The Key Ingredient That Builds 7 and 8 Figure Empires

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Over the past 2 years I’ve generated over $5.5M in sales through my multiple different channels of business online. I did all of that while traveling the world, living in small spaces, spotty wifi, you name it. There was one major lesson I learned that the gurus online RARELY talk about, but deserves to be discussed because it’s the number one reason I’ve had such great success… but I did it by accident.

When it comes to becoming a “PaidCreator” you’ve likely heard countless ways to “make money online” and I’m sure they are all awesome… but for some reason MOST people have a tough time keeping their business afloat. Why is that?

Well - I figured it out. Not only will I help you get started, but I’ll help you stay alive in this industry with what I’m going to share today, so pay close attention and PLEASE share this if you feel like someone you know could benefit.

We need to talk about the elephant in the online world… the income that no one talks about that I would consider a business maker (or breaker).

RECURRING REVENUE!

No one ever talks about this, but this is the absolute secret and key ingredient to a successful online business that stays online for years, and I’ll prove it!

Recurring revenue is the only way you can predict that you’re business will be online tomorrow. I see it all the time with people who are in the affiliate marketing space. How many times have we seen someone with a huge audience, making multiple 6 figures, in 6 months they are gone. Why is that? How is that possible?

It’s because they are SO focused on making sales today, they don’t think about building reliability tomorrow. Eventually your new sales inflow will slow down, you may lose your ad account, the algorithm may not favor you, things happen… the offer you are promoting may change and all that hard work is gone.

I mean to change that forever with PaidCreators by teaching people how to build a community that pays them every single month! A community they get to lead, that provides way more value than they are charging for it, a community that supports the host financially month after month.

To Find Out How We Do This, Click Here To Join Our Community

Whether it’s streaming platforms like Netflix, online education, fitness memberships, or even meal delivery services, monthly recurring revenue (MRR) models are becoming the backbone of successful businesses.

And there’s a good reason why—recurring revenue is predictable, scalable, and, most importantly, it gives you freedom.

But here’s the exciting part… you don’t need to be a giant corporation to get a piece of this recurring income pie.

Right now, more and more everyday people—coaches, hobbyists, creators—are building paid communities in their niches and creating sustainable monthly incomes. These communities are not only helping them generate recurring revenue but are also transforming their passion into a thriving business.

To give you a few examples… I personally know people that are making thousands every month, hosting recurring products in the following niches:

• Holding a handstand

• Homesteading

• Homeschooling

• Doing your makeup

• Fitness/ Nutrition/ health

• Local Run Clubs

• Think of something you love…

And the best part? You can do the same and you can do it in a niche you love. I teach people how to build Micro Community Offers (or MCO’s) to accomplish this as it’s the best of all worlds as far as offers are concerned.

MCO’s are easy to create because it’s a community, but it holds high value because you add a membership on top of it. Most people are out there trying to sell a course for $1,997 and adding in a free community. What if you flipped it? What if you had a super affordable community with a free course in the back of it? Now when they sign up, you are giving them value which starts a bit of “Value ping pong” we’ll call it.

Value ping pong is the back and forth that will take place with you and your customers. You give them education and foundational value to help them get the result they want… they give you value in their dollars. This relationship will continue to grow over time. Maybe you launch a coaching program, well now you have a “ping pong” like relationship with hundreds of people who know you’re material is good… so they will again exchange their money for your value. It’s a back and forth that works for all parties.

Paid Communities are a relatively new trend but check a LOT of boxes for us as PaidCreators.

• Cheap and quick to create (I teach a method that takes less than one hour to make the entire thing)

• Easy to create value for them (I teach a method that uses ChatGPT to help us constantly add and create value for our members)

• Easy to sell because they are priced low and we build in some scarcity with a cool price raising technique

• Easy to talk about and get members for because we know the value is there

• Easy and quick to launch because it doesn’t require months of training videos to be filmed

• Amazing “lead getters” because they make us money while attracting our ideal clients to us.

• Great income setup. Since it’s recurring income we can make 10 sales today and we KNOW we will have some money coming next month instead of always starting every month at square one.

  

  Note: This MRR doesn’t include the sales I’ll show you later because this only shows revenue DIRECTLY billed in Stripe… if the membership is billed in stripe but managed in an outside platform it won’t show here.
  
