Running a Paid Membership Program

Metadata

• Author: Craig Mod
• Full Title: Running a Paid Membership Program
• URL: https://craigmod.com/essays/membership_programs/

Highlights

Why start a membership program? I started SPECIAL PROJECTS out of a desire for greater creative autonomy. (View Highlight)review

my conclusion was that given my existing audience and the clear set of topics that I wanted to investigate, I would be remiss to not try and go the membership route. Worst case scenario: Nobody joins and I close up shop, tail between my legs. (View Highlight)review

It goes unspoken, but SPECIAL PROJECTS members get priority in my inbox. This is somewhat inevitable. Even exchanging just $1 changes the nature of a relationship. So I’d rather sell that priority for a price that feels commensurate to my time — which is (I hope!) worth a lot more than a couple bucks a month. (View Highlight)review

Related: Each time someone joins the program I respond with a simple thank you letter. I’ve never had anyone, ever, send me a personalized “thank you for joining” letter for any of the other membership programs I’ve joined. This seems bonkers. It takes all of 5 seconds to send the “thank you” and immediately increases the intimacy of the membership-relationship. (View Highlight)review

I added the $1000/Lifetime tier as a lark. I should have made it more expensive. The very first member to join was a Lifetime member. I’ve had roughly a billion billion more Lifetime members join than I expected. (View Highlight)review

I believe it’s better to charge more and figure out how to “reach” that value than to charge less. (View Highlight)review

So, after all that, if you’re still intent on starting a membership program, here are my final tips: 1. Start writing / making videos / producing what it is you intend to produce for members today, build up that muscle, and do it, ideally, for years before launching the program 2. Have clear goals6 — writing targets, publishing targets, et cetera — that you can articulate to yourself 3. Exhaust / investigate other possible ways to achieve those goals 4. Spend a month or two iterating on your plan before launching 5. Be willing to commit for (at least) a full year, since it seems that a year of work is required to build momentum and finally understand what you and the program are capable of (View Highlight)review