How to build a membership business on Squarespace with Ward Sandler
Ward Sandler is the co-founder of MemberSpace, a software product that lets you easily add memberships to any website. He and his co-founder (Ryan) launched MemberSpace in 2015 and have bootstrapped it into a profitable SaaS (software-as-a-service) business.
He's an expert on building membership businesses, creating online courses and software entrepreneurship.
I sat down with Ward to talk about the makings of Memberspace, how it's grown and what new entrepreneurs can learn from running a subscription-based business.
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Rough Transcript via Rev.com
Omari:
This is Ras Omari and you are listening to flourish, the unofficial Squarespace Entrepreneur podcast hosted by yours, truly founder of sqspthemes.com the number one source for entrepreneurs building a business on Squarespace. So if that sounds like you, then you are in the right place. Today we're going to be talking with ward Sandler of 320NY founder of memberspace a membership plugin for Squarespace. And I've been following ward for a few years, so I'm, I'm familiar with memberspace since its inception and I thought it would be great to have him come and share some of that story with you and some advice on how you too can go about creating a sustainable membership business on Squarespace with memberspace. So without any further delay we're going to jump right into it.
Ward:
Ward Sandler. So the business I run is technically called 320NY? But we've, we go by memberspace these days as the people probably have heard of. And yet how, how we how we kinda got to where we're at. I guess the quick rundown is we start as a Squarespace consulting company. We've been doing that for for a minute. It's probably been since like 2013, 2014, so a while ago we've worked on close to 400 Squarespace sites. And, and yeah, we, but we at this point where a team of eight full time people, but we start off as just a two or three people. Yeah, the way it worked though is we were building Squarespace sites for folks, did a bunch of those. And over time we kept hearing the same kind of complaint from people about knocking wood to have any kind of membership functionality in square.
Ward:
And I was just like, okay, well we are software developers. We actually know how to build things besides just Squarespace sites. So we do a little research and we did, we went on like the the square, you know, like the Squarespace, a Q and a forum answers the answers for them. So you probably know you can, you can actually sort that by views or votes. So we went there, I just went to the general Q and a sorted by number of votes and like the number three thing with like 100,000 was adding membership functionality to Squarespace or like, Oh yeah, there's a, there's definitely some interest here. And then I read through every single comment, which was just to kind of make sure I got a feel of like what people were complaining about, you know, what, what solutions existed, what they didn't like, et cetera. And yet it just kind of came up with the MVP for memberspace and, and growing since then.
Omari:
So talk to me a little bit about the transition from being kind of like a, a small Squarespace design development agency to the business model that you have now, which is, you know, it's basically what sell, right? It's a subscription Based service. Was there, you know, was there something that made you want to shift towards that business model or was it like, what was the thing that kind of sparked or prompted this, this memberspace move?
Ward:
Yes. I mean, we kind of things in a weird order. We at the very first thing we did when we were a company like we formed and I think it was like 2010 the very first thing we did was custom software development. So you know, good amount of money and we have built custom software applications for people usually on Ruby on rails. So that's kind of where we learned, learned our chops about design and development, client interaction, that kind of stuff. Problem with that was it, it's kinda like a roller coaster when it comes to cashflow. Like you get a big project, awesome things are, things are all good.
Ward:
Then you know, project comes to an end and it's like, okay, got to go hunting again. Yet you'll find the next big client if you can get them. There's no money coming in during revenue. There's nothing. So it's a real sink or swim and that's, that's real stressful as I'm sure you know like when you're running a business, I'm sure a lot of folks out there who do kind of consultant work, you don't have that next project or next few projects lined up. It can get real stressful. Real scary. Real quick. And so we were like, all right, there's gotta be a better way to do this. This is crazy. We have skills. People are willing to pay us money. I don't want to deal with this emotional roller coaster every month. So we were like, all right, well we get a lot. We were getting leads from people who just, a lot of them just wanted like simple, basic kind of websites.
