:07] Michael Evans: Yeah. That is worth addressing because. If you maybe don’t have those existing core deep relationships with those core people, but then you’re also looking to launch a description. I actually would pause for a second and when we’re doing this pre-launch marketing, try and actually build a closer relationship with the people who respond positively.
[00:31:30] Michael Evans: Because if you’re like doing a survey to a mailing list of like 50,000 people, and I know I’m not talking to everyone who’s listening to this podcast, but I do know a few people listening are very successful authors and I’m very proud of you. That’s amazing. I hope we can help you be more successful. So if you have 50,000 subscribers on your mailing list, again, you’re not in the world of co fiction, you haven’t started a subscription yet.
[00:31:50] Michael Evans: You’re going to be starting a subscription and maybe you generated a lot of your readers from Ken Unlimited or ebook retailers or the world traditional publishing, wherever these readers come from, and you can contact them. , [00:32:00] this is great. But now you kind of had this situation where it’s like, how do I build a healthy community, build relationships with people at scale when that foundation maybe wasn’t there in the way that maybe would be most beneficial for your membership?
[00:32:14] Michael Evans: That isn’t a bad thing. I’m not saying you did anything wrong, but let’s now help you do better. So my advice, and I wanna hear your advice, Emilia, if I have 50,000 years on a mailing list, I would take the people who respond to my survey asking, Hey, I’m thinking about launching a membership. If y’all would be, wanna, wanna be part of it, I was thinking about like these rewards, pick your top one that you would consider and maybe you have like five options.
[00:32:37] Michael Evans: I would take the people who are respond to that. I would individually email them and ask them to join a call with me if you’re comfortable with that. If not, you could just email them very personally, like, not like a template, email. Email them personally back and start to spark that conversation because this person now.
[00:32:55] Michael Evans: is basically self electing. They just wanna support you more. Like, because they have an opportunity to support you [00:33:00] more. They wanna do that. This is not a proven thing yet that your subscription works, or they don’t even really know what the benefit is outside of Just Works. So the fact that they’re excited shows you that, oh, this person already like, feels a close connection to me.
[00:33:11] Michael Evans: And now if you can build that connection deeper with them, those, the people that you can then move into the beta launch phase, which we’ll talk about that it’s the second phase. But Emilia, what, what would be your advice to someone in that position who has a big audience and is at this pre-launch phase and doesn’t quite maybe have that baseline Super fans, those people that are in their Discord dms or their Facebook tms all the time.
[00:33:33] Michael Evans: What would be your advice to them?
[00:33:34] Emilia Rose: I don’t personally, I don’t like being on call with people. No. Like, like a lot of people I, and if I’m hosting it, I, I get nervous, so I understand if a lot of people wouldn’t wanna do something like that. But I do like what you mentioned is. Contacting the people who responded in your poll or responded positive positively to you starting a subscription.
[00:33:58] Emilia Rose: And just connecting with them. It could be like [00:34:00] in a Facebook group, if that’s where most of them are, or just like in an email thread. Those are really amazing places to just start that conversation and kind of have like those core fans be the people who are going to be in your subscription, but also like promote your subscription
[00:34:20] Michael Evans: as well.
[00:34:21] Michael Evans: I think that’s, I think it’s amazing insights and I think that once you have this kind of pre-launch phase, so if you’re starting without a readership, your pre-launch phase is a little bit more simple. It’s. Let’s go and get this thing started with the expectation that I will maintain consistency with my early access, assuming you’re coming from the world of serial fiction.
[00:34:42] Michael Evans: And as people come in, we’ll talk later about onboarding, but now let’s talk about the beta launch for people. Again, with an existing audience who are looking to launch description, you have these people who have now responded in your pre-launch who are interested in specific things in your subscription, and you’re saying, I’m going to launch it, but [00:35:00] beta launching isn’t then letting everyone know about it.
[00:35:03] Michael Evans: Beta launch is saying, okay, I had 10,000 people on my mailing list. I had a hundred people respond to my survey, and 20 seem to be interested. So I’m gonna email these 20 people and maybe five or 10 of them actually join. And I’m just gonna open it up to them and I’m gonna tell them we’re gonna keep this secret for now, and during this time you’ll keep it small.
[00:35:24] Michael Evans: Teach them the software, ask them how it’s going, and. Try and again, build these closer relations to your readers and a closer idea of like, what do they really want in this subscription? That would be my idea for what a good beta launch would look like. I’m curious what you think, what a good beta launch would look like.
