We have SO much going on in the business right now…that I thought you guys might want a sneaky peaky into WHAT the hell is going on in the biz, WHY we are making those decisions, and HOW we are making it all happen.

Specifically, I’m going to be chattin’ you guys up on:

  1. Why I decided this biz needed a rebrand… and HOW we put the new brand into action.
  2. I’m going to give you guys a quick step-by-step process to why and what I’ve been up to in the Summit world!!!  (GAH…NOVEMBER IS SO CLOSE!!)
  3. Finally, I’m going to talk about a a TERRIBLE decision I made for the membership…and how I turned it back around.

SO…let’s get going, shall we?

It’s time to rebrand a blog, Baby….

In case you guys haven’t been on the UCYD site recently (shaaaaaame) we are going through a BIT of an identity crises!! About four days ago…I made the decision to change up the brand in the membership site.

My reasoning:

  1. It felt stale…and emotionless.  It was a color pallet with no passion.
  2. I hated the imagery.  Although the images I was using were gorgeous in their own right…they didn’t fit my message.
  3. I’ve learned a TON of new design techniques around worksheets, graphics, URL’s, etc…so in order to TRULY show off this new knowledge, I needed to re-design everything from the ground up.
  4. I was bored!  It’s as simple as that.  When I’m bored in my business, I know something needs to change…whether it’s the visuals, the message, the products or an event.  This is MY home before anything else…and I want to love every second of being here.

SO…once I’d determined that it was the brand that was holding me back, I began brainstorming what I REALLY wanted to see in my business.  The new brand is something that I’ve had in my head for nearly 15 years.  I’m a dorky, colorful, cartoon loving lady…and I want to CONNECT with like minded folks!! I want readers to find my site and be instantly happy and curious.

And damn it…I think I’ve nailed it.

I wasn’t sure what I wanted the site to look like…but I knew it I didn’t want to be all “Tom and Jerry”, so I began looking on the site Creative Market for already put together “bundles” for inspiration.  I kid you not…when I say that 10 minutes into my search I ran across a comic book bundle that jumped off the page.  It screamed “DOWNLOAD ME FOR $15!!!  I’M THE ONE YOU WANT!!”

The bundle was a poster making bundle that included fonts, a few graphic images, a few pre-made layouts, patterns, and some layovers to give the images that old time-y feel.  After messing around with with the designs for an hour so…I had a general layout of text, backgrounds and texture.  All it needed was a bit of OOMF.

So, I headed back to Creative Market and began a search for vintage clip art.  In a few minutes, I found an artist that created clip art in old comic book style….and I proceeded to purchase nearly every piece she published.  (I’m STOCKED FOR LIFE!!…get it?  Because it was stock art? Har har har.)

It took around two hours…but I had completed my initial design for a single course icon.  The GREAT thing about Photoshop, is that you can EASILY create templates to re-use over and over again…simply by adjusting the colors and changing out the clip art.

In the last FOUR days, I’ve wrapped up the design in the membership site and can EASILY create a new course or live training icon in under 5 minutes.  Even better??  Every time I log into the membership…I fall even MORE in love in with the designs!!

I loved the original color pallet..so that made the re-branding seamless and quick…but NOW, we are in the process of updating the brand to the public.  The plan:

  1. Social media accounts (banners, icons, the Facebook Group, etc).
  2. The three primary opt-ins.
  3. The face of the blog (banners, sidebar, etc.)
  4. Individual blog post branding (inline banners, primary post image, pins, and social media images)
  5. Smaller downloads and quick worksheets where needed.

HOLY COW…there’s a lot to get done! WHY AM I SITTING HERE JAWIN’ WITH YOU GUYS??!!

BECAUSE…there’s still so much more to go over.

The Summit

Although there IS going to be an official announcement for the Summit in October, I wanted to give you guys a quick idea of WHAT we are planning and HOW we getting the job done! In November, we’ll be launching the “2017 Traffic Whoosh Workshop”…a collection of 20 speakers ALL giving their traffic building secrets. The KEY element of every presentation will be THEIR whoosh moment story.

