S4E4 | membership Q&A Part 2

“Sometimes when you are the leader of a community, or you know your material so well, or you’ve been through this for so long, you don’t really see things the way that your clients will see things…And I needed to meet them where they were now.”

It’s part two of our membership Q&As! I got a really great question that covers a lot of ground about memberships. In this episode I’ll be giving you advice about starting your membership, deciding what to put in it, and figuring out pricing. Let’s dive in!

The first thing you should do before starting your membership is to validate your idea. Go into your free group and let them know you’re thinking of starting a membership, and tell them what you’re planning on offering, with the price point. Then, ask them for their feedback. 

Sometimes when you’re a leader of a community, or you’ve been covering the same material for so long, you don’t really see things the way your clients will. Asking your audience for what they want is golden. And remember, people LOVE things that save them time, money, and energy!

Some ideas of what you can put in your membership are exclusive Q&As, which could include guest speakers, templates, checklists, fill in the blank emails, or guidebooks of things to implement to get them towards their goals. You could also offer a members-only podcast, office hours, accountability pods, or an exclusive booklist. 

And keep in mind how you’ll be delivering this content. If you do more than four things every week in your membership, you might be overwhelming your members. And if people are overwhelmed, they’re not going to join or renew their memberships. Remember, we don’t want to put too much on their plate, we want to take things off their plates. So look at three or four things for each month that you know you can deliver to them, and keep it consistent. Think of what’s sustainable in the long term! 

You can also occasionally sprinkle in bonus content for your members, like mini-workshops, or tutorials on a popular topic. I created a Wake Up Your Dead Facebook Group Workshop after popular demand, along with a Challenge Workshop. These weren’t bonuses I originally planned on creating, these were things I incorporated after I got input from my members. You can even offer these bonuses during the times people tend to cancel their memberships the most, like during the summer, around December, and in the four month range. (Tune in to the previous episode if you don’t know what I’m talking about.) 

Your membership also SHOULDN’T be a collection of everything you’ve ever created. Like I said before, we don’t want members getting overwhelmed. We need organization. Separate by knowledge level, media type and category to make your content approachable and digestible. 

Another large part of starting your membership is settling on pricing. You want to price your membership in a way that makes you feel good about it. But remember the first few members you get will be your founding members, and are likely going to stay on with you for a while. Why? Because they’re coming in at a really great rate. Give them a great rate because they’re here, now, and don’t have as much content as someone who comes in a year from now. You could also offer those who join a locked in rate, in case you decide to up your membership price later. 

And when setting a price remember that some of the people coming into your membership will be new to you, they may not have that relationship with you yet. So you might want to consider that for your pricing as well. 

Thank you so much for tuning in to our second Q&A on memberships, I hope you got some helpful takeaways! Talk to you soon!