[00:35:44] Emilia Rose: Yeah, so that’s actually a good question because one of the ways I work is I don’t do anything in the beta phase. I just like, I put it out there and tell everyone and just hope people join. I’m pretty bad at planning, but that’s actually one of the things I’m planning on doing when [00:36:00] I start to bring people over to Ream as I’m going to have a couple of my closest super fans people who I really trust join the platform first and not tell anyone really about it in the first couple weeks and just see how they like it and basically tell me what they like and what I’m going to be offering, like as an additional benefits for my subscription on Ream and what they might wanna see change and just a bunch of smaller stuff.
[00:36:30] Emilia Rose: So basically I, I agree with everything you. , you said
[00:36:35] Michael Evans: that’s a good idea though. You don’t need to do a beta launch. I’m trying to help people give you all the different ideas that you possibly could need. Yeah. To then try and figure out what works best for you. So when it comes to a beta launch, first of all, if you don’t have an existing big audience, there’s not much a reason to do a beta launch.
[00:36:52] Michael Evans: Yeah. But when talking to authors, and we’ve talked to quite a few who again, wanna launch a subscription who have, [00:37:00] maybe they’re already making a full-time income as an author in selling eBooks, Ali car in audiobooks and all the other revenue streams you could have now you wanna start a subscription. I think it is worthwhile before pressing both send maybe potentially saying, let me see how this is working for a small group people.
[00:37:14] Michael Evans: But you don’t have to do that because at the end of the day, the beauty of your subscription, and this is where we get into the launch phase, is that the launch. Is less important than you
[00:37:25] Emilia Rose: think? Yeah, yeah. I, I completely agree. And I, I’ll just say this, I’ve been launching a few subscriptions going into 2023 in different aspects.
[00:37:35] Emilia Rose: And launching, at least for me, is just like another day. I’m telling people that I have this subscription. It could be like physical goods or stickers. I’m telling them, and I’m gathering a few people at first, but launch isn’t as important as a launch, like for a book. It’s like you’re promoting it throughout the entirety of your subscription.
[00:37:59] Emilia Rose: You’re [00:38:00] gonna say like, Hey, you can always like come over and join my subscription each month. I give you two stickers if you join. Yeah. Come over. You get five chapters every month. And it’s not just like something, like this big thing that has to happen that will shoot you to like the top of Any subscription platforms, algorithms, it’s something that consistently you have to market.
[00:38:19] Emilia Rose: Which going back to what you said, launch isn’t as important as people think it
[00:38:23] Michael Evans: is. It’s interesting because I’ve been recently reading a lot of books about helping, mainly like technology companies, fortune 500 companies, and some of it’s focused on also solopreneurs and artists transitioning from, we’ll say a transactional model to a subscription model and studying how like companies like Adobe have done this because now a lot of authors might be using the Adobe suite for something.
[00:38:48] Michael Evans: I know I have Photoshop I Photoshop every single thumbnail. You see me in Emilia and I’m kidding. That’s not great , but I do have Photoshop. I have some other things in their suite and. They are subscription based, [00:39:00] so you can’t at the moment really buy 2020 twos Photoshop. They’ll come out with a new version each year and it’s just automatically updated and you’re paying it either yearly or monthly for access to that.
[00:39:11] Michael Evans: And it exists in the cloud, which is what has also that cloud, the nebulous term has been what’s kind of started a lot of the subscription economy. The idea that people can store access to things without ownership in Yeah, the digital spaces and servers that are cheap and scalable has changed how everything works.
[00:39:35] Michael Evans: Like every company, even like what you, as an author, we talk about like ownership online, but as an author you don’t technically own anything, and that sounds terrible, but like when you’re using. That software companies, even if you bought a license to it, are likely utilizing other programs, whether they’re open source or whether they’re paid for subscription, or they’re paying to be a subscription on a server somewhere to store your data.
[00:39:58] Michael Evans: That’s all part of this [00:40:00] grant subscription economy. Like we’re so embedded into the subscription economy that it’s almost impossible to get at it. And when thinking about consumer subscriptions, how to translate a company that’s been doing a transaction wave marketing into subscription marketing, the biggest thing that I’ve seen is that you have to communicate very clearly with your readers because that is the biggest thing people sometimes get thrown off.
