Membership sites Cheatsheet 1
I have been talking quite a lot recently about creating your own product. Some of you have already taken action on the simple product creation instructions I gave.
Some other members may be interested in creating a membership site, so today I'm just going to go over the basics of what types of membership sites are available. All of you will have experience of a membership site because wealthy affiliates is an example of one.
Ongoing membership sites
Most of you will have more experience with an ongoing membership site. An example is wealthy affiliates. You join for as long as you wish to join and leave whenever you are ready. However, this is not the only type of model. Membership sites can have a fixed term. So, for instance, you can create a membership site for six months and deliver written content as lessons and also do life group coaching. At the end of the six months, you will have built loyal tribal members. The core members that have gone through all the training with you, and they may wish to stay longer in which case you can then offer an ongoing membership site. The advantage here is that you don't have the same pressure to build content regularly.
If you can't decide which of these two models will most suit your purpose, you can always go for the hybrid option. You can opt to create a three-day challenge for free. Advertise this on Facebook and also YouTube. To be fair, you can advertise it in any form of social media, but these are the two sites that I get the most results. You can then create a paid 15-day challenge or 30-day challenge. After that time, you then revert to an ongoing membership site.
How to deliver your membership site
There are two popular ways of doing this; you can have what is often called the vault system. Both the affiliates is an example of the vault system. As a premium member, you can dip in and out of the training, wherever and whenever it suits you. You can switch from boot camp to Jay's training.
The danger here with vault content is that newbies can skip vital parts of the educational process. For instance, here at Wealthy Affiliates, very few complete newbies really nail down and understand keyword research before they go on to the next step. Many members here, including myself, have had to go back on content if they haven't ingested it correctly. That is fine if the content is going to be available for an indefinite period of time. If you deliver a 30-day challenge and it may only be available for them for 30 days. The vault system works well when you want to offer quite an extensive library of training.
If you decide to offer the training for longer than you have to find a platform to host the membership sites or the teaching, I use two pieces of /software to create membership sites, and those are MemberPress, which is a plugin. As most of you know, I am not technical at all. I don't understand geek speak. I can deal with MemberPress because it is easy to setup. The other system I use is Membergate, this used to be $497 a month, but recently the prices come down to a more reasonable $97 a month.
The other type of delivery is what is called drip-fed delivery. Drip fed delivery is terrific if you are offering not training but social media graphics or infographics or something that is delivered every month that your customers can download and use. That way, your own servers are never overloaded with content.
You can also have a hybrid method of delivery.
You offer a full system of training, and then every month you offer something which is drip-fed. Depending on your niche will depend on how you do this. If you have a membership site about building email lists and you can have the content which is delivered by the vault system, and you could, for instance, offer monthly content, which could be an interview with top email marketers.
The hybrid system the delivery works very well if you want to offer plenty of resources in terms of teachings and tutorials but also want to provide new content every month. For instance, you could have a training vault about how to use social media and then every month deliver social memes.
How do your learners access your membership site?
There are two ways to do this. It would be beneficial for your members to study the content as a group, or you are delivering it live. It's important to go through the resources in a specific order than a guided membership would be a good fit. On the other hand, self-paced membership is the type of membership where they dip in and out. An excellent example of self-paced membership site will be if you have a membership site to train VA's in specific systems. You might have a block of training videos on how to use Infusionsoft. One of your members may be very knowledgeable about Infusionsoft but may not know how to use Active Campaign. So you could have a training site on how to teach VA's different systems. By its very nature, you would need to have a self-paced system.
Guided vs. Self-Paced Learning
If your members will all study/use your content as a group, or if they will benefit most
from working through the resources in a specific order, then a guided membership is a
good fit.
On the other hand, if you want members to be able to pick and choose what they're
working on right now, then a self-paced membership is the way to go.
Although I have never merged these two options, I can see certain possibilities to combine these two models. You can have a self-paced membership but occasionally have a group challenge or group activity. This may be an extra charge, or it may be included in the membership. You can have people working together to create a new product, for instance. You can also have a library of resources that they can dip in and out of.
Finally, you want to decide how you're going to deliver to your membership site. One of my favorite methods is to have a prerecorded section of videos that serves as a resource library. I then like to deliver live content on the group coaching basis. Typically every second day for a month, I will provide 2 to 2 1/2 hours of live training to the group.
The downside of this is that you can only do this with a maximum of 50 people. You have to get all of these 50 people to a point where they are successful, and it is not possible to do this with more than 50 people. The downside of this is that it's a much more intensive way of creating content. 50 people are firing questions at you that can be difficult. I have been doing it so long that it is easier for me.
I have to admit there are still times when I'm flummoxed by a question. In which case I then have to transfer over and say to the person okay, let's have a separate discussion in the membership group at a later date. The benefit of doing it this way is the fact that I record it and deliver it to the members as a challenge in Teachify. For me, that is the least techie software to deliver a course, and it has full functionality. An added benefit is the fact you can create three courses for free.
The added benefit of this is that I can then edit Those videos so that I cover the training, but I don't have the direct questions, and then I have an evergreen course to sell. I typically sell the challenges for $97 to 50 people, which brings in a revenue of $5000 for the six weeks course.
Once I have recorded and edited the content, it can be sold as an evergreen course for $67.
I hope this training has given you some more insights into the different types of memberships and what you can do with it.
If this has inspired you see my quick fire product creation cheatsheet
Recent Comments
27
Did you know...that Google is going to a "mobile-first' indexing policy for websites. So, if your training/membership sites don't have the capability of being accessible on any device (i.e.: cells, tablets, laptops, etc.), Google will NOT prioritize indexing for any website that is not set up for "mobile-first" compatibility.
I have the link. Thought I still had it open in my browser but...
If enough people want to see Google's page, I'll look it up & make a blog post from my account.
Blessings...
That doesn't apply to memberships sites they are closed sites not accessed or crawled by Google. Having said that it is always important to get your pages looking great on mobile
Great! I have been thinking of creating a membership site and your post is very helpful.
I have a question, is it a must to have video training for a membership platform?
See more comments
Great content Catherine, training and coaching memberships are proving to be quite the money spinner and I expect this will continue as more people explore online business options and need t learn how or increase their skills.
I have gone down the pre-recorded track also, with ongoing access to me through my FB group. So far it is going well, and it also gives you so much additional scope to grow your offering.
Thanks for the great post.