Episode 127: How Gary Clucas Makes $1,000-$2,000 Per Month With a Simple Membership Site

Episode 127: How Gary Clucas Makes $1000-$2000 per Month with a Simple Membership Site

Mike: Hi there everyone! Welcome to Episode 127 of The Mike from Maine Show, the place where we do daily interviews with successful online entrepreneurs. This is your host, Mike Thomas. And today on the show, I have Gary Clucas on to talk about his Newbie Friendly System that he used to bank $5,242.35 the first time he used it. Now, what is this all about? It’s about building a membership site and the way that he did it, this isn’t gonna be something for people that are quote and quote experts but it’s more for people that are just starting out and want to find a proven business method where they can start kind of from the beginning and build a like a blog and then a membership site and a product. So, it’s one of those things that’s gonna let you get along on your way with a little bit of guidance and one of the things I like about Gary is that he’s really enthusiastic about helping people. He really wants to get into the whole coaching scene and really getting in there and giving his time to people. And this is one of the reasons why a lot of times, I’ll have different people on my show who are the super, super, super successful people that everyone knows and then are people that are a little kind of the medium level and kind of along the way like that Gary is. He’ll be the first one to tell you he’s not a millionaire but he’s had success so far by doing this and he hasn’t been — I don’t know if it was like tainted by success, but he hasn’t gone to the point where he’s had loads and loads and loads of people coming to him and has just become too much. He’s still that point where he’s able to give great amount of attention to people if they want to ask him questions and kind of follow his lead. Anyways, let’s get right into it with Gary Clucas.

Mike: We are here today with Gary Clucas. Gary, welcome to the show.

Gary: Hello, thanks for having me.

Mike: Let’s start off as we always do and why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and your internet marketing journey.

Gary: A bit about myself. I started — you mean, specifically relating to wandering online or my life –?

Mike: Yeah, like kinda how you got into doing all of these online and how you’re making money and the successes and failures that you’ve had.

Gary: Okay, well. Quite honest, my children — I have four children and their education is really, really important to me. And because of that, I started working in as a volunteer in a local primary school. So I worked in a school, I guess to support them a bit. On the time I was there, I got to know the teachers quite well, some of the teachers quite well. I soon realized that one of the issues that I have is I’m overseeing the process of their program but now, they used a lot of online resources that they have to find it themselves and they have to pay for themselves and they use it a lot that time. And when I actually looked online, it’s not too or it wasn’t that too many sites that actually offered these resources. And I’m always – I’m a bit of tripping over spirits and then I found out that one of the main sites was getting 750,000 unique visits in a month. I thought a little bit about the action, so basically I set up a blog and started. The teachers were actually supporting me and giving me these resources and spill them on the blog. I started providing them for free. I started to fill that with a lot of traffic, all the sales are looking into all sorts of different ways of publicizing the blog if you want.

Mike: SEO

Gary: SEO. Also, different ways of article writing. I got also um – again, the teachers are writing me articles, I was putting them on the essay and article and stuff like that. It was really good. Initially, my idea – I was gonna get less and less traffic, I was gonna put some ad sense, add some ad sense and I was gonna make my fortune. But I soon realized, when I went too long gone the road, I realized that wasn’t gonna happen because I’m picking up $1 or $2 a month coming from adsense.

Mike: To comment, yeah. To comment on that thing, when people try to monetize with adsense a lot of times especially these, like things that you were talking about, I hear so many people that they put the adsense on, they’re not getting the clicks the wanted or they are getting clicks and because of the niche that they selected that there’s not a lot of advertising in it and they’re getting 1, 2, 5 to 10-cent clicks, and it’s not adding up to what they’re expecting.

Gary: That’s basically what was happening. I spent a lot of time, a lot of time trying different things. I’ve just been working hours and hours and hours and hours on the internet, looking for different ideas coz I was getting traffic, the traffic was growing. I was just posting every day, so I was getting more and more traffic but it just didn’t – I just couldn’t convert them into sales initially. And then, I discovered – I thought I have something. It wasn’t any – it just happened. I just discovered some software in a great membership site. I can’t even remember now why I did that, why I tried the membership site. I think it was leeching just coz I’ve tried everything

else, it didn’t work. And I’ve come across the idea, the concept of building a membership site. I built it and it worked. So, I stopped in that bit. As the time went on, I started building up different products. People were buying into it. I was getting upsells and members. And I started doing PayPal and it was just growing and growing and growing all the time. And I just kind of – I developed this kind of strategies that’s simple, system-ed as you like, so that other people can repeat what I’ve done.