[00:40:25] Michael Evans: They always, people always have the instinct of, are they trying to rip me off? Which is natural. We’ve all been thrown into that, okay, this company wants to make money for me. Your readers might not necessarily think that about you, but if we think about the music industry because.
[00:40:41] Michael Evans: This is now bringing in another, another rant, but it’s important Ticketmaster.
[00:40:45] Michael Evans: So we all know about the debacle they have with Taylor Swift, but there’s something important about ticker master that we don’t always talk about, that it’s not like their ability to glitch and things like that. It’s that Ticketmaster basically [00:41:00] serves as the PR dumpster fire for artists, for them to offload their idea that they might be kind of ripping off their fans sometimes.
[00:41:08] Michael Evans: Here’s what I mean. When Taylor Swift is playing in one city, the only time she’ll ever do that specific performance, any traditional like economic way to value that of supply versus demand, the value you get from it goes out the window. It’s completely based off emotions. So what is Taylor Swift’s ticket?
[00:41:27] Michael Evans: Really worth, it’s what anyone’s willing to pay. But people are willing to pay basically unlimited amounts of money. So Taylor Swift actually grossly under prices. Her tickets grossly under prices, her tickets. But I’m not saying this about Taylor Swift, civic, cuz I don’t know the deals that she makes in the backend, but what Ticketmaster does is they allow people, these farms, like literally like equity funds to buy up tickets in mass and then resell them.
[00:41:53] Michael Evans: And artists get a chunk of that profit. So they might get 20% of the resold tickets values that’ll go [00:42:00] for three x four x what they were at the actual sale because everything’s artificially constrained. Because for these big artists, the stadiums are not even big enough to fit them. I’m not trying to say that this is necessarily.
[00:42:13] Michael Evans: Wrong. Like I want artists to make money, but at the same time it is. It is this really interesting game of playing with people’s emotions and then ultimately Ticketmaster sitting there being the one who is saying, fans get angry at us for these high ticket prices and the scalping that goes on. Don’t get mad at the artist cause it’s not the artist’s fault, but it’s kind of genius cuz the artist benefits from it, which is why the whole industry is okay with it.
[00:42:39] Michael Evans: And fans ultimately, I’m not saying are completely and totally screwed, but if there was a cautionary tale, maybe don’t try and make yourself completely like Ticketmaster. You don’t want fans to feel a sour taste in your mouth description cuz it’s like, yeah, I am willing to pay anything for your subscription, but like a thousand bucks a month for a subscription that’s [00:43:00] early access.
[00:43:00] Michael Evans: Like there’s reasons why you see most authors pricing lower than that, even though some readers probably will pay you that much. This is also why some authors have higher tiers. I
[00:43:10] Michael Evans: promise we’re getting something good so. There’s this podcast called Breaking Points. We’re bringing it all around here. So Breaking Points is run by crystal Saga and oh my God, I’m forgetting, I’m forgetting the other one’s name.
[00:43:22] Michael Evans: Oh no, it’s Crystal. Ah, forgetting the code’s name, but Breaking points. Here’s the notes on this. They had 10,000 subscribers when they launched their subscription for their podcast in two days, 10,000. They broke away from traditional Washington media and created a community around basically like trying to be a bipartisan middle of the Road media platform.
[00:43:43] Michael Evans: That’s really just a podcast of them too. It’s grown a bit since then because they did have 10,000 subscribers. But what they did at Launch was launch multiple tiers. And this is genius, and I think we’re, we’re getting to something useful in this. So they created a tier, it was called the Lifetime Tier, [00:44:00] and you got lifetime access to the subscription at $1,500, which is a ton of money, but they had cheaper tiers, right?
[00:44:08] Michael Evans: So they had tiers at all these different price points. And this is the beauty of subscriptions that make subscriptions better than concert tickets. So concert tickets, everyone basically has to pay the same for that one seat that’s there. And it’s this one overall experience that like too bad, you snooze, you lose.
[00:44:23] Michael Evans: You try and make it affordable people, but you do leave people out. Your subscription, you can have lower price tiers that, I’m not saying 99 cents. 99 cents is probably a bad idea for a host of reasons, but something in the five to $20 range that’s a bit more accessible to people. But these higher priced tiers people will pay for.
[00:44:39] Michael Evans: Let me tell you exactly how much people paid for it outta the 10,000 people who subscribed 2.5% or 250 people paid for the lifetime tier in the first days of launch or gave them $1,500, which means that they made 300,000 plus dollars from selling lifetime access to subscriptions. Which to, to get the math here even more [00:45:00] at launch, if everyone paid monthly, right?
