Creating A Community for Your Members Using Circle with Ward Sandler of MemberSpace
Episode 481: Show Notes
Joining us on the show today is returning guest Ward Sandler, the co-founder and CEO of MemberSpace. Ward runs a SaaS company that enables entrepreneurs and organizations to turn any part of their website into members only with just a few clicks. But we are not talking only about MemberSpace in this conversation but a new way to integrate an amazing community to your membership or products using a tool called Circle. While Circle isn’t affiliated with MemberSpace, they work together perfectly — which we love! Ward breaks down the features of Circle and how you can add-on a community to make a great experience for your members and customers.
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We did an episode on Patreon and Mighty Networks a while ago (Episode 468), and this is yet another option for those who want to move their community away from social media platforms such as Facebook groups. Ward gives his take on Patreon and Mighty Networks, explaining how the pricing and features differ from MemberSpace and Circle and why he is a huge fan of picking the best tools for every need and then making them fit together seamlessly. Listeners will also get plenty of advice for setting up MemberSpace and Circle and learn how it can transform their membership engagement. Be sure to try it and check it out at bossproject.com/memberspace!
Ward’s Thoughts on Patreon and Mighty Networks
Ward agrees that Patreon charges an absurd transaction fee and that the setup of paying them more the more you earn is outrageous. They top off at 15%, which he is sure many of their users are unaware of. Yet they continue to have a lot of customers, although it seems like people are becoming aware of all the other options out there and going as far as building their own platforms on their websites. When you have tens of thousands of members it makes sense to invest in building your own platform but the time and effort it takes to move to a different platform deters many people. Ward has heard of Mighty Networks, and what jumps out at him is that they are the website builder too, which he is skeptical of since it is unlikely that they will do better in this area than Squarespace, WordPress, or Webflow. That is the problem with many online platforms like Kajabi, Teachable, Thinkific – they have all these nice marketing sites and checkboxes, but everything is a mediocre experience. Ward is a strong advocate for picking the best tool for the job and sewing them all together so your customers’ experience is seamless and everything still looks great and works well. The downside is that you as the owner have to find a way to integrate these tools and make a great customer experience. There will be pros and cons to any option you go for, so it is about finding the setup that works best for you. All-in-one solutions offer you integration but the features tend to be basic.
When MemberSpace and Circle Are Right for You
MemberSpace is a way to lock down any existing page of your website, whether your website is on Squarespace, WordPress, or Webflow, or any other one. It creates a paywall to any page of your site and thus any content on those pages without people having to leave your site. Where Circle comes in is that it provides you with the community aspect without you having to create a Facebook group. Often you have to use a third-party or forum to host your community but they tend to be clunky-looking. Circle is a relatively new yet fast-growing platform that spun off from Teachable. If you are using MemberSpace, your folks that are members can just go directly to the community; they don’t need to create a new community login. If they are logged in as a member of your site, they are automatically logged into the Circle community as well. This is a great way to create a super customized experience. Facebook groups are really hard to use for a paid product because it requires strict controls and fewer people are using Facebook than five years ago.
The Special Features to Love
One of the best things about MemberSpace and Circle is that they connect third parties together. With Circle, you can make it so people are added to certain spaces within your forum. You can control it based on the plan someone is on in MemberSpace, so different tiers have access to different parts of your community or forum. If someone pays through PayPal, for example, they get added to a certain section or if they fill in a type form in a certain way they get added to another space within your Circle. In addition to a direct messaging feature, the look and feel are just – nice! You can control all the branding aspects and you can control how you notify people and how people can opt-out of notifications. A lot of it comes down to aesthetics but also full brand control. You can make it how you want it and it is a great user experience. They even offer custom domains on the smallest tier of the plan and this is super helpful for sending your people to the right website. You can also retarget with ads and build up audiences to serve them different content. And even though you might not be ready for that now, you never know what your community is going to do and how it will grow. Unlike Patreon, the pricing is really good too. With MemberSpace, you can get down to a 0.5% transaction fee with a $200 per month plan or $100 a month at a 1% fee. Once you are making tens of thousands of dollars a month, the difference between a 1 and 2% transaction fee ads up. So, while in theory, it might be cheaper to use Mighty Networks, as you start to grow and scale MemberSpace will be better – and you do not want to go through the hassle of migrating at that point!
