See how this guitar master took his passion and turned it into a successful online business with MemberPress.
We all want to engage with our passions, whatever they might be. For those of us whose passions lie in industries like banking, or personal injury law, it’s a bit easier to turn that passion into a reliable source of income.
With MemberPress, you can make any hobby into a career that’s fulfilling – both emotionally and financially. And there are countless MemberPress customers who know that from first-hand experience.
Meet MemberPress User: Tom Fontana
For example, meet Tom Fontana, a MemberPress creator and the owner of TheGuitarLesson.com, a website that provides video guitar lessons to beginner guitar students.
Tom started playing guitar in high school, but it wasn’t until after high school that he started bringing in some extra cash with these his sweet skills.
In college he taught guitar to a few friends, expanding out to a wider array of students.
After college, Tom spend 10 years in the banking. But he started to feel burnt out. The long hours and hard work were getting to him, so he started looking for a new way to engage his passion.
“I wanted to do something else with my life. Just by chance I came across a few guitar lesson sites and I thought, ‘I could do that.’”
So, he started looking at his options. A friend in web design helped him put together his first online guitar lesson website.
Despite the challenge of recording lessons in front of the camera, Tom persevered and realized he was a natural.
TheGuitarLesson.com: A Membership Experience
Back in ’09 Tom migrated the site over to WordPress. He needed a reliable platform that was easy to use and easy to update with content. With that in mind, he went on a search for the perfect platform.
The solution for all Tom’s membership plugin needs? MemberPress, of course!
The successful transition is evident. As of the writing of this blog post, TheGuitarLesson.com has over 300 video lessons and counting.
The site has a couple of different membership options.
Free members get access to about 30 lessons. And Premium members can get to the entire library – complete with quizzes and progress tracking.
All his effort paid off, and Tom was able to turn his back on banking and go full steam ahead on his membership site.
Why MemberPress was a good fit for Tom
All across the internet, MemberPress helps countless solopreneurs and small businesses get off the ground.
When he started off with his site, Tom says, “I didn’t know anything about the internet or online stuff.”
With MemberPress, it’s shockingly easy to get started with only a barebones understanding of WordPress.
After his migration to WordPress, Tom still needed a membership plugin, and he was looking for a few essentials:
- Easy for non-tech heads to use
- Full creative control
- Quick uploads and updates
- Options for multiple membership levels
- Video cataloging
- NO hidden fees
With a bit of searching, he found that MemberPress checked every one of these boxes. Managing membership sales and accounts is a vital part of the business, and Tom knew that there was no sense in only going halfway.
But he didn’t come to that decision without a lengthy trial period: “I tested all of the membership plugins available, and I found MemberPress to be the best one, in terms of quality and value.”
Tom’s favorite MemberPress features
Tom says the countless features and integrations MemberPress comes with are things you’ll end up paying someone else more to automate after the fact. So why not go with MemberPress and have it all in one place?
Tom’s favorite features include the drip functionality, which helps him with protecting beginner guitarists from information overload. The lessons, he says, are distributed out more manageably this way.
Another of his favorites is the cart abandonment feature, which he says is “worth its weight in gold”. This feature helps bring back users who’ve abandoned their signup in the shopping cart.
It prevents a huge chunk of (potentially) lost sales.
The benefits of running a membership site
In addition to all his favorite features, Tom loved the freedom of having a membership site:
“When I worked at the bank I was working from 8:30 in the morning ’til ten at night, but with a website you can choose your hours.”
Suddenly, he was free to spend more time with his family and on his own passions. “That’s priceless, basically.”
It is priceless, for sure. And according to Tom, it’s a pretty sweet deal to have “a full time, normal income by helping people and to be able to make money out of what I love doing.”
We should all be so lucky as Tom, right? To find our passion, and make a living doing it.
With MemberPress, that “luck” can become an earned reality.
Conclusion
If you’re a novice guitarist or someone trying to get back into their groove, head on over to theguitarlesson.com. You’ll find a huge catalogue of awesome tutorials to get you started.
And be sure to watch our video interview with Tom up above!
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The post MemberPress Customer Story: TheGuitarLesson.com (Read & Watch Now) first appeared on MemberPress.
