Creating your very own membership is an exciting prospect and being able to run it as you see fit is the best part.
Although it may feel overwhelming when thinking about all of the pieces together, there are 4 steps you can follow to get organized.
This will work whether you run a membership site with several courses, a single community, a private blog or anything else.
The main thing here being how to put together a subscription with paywalled content that runs perfectly!
Step #1: List What You Want
A lot of beginner creators often jump straight to google to find which platform would be best for a membership.
They end up getting overwhelmed with options and are unsure on how to decide.
That’s because they haven’t first defined what THEY want!
So the first step of this process is to first list out how you envision the membership to work.
Here are some questions to answer that can help put this down here:
- Which features do I absolutely need?
- Which features would be a plus but not a must?
- What do I want the membership to look like - doodle a quick wireframe!
- What are the different parts of the membership going to be?
Here is an example of the kind of answers you might get:
- I need native video hosting, a community feature and the ability to create assessments for my students
- It would be good to be able to create quizzes and a directories of members
- I want to have a handy sidebar and a cool dashboard where I can post announcements and quick links to navigate
- There is going to be the main recorded content and resources, then the community part and finally the live monthly sessions (done on Zoom).
Got it? Now that you know what you want, we can pick a platform.
Step #2: Pick a Membership Platform
This is where most people get overwhelmed and start getting disheartened.
But hopefully since we’ve defined what “perfect” looks like, we can now shop around for the platform that ticks our boxes.
The first decision you’ll have to make is whether you prefer customization or simplicity.
Meaning that you might either want to use a platform that’s fully customizable such as WordPress + an LMS, but necessitate some technical skills.
Or you prefer a platform that’s ready out-of-the-box but where you might make some compromises.
This usually gives you two main path:
- Option #1: WordPress + membership plugin
If that’s the case here are our top WordPress LMS plugins to explore further:
Pros
Cons
What You Should Know
Most well-rounded WordPress suite and will help with much more than just course design! This is everything you need for funnel build, lead capture, testimonials, timers, etc.
Very affordable considering what you get for it! The only other cost you’ll have would be an email marketing system and video hosting.
Ratings
Feature: 10
User Experience: 9