Advice for Those Building Communities for Digital Products
Ward and his team launched a community for MemberSpace members using Circle. When they first launched, it was about sharing wins and getting feedback on your pages or course layout, the kind of stuff that would be helpful to people who are building membership sites. They knew it was good but it wasn’t for support-related questions. But they quickly realized that there was no way to avoid that so they decided that people could ask their questions but shouldn’t expect a quick support response from the team. Questions in the community are for the community members to answer. This feature allows people to have another place where they can discuss your product or service and get help, and it is amazing to see the insights that members can offer one another. That being said, creating and maintaining a community requires time and effort. There is a bunch of upfront work and you have to get conversations going in the beginning before the community runs with it. Eventually, you reach a point where you no longer have to answer questions because engaged members do it for you. If you haven’t started your community yet, get on board with Circle! It is not going to take you forever to get started and set up and it is something that you can keep as you grow and scale.
Realistic Timelines and First Steps for MemberSpace and Circle
Before you even think about doing a trial, you need to have a website. (Side note: They recently launched their Notion segment, so if you want to lock down your Notion section for members only, you can do that too.) After building a website, start with the content you want to create for members. MemberSpace comes in only after you created the content and comes in to lock all the doors. So, create the different ‘rooms’ with the content that goes into them because there is no use locking the doors when there is nothing in it! Get your pages sorted, even though everything doesn’t have to be perfect. Then, if you know MemberSpace, it can take you as quickly as 30 minutes to get all your locks set up. For the future, they are planning even more Zapier integrations so that external actions can trigger the inviting or removing of a member from MemberSpace. And believe it or not, many Shopify users use MemberSpace to lock down sections of their e-commerce site for when they want to do VIP restocks and so on. In this way, you can make shopping an exclusive experience for loyal customers. For Webflow and WordPress users, they also enable you to hide or show particular sections of a page, not just the entire URL. There are exciting things ahead for MemberSpace and circle!
Quote This
I’m still a strong proponent of picking the best tools for the job and then sewing them all together so your customers have a seamless experience and the branding still looks good – everything just works.
—Ward Sandler
Highlights
Ward’s Thoughts on Patreon and Mighty Networks. [0:06:08.1]
When MemberSpace and Circle Are Right for You. [0:12:15.1]
The Special Features to Love. [0:14:54.1]
Advice for Those Building Communities for Digital Products. [0:27:15.1]
Realistic Timelines and First Steps for MemberSpace and Circle. [0:34:38.1]
#TalkStrategyToMe [0:34:38.1]
Build a website.
Create pages and content.
Use MemberSpace to get all the locks set up.
ON TODAY’S SHOW
Ward Sandler
Memberspace
Ward Sandler is the co-founder and CEO over at MemberSpace, a profitable software as a service (SaaS) company that enables entrepreneurs and organizations to turn any part of their website into members-only with just a few clicks. Ward and his partner Ryan started MemberSpace back in 2015 and it continues to grow each year. They have helped customers around the world process over 50 million dollars from their members. Prior to starting MemberSpace, Ward did website and software consulting for four years while teaching himself how to code. He helped design everything from simple websites on Squarespace to custom software applications with Ruby on Rails. Prior to consulting, Ward was a top sales account manager at Thomson Reuters selling enterprise tax software to Fortune 1000 companies. He graduated with a B.S. in Business and Technology from Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey and currently resides in Philadelphia, PA.
KEY TOPICS
MemberSpace, Circle, Patreon, Mighty Networks, Websites, Integration, Community, Engagement, Support, Facebook groups, Features, Digital products
