How to Launch a $12,000 Membership Site as a Beginner

[00:00:00]I was making about $1,200 a month when I launched my very first membership back in 2021 that was at the beginning of my Creator Journey when I didn't have a job and having that $11,000 a month was a lifesaver for me so I want to take you back to how I was able to make $122,000 with my first membership as a beginner so in this video you will first identify if creating a membership is going to be the best option for you then we'll go over what to include in your membership and how to price it and of course I'll share with you a final few tips for how to get people to join your membership and stay subscribed so that you're able to make a consistent income from it as always time stamps are below use them if you need them let's dive in to identify if creating a membership is going to be the best option for you you need to be aware of both the pros and the cons Pro number one having a membership creates an increased sense of community and exclusivity for your people creating a membership is a great way for you to offer this like exclusive level of access to information or more content or even like a close tight-knit Community people love to feel like they're a part of something or have exclusive access and a membership does just that Pro number two in this video here where I analyzed the top creators and how they're able to make millions of dollars offering a monthly membership ranked in the top five income streams with 33% of those creators offering a community to their followers so having a membership is definitely a popular option for creators Pro number three it allows you to have a predictable recurring monthly payment that is also scalable for example with digital products I sell a 100 plus captions ebook and if I want to make $11,000 I have to keep finding new people to sell that to whereas with the membership if I can get 100 people to join my membership at $10 a month I'm guaranteed $1,000 a month until people decide to unsubscribe ideally they stay subscribed month by month I don't have to find more people or sell more things it's predictable recurring monthly payment so that's definitely a perk for membership we have creators like broo Kates who's the founder of Studio Bloom she makes over $40,000 a month with her membership website also we have Justin Rose founder of abundance plus who makes over $100,000 a month with his membership if they keep all those members exactly the way it is they will continue to make that money every single month they don't have to find new people but the more people they do find the more that monthly payment increases so very cool very scalable great option for creators for the cons I really only have one con if you want to call it that depending on the way you set up your membership it could require for you to be more active and involved whether that's upfront involvement or long-term involvement when I started my very first membership for some reason I thought it was going to be like 100% passive income easy peasy like set it up once people sign up and you make money for forever yay but that wasn't the case for me for some reason it did not click that I was the one who would have to go in and talk to my community every day reply to their questions create the bonus content for them on top of my usual social media content so the way that I had mine set up was way more of an active income stream where it was an equal amount of energy given every week instead of passive income where that's more a lot of upfront work and then less maintenance work over time in a way now I did say before when talking about the con that having a membership is active work whether that's upfront work or long-term work I had mine set up where I was like very very involved every month making bonus content but you could also go the route of creating a video membership where the majority of the work is Upfront for example let's take a look at yoga with Adrien her membership find what feels good yoga has tons of pre-recorded valuable videos just like jump rope dudes they created a library of video content where when a user subscribes they get access to all of those videos and because they did a majority of The Upfront work by filming those videos now week by week they get to just focus solely on the community aspect instead of for me I was doing like weekly lives weekly bonus videos and it was crazy so while there are pros and cons to a membership the cool thing is that you could set up your membership however the heck you want I just wanted you to know upfront that there will have to be somebody there consistently being involved with your members to make sure that they are taken care of and staying subscribed now if knowing all of that is not a problem for you and you're like I can't wait to start a membership I want to do it let's do it your next question is probably how do you build it out how do you decide what to include in your membership there are many ways to get ideas for what to include in your membership the four that I used were the initial brain dump audience research competitor research and membership research first what you're going to do is grab a piece of paper because you'll probably do all four of these as well and you'll want somewhere to write down all of your ideas for the first one your initial brain dump this is just get all of your ideas out of your brain free up your brain to do other research if you're like oh I think it'd be cool to include this I think it'd be cool to include this write it all down you don't have to include all of it just get all of your ideas out on a piece of paper so that you're open-minded and ready to go into other research next up is your audience research this is for those of you who already have some sort of audience or following built all you have to do is ask your audience what they want that's what I did I posted to my Instagram stories like hey if I were to start