  

This image here is something I CHERISH every single day in my business. You can see two stats that should show you just how amazing this is. On the left I have a widget that shows me my Facebook reach… Ouch… 66 people in a week.

Well, luckily for me I don’t really depend on virality to make money. I mostly run ads and rely on my internal audience… but let’s look at the number on the right.

MRR = Monthly Recurring Revenue

That means, if I do nothing this month, I’ll make $33,400. It makes it a LOT EASIER to run a business when you have money guaranteed to come in every month… but everyone overlooks this and I really hope we can change that.

Now…. how cool is this? By you being here and reading our newsletter we get to work with brands like this! Make sure you check them out… it helps the brand just by you clicking and seeing what they are all about!

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The Rise of Monthly Recurring Revenue: A Growing Trend

PaidCommunities and monthly subscription bundles are the talk of the town amongst REAL marketers… Here’s a couple cool stats I found when looking into this

1. The global subscription ecommerce market is expected to grow from $96.61 billion in 2022 to $241 billion by 2028, at a staggering CAGR of 14.5%. In simple terms, this isn’t just a trend—it’s the future of business.

2. Platforms like Skillshare and MasterClass, which operate on a membership model, saw membership growth of 300% from 2019 to 2022, proving that consumers are hungry for ongoing education and community-based learning.

3. 80% of businesses report that subscription models help improve customer retention, making it easier to predict monthly income and plan for growth.

4. In the world of online education, subscription-based models lead to retention rates 50-60% higher than traditional one-off courses. People stick around because they want continuous value and support.

5. Over 50% of online learners now prefer subscription-based access to educational content, citing flexibility and continuous learning as the top reasons.

The key takeaway? Monthly recurring memberships are not only incredibly popular, but they’re also a stable, predictable, and fast-growing way to build a business that runs smoothly month after month.

You want REAL mental freedom in your business… focus on building up recurring revenue. One time sales are awesome, but why not get a low ticket front end recurring product… now you’re acquiring buyers AND they are paying you monthly. It’s a win/ win.

Why Paid Communities Are So Powerful

Imagine creating a paid community where people join you month after month to learn something you already love doing. Maybe it’s a fitness routine you’ve mastered, a skill like photography, or even something as specific as gardening. The possibilities are endless. I mean that, basically any niche could hold the keys to a super profitable paid community.

Here’s why this model works so well:

1. Predictable Income: With members paying you every month, you can build consistent, recurring revenue. No more chasing clients or wondering where your next sale will come from. Maybe you could ACTUALLY take some time off instead of having to grind CONSTANTLY to get new customers… you just focus on providing value for the ones you have.

2. Retention and Loyalty: Subscription-based communities boast 50% higher retention rates than one-off sales, meaning your audience stays with you longer and invests more in your content.

3. Engaged Audience: You’re not just selling a product—you’re building a community. People are far more likely to stick around when they’re part of a supportive group that encourages them to grow.

4. Scalability: The beauty of a paid community is that it scales effortlessly. You don’t have to work harder as more people join—your content works for you. Plus, for every 50 members you add, you can easily increase the price $10, allowing your income to grow exponentially and adding in scarcity to get people to take action NOW.

5. Lifetime Value: This is one of the key factors to all online businesses. You have to figure out how to make more from every customer, and you do that in recurring membership products. The more you make from every customer, the more growth you can afford.

My favorite numbers are these…

- If you get 73 members between now and the next 100 days, you’ll have generated $10,000
- If you get 240 members total, you’ll be generating $10,000/ mo
- If you get 691 members you’re generating $50,000/ mo which is a life changing amount of money

But don’t just take my word for it. Look at the data:

• 65% of top online course creators now offer membership programs instead of one-off course sales because it’s more sustainable and scalable.

• Companies with membership-based models have seen an average 30% increase in customer lifetime value, meaning each customer brings more revenue over time.

If you're serious about building a business that doesn't just survive but thrives, The PaidCreators System is the best way to do that in todays market.

How My Journey Led Me to Paid Communities

In August of 2023 my wife and I sold our house and decided to pack everything up and travel the world while our kids were young. My online business, selling digital courses, was what allowed me to do this because it’s not location dependent. Funny enough I was selling a $97 course at the time. Can you believe I was able to generate over $5Million all from a $97 course and some Facebook ads? It’s wild…

During this year of amazing sales to this offer, the $97 sales weren’t what really made my business any money… it was what we sold BEHIND it that opened a lot of doors for me.

