Lessons
Introduction
09:53 2Why Sell Subscription Products?
02:53 3Great Subscription Ideas
10:59 4Positioning Your Subscription Product
06:09 5Pricing Your Subscription Product
25:48 6Interview with Stacey Trock of FreshStitches
34:29 7Subscription Models: Which One is Best for You?
23:52 8How to Manage Your Subscriptions
06:14Shipping Tools and Apps
23:06 10Finding Your Ideal Customer
05:54 11Why Marketing is Necessary
06:45 12Copywriting for Your Subscription Product
19:03 13Photography for Your Subscription Product
03:49 14Promoting Your Subscription on Social Media & Blogs
32:47 15Interview with Maureen Vasquez of Pipsticks
23:57 16How to Handle Unsubscribers
09:19 17The Unboxing Experience
06:18 18Frequently Asked Questions
08:09 19Common Challenges for Subscription Businesses
08:52 20Growing Your Subscriptions
10:21 21Interview with Wendi Gratz of Shiny Happy World
24:50Lesson Info
Introduction
I'm ready. My name is lily tongue crystal welcome to crate of live today, I'm your host for crafters guide to starting a subscription business with may pock we haven't exciting expert instructor for you today may has done so much he's, a marketing strategist for small in creative business owners on her website, creative hive co she's helped artists, designers and makers create more buzz for their business finally, may not only talk the talk, she walks the walk, she has her own successful handmade business called tiny hands, where she makes scented food jewelry. They're super cute, so check it out online. A tiny, hands online dot com they've been featured in hundreds of stores, as well as an in touch magazine everyday with rachel ray and finally, even on the tv show parks and recreation, please join me in welcoming may pox to our stage. Thank thank you great! We have a lot going on these three days or here we have this class crafters guide to starting a subscription business, and then w...
e have selling on social a complete guide and finally to other courses, contest rules, run great social promotions and keep them coming back. The secret to repeat sales there's a lot of different classes, and I'm wondering if I could ask you from a big picture standpoint, how did all four courses go together yeah, so I in the past year have worked with a lot of people like me maker's hand me designers, artisans basically and the one big thing that I think is really important for people like us in our business is that sales is the most important metric. Well, profit is really the most important metric, right? Because without profit we can't pay ourselves we can't grow our business, but before profit we have to first think about sales because without sales we don't have profit. So all of these courses and crafty marketing techniques all I have that one big goal in mind of making your business more sales and I'm all about the practical how twos and strategies for how to actually do this for your business and show you and share with you some of the experiences I've had good or bad so you can learn vicariously and see you skip the learning curves and get to your, um your your vision of success as fast as possible yeah, which is what we all want so weaken live more and what we love to dio yeah, yeah, awesome well, there's a lot to cover, so I'll go back to my seat and lets you sure yeah, thanks thank you all right, I am so excited to be here today, so we're all here to learn how to start our own subscription business or if you are already an established business owner than toe how to start your own subscription line. So what is the challenge that we are all here today to solve? So if you're a maker, you're an artist or a designer and business, one of the biggest problems we have is thean consist inconsistent sales and income, right? We are not sure when that next order is going to come in, and that can be really stressful that can cause a lot of worry any every month we've got bills to pay, we've got the mortgage, we've got utilities, and, you know, we have toe put money into our retirement, too, so all those things don't change, but our sales that that's always fluctuating, that can cause a lot of pressure on this. So another thing with a lot of us in business for ourselves to we're selling a product, we're kind of forced to follow the ebb and flow of the seasons, so for a lot of us, if we're selling a gift product. The fourth season tends to be the biggest sales season of the year for us and then the rest of the month is kind of slow so like in my facebook group which I'll talk a little bit about later by a lot of people complaining like while august in october it was just such a slow month what's what's happening that's just kind of how it is there are ebbs and flows through the year on the other hand, if you're like in the wedding business for example in the summertime you might have more great business but then in the winter months there's like no one's no one's having weddings or at least very few people so again very slow sales month so what can we do during those times to kind of build up that revenue and get more sales during that time and make sure that we're still supporting ourselves make sure we're still making that income and again it's all it all just adds up to stress and worry in pressure I think that's one of the major drawbacks to being self employed is just not having that stability which