Memberful Transformed "Silas Wrote It" From a Budding Blog Into a Bountiful Business!

Hi there! My name is Dream Silas. I am the face, voice, and creator behind the Silas Wrote It blog. It is there that I blog about my own cultivated perspectives and beautiful epiphanies. The topics surround love, faith, connection, and nature. It's a wonderful pastime. One that I couldn't stop doing even if I attempted. There's just too much passion behind it. It's like an impulse. A perpetual itch.

In the midst of scratching that itch, I started thinking of ways in which I could share my thoughts in a lucrative manner. Quite frankly, I wanted to turn my thoughts into coins. My words into dollars. And through a few weeks of intense brainstorming, I was able to come up with a plan. One that would allow me to profit off of my blog. And that plan consists of strategy, hard work, consistency, and a whole lot of Memberful!

Silas Wrote It Origins: I've always had a passion for expressing the beautiful...

I was the little girl to keep everything on the inside. From petty secrets to serious matters, I kept almost everything to myself. Within myself. This obviously had both pros and cons. I’ll let you wonder which outweighed the other…

Being extremely introverted, I took to writing everything down that came to my mind. Through thousands of small passages of words cultivated by me, my truest self attempted to escape through carefully paced syllables. I had never truly met her before, but she was bold, opinionated, and valued the more beautiful, airy textures of life. I was amazed at this defined fragment of me.

After accepting and integrating this part of myself into the whole of me, I only wanted to write about the simple wonders of life. The pure phenomena of life are often overlooked and undervalued, but I wanted to highlight them. I wanted to praise them. I aspired to take a normal idea, a common object, or a simple moment and extract the beauty out of them and highlight it with words. The desire dominated me. Completely. I know this all may sound a bit abstract but this is why the Silas Wrote It blog was created.

I felt a strong calling to express the beauty of normal, everyday human life and existence from my perspective.

I realized that everything in life is essentially a relationship, as we are in relation to everything. Thus, I decided that I would talk about the beauty of life through the lens of relationships.

Our relationships to the natural world, to our loved ones, to society and the world we live in, to faith, and to ourselves. In this domain, I extract the beauty from wherever it is and highlight it in my posts to the best of my ability.

I write about choosing to look at everything with loving eyes and seeing the inherent beauty in the seemingly mundane. I strongly believe that this garners appreciation and is the blueprint of a beautiful, enjoyable life. I want to be able to contribute to that blueprint.

An excerpt from my blog post titled, In Defense of America the Beautiful:

There are many reasons to be in a continuous state of appreciation while living life here. Whenever I think of my life here in America, I’m met with a list of luxuries that I am overwhelmingly thankful for... I can’t separate all of the beautiful aspects of my life, the ones I love, or myself from this country.

What Kind of Person is the Silas Wrote It Blog For and What Value Can They Derive From It?

My main target audience is indrawn, young women who are looking to lead softer, beautiful lives. But it is not exclusive in the slightest. Not at all.

The Silas Wrote It blog is really for anyone who likes to dwell on the delicate nature of ordinary life. Of earthly life. Anyone who seeks the texture of that appreciation and wants to connect with a stream of beautiful ideas. People who are remarkably sensitive and therefore are sensitive to the energetic wave of beauty in subtle, common things. Personalities that are also inner-directed, like me, and like to reflect on how the outside world feels to them.

The Silas Wrote It Blog proposes perspectives that feed the appetite of the person looking to connect with beautiful ideas concerning their inner and outer worlds. Readers of my blog can expect to be introduced to an array of new viewpoints concerning everyday life and to be thrown into the lens where everything seems like a miracle.

An excerpt from my blog post titled, Stay Away From "Realistic" Relationship Expectations:

Both parties should always strive for perfection, even if it can’t be reached. Why? Because reaching for perfection allows there to be consistent, unwavering growth... Holding each other to the highest ideal calls the best out of both parties. I personally feel this is one of the main purposes behind romantic unions. To continually inspire and call the best out of one another. You are around a person who demands the best of you daily. How wonderful is that?! When this is abandoned in a relationship though, it tends to spiral downward for lack of a vision forward.

Monetizing the Silas Wrote It Blog Without Memberful VS With Memberful

There, fortunately, are lots of ways to monetize a blog these days. Although this is a good thing, it can be easy to get overwhelmed with what already needs to be established to decently benefit from certain monetization programs.

For instance, there is affiliate marketing. This is beneficial but it can potentially lead you to stray too far away from your content while trying to promote someone else's products. Next, we have Google Ad Sense. Google Ad-sense is very useful but the problem is that you need a substantial amount of traffic coming to your website if you're looking to make any decent amount of money. There would also be a ton of annoying ads on your site which can be obnoxious.

And I'm not sure of how common this is, but I have added a tip jar to my website. I ask anyone who feels moved by any of my work to consider leaving a small tip. I think it is a wonderful idea but it is obviously pretty unreliable.

This brings me to Memberful, a membership selling software for creators. Before stumbling upon Memberful, the idea to sell a membership never even crossed my mind. But once I thought further into it, it was a brilliant idea!

Memberful could enable me to turn Silas Wrote It into a lucrative business by allowing me to sell memberships of exclusive content to my blog readers and subscribers. This is a more reliable source of income because I don't need tens of thousands of subscribers or a substantial amount of traffic to make decent money. It is also more reliable because there is a monthly fee for the membership, which translates into consistent, recurring income.

