Is it just me, or is anyone else noticing that memberships are making a comeback? It’s like we’ve taken a trip back to 2017, and I’m here to confess – I’ve hopped on the bandwagon too! 🚕
So, what’s this all about? Well, in my new membership community, “The Midlife Biz Hive,” I’m on a mission to empower entrepreneurs to build a purposeful online business, no matter your age. But it’s more than that – I’m all about creating a genuine community, a safe haven where we can share, connect, and ask questions.
Initially, I kicked off my membership journey on Teachable with a cozy little private Facebook Group (yep, just like the good ol’ days). But then, I stumbled upon something that caught my attention: Skool. 🎓
Skool isn’t your average platform. It’s a unique community hub that seamlessly integrates course hosting, community building, event scheduling, and now even payment collection, all in one place.
What I love about it is that it has everything in one place – the classroom with your trainings, the community, a calendar for your membership events, and also some great gamification features.
If you want to start a membership that also has a strong community aspect, definitely check out Skool! And if you’re ready to set up your own membership in Skool, here’s my step-by-step guide:
#1 Sign Up for Skool to Host Your Membership
Signing up for Skool just takes a minute and the next step is to create your own community. You can try it for free for 14 days and after that you’ll be charged $99/month.
Use this link to sign up (please note this is an affiliate link and if you decide to join Skool through this link I get a small commission at no extra costs for you):
>>> GO TO SKOOL
#2 Set Up Your Skool Membership
Skool comes with these tabs for your membership/community:
Community
This is the social feed where you can post things – looks a bit like a Facebook Group before video took over and it was all full of ads left and right…
You can add links to videos but you can’t go live in the community (yet), I actually like that it’s more focused on text and you can share long posts.
When you set up your community you should add some categories – I recommend keeping it simple and have only 3 or 4 categories so it’s not overwhelming your members when they want to post something (what category does this belong in??).
Classroom
In the classroom you can create courses with modules and lessons (they are called set and modules here which confused me first, but okay).
Skool doesn’t host your video content (like teachable does for example), you have to upload your video to a different platform like Vimeo or YouTube and then add the link in Skool.
You can also add text and files and I love how clean and simple it looks.
You can make the courses available to everybody in your membership or give access when someone reaches a certain level – more about that later!
Calendar
Next you have a calendar where you can add events that are happening inside your membership. You can’t host live events but you can add the link for example to Zoom.
What I like is that close to the event a banner will be shown in the community reminding people of the event and you can also set up email reminders.
Members
Your members can add a short bio and a picture and connect to each other simply in the member directory, which I love. This is such a big advantage to using a platform like teachable or a Facebook Group, that it’s easy to see who else is a member and to connect with them.
Leaderboards
Skool has some really fun gamification features! Members get points when they like someone’s post, when someone likes their post, when they comment etc. As they get more points, they start to level up.
The members who gained the most points in the last 7-days, 30-days, and all-time will show on the leaderboards tab and you can give them access to bonus content in the classroom when they reach a certain level. It’s really easy to set up and I surprised me, how much I liked it, even though I’m not normally motivated by things like this. It just feels good when you get a notification that you reached the next level.
About
Here you can promote what your membership is about and add a video and/or images to show what’s inside. When you set up your community as private this is the page non-members will see and it’s basically your sales page.
#3 Choose Your Name and URL
Your first step is to add a name for your group (max 30 characters) and a description (max 150 characters), as well an icon and cover image.
If you also want to link to your website or social media (and why wouldn’t you), you can add links when you click on “Links” in the left menu.
Important: You can’t change the group URL while you’re on the free trial, and you can only change the URL once. So be sure that you’ve chosen the right name…
#4 Set Up Your Privacy Settings & Payments
In the group settings you can choose if you want to make your community private or public.
- With a private group only members can see who’s in the group and what they post and content is hidden from search engines.
- With a public group anyone can see who’s in the group and what they post. And the content is discoverable by search engines.
I love the idea of the content being discoverable by Google, but if you want to create a paid membership, I think as a member you’d prefer it to be private and that’s what I chose for the setting of my membership.
When you want to set up a paid membership, so people sign up and pay a monthly fee, it’s very easy to do so. Simply choose the price you want to charge monthly and connect it to your Stripe account and Skool handles the rest like VAT taxes etc.
The payment feature has just been added when I wrote this post and I hope they’re going to add a few more features like a free or discounted trial period and the option for members to pay for a year and not monthly. But right now, it’s really simple which I also like.
And that’s it! It took me just a few hours to set up my membership site in Skool, plus a bit longer to move my course content over from teachable, and I’m so happy with how it looks, and the engagement in the community already. I’m really excited about the potential, to make this a thriving business-building community for yoga teachers that will get them results.
Ready to get started and set up your own Skool community?
>> GO TO SKOOL*
(*Affiliate Link)
Join The Blissful Biz Hive
➡️ Join today and get access to our FREE training “Make Your First (or Next) $5k as an Online Coach”
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No more trying to figure things out alone! Ask anything online business related or even when you’re just feeling lost – this midlife entrepreneur is here to lend an ear!
Inside our community you’ll also earn points just by getting involved and sharing your insights. Plus, you’ll gain access to more free resources covering key topics such as:
Join while it’s still free, connect, learn and have fun 💖
>>> https://www.skool.com/the-hive