a membership what would you want that to look like or what would you want included what would make you excited to join a membership I asked them all the questions and just pulled my audience this could be through Instagram stories you could do a YouTube Community post you could send out an email to your newsletter because everybody here has has started an email list right right so pull your audience ask your audience if you have an audience Bas and see what they say they'll probably give you some really good ideas the Third Way is competitive research this is something that I did with one of my students when we were building out her membership I had her look at other people in her industry to see what they were offering in their memberships she wrote down a list of everything that they were offering and of course circled the ones that she was like oo I really like this I really like this again you don't have to do all these things we're just writing and creating a list of ideas of things that you could include the fourth and final way is our membership research doing membership research this is in case maybe you don't know of anybody off the top of your head that offers a membership so instead what you're going to do is go to a membership site like any membership site like uscreen and look up the creators that have accounts there and look for creators in your industry see what sort of memberships they have set up see what they're including in those memberships anything that you like write it down if you want extra help learning how to build out your community I will link a completely free training down below that teaches creators how to build a premium membership Community this training and interview is hosted over on uscreen website where they got to sit down and talk with Jake clouse who built his own premium membership Community generating him $4,000 a year with only 200 members might I add so I definitely recommend giving that a watch if creating a membership is something you're really interested in plus it's completely free it's given to you from our amazing video sponsor you screen now if you haven't noticed all the amazing membership websites that we've looked at today our membership websites that creators have set up on you screen so if you're a coach or aspiring content creator in the educational space you're going to freak out when I tell you about UK screen because they are the platform for building a membership that generates a sustainable predictable Revenue stream for professional content creators as of filming this video uscreen has helped over 4,000 creators build successful memberships and drive predictable recurring Revenue when I first created a membership in 2021 I wish I knew something like this existed because being in the educational space being able to basically create your own Netflix Style video library allowing members to easily categorize and binge through your video content like they would binge their favorite TV show is unheard of not only do you have the ability to create extreme value for your followers by having a video library but also uscreen can help you by creating your very own branded app for your membership their team will Design the app for you to offer for both iPhone and Android users which means your members can watch your content on their phones or even TVs using devices like Roku box Apple TV Android TV and Amazon Fire TV so whether you're a large or small Creator check out the free video below to learn how to build your own premium membership community and thank you so much youus screen for sharing this nugget of wisdom with all of us and sponsoring this video now that you have your full list of ideas that you could include in your membership how do you actually build it out and price it the first thing that I did when building out my membership I created that list and I looked through and circled the things that I was like yes this will be valuable for my audience I knew it would be valuable for them because they told me when I pulled them but also doing my competitor research and membership research I saw other people offering these sort of incentives so I was like okay this confirms that these ideas work now you don't want to make the mistake I made where I over promised on my top tier I was like oh you'll get this this this this this this this because then you actually have to do those things and you might get burned out and then your membership only lasts for 10 months and you're like wa I burned myself out never doing that again only include the things that you know so you can realistically offer them then I built out my tiers now you don't have to do tiers like Brandon Washington here on YouTube who has 150,000 subscribers he has the creative fam Academy membership and to join is a simple investment of $34.99 a month one price everyone gets access to the same things easy peasy if I was creating a membership website now I would probably just do the video membership on you screen and then have one simple price I think that's just like the easiest way to go about it for me and my my industry but at the time I was like no I want to do tiers so let me talk through the tiers and how to price it out first I built out my top tier this was everything that I thought would be really cool for my members to get access to so they got a weekly engagement and networking thread weekly lives with me with access to all previous lives and replays weekly bonus videos these are pre-recorded videos answering their most burning questions the monthly Creator Challenge and member access to vote on upcoming topics for Content that tier was like in a perfect world this member gets access to all of this goodness then after I created the top tier I created the lower tier by asking myself okay what are the fundamentals foundations that I want everybody who joins to have access to so I made sure everybody in my membership no matter what tier they were on they got access