How to start a Membership

Memberships are an excellent way to have recurring revenue for your Business. Especially with the ease and accessibility of virtual classes this can be a nice revenue stream for any Independent Art Teacher. You can also combine them with in-person activities. 

Let’s dive into how you can have a thriving Membership and why someone would pay for it instead of consuming free information on the Internet and YouTube? 
 
What type of Membership can you offer? 
There are many different types of Memberships. For example, Newspaper subscriptions or Amazon Prime.
For your Art Teaching Business, you can offer these 3 types:

1. Classes in your medium
2. Lesson Plans. For example Deep Space Sparkle has a successful Membership offering art lessons to thousands of Teachers 
3. Subscription Boxes with specific projects. Art Teacher, Amy Balowitz Miller  has opened a Mother-Daughter project, where she sends monthly Subscription Boxes,offers Zoom calls and weekly e-mails with ideas for point of connections.
   

 
Why pay for Membership when there is plenty free info on YouTube and Internet?
Free is one way and not curated: people find the information, and that’s it. They are on their own after that. Nobody is holding their hand and guiding them through progress. 

A Membership is a relationship and has many additional benefits:
 
1. Members have access to YOU.There is an ongoing interaction with YOU. You will show up regularly with your offer: to deliver the classes, subscription boxes, or lesson plans. 
 
2. Members make Progress! They will follow a "Success Path" they gain from the Membership. 
Progress can be: Mothers will develop a stronger relationship with their Daughters through the Mother-Daughter Projects. Aspiring Artists will go from not being confident in painting to becoming professional Artists. Teachers can save more and more time with ongoing new Lesson Plans.
 
3. Members receive your expert guidance on regular basis. You can offer, for example, a closed Facebook group to hold live Q&A sessions. 
 
4. Members belong to a Community with other like-minded people who have the same problems and a variety of solutions. 

5. Members  have Accountability. You give them "Homework" then check and encourage them to work on it so they can progress along their "Success Path". 
 
Why do you need to define a Target Market? 
You need to know who you are serving with your Membership to offer the advantages of a Membership. The Mother-Daughter project is clearly for those: Mothers and Daughters. Sometimes it can be challenging to narrow it down instead of serving everyone. For instance, Amy Balowitz Miller had a hard time deciding to focus only on girls in her Subscription Box Project because she did not want to exclude boys. But by focusing on the Mother-Daughter bond, which is different from the Mother-Son bond, she could decide what projects to offer specifically to them. Same with Lesson Plans, it must be for specific age groups, or level of mastery for instance. Otherwise, it is too broad to focus on the need for that group.  
 
How to attract Members?
Starting with free is always a good option. You can offer free Facebook Live classes that you post for limited time, then encourage people to enroll in Membership for unlimited access and the benefits above. Or you can sell individual classes for a set price but give access to all through a Membership. 
As an example Julies Paint Parties offers live paint parties for $10 each but encourages enrolling into her Membership at $20/month for unlimited access to all live and recorded classes, plus Q&A with the Teacher.   
 
How to set up a Membership?
You can start simple with a closed Facebook Group and upload your classes there. Or choose a more sophisticated option with an online marketing platform, like NewZenler, where you can host your classes, send e-mails, and collect payments in one place.  
 
Conclusion:
Memberships are an excellent way to have recurring revenue, and the questions you need to answer before your start are:

• What is your offer (classes, lesson plans, subscription boxes.)
• Who is your audience (aspiring Artists in your medium, mother-daughter pairs, retirees, etc.)
• What progress they will make (become self-confident Artists, build stronger relationships, want to belong to a community, etc.)
• How to get them into your Membership (free limited Facebook live classes, then unlimited access within the Membership, etc.)

The ins and outs of starting a Membership is too large to fit in one blog post. If you want step-by-step instructions on how to open a Membership,
I am launching my own Membership in January specific to Independent Art Teachers.

learn more now

You will learn how to define your audience and messaging, create a "Success Path" for your Members, and more practical steps to have a nice recurring extra revenue stream.

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Sign up for the waitlist here 
to be the first to know when we open our doors.

Your Success Path is (you can be at any level when you join and go to the next one): 

1. FOUNDER - part-time teaching, as a side gig, needs supplemental income.
2. TEACHER - full-time teaching, start focusing on Business, generates enough income to leave his/her primary job.
3. MANAGER - mainly teaching, has some staff and teachers hired, but focuses more and more on Business, and generates income to support the entire family.
   
4. LEADER - less and less teaching, has almost full staff and teachers on payroll, focuses mainly on Business, and has a comfortable income.
5. CEO - Business runs without him/her, only focuses on growth strategies.