[00:45:02] Michael Evans: 10,000 people paid monthly, you would’ve made like $5 a month, $50,000 at launch cash flow coming in. But since they got 2.5%, just that 2.5% to of people outta the 10,000 people to pay $1,500 for the lifetime they made, in addition to all the other revenue they made, they also got $300,000 plus in cash upfront.
[00:45:24] Michael Evans: That’s really cool. So there’s ways to see what Taylor Swift does, see what these concerts are doing, see what other creators are doing, and apply it to our subscription in terms of how we do our pricing. But what was all this supposed to say? What we were actually getting back to, because I did go on a huge tangent, but I hope it was useful to people, is that we do obsess over the launch.
[00:45:50] Michael Evans: But the biggest thing, although I love the the 10,000 subscriber and two day example, because it feels like super big, that’s probably not gonna be how your subscription goes. And [00:46:00] for someone, Artist who’s having concerts. That is a one-time event, but your subscription’s not a one-time event. This is why you have so many advantages over musicians and other people who are trying to, again, create spaces that their super fans can be a part of and have better experiences.
[00:46:15] Michael Evans: Your concert, your subscription is an iterative experience. It’s not just one day event that all this pressure builds up to and it, it doesn’t work. You’re gonna be out tons of money. Your record label’s gonna kill you, and your career is over with your subscription instead of the launch being what’s valuable.
[00:46:31] Michael Evans: It’s constant iteration. And what you see with companies, big companies who’ve launched subscriptions is that they oftentimes don’t rip off the bandaid in one day. It’ll be a slow transition into new benefits, into new tier pricing, into new models. So it’s not like overnight. And they do this purposely because they know that it has to be an iterative model.
[00:46:51] Michael Evans: Yeah. That they build trust in continuously and not this big, sexy launch. Totally antithetical to how [00:47:00] transactional products work. .
[00:47:01] Emilia Rose: Yeah, I completely agree. And that’s what,
[00:47:04] Michael Evans: I’m sorry if that ran . No, you’re .
[00:47:07] Emilia Rose: Ok. No, that’s what I’ve seen a lot of people do even if they already have a big subscription, I do this as well.
[00:47:13] Emilia Rose: And I wanna launch a new tier or a new benefit to a tier. I will tell everyone about it, but it’s not, I don’t push it. I see if people join the new tier or use the new benefit and I tweak it and as the months go on, and I feel finally comfortable with what I’m offering, I’ll start pushing it out a lot more and be like, Hey guys, so we’re doing this now and this tier and here are the reasons why.
[00:47:38] Emilia Rose: And it’s a lot more, like you were saying, getting people comfortable in certain tier, certain benefits .
[00:47:44] Michael Evans: And when it comes to launching, because we already have so much on our plates as authors, my very simple advice is let your readers know that you’ve had existing connections to, that you’ve hopefully mapped out as part of your pre-launch.
[00:47:56] Michael Evans: But if you wanna roll up the pre-launch into the launch, you just have to let your readers know [00:48:00] who you already have relationships with. And especially let the ones know that, really like you. So if you have a Facebook group or a Discord server or anything like that, people like are really connected to you.
[00:48:09] Michael Evans: Those are good people to let know about your subscription.
[00:48:11] Emilia Rose: And a lot of times if you have really good connections with those readers, they’ll go out and market your subscription for you at times. I’ve even seen one of my really good author friends, somebody posted in a well known Facebook group and said Hey, you can go to this author subscription and she offers this content that you guys are looking for.
[00:48:30] Emilia Rose: Wow. Yeah. That’s
[00:48:32] Michael Evans: so cool. Let’s go you . Yeah.
[00:48:34] Michael Evans: And. I think that another really interesting piece to this is that when you actually decide to come out your subscription, you don’t have to forever have your tears be the same, which is part of this iteration. So one thing you could do as well as part of your launch, it’s a tactic that this is probably something better to do if you have an existing audience, but you could also do this if you don’t have an existing audience to entice your first people to [00:49:00] come in.
[00:49:00] Michael Evans: It works either way. You can have a founding tier and you don’t necessarily need to call it a founding tier, but like your early tier that maybe will be capped in terms of the number of members in it, or you’ll archive it after certain period of times that people who join in the first 30 days or so get certain benefits.
[00:49:17] Michael Evans: And to my understanding, you’re gonna be doing this when you switch to ream, is that right, Emilia?