Ward:
We were like, nah, sorry, we can't help you. We just do big software development projects. You don't have five $5,000 $10,000 plus budget. We can't even talk to you. And one day I looked at my partner and I was like, Hey man, we've like turned down hundreds of leads. When I started thinking about it and I was like, we turned on hundreds of leads. Those are all people that we could have made really like for us, since we know we know how to build software, so like using threes. So it was like, wow, we could have built like super simple websites and just cranked out a bunch of those gone and paid if we could even get them on a support plan. And then it all started clicking like, you know what, let's stop saying no and let's figure out how we can serve people who, who, who we're getting all these help requests from.
Ward:
We started transitioning just building Squarespace sites for a small fee and then we, and then we also pretty immediately had a recurring support model to where, you know, monthly have access to us for support, tweaks and updates, that kind of thing. That was 99 a month. And yeah, we basically started in that recurring revenue, which is the dream, right? For everybody. And then we were like, all right, well this is going well. What's next? You know, building, you know, right. Building sites or people doing sports. It's good, but it still requires a lot of time. Right? You got a lot of hand holding by the emails on a back and forth phone calls. So we're like, all right, next best thing would be software, right? Cause you can scale that real quick. You can, you a lot of people using it, there's still work, obviously still dealing with people still dealing with issues, but you can, you can help a lot more people with the same amount of time, more money for the same amount of hours footage. And so we're like, all right, that's, and that's, that's what I told you about before about how he started researching about [inaudible] and what was, what would be useful. And that's kind of how that transition happened.
Omari:
That's cool man. Because I think when, when we first met, I think I was really interested in your ongoing maintenance kind of offering that you had. And so to see the transition to a full-on product like memberspace is pretty cool. So tell me like, what's with, with memberspace? Like there's obviously other solutions. There's the big elephant of, is my content going to be secure? What's, what's been like the biggest hurdle or the biggest challenge with creating a third party? Software integration for Squarespace users?
Ward:
Yeah, I mean it's just that it's a third party, right? We are not, we're not connected to the Squarespace server, so I don't know. I don't know how technical the audience is. I don't want to get too crazy in the weeds, but we're not connected to the server. So therefore we can't we can't control 100% what pages people have access to. Now that's not a problem for a lot of folks. But for people who it is, we have another feature called content links, which allows you to upload content securely to member output that content either as a link or as an embed or stay site. And that is truly secure. There's no security vulnerabilities to it.
Omari:
Right. All right, cool. So like, cause I've been watching since you started it. And, and I've, I've tried it out myself even though I, I don't, I haven't had the need in the past. And the one thing that stands out to me from members of my community is, you know, you guys have really good service. But also I always get the emails for the updates, which seem to be frequent and it's always like a new feature, new feature, new feature. And even when you go to the landing page now it's like, wow, this thing is pretty robust. What advice would, would you have for someone who has started a membership business or who has transitioned into a subscription based model, business model?
Ward:
I mean, general advice, keep it simple. You know, most people overcomplicate it when they launched things. And you know, whether it's software, whether it's a membership business you know, real simple, you know, one or two you know, products or price points and just and just get going. Like I actually wrote a whole article about this. I'll give it to you, she can put it in the show notes that I've had. I kind of find your initial niche audience and how to price initially when it comes to a membership business. Because a lot of people use the offer way too many options, way too much text and explanation. And it just confuses people. And this is someone. So the key is start as simple as you can with as few variables as you can. Get some people to give you their credit card and pay, cause you got to get past that hurdle first.
Ward:
Otherwise you're just, you're just playing just pretending to play business. You don't have to just running a business. I do too. So if you get a few people to pay you, if you can't get a few people to pay, you need to change something in the business model. So that's another reason why you shouldn't be spending too much time trying to get everything perfect because you gotta just get it out there and get feedback because your feedback is when you asked me for a credit card back, your mom, your dad, your friends give you, that's all BS. It doesn't mean anything, right? When we feedback that matters is when you asked me for a credit card and then they say yes or they say no. If they say no, you can ask one and then you'll get real honest feedback. And then once for people that say yes, you'll hear what they want, you don't have or what they like down on that or fix the holes, but all this happens after you're charging. So the less variables possible start there, then you can always add on new things. You can always make things more complicated and you can do that based on feedback on people paying you, not just random thoughts in your head or, or friends or family who just want to see you do well but don't, aren't actually your customers.
