6 Tips for Creating and Running a Successful Membership Site

The term “membership” carries a lot of weight. Customers are naturally drawn to it because of its uniqueness. This is a very effective strategy for your online course or school.

Membership sites vary from conventional online courses in that, instead of developing a single curriculum, you’ll continually upload fresh material to keep your site up to date. Your committed community members will pay a recurring charge to access the material you produce regularly.

Here’s how to create a profitable membership site.

#1 Use the ‘course bundle’ functionality

The following are the four most important steps to take while creating a membership site:

• Organize the material on your membership site
• Sell it as a subscription.
• Limit who has access to your premium content.
• Manage your material regularly.

Course bundles are something that enables you to accomplish all of these things and do them extremely efficiently.

You may combine several courses and offer them as a bundle using the course bundle functionality. You may sell your course bundle as a monthly or annual subscription, or you can provide a variety of payment plans.

When a member buys a bundle membership, they get access to all the kid courses, and when their subscription ends, they lose access to the courses.

You have two options for pushing new material to your members: create a new course or add it to a current course, in which case the content will be posted to the membership area instantly. You may also delete and archive your courses in the same way.

Pro-tip: You may remove the price plans from the courses and enable the bundle to have pricing if you don’t want to sell them separately. You may even remove the lessons from the course directory by unpublishing them.

#2 Offer new members a free or paid trial period

Offering subscription trials is one of the most efficient methods to promote your membership site. You may immediately address many of the questions that a user would have otherwise by providing a trial.

When putting this approach into action, you have two choices: You may either establish a free trial or a low-cost trial (for example, a $1 trial).

#3 Provide various subscription tiers

There are only two methods to increase your earning potential: Either you attract more customers, or each client spends more money. We’ll concentrate on the second option here.

Creating different membership tiers is a great way to boost the average expenditure per member. For example, you might create two or three membership tiers for your website, naming them as bronze, silver, and gold.

You might provide access to only the primary material at one membership level, but at another level(s), you could offer monthly webinars, group coaching, and so on.

The number of levels you create, how you name them, and what you include in each one are determined by your company and the goals you want to accomplish by using various membership levels.

Duplicate your current bundle and add or delete courses as needed to meet the needs of that level. The checkout link may then be placed behind a button on your main sales page. That’s all; your membership site is now ready to offer various subscription tiers.

#4 Upsell Other Courses

Upselling is another way to get your subscribers to spend more money and improve your income.

To establish a successful upsell strategy for your membership site, you must first address three key questions: what to upsell, to whom to upsell, and when to upsell.

The ‘what’ and ‘who’ parts of your upselling plan are linked, and here are some thoughts to consider:

• Monthly subscribers may be upsold to an annual membership.
• Upsell your silver subscribers to the gold membership level.
• Gold members may be upsold a premium one-on-one coaching package.
• You can also upsell other courses and programs.

The second issue to consider is when you should deliver your upsell offer. You may display your upsell offer on the post-purchase thank you page, for example.

You may also upsell your courses by adding extra lectures. As a result, you may wish to add a bonus lesson at the conclusion, provide the course information, and then include a call to action that directs them to the checkout page.

The use of email marketing is another crucial method to upsell. You can set up Zapier to send out course completion emails, and you can include your upsell offer in the email itself.

#5 Make a learning route for your students to follow

You’d want your students to follow a certain learning path in the membership area, and you’d like to do it in a way that doesn’t overwhelm them and allows them to finish your courses in tiny chunks. This ultimately leads to higher completion rates and more engaged students.

For your membership site, provide a variety of content kinds.

Your content is at the heart of your membership site. If you can provide real value to your audience while keeping them interested, they will renew their subscriptions and seek additional goods and courses from you.

In the end, when it comes to membership sites, content reigns supreme.

#6 Add a variety of content

So, what kind of material can you add to your membership to guarantee that your members receive genuine value from it?

• Videos – Videos are one of the most engaging ways to provide information, and you should include them in your membership.
• Resources and downloads — To supplement your primary material, you may provide various workbooks, cheat sheets, and other resources. You may also upload them as PDFs to your Teachable site for students to download.
• Live webinars – You should include webinars in your content plan since they are regarded as premium material and may help retain subscribers. You may integrate a YouTube live webinar on your Teachable site if you use it for webinars. You may also link to your webinar event.
• Quizzes – Depending on your speciality, using quizzes to assess your learner’s progress from time to time may be an intelligent approach.
• Assignments – You may utilize your Dropbox account to gather lessons from your members. You may send out a file request, and your members can then submit their assignments to your Dropbox account.