How Memberful's Gated Content and Community Features Can Help Monetize the Silas Wrote It Blog

Selling memberships sounded like a fantastic idea when I heard it. I was all for it as soon as I realized it was possible. The next challenge though was figuring out what I would actually sell to members. I knew I didn't want to deviate from my blog's purpose by selling something even remotely unrelated. Furthermore, I didn't want to do any additional work. Blogging is already a lot of work in of itself and I didn't want to add any more stress. So, I had to think of something that didn't deviate from my blog's direction and didn't require extra work.

This is when I noticed Memberful's gated content feature. The gated content feature would allow me to restrict some of my blog posts and reserve them only for paying members. I love this idea because I don't need to deviate at all from my blog's purpose, instead, I am able to monetize what I would normally write anyway. It also doesn't necessarily require any more work on my part. It's perfect!

Memberful's feature that allows you to create a community exclusive to paying members is something I also had my eye on. I thought that building a community full of like-minded individuals that focus on sharing beautiful perspectives was a nice addition to my blog. The community would strengthen the purpose of the blog further instead of deviating from it.

I decided that I would name the membership Silas Wrote It Unlimited.

Gated Content: A Locked Blog Post for Non-Members VS Silas Wrote It Unlimited Members View

An excerpt from my blog post titled, The Beauty Over Brains Debate:

Beauty has an important role in the human experience... it makes us want to combine with it and have it become a part of us. Beauty inspires the goodness within us and forces us to emit it out to the world. It is the energy of everything that is moving, lovely, pure, and holy... Intellect, though highly important, is always focused on the exterior of things... It is the shadow of wisdom. Intellect has its place and is undoubtedly valuable, it just has its limits. This makes intellect too finite and rigid. Beauty is limitless energy... it doesn’t keep anyone or anything tied in bondage to this physical realm... While intellect keeps you in your head ceaselessly, beauty offers freedom. Beauty is an escape as well as something to ground you when you need to be in the present.

My Business Strategy to Implement the Gated Content Feature and Help Me Obtain More Members

My next hurdle was figuring out how I would convert blog readers and subscribers to members. What incentive could I give my readers to actually sign up for my membership? After all, I am already putting out free content, (which I love doing no matter what) why would they pay for anything else?

Well, after a few moments I started devising a strategy that could work. In all of my blog posts, I urge all of my readers to sign up for my newsletter about two times each post. If someone truly enjoys my content, they would subscribe to my weekly newsletter.

In the newsletter, I'd announce all of my recent blog posts as well as the upcoming ones. I post two blog posts a week, one on Wednesday and the other on Sunday. The newsletter would be emailed out every Monday morning, displaying excerpts and call to action for the posts that were published the previous Wednesday and Sunday. The newsletter would also briefly give descriptions of the upcoming posts I'd publish on the following Wednesday and Sunday.

Wednesday posts would be available to everyone and Sunday posts would be for paying members only. The newsletter would have excerpts for both members-only posts and the posts available to everyone. Both posts would be ones of value but they would differ.

Typically, the members-only post would be more in-depth and on a more provocative topic. The excerpt of the members-only blog post that I would include would be an intense part of the post but I would cut it off just before I make any notable points. This would potentially entice the non-members to sign up for the membership as they might want to actually read the post.

I'd even break an intriguing post into two parts. I'd make the first part available for everyone and the second part for members only. My thought behind this is that if readers really liked the first part then they would possibly want to read the second part. But because the second part would only be available to members, this may tempt non-members to consider joining my membership.

In any case, in every newsletter, I'd gently urge non-members to join my membership. At the bottom of every blog post as well, I'd encourage readers to become members.

How Silas Wrote It Can Implement and Benefit From Memberful's Community Feature For Paying Members

Eventually creating a community is something I am interested in. I would use Discord and integrate it with Memberful to create my private community for my blog. The community would act as a forum where we would discuss any of the lovely points of our week. We'd perhaps send pictures of plants we've grown, a park we love, or a pleasant moment we've captured. We'd talk about anything that makes our lives beautiful. We'd get inspiration from each other to continue to cultivate a life full of more beauty and more value.

I pose a few questions at the end of every blog post. We could discuss these questions in the forum. We'd hear other's perspectives on that week's blog posts and perhaps even debate a little. Maybe we'd even just chat because we've formed such great friendships.

Additionally, members would give ideas for other blog posts. The topics would obviously have to be related to my blog's theme. Every month I would choose a topic from one of my members and give them recognition within that post and within the newsletter that contains that post.

Example: This post was inspired by Haruka O. from Pure Michigan.

The community objective is to feed the desire to dwell on the beauty of life and to cultivate a deeper appreciation for living, even the mundane aspects of it. Having a community brings like-minded people together under an umbrella of wonderful ideas. It would undoubtedly strengthen the purpose behind the Silas Wrote It Blog. And I would feel excited to be able to meet and get to know people like myself.

Final Thoughts

This is my business plan for Silas Wrote It. I recently finished doing the groundwork for my blog and now I can't wait to proceed with my plan. I realize there will be some trial and error with implementing certain features. Execution of a plan is completely different from simply planning it, but I am prepared to make the necessary tweaks to see it forward.

Overall, I feel that the plan is solid enough for what I want to do with my blog. Memberful is an important piece in the monetization of my blog and I aim to get the most out of it. I plan to move forward with Memberful in such a way that I can actually tell someone that "Memberful transformed Silas Wrote It from a budding blog into a bountiful business!"

I have a deep love for writing. A serious affinity. I'd one day love to make enough money to completely support myself from it. It is a dream I am ready to do the work for. A dream that I have planned for.

The honor it would be to bridge what I love to do with what I am paid to do. I believe there is beauty in the attempt of this. The unwavering, genuine attempt. And I'll do just that.