Two Ways to Handle the Back Catalog of Your Monthly Club

A common product type is a monthly club, where members get a new piece of content (a monthly "theme") each month, for as long as they remain a member. Typically there'll also be an only discussion group, either in a Simplero Space, or on Facebook. And maybe a monthly webinar or group coaching call.

The big question what happens with all the old content? What do you do with your "back catalog" of previous months' content, including recordings of the calls?

There are two options:

1. You can give members access to only the content that was published while they were a member, plus the most recently published content, or ...
2. You can give all members access to the entire back catalog

At Simplero, we strongly recommend going with the second option: Give all members access to the entire content collection.

Why?

Well, why not?

Giving access only the most recent content

The reason why you wouldn't do that, is because you're afraid people might speculate in it, and join, then leave, then join, then leave. Or join, download everything, then leave.

At Simplero, we don't believe in making decisions based in fear :)

We believe in making decisions based in love and the desire to provide value to our customers, while making sure the business works for us, of course.

When you're restricting access to the back catalog, only a relatively few people will have access to the oldest content - and if you have any churn at all, it's likely that no-one will have access to that content. That means, you have produced valuable content that is not doing anything for you or your customers. It's just sitting there on a server somewhere in cyberspace, twiddling its thumb.

Giving access to everything

So our solution is to give members access to the entire back catalog. It's simple and easy. It provides even more value and even more incentive for people to join. Your old content is still creating value for you and for your customers.

If it turns out that your customers are taking advantage of your generosity, there's a lot you can do about that. You can appeal to their morality, their sense of honor. You can let them know that you're noticing.

You can offer people a falling monthly rate to reward people for staying. If your normal monthly rate is $49, you could make the first month $99 - after all, you get access to the entire back catalog.

You could then let the rates drop to $49 from month 2, or you could have them slowly fall over time - for example $99, then $79, then $69, then $59, then $49, which would then be the norm.

You could work on your marketing so that you attract people who are not as price-sensitive and prone to speculate in things like this.

The bottom line is, there are many advantages to giving people access to the entire back catalog when they join - for you as well as for them.

We suggest you give it a shot, and you deal with whatever problems may come up as they materialize.

One of the best ways to waste a lot of energy and effort is to try and solve imaginary problems when you don't even know for sure if they'll ever be real.