A summit has been something I’ve been contemplating for nearly a year…since my first Summit with Sam Bell’s 2017 Ladyboss Summit last March! That summit brought in a HUGE audience boost, a pretty decent chunk of change, and thrill.  I’d be lying, though, if I said I wasn’t scared shitless to try and host one myself! ME??  Trying to wrangle 20+ speakers into time slots and topics???

Uuuuuuhhhhhhh…..

And THAT is literally what I’ve been saying for the last few months.  I TRULY believe a summit can be a game changer…but I also didn’t want to get into something over my head.

SO…two week ago, I told myself “Based on everything I know about being an Attendee for a summit (I’ve spoken at 3 now!!), I’ll simply start designing the website. If it seems too intimidating, I’ll put it on the back burner and start building a team for it.”

So, first I designed the speaker page. I decided to start here first, since this was the information I was intimidated by the most.  It took me two days to get the sucker written and branded (which I had to rebrand yesterday…ugh), but it was WAY easier than I thought!!   With my calendar up to check dates, an Acuity Calendar, and Sam Bell’s SERIOUSLY MIND BLOWINGLY PHENOMENAL Podcast on organizing a summit…the planning literally flew from my fingertips.

Within the week, I had the speaker page, the sign up page, the affiliate page, and the schedule page (with no schedule yet) designed and in place!!

That was the hard part!!! DONE IN JUST A FEW DAYS!!  I REALLY need to stop doubting myself.

SO…what’s next on the agenda?  Finding my speakers!  I’ve put together a list of my top 25…and those slots are filling up fast, so I think we’ll be WAY ahead of that 3 month deadline!

The Membership

Finally, (I TOLD you there was a lot going on!) we have a LOT of updates happening in the membership site!!  Before we go over those, though…I want to talk a LITTLE bit about a mistake I made.  I want to preface it with…I started this membership as a bit of an experiment. Since I’ve never LAUNCHED or OWNED a membership before, I’ve been winging it and learning everything as I go!!

Related Posts:   How to Increase Sales On Less Than 100 Page Views a Day

I’m sure more than a FEW of you can attest to the amount of contradictory information in the world of digital entrepreneurship.

SO, two weeks ago, I decided to make my evergreen Membership “open and closed”.  I did this for a few reasons.

  1. I DESPERATELY hate launching…and having an Evergreen model membership means launching in SOME capacity every single month.  An opened and closed model, means I’d only have to launch the membership 3-4 times a year.
  2. I wanted to make more time for content creation!  I was spending so much time launching…and working to get members, that I didn’t have enough time to really create the content I was dreaming of for my members.

These are two REALLY good reasons.  SO with almost 150 members (that’s almost $4,500 in income), I made the decision do one FINAL launch…then shut the doors. On average, I get about 1-2 sign ups a day…which is PRETTY damn good!!  So I really struggled with the idea of turning people away.

BUT, I created my “notify me when the doors open” page…and went forward with the shutting up shop plan.

In case you aren’t aware…in the membership world, there is something called “Churn Rate”.  This is the rate at which people leave your membership.  Membership cancellations are common, even for the absolute TOP memberships!!  The average churn rate is around 20% - 40%. My churn rate has been around 20%…which I am SUPER proud of.  This means that out of 100 people who sign up, only around 17-20 of them decide they need to cancel for some reason.

So….here I was, closing the doors to any new members who thought they might want to join.  Oh MAN, was I miserable!!  My “sign up to be notified” page grabbed about a sign up a day…which was pretty on par with how many folks sign up for the membership.

I re-opened the doors after a week for two reasons:

  1. Looking at a number that COULD mean income out of your reach is excruciating!!!
  2. If the same number of people are signing up for the “notify me page” as would be for the actual membership…we’ll LOSE money when we re-open the doors.  Statistically, only 2% of a list will click a “sign up” button… which meant out of (for example) 100 people who said they were interested in joining in the moment…only 2 would likely hit the “join” button when we re-opened.