Check this out. Without knowing what I was actually doing, I started promoting a Paid Community…

We got 889 people to join and ended up making over $195,000 in a year as you can see above. We still have 100 people paying for this community and I haven’t promoted it since December of 2023! (Almost a year ago).

But then I did it again with a different product

Yep… 1610 people joining and that product made me $327,000 in a year.

Not bad right? All from products that cost less than $50/ mo! This is the power of collecting compounding payments by providing compounding value.

This exact philosophy is what we teach in our PaidCreators Community… it’s the entire system that will help you figure out what to sell, how to package it the way we do, and how to start generating sales without needing a big audience or budget when you start. You start by creating something valuable that doesn’t cost, this will attract your ideal clients… then we break out the HIGH VALUE, LOW COST “MCO” or “Micro Community Offer”. Once we get that nailed down we open up more traffic channels and more leveraged products in the funnel to bring in more revenue.

The beauty here is that recurring keeps you interested, keeps you learning, keeps you engaged… If you want to have a good recurring product you need to be a good recurring host, and you know that, which means you’ll be doing your best to give your members what they subscribed for. It also gives you income you can use to fund new traffic sources, paying influencers for shout outs, buying your way on to big podcasts, paying for ads… it is literally the cheat code for anyone looking to create an online business.

I believe most business coaches/ trainers are trying SO HARD to teach what they think is sexy that they overlook this. Recurring revenue is sexy, but also a bit harder to get. Think about it. It’s easier to get someone to give you $20 one time than it ever would be to get them to give you $20/ mo… so you have to figure out how to make your offering more attractive to get more customers. Again… not to toot my own horn but that’s what I specialize in and exactly what I teach in the PaidCreators Community.

It’s clear to see that recurring revenue is the core of what’s created multiple 7 figures for me in the past 2 years, it’s what helped me build an sell a software product in 2022, and what’s kept me online for over 15 years.

This stuff works…

Let me make this clear. Without recurring income I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t have been able to travel the world, I wouldn’t have been able to take chances with my business, I wouldn’t go to bed knowing tomorrow I’ll make money even if I don’t make sales.

Whatever you do… make sure you have some recurring element to it. It may seem hard to figure out what you can create that people will pay monthly for but that’s what I help you create in our PaidCreators Community!

The Simple Path to Building Your Own Paid Community

Starting a paid community doesn’t have to be complicated. I teach hundreds of people exactly what to do, in step by step fashion in our community… but I’ll cover a basic outline here.

In the PaidCreators Community, you’ll learn how to:

• Find The Product Niche you are best suited to serve with your current knowledge and passion.

• Build your community offer and package so that people are begging to get in at each price level

• Build a thriving community that keeps people engaged and coming back month after month by using our proprietary value add system.

• Get 50 members in your first month using my EXACT outreach approach that has nothing to do with going viral or having a big budget.

• Scale the, now, proven system with Facebook ads and affiliates.

The first thing you have to do is decide whether or not you want it. Everyone SAYS they want to run a business for themselves, everyone SAYS they want to make a lot of money… but most people don’t genuinely have the “guts” to see it through.

While my PaidCreators method works for most, it isn’t going to be something where you snap your fingers and have a business. You’re going to be learning new skills, creating new habits, and building a new way of life… don’t expect that to be something that just instantly clicks.

It’s hard work… but you choose your hard in life. Being poor is also hard… working for other people is hard… commuting to work is hard… begging for “sick days” is hard… holding out for a raise is hard…

I’d prefer the “hard” of building a business to the alternative any day!

No matter what you choose, not matter what kind of business you go into… please do not overlook recurring revenue. It’s honestly not that complicated… and it’s worth the work you put in.

See you at the top!

Travis Stephenson

PS… if you made it this far could you do us a favor and check out our sponsors? It’s how we keep this newsletter free!

2025 Prediction: A Surge of Self-Serve CTV Buyers

Roku predicts that 2025 will be a breakthrough year for self-serve CTV advertising. Roku Ads Manager makes it easy to integrate CTV into your 2025 marketing mix. Easily segment your target audience, optimize campaigns in real-time, and drive conversions with interactive ad formats and shoppable ads with a Shopify integration. Roku Ads Manager makes CTV advertising accessible and impactful for businesses of any size.

Discover CTV Performance on Roku