Mike: It’s interesting. So many people that I talked to on the show, their main target audience — it’s so many people doing internet marketing and targeting internet marketers, like it’s internet marketing. How can you make money online and then you, like your target website would be like a make money online kind of course or membership site but it seems like what you’re doing here is you’re doing a membership site for a specific niche outside of –.

Gary: Yes. That’s what I’m doing, yes. Which means, obviously if I can do that, then other people can do it. It is really – making money online is not as difficult as what’s made it out to be. I’ve done – I understand why it’s not as more as people make. But I do understand why they’ve done more. And that’s basically because I fed lots of information and I got no – I can’t pick for it once they saw what is ahead there. But basically, to make it online is quite a simple thing to do. You probably don’t hear too many people saying that but I don’t think it’s quite straightforward too.

Mike: It’s easy to say it’s simple after you’re making the money online.

Gary: Yeah, that’s was quite easy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that’s part of it. Part of it – I think the main people, reason they fail — the main reason people fail is because they’ve got lots of objections, roadblocks, things that they can’t get pass. For instance, the discipline – what I do, what I’m always doing with my initial product, you have to get a lot of discipline. you have to post stuff on there, you have to keep your sales up to date. And when you’re first starting and you’re not making money, that’s a difficult thing to do, because in your mind you’re thinking – I’m doing this, is this gonna make me money. Is it gonna be successful. And perhaps, initially it won’t get the traffic that you want or it won’t convert when you think it should convert. You just don’t know the numbers, you don’t know your numbers. You don’t know how things are supposed to convert. And I just think, there’s all these little roadblocks. But if they just kept it, if people just keep it really, really simple and just follow whatever plan they’ve got step by step, then they will get there, coz you don’t even need a lot of money to get started. It’s not like you need to invest crazy amount of money to start. In fact, I don’t understand why people do invest crazy amount of money, coz there is no need.

Mike: I think, If I can interject you, I think one of the things that you said that I hear over and over again and one of the things that I say over and over again is that consistency is so important when it comes to — not even just making an online business and just doing anything in life, if you wanna lose weight or you wanna build a skill or develop a habit or just anything where you hear about this people that are successful, it’s about the people that get up in the morning and they do the same thing over and over again and of course, it has to be something that’s logical and it has to be something where like it’s gonna, in the end, amount to something. But with — let’s say like, with my interviews that I’m doing every day. I do five interviews a week. And most people, they would go — what, how can I do five interviews a week. And when I first was doing it and I wasn’t seeing much income coming in from it, of course it was hard. It took a few months before I was able to say, I wasn’t working for $3 now or -$3 now. I mean, eventually it was 3, 5 10, 20. It goes up over time as with anything. But in the beginning, you’re gonna be making nothing if not negative money. And that’s frustrating for a lot of people.

Gary: Yeah, it comes there. I can see. But you can’t fully expect – before the internet came along, if you are to start a business – offline business obviously, and someone said to you in six months time you’re gonna be making a profit. And you’ll think for a moment because businesses don’t make money that quick. You know, before the internet came along, it just wasn’t heard of. How could you start a business with a couple of hundred dollars and turn that into thousands of dollars in just months? You know, and you never went back from it. Once you get to that stage, it just keeps going up.

Mike: Could you imagine having a list in office for every single business that you’ve tried to start?

Gary: That’s what I mean. It’s crazy. It’s such that – that goes back to what I’m saying. How simple it is and how easy it is made for us. It’s strange, really that there’s not more people doing it. It’s not – but of course, it’s still growing. You know, it’s a new thing.

Mike: Relatively, yeah. Very relatively new. Now, you’ve come —

Gary: But for us, it’s been done forever.

Mike: Yeah, yeah. I mean, well for us — we’re people that have been trying so hard to be successful. It feels like it’s forever. Okay, you’ve got your Membership Marketing Machine product here and I’m assuming, I haven’t had the chance to look over it a little bit but from what I understand, it’s kind of the exact formula of what you did to develop your teaching website. Is that –?

Gary: Yes. Basically, yes. That’s basically it. I’ve looked at what I did, all the things that worked, all the things that didn’t work. And I’ve stripped it down into this strategy, as I say it, five-step strategy. And if you follow those steps as it’s meant to be followed, then there’s some things that will happen. It will just happen. I know everyone one says that but it’s true. Like for me and some people experienced, I know why it did work. There’s no one that couldn’t do it. It’s easy to follow. It’s simple.

