How Azhelle Wade Collaborate with Other Creators and Turned Her MV Site into a Masterclass Style Hub

Welcome back to another episode of Made with MV! Today we'll hear from Azhelle Wade, also known as the Toy Coach, as she peels back the curtain on her innovative approach to breaking into the toy industry. In this episode, Azhelle gives us an insider's view into how she transformed her MV site, toycourses.com, into a masterclass hub for toy industry education. She sheds light on the benefits of her strategy, allowing numerous industry experts to share their knowledge without starting their own course businesses.

Key Topics & Highlights

• Azhelle's role in assisting innovators in the toy industry
• The evolution of her MemberVault site into an educational hub
• Revenue generation while diversifying educational content
• Challenges with integrating MemberVault modals
• Steps to Build Your Own Educational Hub
• Affiliate Management and Revenue Sharing

Connect with Azhelle

Website 
MemberVault Site
Instagram 
LinkedIn
TikTok
Podcast
Download the Toy Idea Starter Guide 

Episode Full Transcript

Azhelle Wade [00:00:00]:

Hi, my name is Azhelle Wade, and I help passionate innovators break into the toy industry so that they can get paid to play. I am excited to share with you how I turn my membervault site into a masterclass like hub for education in the toy industry. So I started doing this strategy about a month and a half ago. I had ideated it. I'd started, started building it out, and I wanted to do this because I looked at the future of my business and I thought, you know, I don't know that it's always going to be me as the primary face of all education in the toy industry as I've sort of marketed my brand now. And there are so many people that I've learned from that I would love to feature and have my students learn from in a way that's consistent, but also in a way that brings revenue back to the toy coach, back to my business. This strategy is new for me, but it is executed and it is up. And what I like most about this strategy is that it allows more people in the toy industry to share their knowledge without having them.

Azhelle Wade [00:01:26]:

Having them need to learn how to, you know, build a business around course creation and having to figure out how to market that business. And it really allows me to answer the needs of all of my different clients because some of them want very specific information that they might find from a smaller course that maybe I don't offer, but maybe one of my creators does. So basically, on my if you go. So basically, if you go to my site, toycourses.com, we have installed a custom homepage. We've changed our MemberVault. So we have our custom homepage. And the introduction that people see is something that says, unbox your potential in the toy industry. And as you scroll down, depending on if you're logged into the platform or if you're not logged in, you will see a selection of courses.

Azhelle Wade [00:02:28]:

If you're not logged in, it'll say, choose your guide, and you can choose which instructor you want to learn from. And if you are logged in, you will see, you know, pick up where you left off and it will show you products you do have access to. What was really interesting in the building out of this platform and working with the template that I purchased, I found that the hardest, one of the hardest parts was trying to pull in existing modals from MemberVault, where we wanted them. So there were different containers for different products. Like, for example, there was a different container for products that people who are logged in can see. And so we had to pull those into the right places on the site. And that was something that was just really exciting when we got it right, but also nerve-wracking till we could find the right code and know where to put all of that information. When you keep scrolling down on this new website for toycourses.com comma, you're able to filter through all of the courses available thanks to this incredible template that I got.

Azhelle Wade [00:03:33]:

And with this template, you are able to flip through and sort your programs and products by different categories. So we have toy design, game design, networking, branding, marketing, career growth, entrepreneurship and we have several different courses offered by other creators and we will be growing out that network and being able to show people look at all these different things you can take to focus on these different skills you might want to master. We also were able to include previews of the courses. This is something I've wanted to do for such a long time. Integrating a preview pop-up modal honestly, you need to hire, like I did, someone to code the website for you so that there can be a pop-up. But it is possible with a video, a Vimeo link to use a Vimeo embed link so that when somebody clicks on watch preview on my site, a video pops up and it plays and they can actually watch a preview of a course before they buy it. We have other sort areas of the platform that focus on trending resources that are not courses but more like downloadable guides. And we have an area where we can highlight a masterclass that we want people to take.

Azhelle Wade [00:04:49]:

And right now we're highlighting the foolish mistakes new toy and game creators make. Masterclass. And we're also able to have a carousel of testimonials floating through. Now all of this stuff was done in the backend based on a template that I'd purchased, purchased and editing that template. So honestly, changing the page isn't easy, but I'm sure that once you see what we've done with it, you could say that it was worth it. Now, the reason that Membervault is the best place to do this is because membervault already has an affiliate system built into it. So what I'm now able to do is every time we have a new creator on this site, you know, whatever our rev share agreement is, I can provide them with a custom affiliate link and say any sales that come in under your custom affiliate link, you will be getting whatever percentage that we agreed to. They can see that link and get access to that link and it's just such an easy way to be able to track, you know, sales that affiliates bring in from their own programs.

Azhelle Wade [00:05:55]:

Now, let's get into some of the steps that I would recommend you take if you wanted to try this out for yourself. Step number one is to definitely download a template. Okay. Step number one is definitely to download a template. I just did a little search and found the name of the person who I got my template from was Corinne. Late, and I got one of her templates, she sent it over, and, and a good friend of mine, who's actually a coder, worked with me to just perfect this template for exactly what I wanted to do with it. So the first steps that I would recommend, you head over to Corinne's MemberVault and get one of her templates to start out with and map out, you know, what you think your site could look like if it did feature products from other creators. Now, what you also need to do is figure out how you're going to structure those deals.

