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Who Are You and What Is Your Background?
My name is Lisa Rosen, and I am the CEO of Rosen Media Group. I started my career as an environmental lawyer. In 2009, I moved in-house to a nonprofit focused on climate change, which then gave me the opportunity to develop operational and management skills. In 2022, after COVID, I took over the suite of membership websites my husband and I had been buying over several years.
What Is Your Business and When Did You Start It?
My husband was the entrepreneur in the family. In 2009, he started a company called CustomMade. Through CustomMade, he made a variety of contacts in the jewelry and gem trade. In 2013, we acquired the International Gem Society, one of the oldest online gemology schools, on the condition that we kept the founder’s commitment to make gemology accessible and affordable for everyone. Three years later, we acquired the largest online metalsmithing resource, Ganoksin, from the retiring founder on a similar condition.
We turned both websites into membership websites with premium content, courses, and forums available to members. On IGS, there are two tiers of membership: Gem Enthusiast and Professional. The Gem Enthusiast membership is for the hobbyist who wants access to our premium content, gem price guide, forum, newsletter, and other membership discounts and perks like monthly gem giveaways. The Professional membership was created for the gem professional or aspiring professional. It includes all of the Gem Enthusiast benefits plus a listing in our Business Directory, free access to all of our gem-specific mini-courses, and eligibility to take our professional-grade courses, Professional Gemologist, Diamond Specialist, and Mineralogy.
Ganoksin is similarly structured with three membership tiers. The Silver membership gets you access to our world-famous Orchid Forum. The Gold membership includes access to Orchid and our catalogue of online courses. The Platinum membership is tailored towards businesses that want to be listed in our business directory and have access to advertising channels.
What Was Your Professional Situation Right Before Starting the Membership Site?
My husband and I had been working on the websites as a side hustle from 2013-2021. When COVID hit in 2020, I was the Interim CEO and Chief Operating Officer of a climate tech startup. Our websites grew significantly during the pandemic. At the same time, we had two young children at home.
I decided to pivot my career to managing IGS and Ganoksin. They were now too large for a side hustle – they needed senior management. It would also allow me to stay home and be available for my kids. My husband and I agreed that if I liked the work, we would look for other websites to acquire. Indeed, in late 2024, we acquired the maker marketplace from CustomMade and spun off Maker Marketplace.
How did you get the idea to start this particular membership business?
We became familiar with gems and gemology through CustomMade. We fell in love with the idea that the earth could produce stunning gemstones, so we started collecting and trading rare gems. When we discovered the founder of IGS was looking for a successor, we agreed that it would be a logical next step for us to further pursue our hobby. We contacted him, and the rest is history.
What Was the Major Challenge You Faced in Starting or Scaling It and How Did You Overcome It?
We acquired IGS in 2013, but the website was still using its original technical platform from 1998. It looked terrible, but we knew it had great content. First, we hired software developers to redesign and rebuild the website in WordPress to make it fast and sleek. Second, we hired a few technical writers to build out the library. Seth knew about SEO, so he managed content creation. Next, I managed the members – we didn’t have very many – and designed courses that I thought would be interesting to rockhounds and aspiring gemologists. Finally, we hired a marketing agency to help us run Facebook ads to acquire new members.
Our biggest challenge was our budget. We negotiated with every writer and every vendor to try to keep our costs as low as possible while we built the business.
What Was Growth Like Over the First Couple of Years?
Growth was very slow, and it took 10 years to build the membership revenue to support me full-time. Each year we added new members – maybe it was 100 in the first, 200 the next – and our bet was that a certain percentage would renew, so our membership base compounded from one year to the next.
Our web traffic was very good because our domain authority was high, and we published high value content. We added affiliate partners around 2020 because we realized we not only had traffic from rockhounds and gemologists, but also consumers looking to learn about gems before making a purchase. Adding affiliate partners grew our revenue by about 10-15%. Notably, we didn’t monetize the site through digital ads until 2022. We felt ads interfered with the membership experience, but when our traffic skyrocketed during the pandemic, it was too big of a revenue stream to ignore.
What Was Your Specific Strategy for Growing It and How Did You Implement That?
Our growth strategy was very simple: we hired great writers and only published high value content. We then aggregated that content into courses, which we advertised on Facebook back when you could get substantial ROAS through Facebook ads.
Our theory was that as long as our content was of high integrity, the rockhounds and aspiring gem professionals would find us and join. We were right.
How Much Money Is the Business Making Now and What Is the Revenue Mix?
At its height, the two websites together were low seven figures when accounting for membership revenue, affiliate revenue, course sales, and digital ads.
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?
Unfortunately, content websites aren’t doing as well as they used to because of changes Google has made with the Helpful Content Update and AI overviews. Google is now an answer engine, not a search engine, and it’s taking clicks away from small content businesses like ours. To avoid dependence on Google, I would recommend making sure that you build a membership website where you own your audience through an online forum, email marketing, or social media marketing. You need to offer something of value that cannot be found on Google.
What’s Next for You?
We think e-commerce is a good way to further diversify our revenue. For IGS, we are going to diversify our offering by building a gemology program for kids called Gem Junior. Gem Junior will have two parts: an online course for kids and a monthly subscription box called The Mystery Gem Box. Each month, kids will receive one jewelry-grade gem, the same gem in rough form, a real gem tool, and a puzzle book. Kids can complete the puzzles to reveal the identity of their gem. We trialed the subscription box with 50 kids, and they loved it! It’s a great way to build the next generation of gemologists. If it works, we will then roll out a jewelry-making subscription box for kids on Ganoksin.
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