Mike: From looking at it, Gary — from looking at it, I’m able to say that it’s not something — it’s not one of these things that it’s some magic bullet or it’s not some secret source of traffic or a secret method. It’s pretty much from what I saw, it’s a — just your business method, how you got everything set up, how you went about doing everything. So —

Gary: It’s just about how I put the foundation in place. And then, it just goes from there.

Mike: In your sales copy, the numbers that you show — we’re doing this interview in March 2013, and the numbers that you show are from March 2012. So, what I would wanna know is what are your numbers like now?

Gary: Well, now we’re at – it’s not that huge but not through hundreds of thousands of dollars. We’re just on the $20,000 I’ve made from it.

Mike: Is that over the whole year you made $20,000 from it? Gary: Yes.
Mike: Okay. So, we’re not talking about a huge amount of money.

Gary: We’re not talking here huge amounts of money. It is growing. It is still growing daily. Someone actually did ask me why I put up old figures. The reason I put up old figures I think in my sales copy coz I launch it last 2012 and I’m starting in my head letter in my headline. I put up I made $5000 in three months. So, I put up the biggest from those three months, just kind of —

Mike: So, that was your biggest month. You wanted to show the biggest month of success that you could — Gary: Yeah.

Mike: And if you’re gonna say, I guess from $20,000 in the last year, so you’re making about $2000 — 1 to 2,000 a month on the average.

Gary: It varies month to month. Sometimes it’s more, sometimes it’s less. But yes, yes. I would say that, though it varies per month. Mike: I mean, it’s not amazing money but it’s —
Gary: It’s not amazing, but you got to consider what I started off with this as well.
Mike: But it’s decent money. It’s something that no one’s gonna say no to.

Gary: No, who’s gonna say no to? I mean, we went on two holidays last year and it was paid for by my sale. You know, in fact I got the pictures in my copy. Well actually, there’s lots of them, I just pooled it up in the internet. That’s picture if my family with me, with my children, my wife. And the picture next to it is actually my daughter looking up to see. There were all holidays that we wouldn’t have had if it wasn’t for my membership site.

Mike: Have you thought about taking the way that you’re able to launch this site and you personally doing it again and trying to launch other membership sites?

Gary: That was my initial plan. That was what I planned to do when I started out. I’d just create a model and I’d just repeat it over and over and over again. But last year, around October time, I come across Alex Jeffreys. I didn’t physically meet him but on the internet .

Mike: Sure.

Gary: And I’ve joined his – I was so impressed with what he was doing, I joined his coaching program like what has lots and lots and lots of people have done, obviously. And there were lots of people that were in a similar position as me. They started out online, they have made a bit of money, now they wanna go on to the next step. And it occurred to me that what I have already done, other people were glad to repeat themselves and that could make probably just as much, if not more, by teaching other people to do what I have done. And I carried on teaching them the next step. You know, what I’m doing now, I can teach that online, I can them to do that. And I get a big bunch of help in – when I was in school, I’m also a cricket coach. I used to play cricket. I helped a lot of children and I made a big difference in their lives, even if it’s only in a small way. I got a big buzz out doing that. I said to Alex I was doing that and I just decided I could do the same. I could help a lot people to get out of the lock they are in of searching, trying to kind of look in for ways of making money and they’re trying all sorts of crazy ideas and schemes and trying to make a thousand dollars by tomorrow and $5000 by next week and keep repeating stuff like that and you know, nothing like that ever worked for me. And I just want to give them something new and really help them, because Membership Market Machine, initially the ebook – it’s just an ebook that outlines all the steps that I took, the OTO for that is actually a video course and not support but an email address that’s directly linked to me. So, not only do they get the video course, but I will hold their hands and make sure that they get where they need to be.

Mike: Okay, so the one-time offer is you going over it, all the little steps with people and also, giving them support.

Gary: Yeah, especially the email address directly to me. So, whenever they got problems, they can get in touch with me. If I think they’re not progressing as much as they could do, then I’ll be at their back to make sure – because you don’t need that. Sometimes, you need someone to find out where you’re going wrong or throw in some words of encouragement, because as I said – as you said actually, when you first start out, it can be slow progress and can be a bit mundane and you have doubts. And it’s nice to have someone there who’s just gonna say, look do this or this will help you or you know, have a look at this. That’s my plan. That’s what I wanna do. I wanna be there to help lots and lots of people and as much as I can, as long as I’m in the position to.