I’m not saying this system doesn’t work for other memberships!!  I’m just saying that right now…for MY membership, it wasn’t a good idea.

SO…I am SUPER happy to officially announce that the doors are BACK open to the membership!  We DID, however, take that brief time to make some serious changes inside!!

The Membership Course

Since launching the membership, I’ve learned a LOOOOOT about building them wrong AND building them right!!  Since it’s a product that I’m working to promote in almost every blog post and email I send out…it’s been one of my biggest drivers of traffic and sources of income OF ALL TIME!!  I’ve been receiving a lot of emails from blogger’s asking how I’ve done the tech AND how I organize my content inside of the membership…so this month I’ll be releasing a Membership Course for…well…members!!

We’ll go through types, creation, marketing and more.  I’m preeeeeetty excited!

November Summit 

In November, I’ll be hosting “The Traffic Whoosh Workshop”!!!  It will be open to the public…but I’ve decided to trickle out the replays inside of the membership!!!  There will be 20 other speakers (some HUGE names have already come on board!!!  I’m so freakin’ excited!!) ALL talking about the moments they truly connected with their audience and got their “traffic whoosh”…PLUS, tips and trainings on how listeners can do the same.

I’ll be announcing the summit November 1st…and members are more than welcome to attend for free! BUT, they’ll also get access slowly to the replays starting in December. Most likely, we’ll be adding 2-3 a month.

Zoe Linda’s Influencer Marketing 101 

We JUST added this course this week and I am SOOOOOOOOOOO excited!!! Influencer marketing was the cause of a 5,000 person boost in traffic I had two weekends ago.  (It was insane in the brain.).  This method of marketing has nothing but benefits, and is one of the QUICKEST ways to find a larger audience.  If you’re looking for the “one secret” the big bloggers have…this is it.

Goal Setting Sessions 

We announced the first Goal Setting Session on September 1st!!  Members currently have access to the replay and workbook inside of the
Live Trainings section of the site. Every month, going forward on the 1st, we’ll be holding a LIVE goal setting session/webinar. In addition to the goal setting, we’ll also go over a quick training on ONE new traffic building method.  September’s was “Influencer Marketing”. Woot!!

If blog readers want to sign up for the public October session, click here!!  We’ll be going over goals + the How To’s of Creating and Maintaining a Membership Site! 

Gamification 

O…M…G….my brain hurts so hard on this one.  For those that don’t know, my boyfriend is in the gaming industry.  (I’m dating him because he worked for Nintendo.) BUT, because nerds unite, he is helping me get some gamification up in that membership beast!!  I don’t know if it will be ready to launch this month or next…but it’s looking pretty amazing.  There will be a points system and a chuck-e-cheese type prize counter where members can grab access to site reviews, bonus workbooks and ebooks, 1 on 1 sessions, on page reviews, etc!!  GAH!!!  I’ll be announcing it soon!!

Bundles 

We have a LOT of information in this member’s only library…and it just keeps growing. SO, we wanted to make sure members could navigate and find solutions easy peasy!!  SO, we’ve added the Bundles page!! On this page, you’ll be able to find courses, live streams and downloads all bundled together for easy to find solutions!! Need info on influencer marketing?  There’s a bundle for that.  Need info on Pinterest?  There’s a bundle for that! Check it all out!!  We will update the bundles as new content is added.

Banners

Finally, this is a small tweak…but an important one I think!! At the top of the Member Dashboard, we’ve added a rotating banner giving members up to date information on events, new courses, and membership updates!! Members can click any image to learn more!

I can’t WAIT for all of this awesome-crazy to get organized and in front of you guys!!!  If you have any questions about anything I’ve talked about…feel free to post them below or shoot me an email at terradawn@uncorkyourdork.com!!

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