to live calls networking threads and the monthly challenges I thought that was a good foundation for membership plus the like most requested thing for my audience was weekly lives so I just wanted to make sure everybody had access to weekly lives then I created the middle tier by just kind of like looking at the two and saying okay what do I want this middle people to have access to really I just gave them access to that Weekly bonus video the way I packaged tier 3 was in a way where I wanted everybody to want tier three because that tier was the only tier where you also got access to the replays of my life lives and all previous lives I've ever done so if you were in tier one or two you didn't get access to any replays or previous lives you would have to show up live to interact with me so I tried to make sure tier 3 was just like really enticing and something that I wanted them to want then when it came down to picking a price I asked my audience I wanted my price to be attainable for my audience something realistic that they could pay monthly and still feel like they're getting a lot of value for that price I didn't want it to be too high of like $100 a month but I also didn't want it to be too low where I felt like I wasn't getting paid my worth so I asked my audience I asked them a few questions if I started a membership that included D D D D D D D I listed all the things what is the most you would pay monthly to maintain access to all of that so I just wanted them to know what they would get and then I wanted to hear what the most is that they would pay and if they're like okay the most I would pay is like $25 or 50 if they're like most I would pay is $50 I'd be like okay then maybe my top tier can be$ 39 and maybe the bottom tier is 19 because then they're like wow I'm getting such a deal so I really talked to my audience to figure out what that good middle ground was if you don't have an audience to talk to then again do your research and look at what other people are pricing their memberships and not just like look at the price but read what they're offering within that price compare their offer to your offer and then set your price for from there when I was working with my student when we did the competitor pricing or the competitor research she noticed that her competitor was charging a specific rate I don't remember what it was let's say it was like $49 but that person had also been in the industry for like 10 years they were like very very popular well known and even though they were offering the same exact thing because this person already had an established presence and my student was just getting started we actually set their price lower to be more more competitive with that person who's already established so if there was like $40 a month we started them at $19 a month something that I would recommend when setting that first price and I don't know if other people will agree with this but this is what I did and I I liked it you don't have to do this when I set that Foundation price that first price I actually set it a little lower than what I was thinking because I was worried if I set it too high $50 and I only got two people to sign up I would think oh it's too expensive let me lower the price to 25 and then 25 people sign up those people that bought at the original price I would have to refund them for every month that they were signed up or they would probably come back and be like hey why' you lower the price can you give me a refund and I didn't want to have to deal with that yeah I started lower than what I was originally thinking just in case that happened I know there's also the argument could go both ways like okay well if you set it lower then when you raise your rate people are going to be like oh you raised your rates I'm canceling I had to pick and choose my battle that was the battle that I would rather have once your membership is created how do you get people to sign up a few tips for getting people to sign up for your membership include it as a call to action in every YouTube video and pinned comment this means like go back to videos that you've posted on YouTube and pin your membership in the top comment be like join my community where you get access to say the biggest thing and then link it right there in the pinned comment as you interact with your community members share the behind the scenes to your Instagram stories if you have a membership where you're helping your community achieve wins or accomplish certain things I would share those wins to my Instagram story with a link for people to join my membership and not only I'm sharing it to my stories but I would create a highlight on my Instagram page that's called like wins and anytime somebody goes to that win highlight and they're tapping through all these wins my students have seen in my membership it's a link to join link to join link to join so it's very much in their face hey join the membership if you have an email list the quickest and easiest way to get people to sign up email your email list let them know that you started a membership that was how my student launched her membership in coaching group was she started an email list and this was like 5 months before when she didn't know she was going to start a membership but she was like hey join my email list we made one together 5 months go by she's like hey Millie I'm ready to launch a coaching group I'm like great send an email to your email list so she did sold it out with one email didn't even have to really posted on Instagram that's how valuable an email list is if you don't already have an email list set up or you have no idea what the heck I'm talking about then I definitely recommend watching this video next where I will teach you how to create a freebie set up your email list in an easy low Tech way you could get it done in less than 24 hours thanks so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one follow your joy bye YY