Every now and then, I get asked what drip content is or how do I use drip content in my membership site and why is drip content so important. And the truth is that if I did not have drip content, my membership sites would not be as nearly as successful as they are. And also, the average person’s idea of drip content is completely wrong. So, let’s deal with drip content today.
[audio:A2-WhatIsDripContent.mp3]The most basic form of drip content is just where your blog delivers content in a sequence. Even if you don’t have a membership site, just a regular WordPress blog out in the open, when you make a post onto a WordPress blog, you can choose to either publish items immediately or in a day in the future. And what makes WordPress really cool is if you schedule a post for next week, it will be scheduled until next week. For the moment, it will not appear at all, but when next week goes around, suddenly that post will go live. That is a very easy way to schedule your content and to deliver your content out in a sequence is simply by changing the date on your next blog post to a date in the future. So, if you have ideas for three new blog posts, instead of simply posting them now, schedule them a week apart. That way, the content shows up gradually over time.
Now, when I talk about drip content within a membership site, many people do this wrong. They simply apply the blog model I just explained and charge for access to that blog. The problem with drip content in this way is that if somebody joins during month one of your site and cancels, then waits several months and comes back on month six, they can see all those back issue archives without paying for the months in between. The correct way to do drip content is drip out the content based on when that person joined.
Now, let me explain. When somebody joins your site, they should just see the first chunk of content you have on your blog, maybe the first week or so of content. But then if they wait a month, they will be able to see the next month of content. But if they cancel at any time, they’re back to zero. If they join one-to-one and they cancel and come back on month six, they should be back at the beginning. That is the big difference between a blog on its own and a membership site in a protected area, which is when somebody joins this membership, their drip starts when they join, and when they cancel, they’re gone.
That is what drip content is, where people don’t get all the information all at once, it gets slowly dripped out for them, but most importantly, inside a membership area, the content is slowly given out based on when they joined and not when you posted that content.
Robert Plank is the creator of Membership Cube and he wants to give you the ultimate solution to drip content at www.membershipcube.com.