[00:49:21] Emilia Rose: Yes. Sort of. So yeah, I’m definitely archiving a couple tiers., I’m changing my benefits around a little bit in 2023, just in general. And I’m archiving certain benefits and I’ve already archived my lowest tier that I wanted to archive, so I’m probably going to hold off on that.
[00:49:39] Emilia Rose: But yeah, it’s a lot of tweaking and a lot of just offering new things when you think they’re needed.
[00:49:46] Michael Evans: It’s something that’s different because we’re used to having one product as a book and maybe we’ll go back out and make edits the books. But I would think more of this like an amusement park.
[00:49:57] Michael Evans: And I don’t used an example before, but imagine [00:50:00] if Disney never came out with any new rides. Yeah. They never did anything it. It would be tough to get the same people coming back each year because for an experience, cuz we’re part of the broader experience. Kind of economy, the experience movement of people wanting access to memories
[00:50:18] Michael Evans: disney, if they get someone to come to the theme park once is great. But how Disney makes most of their money in their theme parks are people who come back every single year. That’s like, that’s what they want. They want those super fans and they do that because, oh, and it’s not like a crazy, like they opened up a brand new theme park.
[00:50:36] Michael Evans: It’s like, oh, star Wars in the Star Wars section opened up a specific bar that’s themed for this specific area of the world that you have to join And. , what is your equivalent of that? You are not Disney, but also Disney’s a two 50 billion company. So like you don’t have to be that big to be very successful.
[00:50:53] Michael Evans: What is your version of over time I’m opening up, you know, Java the Huts bar. Like what, what [00:51:00] would that equivalent be for your world or Harry Potter? Ws like people freaked out even when they had like their new beer. I think like there was a Harry Potter alcoholic beverage in the park that people like really wanted to go back to and it’s like they get ’em in the gates, right?
[00:51:15] Michael Evans: You need to get people in the gates of your subscription somehow. Especially the fans who already like your IP, who already are interested in your worlds.
[00:51:22] Michael Evans: This goes back to I think, the biggest principle subscription marketing, which is that oftentimes we always are finding new readers. We’re obsessed with how do we find new people.
[00:51:33] Michael Evans: But the part of a subscription, maybe the freeing part of it, for some people, maybe the uncomfortable part about it for others is that. It has this belief that your most important readers are the ones who already, like your books, the people who are already paying you. Those are the most important customers you have.
[00:51:49] Emilia Rose: I feel like a lot of people who do, at least I know, early access and, and I guess bonus content too. Those readers are readers who are invested in you and in your [00:52:00] brand and in your stories and anything you write. And so you don’t have to go out and constantly market and to, to new people to get them to join.
[00:52:08] Emilia Rose: Yeah.
[00:52:09] Michael Evans: Yeah. And it’s also, Way cheaper to keep someone happier and keep paying you monthly or annually rather than having to find a totally new person they have to go build that trust with, to then replace someone who left your subscription. Like the most important thing you could do is keep existing people there.
[00:52:28] Michael Evans: Cause if you have a system that does that, then the lifetime value of your reader becomes absurdly high. Like if your average reader stays in your subscription for let’s say 24 months, and that doesn’t count them buying your book sales for that doesn’t count. All the other things that might, might do to actually give you like tangible money.
[00:52:47] Michael Evans: Because as much as we don’t wanna hyper focus on numbers, numbers are important. If they’re paying you $10 a month for, you know, 18 months straight on average, that means like your average reader is gonna generate you north of [00:53:00] $150. That’s pretty incredible in a, in a short period of time too. And I don’t think that this is impossible.
[00:53:05] Michael Evans: I, we’ve heard stories of authors being able to make, you know, a hundred of dollars in average per readers and in subscriptions over the course of a year. So, When you have that as your average value, we talk about read through rates and Facebook ads and , my series is worth $17. So if I can have an ad that goes in that $10, I’ll end up making money to acquire that reader.
[00:53:26] Michael Evans: Your subscription adds so much more value to that, that no matter what else you’re doing to market your books and market your brand becomes more profitable. And anything you’re doing works more cuz you’re feeding more people into the bigger flywheel that you have. So when it comes to actually marketing your subscription, the best thing you could do is make your existing people happy.