Omari:
Yeah. no that's really good man. I mean I've learned that myself from my experience. And I think that is probably one of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make starting out is especially if you're technically oriented, you know, you want to just like make something yourself that you think is really good. And then if you do build up the courage to communicate it or like put it out there, then you have to like face the hurdle of like, how am I actually going to sell this thing? And I think what you've done is you've baked that into the product where it starts. It's a solution from the jump. It's not like you know, people actually wanted this thing and big numbers and I think you guys have filled that gap pretty well. What's, what's next man? I mean, what, what happens if Squarespace says, yeah, we're gonna you know, add on the type of features and, and, and, and functions that that make memberspace no longer needed. Is that, is that something you think about?
Ward:
I mean, we, we've thought about it and I, I, my, my answer is probably counterintuitive. You know, we actually welcome it. I actually hope Squarespace does it. Here's the reason why. Number one, like you just said, right? If you look, go to our memberspace.com homepage and look at our feature list there, there, there is no way in hell that Squarespace is going to launch something with all of those features. We've, I mean, you know, I don't, I can't tell you that 100% but just based on the way they develop every other feature on their platform. For example, e-commerce, they didn't launch a commerce and it had every feature. Shopify has, it still does it. It's not even close. We've launched a rough MVP version that has the core features which likely launch a membership thing. If they even launch it. We don't know what's going to happen, but let's say they do on something.
Ward:
My guess is it would be purely just, okay, you can restrict access to certain pages. It would probably be tied to the eCommerce functionality, can add a product or add a membership. Maybe it would have recurring payments. They don't have that yet and maybe they would have that and maybe they want it and that might be about it. So it would serve, it would do the core stuff. If that's what someone needs, that's perfect. They're not a good customer for us because the whole memberspace is for someone who, as a real business, cause we have a lot of functionality built in a lot of features that allow you to do things that you wouldn't be able to do with that core offering, which described it Squarespace. So what I'm thinking, what happened is people would come to Squarespace, you're like, Hey, any memberships, Squarespace would be like, cool, we have that. And then they'd be like, Oh actually I need X, Y and Z to, Oh we actually don't have that, but checkout memberspace. So they would actually become a funnel for us, more people in, cause they'd be advertising, we do memberships now and so we actually create a funnel for us. I think that's, that's my theory.
Omari:
I like the thought process, man. It makes a lot of sense to me. I get it completely, especially when you break it down like that. So I noticed also you've got some case studies and you just mentioned like, you know, this is for people with a real business. It's, it's, it's an, it's an add on that is beneficial. Of your customers, like are there any particular cases that really stand out in terms of like highlight in you know, what's possible with members face?
Ward:
Yeah, I mean, yeah, our case studies are a good mix of successful customers and like really successful customers. There's one in particular ladies of real estate. You know, you can just go into there if you look at our case study and you need some back of the envelope math that you can see that they're generating. You know, well into the seven figures of revenue through our plan that that right there stands as a Testament to we scale a lot of money with thousands of customers without a hitch. They've had no issues why they're willing to be a case study for us and let people know about all that. Yeah. But yeah, they're, they're a good Testament to like th this stuff could scale. You've been having real business on Squarespace where you charge people recurring revenue from membership. It's not like, Oh, this little side dinky project it can here is this now to get to that level just cause you have memberspaces. I mean you're on half clean, decent, successful business. That's why we kind of our, our, our focus is on people who have an audience, have an actual audience. You're looking for a way to monetize that. If you're, if you have no audience, nobody knows who you are and you just kind of starting off with like with a business number space may or may not be the best day, just cause you know, we're not, we're not the cheapest option. Absolutely not. And we're not. And there are things you can do to Hack together to maybe create the initial MVP of a membership without using memberspace. Once you're ready to have like a professional tool to, to run a professional business, that's what number stays going.
Omari:
Yeah, I can, I can definitely affirm that because when I first tried it out, I had none of those things, which is why it wasn't a good fit for me at the time. But I definitely see how this particular model is, is beneficial. A ward man. Thank you for jumping on and you know, sharing your experience with us. I think this is going to be a good episode to kick it off with.