Mike: When I hear people talk about membership sites, like it — for me, membership site sounds great because you signed that person up one time and then, you get paid month after month after month. And that sounds wonderful, like that’s great. I do less work, make more money. I know how much money I’m gonna get per month but then, from talking about people that have membership sites, I also know that there’s customer retention and keeping people paying and wanting to pay and thinking that okay, I’m gonna get so much value every month from this membership site that I’m willing to keep my PayPal account making these payments and not cancelling. So, my question for you would be, how much maintenance is involved in keeping these or this membership site that you have running?

Gary: It’s amazing, actually. The longer I’ve gone on, the less maintenance there is, the less time I actually have to complete it. Initially, I was posting on my blog for instance every day. Now, I only post once a week. So, that means the traffic is generating itself now. I don’t have to push hard. In terms of products, I access the site itself, the website that it’s serving. Probably once every month or six weeks, I’ll have a new product. So, it’s very little to work. I mean, it’s quite a straightforward process.

Mike: With — okay, if you’re making $1000 to $2000 on average a month, how many members does it take — how many members do you have on there to make that kind of money?

Gary: 5-600 members.
Mike: It’s not bad. 5-600 members is a pretty decent membership site.
Gary: Yup. I’m very pleased with it.
Mike: Yeah. And how much — to get that amount of members, how much traffic did you have to drive to your site?

Gary: It’s not what you’ll expect. It’s not – I’m only getting, last time I looked at it was 16 or 17000 unique visit just per month. And when I started off, it was probably – I’m thinking now, it’s probably 3 to 400 a day I was getting unique visits. And that initial 5000 in the first three months, most of that left or don’t visit or anything more than that. It’s just, the visits are naturally, organically growing. And obviously, the more visit you have, the more money you make. Initially, I didn’t think of it that way. And that’s the beauty of a membership site. You don’t need 50,000 visits, 100,000 visits. As long as it’s – because it’s quite well-targeted. You know, it’s not just random visitors from the internet. They’re actually interested in what I’m providing. And so, I see that helps a lot.

Mike: Are you open? Are you showing the site that you have that’s making all these money?
Gary: The site is teacherz-pet.co.uk. That’s teacherz with a “z” and it’s got hyphen. So, it’s teacherz hyphen pet.co.uk.

Mike: Let me take a look at this.

Gary: That’s the blog, anyways. The first form of contact.

Mike: Let’s see. So, I see tpet.ucode.

Gary: That is not it. No.

Mike: Send me the link underneath in the Skype chat right here. I’ll just click on it, so I don’t type it in full time and mess it up.

Gary: If you’re talking K2 search resources, it should be near the top end, I think.

Mike: Let’s see here, if I can see.

Gary: I actually worked too hard to get teacherz-pet right at that time, because people don’t – teachers are looking for resources online and not looking for teacher’s pet. They’re looking for resources.

Mike: Yeah, I mean it’s – and this is the blog.

Gary: That’s the blog. It has a bar at the top that links to the membership site. And then you will see how to make access to it. It’s just a log in path.

Mike: This is — It’s definitely interesting and it seems definitely like a — like I was mentioning before, it’s not something that I think people are gonna sign up for and start making a lot of money over night. But it’s better than I think going around in the forums and trying to find a method that isn’t gonna work. And if people have an idea and they wanna dig into it and slowly create some kind of membership site and over time get members and build up that re-occurring income, coz I mean that’s the key here. You got 600 people paying how much per month, normally?

Gary: It’s 12 pounds a month. So, I don’t what’s that in dollars. Mike: $24, $30 — $20-$30 a month, I think.
Gary: Yeah, $20 or so.
Mike: Cool, Gary. Well, thank you —

Gary: Of course, I also get some that drops out.

Mike: Of course.

Gary: The thing is, I start Membership Marketing Machine, which is gonna be my next membership site actually. I am currently working on my membership site for it. And, where was I? Membership Marketing, I’m creating a membership site for it. And I expect that to be doing the same kind of stuff essentially, even more because one of the problems I’ve had and one of the reasons why I started Membership Marketing Machine is because teachers want their resources, they want them fast and they want them easy. As long as they can get one, they’re not interested in building a relationship. They don’t want to be helped any further than that. And people who wanna make money online, they need help. They want more help, any help they can get, they’re gonna grab it. And I wanna build that, I want that kind of relation. I don’t wanna be isolated. I want that relationship thing built. I wanna be a help to them, to drive other people, watch them grow, like I’m really big at helping people. I’ve already started ever since I launched that WSO, where I got people emailing me, sharing the best sides of what I’m doing. And I get a big blast of help, so.

