Day 60: Membership Sales. One-Time Offers v Recurring Revenue

It’s October 30th — Day 60 — the final day before we close out month two of this 12-month journey.

Over the weekend or early next week, I’ll be reviewing all the numbers from both September and October, combining performance metrics, ad spend, and profitability to pull out some useful insights.

Today’s focus is on memberships — why I include them in my funnel, how they perform, and what I’ve learned about managing churn versus growth.

Daily Numbers

Yesterday brought a welcome rebound: $1,012 in sales with an ad spend of £342 ($415), giving a profit of $562 — right where I want to be.

Today, as of 11:15 a.m., sales are at $229. It’s unlikely we’ll hit yesterday’s level, but if we can close around $600–$700 by day’s end, that’s still a solid result.

Membership Overview

Over the years I’ve tested several approaches to memberships — sometimes offering them as the core of the business, other times focusing entirely on one-time course purchases.

At this stage, I’ve settled on a middle ground: I still include a membership option, but it plays a small, supporting role in the funnel.

Right now, I have 126 members on a low-ticket plan priced at $9 per month. It’s deliberately positioned as a downsell and only appears in my cart-abandon sequence, so it doesn’t get heavy promotion.

The goal with such a low-price membership is stability. High-ticket memberships tend to attract more cancellations and customer support needs.

By keeping the price low, the churn rate stays manageable and admin work remains minimal.

Performance and Churn

Looking at Stripe data from August to October:

• 70 members are billed through Stripe, with the rest via PayPal

• 37 new signups in the past three months

• Net gain of 12 members after cancellations

That works out to roughly four net new members per month. It’s not a major revenue driver on its own, but it adds consistent background income.

Churn is the main challenge for any membership program. My data suggests that members stay between six and nine months on average.

At nine months, the lifetime value roughly equals the price of my main upsell, meaning each member ultimately contributes similar value to a single-purchase customer — but over time.

Currently, the membership brings in just over $1,000 per month, entirely passive, requiring no ongoing management.

Positioning and Future Adjustments

The membership is offered on a simple sales page within my cart-abandon flow — a one-time opportunity to access all courses for $9 per month.

Because this offer sits so deep in the funnel, relatively few people see it.

If I wanted to grow it more aggressively, the logical next step would be to move it higher in the funnel — possibly replacing my current primary upsell.

That would expose it to a larger audience and increase the net monthly growth rate.

The trade-off, of course, is churn. Raising visibility or increasing the price may improve short-term revenue but could also reduce retention.

The balance between price point and churn rate is always the key strategic decision with memberships.

Next Steps

The membership remains a small but steady contributor to total revenue. My focus for now stays on optimizing the main “Classic Riffs” and “First Song” funnels.

The latter still looks promising — it produced one sale yesterday but remains profitable on ad spend.

Tomorrow I’ll aim to set up the first official split test for the new beginner funnel and walk through exactly what changes I’ll be testing.