By now, Your Course Creation Membership has been around for more than a year. Now is the time to recap on the biggest challenges of running a membership and get an insight in how Your Course Creation Membership came to be!

For years, I had thought of creating a membership website but this thought came along with various excuses why not to…

• How will I manage to create consistent content all the time?
• Who will join?
• Is it really worth the time investment?

These were just a few of the thoughts I had along the way…

I left the idea behind over and over again.

Until I realized that it was the only right way to go in my business.

Let me take you behind-the-scenes of creating my own membership and the biggest challenges of running a membership that I’d had to deal with so far.

NOTE: Originally the article was written after only TWO months of having Your Course Creation Membership. It has had a recent update in 2023, when we’ve hit the mark of one year in the membership. 

Behind the scenes of creating a membership

How did I decide to create a membership?

For years, I’ve created various online courses that have brought me a good dose of passive income. However, I was always driven to work on yet another project as soon as the one at hand was launched…

I found myself in a bit of a rut. While I loved creating new content all the time, my marketing efforts were running in circles as I had no solid ground for WHAT to market – there was always something new happening!

I used to have my “signature course” that was a success but gave me more anxiety than happiness…

I was thinking about creating a set of smaller courses and just base my business on them…

Then again, I was always driven to create more. If it wasn’t a course, it was a new freebie or tens of blog posts at a time.

At some point, I even considered creating new Instagram posts every single day just because I had so much to say…

And then something triggered me. I suddenly felt like there really is no time like now to start that membership website!

I have proven myself that my audience enjoys my content…
I have plenty of content ideas and I’ve committed to content creation for the past 7yrs and don’t see it changing…
I had SO many ideas I wanted to share and so many different questions I wanted to help with.

It was time.

And on December 1st, 2021, without much of preplanning, Your Course Creation Membership was born!

The technical side of setting up a membership

As I’ve been using Teachable for my courses for years and initially this membership was built on this platform as well.

All I had to do was to create a new product, add all of my existing courses in there plus prepare some additional Masterclasses to have some fresh content good to go.

Then, I created a subscription-based payment for this and launched the offer! Yes, it was exactly that easy…

My other courses are still available as stand-alone courses as well but I always promote them along with the membership as a better deal.

After the first year of having the membership, I decided to focus more on the COMMUNITY aspect of it and move it from Teachable to Circle.

Now, it’s been a few months since the move and I’m excited about this decision.

Circle offers course hosting, along with Live room experiences AND community space which all work together like a charm.

The biggest challenges of running a membership

While I absolutely ADORE my membership model and am truly thankful that I decided to take this step, not everything about it is all that pretty. Here will be some of the biggest challenges of running a membership.

CHALLENGE no.1: Setting boundaries is hard!

When someone joins the membership, I truly want to help them in the best way I can.

Initially, one of the biggest challenges was the never-ending conversations I had.

Either somebody had joined or were looking forward to doing so, I found myself spending a lot of time helping out, sharing insights, giving my perspective and feedback.

However, it takes a lot of time and is not very scalable…

Now, I’ve implemented community space so the process is more streamlined and I can answer at a convenient time for me. I have also set in place some onboarding sequences, have the welcome emails going out with more details, all of which helps a ton!

Plus, my students can also support each other along the way.

CHALLENGE no.2: The constant thought of “is this enough?!”

Although I know for sure that my membership is incredibly valuable, the little nagging voice in my head never shuts up.

Is it enough? Is there enough content? Is it good enough? Am I covering everything?

This was especially true in the initial months when the content in the membership was still in its growing phases.

Now, we have rolled into the second year with more than 40+ video guides available, additional templates and regular new Live Masterclasses. All of this definitely puts a ton of value on the table and I don’t worry about this as much anymore.

CHALLENGE no.3: Content management

While this definitely is my favorite part of the process, content management and pre-planning can be quite stressful as well.

There’s A LOT of content I want to provide, Lives I want to show up for, and templates I want to share. So I’m always managing it all in terms of when and how to provide this information in the best way possible.

As I love working on my membership content, I haven’t been great at outsourcing as much… But various project management tools definitely help me in the process a ton.

CHALLENGE no.4: Engagement

Oh, the almighty engagement! No doubt, having consistent engagement levels is one of the biggest challenges of running a membership.

First of all, the fact that the membership is being hosted on Circle which means that my students have a specific separate link to log into to get into the community and see the content.

Would it be easier to upkeep the engagement if it’d be hosted in a Facebook group? Maybe. But I have gone down that route as well and it just didn’t sit well with me.

So even though it sometimes feel like an uphill battle, I’m way more excited to inspire my audience to engage in our own community space vs FB groups…

The first year of running my own membership in numbers

Creating a membership genuinely has been the best business decision I’ve ever made. I have never felt as aligned and content. I’m still madly inspired by what I do and I get more and more confident in my own ideas, all the time.

However, if you look at the numbers alone, one could argue that it might have gone better…

(For me though, the results seem more than worth it!)

• Within the first few days in late 2021, I had around 8 signups for the BETA group of $12/monthly. From there, there was 1 unsubscribe on the following day. Many of these initial subscribers are still active members a year later!
• Through December, the signups slowed down as it was a Holiday season and I wasn’t sharing as much about the space either.
• Then, in January, as I started promoting Kickstart Your Course Creation CHALLENGE, I experienced a consistent flow of new members. Sometimes one per day, sometimes two, other times just a day or two being all quiet in between.
• This resulted in almost 40 members by the end of January, 2022. As this is a fresh-in membership and I haven’t had much of a chance to promote it just yet, I’m SO excited about this outcome.
• As of now, it brings me around $670/monthly – passively, in a way. But as the membership grows, this number has an unlimited potential to grow and it makes me SO excited.

The marketing strategy and membership growth plan from here on

Despite the challenges of running a membership, this is that ONE thing I really don’t plan to ditch. At least, not in a foreseeable future, as I have so many plans for it!

As of now, I do consistent new Live Masterclasses every month which is the key selling point for existing members to stay around. All of the active members get access to these recordings afterward as well which is the perfect middle ground for me – I get to connect with my audience AND generate consistent new content.

I’m also considering getting back to hosting guest Masterclasses which I hope to start this summer.

Most of my marketing will still be focused on Instagram as it has been my main go-to marketing method for the past year or so. However, these days I’m also showing up on TikTok and hope to grow on the platform as well.

I have a MAJOR vision in my mind for this Membership and I’ll do my best to truly make it all happen!

Cheers to many more months (and years!) ahead! ✨✨✨