[00:53:49] Emilia Rose: Yeah, and what’s really great, I know we’ve probably said this multiple times, but what’s really great about having a subscription is you have to provide content consistently, but you don’t have to convince [00:54:00] people to pay you every single month if they’re on a subscription. If you’re selling your books and you sell like, and you release one a month, every single time you release, you have to convince your fans to buy that book.
[00:54:13] Emilia Rose: Like go to Amazon, go to Barnes and Noble and physically purchase it again and again and again every single month. But it just happens kind of automatically through a subscription.
[00:54:23] Michael Evans: It’s incredible. It’s so cool. And honestly, to end this podcast off, cause I know we’ve probably completely overwhelmed everyone, but that’s a sign of a good podcast if it’s like positive, overwhelming.
[00:54:35] Michael Evans: I want to ask you, what would be something that you wish you did differently looking back. when it comes to marketing your subscription, what’s something you learned that you’re now gonna apply as you maybe begin marketing your new subscription that will be on re?
[00:54:51] Emilia Rose: So for a while I was caught up in wanting more and wanting more people to be on my subscription and [00:55:00] just like trying to get my books in as many places as possible.
[00:55:03] Emilia Rose: And it’s like, it’s what a lot of authors fall into is like that trap of wanting more and more and more and getting more readers and wanting to hit big on Instagram or TikTok or Facebook or whatever you promote. And so when I was doing that, I was getting away from like the core of my subscription and getting away from leaving those author notes or connecting with breeders on a deeper level.
[00:55:24] Emilia Rose: And I think that really hurt me, and that’s something I’ve definitely have started to change and I’m going to change as I move into rehab. I move into 2023 is just going back to where I started and focusing on community.
[00:55:39] Michael Evans: I love that, and it is community-based creators who I think in an age of AI and an age of ever increasing technological encroachment slash development will be the ones who make better experiences for breeders who make this world a better place, and ultimately they will benefit as a [00:56:00] business from that.
[00:56:00] Michael Evans: But because you’re doing the right things for the people you care about, my advice would be on a front that I know a lot of people are probably thinking about. As you draw your connection map of all your different readers and all your different platforms, there’s this pressure as authors to like create an account on every social media platform.
[00:56:17] Michael Evans: So you’re like, oh my God, I have to like promote my subscription in eight different places. How am I going to possibly do this? It’s very overwhelming. It has been proven across studies that like sites like Paton have done, who have creators that are across all different disciplines that it. It’s beneficial to regularly remind your fans who are not part of your membership about it.
[00:56:40] Michael Evans: That’s a good thing. So you have to be making these call to actions. But now if it’s like I have to make a post my Instagram, post my Facebook post, my Twitter post, my TikTok post, my Facebook group, post my newsletter each week, you’re like, I now have a part-time job just letting people know that this thing exists.
[00:56:54] Michael Evans: Yeah, that could be very annoying. So here’s my advice to try help you with that. We just told you the [00:57:00] secret descriptions, which I wish it was the kind of secret that’s like, oh yeah, like if you do this, you’ll make a million dollars tomorrow. But it doesn’t work that way. Sorry. But the secret is, building greater relationships with your readers will make your business better regardless, no matter what happens, whether you have a subscription or not.
[00:57:14] Michael Evans: And if you do have a scription, it is essential to make it work. So my advice would be, Try and have one place that you’re really connecting with your readers. Like one place. Yeah. Because when you bring it all into the roof of one area and begin to just try and funnel people into that area, it takes a lot of the stress off of like, oh my God, I have notifications on eight different platforms.
[00:57:36] Michael Evans: Like you probably will still have readers emailing you, emails a nice thing, but pick one other place to actually have your community to actually create content. Because when you’re trying to promote it everywhere, I think it gets very overwhelming. And this is good advice for authors too, who haven’t begun actually marketing their brands yet, who are just getting into the social media, getting into advertising, getting into publishing.
[00:57:57] Michael Evans: So you have to think as a [00:58:00] solopreneur, as a creator, how can I make my life easier? And I think the way that you can make your life easier first is to simplify and realize that you just need one platform, one space. Connect your readers, one channel working to. Have this great funnel into your description to have this great experience.
[00:58:16] Michael Evans: And I would not try and get too overwhelmed with it all.
[00:58:19] Emilia Rose: Yeah, that’s very true. It’s really, it’s really easy to get overwhelmed with all the platforms and all the new ones popping up and all the cool new things that you can do in your business. But yeah, focusing on one is really important and getting really good at it.