Mike: It’s funny, the site that you created that you’re making so much money off of is about like teacher’s resources because when I was teaching English as a second language in Turkey, I was also using a website similar to that. I was going in and I was okay, how am I gonna get my lesson plan set up coz planning as a teacher — one of your greatest pains as a teacher is getting your lesson set up. Everyday, you have to have all your materials and your topic and all these, like handouts and everything. You have to have all that ready everyday for your classes. And I was willing to pay money to have that pain taken away and it was a monthly membership fee and I paid it and I was happy to pay it. And as I was using that site, I will go in and get my resources and print them out and it’s — it makes sense. It almost makes you wanna to look and go into your own PayPal account. Go and see what you’ve paid money for.

What have you personally been willing to pay money for and ask yourself why have you been willing to pay money for it. Why were you able to justify paying your hard-earned money month after month into someone else’s pocket for something and think okay, if I’m willing to pay for this, then if I create something along the similar lines, then other people are gonna be willing to pay me.

Gary: Yup.

Mike: Cool.

Gary: That’s basically what happens, yeah. The bottom line is I know I can help a lot of people. I know there’s a lot of people watching this, that will be watching this – they’re sitting there, they’re trying a few things, some of the have invested in probably lots of, I’d like to say WSO but there’s gonna be people who have invested in a lot of WSO and are not going anywhere with it for whatever reason. And they’re gonna be sitting there and they’ve gotten next to no money and what I can say to those people is you can do it, you can start off with next to no money at all and in just months, you’ll get thousands. And it’s really, really not as difficult as what it seems. Just go back to basics, forget most of what you’ve learned and just stick on the basic principles and it will happen. As a saying, can I mention – I’m actually, I’m prepared to say the five steps.

Mike: Go for it. Let’s wrap it up with your five steps.

Gary: First step. First of all, obviously you need hosting and domain. You need a blog. I use WordPress because it was easy, really. I’m using WordPress and Google Adword, but it’s not as unique as WordPress, and a theme. And then you just add content because that’s the key. If you have content and you keep doing it regularly, you get visitors. You get traffic. It just happens. You will get traffic. You don’t need to worry about SEO and paid advertising and social media. You don’t have to worry, just post content. And if you’re passionate about what you’re posting, you will get traffic. It’s simple as that. Once you get traffic, you start building your list. I use AWeber. I always say that, I use AWeber. And again, people will sign up to your list coz they’re interested about what you’re writing about. They want more, they wanna know more. You get a list and you will need another simple method of extracting money if you like from that list, without actually having to be an expert for copywriting because let’s face it, there’s not plenty of people and I’m certainly not. And once you get your list, you get your traffic, I will say product is much easier to make but not people realize this. Well, once you get them and place them, you just need your membership site and then you’re just making money. It’s just natural progression. You get traffic, you build a list, you get your website, if you got a website you build traffic, you got your list, put them on your site. And then, the money just comes. It just happens, coz it has to coz it just keeps you know – as long as you do it in the right order, it just happens. There’s nothing magic about it. It just happens.

Mike: I like that. There’s nothing magic about it.

Gary: It’s not magic. It feels like magic. When you see your PayPal account –

Mike: It’s like magic.

Gary: When you see figures and when you start seeing traffic coming through, it feels like magic. But it’s not. It’s just good old- fashioned common sense and basic business trend.

Mike: Well, Gary. Thank you so much for coming on the show today and sharing with us a little bit about your success and failures with membership sites and internet marketing. Yes, thank you again.

Gary: Can I just mention my Facebook group?

Mike: Of course. Go ahead. Go right ahead.

Gary: Part of what I will mention is Alex Jeffreys’ coaching program. And we got a tight Facebook group and we really help each other and I gotta I think, I gotta give them a little back coz they all have helped me to launch my Membership Marketing Machine. And I just wanna say *two thumbs up*. That’s one, and if you might wanna go interview one or two of them, coz some of them have done pretty well.

Mike: Cool. Thank you, Gary. Gary: Thank you.

Mike: I hope you enjoyed the interview with Gary. If you’re interested in checking out his membership product, go to mikefrommaine.com/membershipmarketing. That’s mikefrommaine.com/membershipmarketing. Thank you for watching and I’ll see you tomorrow.