Now we’re well and truely into the second half of the year and the final sprint to see if my project will continue beyond this year.
Let’s dig in to what happened this month.
The mass exodus
I lost 4 members this month, that’s almost a quarter of my members gone. Two thirds my entire second launch. These were all from my first round of people.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t take it personally but it does definitely hurt a little.
Having said that I feel responsible because I wasn’t as engaged as I should have been.
We had a burst water pipe and we’ve been without water in our house for over a month so I’ve been somewhat distracted and have had less time to work on pumping out the content. I’ve not missed getting content out but it’s always been down to the wire.
This has definitely put a bit of a firecracker behind me to get ahead and motivated to get things more streamlined and scheduled in advance. Because the reality is life happens!
But it’s also part of having a membership there will always be churn. Nothing will stop that, and I need to get ok with that.
Losing this amount of members has basically taken away my goal of being able to pay myself for now but I am not giving up on hope of this, it will happen eventually.
Success on the socials
I’ve been pushing more of my content on Instagram and Pinterest and it’s certainly paying off in terms of getting traffic to my website with it almost tripling. Email signup conversions are slightly up as well (still not the greatest) with results similar to what I was getting during a paid ads.
I am not sure what has really changed but on Instagram I’ve gone from an average of 100 likes on my posts to upwards of 500 and an average reach of 20k. It’s like I’ve reached a tipping point. The main thing I can attribute it to been doing is when I haven’t got anything to post I just go and comment on accounts that I like (and are in the same industry).
Plan the August launch
For my next launch I am planning a 3 day challenge with a pop up Facebook group with a live video each day.
I’ve mapped out the plan for this with the goal of running it late August.
The live video element is always tough because it’s super hard to have the kids under control (especially when you’ve got a kid who melt downs at the smallest things and sounds like she’s being murdered). I always feel massive amounts of guilt making hubby take them. Which I know I shouldn’t!
Feedback and new ideas
The other thing I need to do is take on board the feedback I am getting. People want step by step, not necessarily more content. I have laid it out in this format but I am not sure if it’s clear enough that these are the steps people need to take so I need to look at strategies to make this more intuitive. This feedback has given me direction on how to move forward with my next product.
The plan is to launch the membership one more time this year and within the membership I’ll beta test the course, which I’ll launch as a stand alone product and then turn it into a funnel for my membership. I’ll probably only then launch the course to new leads and open doors to the membership to those who’ve completed the course and want to continue the journey.
I am however a little reluctant to take on all the feedback and some people have requested more stuff posted directly in the Facebook group instead of the portal. This concerns me as what happens if Facebook changes? Who then owns the rights to the content? What about the members who don’t use Facebook? All valid concerns and things to look at in the long run. Instead Ive decided to meet halfway, post way more but will just reference things within the portal more frequently.
Struggling with time
I really am struggling to get things done now. Ivy has mostly dropped her nap, so the only time I get to work on the project is when hubby takes them out for an hour or so on the weekend. I always feel like massive guilt over making him do this as we’re trying to fix two bathrooms at the moment as a result of our water leaks.
So for me to continue I need to outsource or get the kids in daycare or both. It’s so the chicken or the egg situation and I really need to do something about it next month.
Create a new lead magnet
I didn’t get a chance to get this done, so adding it to next months huge list of tasks.
JULY STATS
Members – 14
MARKETING
Email subscribers – 520(+55)
Instagram followers – 8187 ( +1184)
Facebook followers – 729 (+28)
Average Monthly website hits – 3800 (+93%)
DOLLARS
Money earned – $156
Money spent: $92.76
Hosting $22.50
Payment Fees $8
Vimeo (video storage) $13.20
Jetpack (spam/backup/security) $12.86
Biz name renewal $36
Total profit this month: $63.24
Total carried forward: profit of $83.86
TIME
Hours spent on the project : Approx 5
MY COMMITMENT FOR AUGUST
Create a new lead magnet
Spring Launch
Start creating new offer
September SNAPSHOT
Launch a new offer.
Until next month, if you’re not on the list to get my regular updates on this project and are wanting to follow along you can sign up here.