Quick Overview

Think it’s impossible to launch a new membership site in less than a week? If so, check out this Case Study about a premium newsletter service that was launched in just six days for less than $1,000. Business coach Justin Lukasavige tells Insider the secrets of his rapid site launch, including how he conducted *very* informal market research, why he skipped the typical practice of creating a big archive of web content, and how he solved the technology challenges of integrating several platforms and plugins to power the site. Plus, you’ll get great ideas for no-cost marketing tactics, including providing comp subscriptions to bloggers, working your LinkedIn contacts, and cross-promoting the new service on an established sister-site.

Company Snapshot

Founded: January, 2011
No. of Employees: One (Founder Justin Lukasavige)
Business Model: Subscriptions
Headquarters: Cary, NC
http://www.needatopic.com
http://www.coachradio.tv/

Target Audience

Need a Topic’s primary audience is entrepreneurs and business owners who are blogging to either market their business or to make money from the blog itself, but need help producing consistent, quality blog content. Personal bloggers are a secondary market.

Content Model

Need a Topic provides writing ideas and practical advice to grow profitable blogs. Content is delivered to members three times a week through email newsletters:

Each Monday members receive an email newsletter focused on blog topics — five to 10 ideas for posts that any blogger can adapt for their own written or audio/video content. Topics are applicable to any business or subject matter niche, such as incorporating personal information in a business blog, creating how-to content, or becoming a resource.

Wednesday’s newsletter focuses on blog management tips, such as how to get free products to review and how to create good “about me/us” pages.

Friday’s newsletter focuses on techniques to improve blogging technology or operations, such as using plugins, creating shorter URLs, or uploading pictures. The techniques newsletter is extremely practical, offering detailed steps for implementing recommended techniques.

Each email newsletter is delivered at 9 am ET, and designed to take only 10 minutes to read. They contain practical steps members can take to put the recommendations to work right away.

Newsletter content is also posted to the Need a Topic website in a password-protected members-only section. Non-members can view the newsletter headline and the first sentence or two of the newsletter (typically a quick teaser about that issue’s topics/tips/technique), but must sign-up and login to view the compete article. There is no free content on the site.

Lukasavige came up with the overall concept and the three-email format while hiking in the mountains near his home in North Carolina on a Friday afternoon. Over the same weekend, he reached out to his contacts in the blogging world — many of whom he met while interviewing them for his free, business coaching podcast site CoachRadio.tv — to ask what they thought of the idea. The immediate response was so positive that he began developing the site immediately and had it ready to launch by the next Wednesday.

“I hesitate to tell people that sometimes don’t need it, but if you know yourself well enough you don’t always need an in-depth, detailed plan.”

To help get the site up quickly, Lukasavige did not pre-load his online archive with any content. Instead, he simply created the first week’s three-newsletter series and began promoting the new service.

“The archives are not the powerful thing — the power is in getting a relevant, timely email that you can use right away,” he says. “It never really entered my mind launch with a big archive. The project was all based around selling the deliverability of an email.”

Lukasavige writes all newsletter content himself, brainstorming each week’s three-email series on Friday mornings and then writing the three newsletters in an hour or two. He then uploads the articles to his blog admin window and schedules them to be published on Monday, Wednesday or Friday. His email publishing platform is tied to the blogging platform to automatically send a new newsletter as soon as content is published (see Technology and Vendors Used, below).

Revenue Streams

All of Need a Topic’s revenues come from monthly membership fees. Memberships cost only $7 a month, and autorenew.

Lukasavige chose the low monthly rate to balance two goals: Making it affordable enough to attract members, but requiring some payment to reflect the value of the weekly topics, tips, and techniques that will help members increase the profitability of their own blogs.

The low rate also helps introduce new readers to Lukasavige’s ideas and expertise, so the newsletter performs lead generation for potential coaching clients, who may spend $2,000 with him.

Marketing Tactics

Cross-promotion on CoachRadio.tv

Lukasavige has used his podcasting site to promote Need a Topic in several ways. Prior to launching the premium newsletter service, he began teasing the concept in his podcasts and CoachRadio.tv email newsletter. As soon as he revealed the Need a Topic URL to his CoachRadio.tv audience, he says he got his first member signups.

Subsequent promotions include occasional mentions of Need a Topic in CoachRadio newsletters and podcasts, as well as a permanent ad for Need a Topic in the CoachRadio.tv website sidebar.

Guest blogging

Lukasavige is a frequent guest blogger for several other coaching/blogging sites. Most guest-posting arrangements allow him to link to CoachRadio.tv, where visitors can sign up for a newsletter and learn about Need a Topic that way.

