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Who Are You and What Is Your Background?
I’m Lidiya Kesarovska, the founder of Let’s Reach Success.
I’m a blogger, course creator, and author and I teach people how to create an abundant business so they can be financially free, become their most ambitious selves, and serve their purpose. I combine personal, spiritual, and business growth to help them do what they love and turn it into their career, with a focus on building a blogging business that can last forever.
What Is Your Business and When Did You Start It?
I started my blog Let’s Reach Success (which is also the name of my registered company) back in 2013. It began as a hobby and on the topic of personal growth. I wanted to share my journey, I love writing, and I needed a creative outlet, so blogging was the perfect way to combine that.
I then learned sites can be monetized and began learning from other bloggers. In the meantime, I was freelancing (writing articles for clients) and earning my first income online. I then started making money from my blog, and with both income streams combined, I was able to relocate to another country and live life on my own terms. I later replaced freelancing with full-time blogging, and because I learned so much about that business model and loved it, I naturally started teaching it. I created different courses on the topic and now also run other sites as well as a membership for bloggers.
What Was Your Professional Situation Right Before Starting the Membership Site?
The membership (Fearless Bloggers) is just another digital product that’s part of my product suite, it’s another way for me to teach what I know and love (the business of blogging) and it’s something I wish existed back in the days when I was just starting out.
It’s a very small part of my revenue right now, but memberships aren’t easy to grow. I believe in that offer, though, and think it provides massive value (the current members are loving it) so I will keep growing the community and see how it evolves.
How did you get the idea to start this particular membership business?
I didn’t need to start a membership, but I follow inspiration, passion, and creative energy when taking up new projects. It’s something I was eventually going to do, and I put a lot of thought into outlining the whole idea before getting to action.
I knew I’d give it at least a year to see how it goes. There’s a lot of prep work involved, figuring out which platform is best, setting it up, preparing the initial content, creating the curriculum, deciding on the best format, creating the offer itself (bonuses, structure, value, messaging, etc.), the community aspect, the pricing, the marketing copy, and anything else.
What Was the Major Challenge You Faced in Starting or Scaling It and How Did You Overcome It?
Running a membership is a lot of responsibility. You need to constantly be doing 3 big things: keeping current members in, creating new content, and making more sales.
All of these have been challenging for me. Not getting new members in can be discouraging but it doesn’t mean you have a bad product.
In my case, it might mean that all people on my email list already know about it and those who haven’t joined, don’t have a good reason for it, or aren’t ready to invest in any product (even if it’s a small monthly expense).
Also, recurring expenses scare people and they avoid them. In this article, I share some important things I’ve learned from starting a membership.
What Was Growth Like Over the First Couple of Years?
The membership has only existed for a little over a year. Initially, more people joined (still, small numbers, though. Like 20 people or something, but that meant a lot to me.) to grab the early-bird pricing.
It’s easy to promote a new product as my excitement can sell it. But as time goes by and as people in my audience have heard about it multiple times, it gets harder.
Keep in mind I do many other things online, and the membership was just an addition, an experiment, a creative project for me, another way to serve people. I wasn’t in a rush to make big money quickly.
What Was Your Specific Strategy for Growing It and How Did You Implement That?
When it comes to selling a paid offer, I rely on my email list because these are the people who know, like, and trust me. Still, though, many might not want to invest in products and are just following my updates via email and checking the new free content I publish.
Some members who joined did it because they love my passion for business and says it motivates them to keep going. Inside the membership, I publish my monthly income reports so that creates accountability both for me and the members. It’s fun.
The other ways in which I promote the offer are indirect. I grow my blog traffic, create content on socials, promote on Pinterest, etc, all with the goal of getting people on my email list and forming connections. Once they are on it, they will be hearing about Fearless Bloggers often.
How Much Money Is the Business Making Now and What Is the Revenue Mix?
I’m earning $3K-$6K/month, but the membership is like 5% of that revenue. The rest comes from my blogging business (sponsored content, ad revenue, and selling other digital products).
If You Were Advising Someone on Starting a Similar Company Today, What Would You Tell Them Is the Key Area to Focus On and Which Strategy Should They Use to Address It?
I believe in building a content-driven business – providing a lot of value upfront with free content, and using email marketing to build relationships and make sales.
These days, however, people can just build an engaged audience on socials and launch their product (once they’ve validated their idea). That’s a pretty awesome thing to do and it can work really well once you have the audience.
What’s Next for You?
One new thing I’m doing is creating content on TikTok (and republishing it on Instagram). There I teach blogging as a business and invite people to get my freebies for bloggers (like the 5-figure Blog Biz Checklist). In my bio link, you can also see a link to the membership.
For the rest, I’m doing a content audit on my main site, creating new content for it, growing my second blog, growing 2 Pinterest accounts, creating content for the membership, and updating my course The Blog Sponsorship Boss.
Meanwhile, I keep sharing my journey with my audience on all platforms, especially with members of Fearless Bloggers.
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