Azhelle Wade [00:06:57]:

So for me, I have a deal where I'm the producer of all of these programs, meaning I recorded all of them, I edited all of them, I host them all on my Vimeo, I host all of the worksheets and the books and everything. I am essentially the course producer. The creators come in and lend their expertise and they plan out the lessons and they deliver the information, but I do everything else, and that's why it can live on my platform. And. And, you know, the Rev share agreement reflects the amount of work I put in versus the creator. So the first thing I guess I would recommend you do is figure out what your agreement will be with your creators so you can understand how much work you're going to put in and then go and buy Corinne's incredible, incredible landing page template for member vault. So those are the first things that I would recommend you do. And then once you have her landing page template for member vault, you are going to then need to get yourself a coder.

Azhelle Wade [00:08:03]:

You're going to need to get somebody who knows a little bit about code a lot, honestly, I mean, not just a little bit. You're going to want to get someone who knows a lot about coding because there were a little bit of challenging things we had to figure out and problem solve. And I think it just went so much faster because my friend is so good. She's such a great coder. So I would highly recommend, you know, you get somebody, and once you get that coder, you want to actually design what your whole page will look like. So for me, I actually designed the entire layout of what I wanted the page to look like in Canva before my friend ever started editing one line of code. And once she started editing it, I would see, like, okay, this design idea I had isn't working or it's not possible. Let me see how I can change it.

Azhelle Wade [00:08:51]:

And so I would adjust my rendering, my mock-up of what my site would look like, and then she would try to make it work and make it work that way. So we did have to do quite a bit of back and forth of me designing and her coding for me to understand what's possible and what isn't. But definitely recommend having a mockup and you can easily do it on Canva before you let your coder start coding away. And, and I, you know, for me, I was working with a friend, so she let me have a ton of changes, but I would recommend getting and writing how many changes or what the agreement is for how long they will work on your site and change it to your perfection. Because I've got to say, we did at least like six or seven significant rounds where we were changing significant things, significant errors, significant things that were just discovered along the way. So you definitely want to build, you know, build that into your process. Other than that, I also have to say when I started building out this site, I decided to move my member vault away from a subdomain of my site and into its own URL. So that's why now it's at toycourses.com instead of the toy coach.com.

Azhelle Wade [00:09:58]:

But yeah, that was a decision I made as I'm going to be adding more and more products and it's just going to kind of bring down the SEO of this site because the more products, the more pages, none of those pages will be searchable by Google. So I decided to just move it away from my main domain. The other areas that I would recommend you consider would really just kind of be your launch. This is something that I didn't consider too much because I was so busy building it. But now we're really in the phase of like, okay, how do we get the word out there about this? It's so good. Can't wait for everybody to see it. So, yeah, I would definitely just make sure that once you've, once you've got your coder working on coding it, maybe before you even see the first pass you start working on, how am I going to tell everybody how amazing it's going to be? Because it's going to be amazing because MemberVault is awesome. Okay, so, yeah, those are the steps that I would recommend.

Azhelle Wade [00:10:55]:

So just to recap, do a mock up on canva. Get your, oh, actually, to recap, restart. To recap, figure out your plan. If you plan to do a rev share agreement where you have other creators teaching on your platform, then do yourself, get yourself that template by Corinne light, then do your canva mock up, then hire your editor. While your editor is working on, you know, refining the code to fit your design, you plan your launch plan of how you're going to promote this thing, and from there you'll be going back and forth with your edit editing editor, refining things. And that's really, you know, the key. And remember that, you know, this site needs a footer which might need a privacy policy and terms and all that other stuff. So don't forget all of those details.

Azhelle Wade [00:11:40]:

Leave enough time for those, for those details things to watch out for for this strategy. One big thing I noticed when we edited the code and when somebody would log in, it would go away from our main, our new homepage and it would take them to the generic membervault product page. But my editor was able to figure that out. So I would just, you know, make sure that when you work with an editor, you let them know that this is something that's probably going to happen and I need you to fix it so they know ahead of time. I also would recommend having your editor record an Sop of what you need to do to change certain things. So that's something that we're going to be doing next. Yeah, definitely. Like for example, now that this, this whole site is coded and it's beautiful on the front end, but the back end there's, you know, there's a lot of code.

Azhelle Wade [00:12:28]:

So if I want to change an image, if I want to change a font, you know, it's not as simple as, you know, changing an image in canva. So an SOP of how that's done would be really helpful, whether it's me or a future coder who's going to be making those changes. So I would highly recommend, you know, getting that done as well. And then the last thing, if you do a rev share agreement with other creators on MemberVault and you use MemberVault to track the affiliate purchases that that creator gets, you actually want to hide the affiliate option on the drop-down menu. So anyone who logs into your site won't be able to see that affiliate side because then they'll be able to see the percentages and they technically then would have their own affiliate link so that they could share your course with other people and could potentially claim their own affiliate percentage. So we just decided to hide that in the dropdown so we don't have so people logging in. Can't, you know, just share any course or anything to get an affiliate percentage that is only for our signed creators and yeah, so that's it. I would love it if you could share in the MemberVault Collaborative and share your takeaways from listening to this episode.

Azhelle Wade [00:13:51]:

And I would love to hear if you're going to try this out for yourself again. My name is Azhelle Wade. I'm known in the toy industry as the toy coach. You can find me on LinkedIn. I'm Azhelle Wade or The Toy Coach on LinkedIn. You can also find me on Instagram  @thetoycoach, TikTok at @thetoycoach. But I would super love it if you checked out my podcast. You can go to thetoycoach.com/podcast or thetoycoachpodcast.com.

Azhelle Wade [00:14:18]:

Got all those URL's and domains. But I would love it if you listen to the podcast and if you love it, leave us a rating and review. And I hope that this helps you, you know, develop your big course streams. All right, until next time. I'll see you later people. Bye.