[00:58:34] Michael Evans: It’s like if you wanna write, run a Facebook group for Dark Romance readers. There’s, there’s a lot of people out there who like to read Dark Romance and who like to write Dark Romance. You wanna create one of the best places for them to be in, not because you can’t uplift other authors in the process.
[00:58:51] Michael Evans: This is all a collaborative thing. You could work with other authors, create these spaces, but you do wanna create the best space for readers because readers are probably not [00:59:00] going to be part of 30 Dark Romance communities at once. It’s probably a lot for people to actively be a part of. And when you think too about engagement, Most people who actually are connected to your brand will never let you know.
[00:59:10] Michael Evans: This is the depressing part about it. Yeah. So when you have people actually let you know they like you, that’s really important to keep in touch with that. And it’s something like 80 to 90% of people are lurkers. 10% sometimes participate and one to 2%. Any online CUNY end up like doing like 80% of the interacting, which means that if you have like a thousand people on your mailing list to be regularly getting replies from 10 to 20 people is really good.
[00:59:36] Michael Evans: So don’t feel like you need 500 responses. Like that’s, that’s great if you could do that. But that’s just not typical. That’s more typical. And when thinking about marketing your subscription, the last number I’ll give to people, I like to hesitate, not try and set norms, but it’s nice to know what can happen.
[00:59:53] Michael Evans: Anywhere from two to 5% of your readership being on your subscription is a success and that will be a very significant [01:00:00] revenue stream for you because. Two to 5% of your readership paying you three to four times more on average than your typical reader generates. You could end up being 20, 30%, 40% of your income for your business as an author, which sounds nice to me.
[01:00:15] Michael Evans: So again, those are just things to think about of am I doing a good job with this? Do I have a hundred thousand people on my mailing list and only 10 people on my subscription? Maybe I have a problem or do I have a thousand people on my mailing list and 50 on my subscription? That’s actually, you’re, you’re off to a great start and I’m proud of you.
[01:00:34] Michael Evans: Yes. Yeah. I think that’s everything about marketing your subscription. I mean, I dunno if it’s everything, but it’s a lot. . It’s a lot. Yeah. ,
[01:00:43] Emilia Rose: it
[01:00:44] Michael Evans: definitely is not, not all of it, but if you want more of it, we also will be releasing more episodes in this series, so stay tuned because we have definitely not talked about all the different areas of running your subscription, which is kind of funny, but also kind of cool for all of y’all to [01:01:00] be able to listen in.
[01:01:00] Michael Evans: So thank you for being here, . Yeah, thank you.
[01:01:03] Michael Evans: Thank you for listening to this podcast. Honestly, I know this one was kind of all over the place, but I was feeling really excited during this one, and I think me and Emilia loved creating it. So I hope you all enjoyed it. If you’re looking for more information on how to market your subscription, we actually came out, the subscription starter guide more will be coming out with it in like two or three days.
[01:01:23] Michael Evans: So if you’re not on the descriptions for author’s mailing list yet, you should, you should join it. It’ll be linked down the description, and if you sign up there, Or if you sign up for the re wait list, which will also be linked down the description, you’ll be sent a free copy of the descriptions for others starter guide.
[01:01:38] Michael Evans: If you’re listening to us into the future, that early access starter guide may or may not be free anymore, I’m not sure. So I hope you on our mailing list in time, and if you sign up to our mailing list, I think probably before May, you should get the copy of the free before it releases out into the actual wild, into the real world.
[01:01:56] Michael Evans: So I encourage you to look at. [01:02:00] Otherwise, I’ve been kind of tired of hearing me and Emilia’s voice because we’ve done like a lot of solo episodes recently. We have two more solo episodes coming up to end our subscription starter series. One of them’s gonna be about struggles in your subscription. The other one’s gonna be just me, a short episode.
[01:02:16] Michael Evans: I know a short episode coming from me feels paradoxical, but it will be short and it’ll be of analyzing the top 500 fiction authors inscription. These episodes will be coming out in the next few days, which will be really exciting. And then we get back into some amazing interviews. We have four awesome interviews coming out in February.
[01:02:34] Michael Evans: One with Terry Bruce, one with even Ellis, one with Steph, PA Jons, and one with Russell Ty, which is gonna be incredible. And then we’ll see what March and April brings us. But that’s it for this podcast. Thank you so much for listening and I hope everyone has amazing rest of their day. And in the meantime, don’t forget storytellers rule the world.
[01:02:57] Michael Evans: They do. You do.