honestly there have been times where I'm like man this is this is hard work being your own business owner right wouldn't be so nice if you could just have someone else make the decisions for you and just have someone else cut you a paycheck every month that's a pity you don't have to guess you can surf on facebook if you want and still get paid that's not how it works when your own business owner right? We have to we have to do what it takes to make sure that we're making that money. So how this course? How will this course help you? Having a subscription business will create a new stream of income for your business, and what that does is it diversifies your business and it minimizes risk and why that's important say, for example, in my business I have a retail web site I get a lot of my sales from my my own website, I get a lot of sales from etc and I sell on amazon I saw an open sky and a whole bunch of other places, so what if if I never sold in all of those places if I didn't sell wholesale, for example, I do a lot of wholesale as well if I didn't have all of these different streams of income what if my website goes down one day? I would just stop making money completely until it comes back up and I'm lucky that at ces there that open skies there that amazon's there to still keep making sales for me even if one thing falls out the place I'm still making money and at the end of the day because I've talked to a lot of makers and for the most part we all don't need to make a million dollars we don't need to make six figures, we just want to make that consistent income we want that stability and having a subscription business is really good for that, just knowing that you have x amount of subscribers on average every month, you know this is guaranteed money in your bank account or in your paypal account. This course is intended to give you the complete how to and selling subscriptions if you want, you don't have to take this course, you can try to figure it out yourself. You can go through trial and error and whatever mistakes you go through and put out your own fires that's totally fine, but what if you could just take this course and everything is there for you? You can learn from some of the three great interviews that I'm going to have on this course today, which is going to teach us so much. I know I'm going to learn a lot from it as well, but if it's all going to be given to you it's there for you as a resource, so learn from my mistakes learn from other people's mistakes learn from our successes this well, what works? What doesn't? We're going to give it all to you today so why are you here? I think we might have two different counts of people watching this today and for I think for the most part you already have your own shop, but you're looking to expand on that. What more can you do? What more can you offer to your existing fans? But for some of you guys out there also, you might be thinking of new business ideas and I don't know, you know, serial entrepreneurs out there watch creative live, I know I'm kind of one of them. You might be wondering how you might be able to start your own subscription business that's just solely subscription business, we're not going to talk so much about the letter, but one of the interviewees that we're having on in our third segment of this workshop, her entire businesses a subscription business so we can learn a little bit about that from her. So why am I teaching this today? Well, in my tiny hands online, my my jewelry line, my experience comes from in the past nine years since two thousand six, I've been running my own jewelry business, tiny hands and recently actually, two years ago I started the necklace of the month club kind of cut up a little bit there, but it just says the necklace off the month club I started this in late two thousand thirteen and I have on average, about seventy members at any one time that fluctuates no between sixty to seventy sometimes on a good month I would have eighty members and at twenty five dollars a subscription, I could make an extra ten thousand dollars every year and it's not like much in the grand scheme of things, but at the same time it's also not pocket change. You know something like this you could help your more get you could help pay for your car whatever it is it's still additional income to your business and it's kind of no, I don't want to say guaranteed, but in a way pretty secure, stable income, so I can I can feel comfortable and certain that this is money I'm going to make every year on, and I was actually inspired to make the necklace of the month club when I had met my really good friend stacy truck off fresh stitches, she runs her own very wildly successful kit club and we're going to have her on in an interview later on in this segment. So I'm very excited to to introduce you guys toward two she's very inspiring and so seventy members of not a lot of people but I partly want to keep it small because I feel like if I were to make one hundred necklaces or two hundred necklaces, I would just be working all day in the studio. And I don't necessarily want to commit myself to that soul.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
a Creativelive Student
Great course, especially the interview with Stacey (part 6).
Nuvea
Mei gives lots of practical information and resources in this course.