But one of his regular guest-posting gigs is at the site EpicLaunch.com, which has allowed him to place an ad for Need a Topic on the site.

Complimentary subscriptions to bloggers

After launching Need a Topic, Lukasavige went back to his contacts in the blogging community and offered complimentary subscriptions to about six bloggers with a range of experience — some with several years of blogging under their belt, some who were business owners new to blogging.

He did not require anyone to blog about Need a Topic in exchange for the complimentary subscription, but says, “Without exception, every single person is talking about it. It doesn’t cost me any overhead to do that.”

Emails to LinkedIn connections

Lukasavige reached out to about 200 of his 800 LinkedIn connections via email to let them know about the new service. (A free LinkedIn membership allows you to send the same message to 50 of your connections at a time.)

Homepage design to encourage conversions

Because the content is primarily delivered through email, Lukasavige was able to dedicate his homepage design and copy to generating conversions.

He created five tabs that a visitor can click on, or scroll through sideways using arrows on the right and left of each screen, to see a succinct description of the service and pitch for a paid membership. The tabs include:

• A “welcome” screen describing Lukasavige’s background and the inspiration for the service
• A “challenge” screen presenting data that shows 60% of business struggle to produce blog content
• A “solution” screen outlining Need a Topic’s weekly emails
• A “free” screen explaining why the service costs $7 a month
• A “join” screen that includes a link to the membership signup page.

Free trial

The membership sign-up process includes a 7-day free trial to let prospects view one week’s worth of topics, tips, and techniques emails. The trial requires either a credit card number or a PayPal account.

“I want people to have some buy in,” says Lukasavige. “If you’re not willing to invest in that 7-day free trial, you’re going to be someone who’s a lot of work for that $7 we charge.”

The free trial is also promoted won the homepage through a narrow banner that appears at the top of the browser window. The banner contains the copy, “Now with a 7-day free trial” and a text link that says “join now.” The banner is generating a 7% CTR.

Technology and Vendors Used

Lukasavige built the entire service on low-cost, off-the-shelf platforms, but still faced some programming challenges to tie all those pieces together. In fact, creating the integrated platform was the most difficult part of the launch, he says. Here’s how he did it:

WordPress: The blogging platform on which he built Need a Topic.com, and through which he uploads each week’s three articles.
http://wordpress.org/

AMember: The site’s membership and subscription management platform that maintains the membership database.
http://www.amember.com/

AWeber: The email marketing program used for sending the email newsletters.
https://www.aweber.com/landing.htm

PayPal: The payment processing platform Lukasavige uses to collect membership fees.
https://www.paypal.com/

AMail: A plugin that syncs the site’s AMember member database with its AWeber email database and the PayPal payment processing database. The plugin solves a major logistical problem: How to get new members’ email addresses added to AWeber automatically, and how to remove those addresses automatically if they use PayPal to cancel their membership
http://kencinnus.com/plugins/integration/amail/

HelloBar: Provides the message-bar banner technology that promotes Need a Topic’s free trial. The platform creates a narrow, embedded message bar that automatically appears at the top of the screen to present an offer and a link to a landing page.
http://www.hellobar.com/

About Justin Lukasavige

Lukasavige took one of the more interesting routes to the online content/membership site industry. He graduated from college with a degree in aviation and worked as a commercial airline pilot before starting a side business helping people get out of debt. From that experience, he launched a personal/professional coaching business called Lukas Coaching.

He used his coaching experience to create CoachRadio.tv, a free podcast site dedicated to helping people grow their online businesses and blogs. But he saw an opportunity to create a premium service dedicated to one of the top challenges he saw among his coaching clients and podcast audience: “One of the things they’re struggling with is just being real consistent about putting out good, quality information to build their businesses.”

Subscription Site Insider’s Analysis

We love this kind of down-and-dirty project as a way to test premium content ideas. In most cases a more detailed planning processes is required for a site launch, but Need a Topic shows that sometimes an idea is simple enough to execute and requires so little overhead that it may be better to just get it out there and make improvements based on member response. The premium email newsletter model aimed a specific challenge or niche audience also is an intriguing option for sites looking for ancillary revenue streams. Finally, note that Lukasavige did no paid marketing to promote the service — instead relying on blogger outreach, his LinkedIn connections, and cross-promotion from his primary business. Those are ideas that any subscription site could put to use for their own service.

Eventually, though, the site will have to expand its marketing outreach beyond Lukasavige’s existing audience and networking connections to maintain its growth. A formal referral-marketing program seems like a natural fit to get current members to help spread the word about the service. And once the service is better established, price testing that $7 monthly membership fee may reveal that Lukasavige can raise the membership fee slightly to increase profits while still converting new members.