In today’s digital age, online membership communities have emerged as a powerful tool to snowball your earnings month after month with minimal ongoing effort. In fact, the online subscription economy is set to grow to $1.5 trillion by 2025! But don’t think online memberships are limited to conventional uses only. In this blog post, we’ll share eight innovative ways to harness the power of online memberships, transforming your business and maximizing your income potential.
One platform that stands out in this space is Kartra, an all-in-one business platform designed to create, monetize, and manage membership sites. Kartra’s Membership feature provides a space to deliver public or password-protected content to your audience. You can add just about anything to the membership area — from videos and audio files to downloads, worksheets, photos, and even embedded elements (on Growth plans and above). Basically, your membership area is a blank canvas for your creative vision.
At first glance, Kartra’s Membership feature might seem best suited for online courses, memberships, summits, digital downloads, and other file-based content. But with a little bit of creativity, you can take things a lot further! Let’s explore eight unexpected ways to use your Kartra Membership feature for more than just online courses.
1. Business SOPs
If you are running a business and have a team of any size, you understand how important your Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) are to the smooth operation of your business. It’s even more important that your team can easily find and implement them when needed.
This is where Kartra’s Membership Site area shines for your SOPs. Here, you can grant access to specific team members and watch productivity soar. You can also include video tutorials, written step-by-step instructions, or videos demonstrating the exact procedures your team should follow, along with photos.
Enhance your SOPs by organizing them into department-specific levels using Kartra’s Membership feature, which allows up to 10 levels. This way, you can compartmentalize SOPs by individual departments.
With Kartra’s easy-to-use and edit interface, you can quickly update SOPs as needed, ensuring everyone has the latest version and eliminating the worry of multiple outdated copies floating around.
2. Retreat Hubs
Retreats come with lots of information! If you are hosting a retreat, consider using a Kartra Membership area to house all the important information your guests need.
Upon purchase, deposit, or registration, you can automatically grant access to a Kartra Membership area, keeping all the information in one place for your attendees. Let’s face it: the last thing someone wants to do when getting ready for an event is to search for “that one email sent out months ago” with the address and travel details.
Within the membership, you can organize everything needed before, during, and after the event. This includes airport information, daily schedules, activities, lodging and dining information, itineraries, room assignments, and a countdown to all the wonderful activities. Keeping everything in one place is convenient for both you and your attendees.
You can even use Kartra features to poll your audience about food preferences, arrival times, and excursion choices by utilizing Kartra’s Surveys and Quizzes feature.
After the event, you can share photos and links to galleries where people can upload their photos and share the memories with others.
3. Instructional Content
One of my favorite examples of using Kartra in a unique way is for instructional content. Contemplative Outreach of Colorado uses Kartra’s membership areas to host the materials their volunteer or staff teachers need to facilitate classes effectively.
Here’s how they do it:
First, they create a student membership area filled with all the videos, prayers, reading recommendations, and handouts, structured so the content is released according to the course schedule.
Then, they create a cloned version of the course for their instructors. They remove the release schedule and add instructor notes and discussion points for each lesson. They also remove the password requirement for the instructor version and provide the login link to the instructors.
When it’s time to teach the class, the instructors have everything at their fingertips, eliminating any uncertainty about what they will be teaching or the discussions they should facilitate during the lessons.
By utilizing Kartra’s Membership area, Contemplative Outreach of Colorado has streamlined their educational tools, impacting more students and transforming the way their materials are taught.
4. Private Coaching
Kartra’s Membership feature empowers you to provide a dedicated space for your private coaching clients. Here, you can upload individual sessions and manage the material they receive, tailored to their unique progress. This means that each of your clients will have their own personalized membership space.
Here’s how you can do this:
- Create a “control membership” that contains a template that can eventually be customized for each client.
- Optional: If you are going to record and upload your client’s sessions, make a category for past sessions.
- Optional: If you are going to record and upload your client’s sessions, make a category for past sessions.
- When new clients are onboarded…
- Clone the “control membership” and rename it with your Client’s Name.
- Optional: Customize the “Home” post with a unique message (video or text) to them to welcome them to your program.
- In the “access levels” step of the wizard, choose any posts you’d like them to have access to when they login for the first time.
- Change the login URL slug to /their-name.
- Grant them access to their unique Membership area. This will send a welcome message from the Membership to them with their username and password.
- As you go through your coaching program, upload their private sessions for them to access after the fact or to review their progress.
All levels of Kartra include unlimited membership sites!
5. Newsletter Vault
If you leverage email marketing to deliver a newsletter to your audience, consider creating a vault where they can scroll through and read valuable past editions.
This type of membership can be set up without a password.
Simply organize your newsletters by categories such as topic, year, month, or season, and create posts for each edition. This approach provides even more value to your audience.
Once you set this up, you can include a link to your newsletter vault after new subscribers opt in. There, you can feature some of your favorite or most popular archived newsletters.
When you publish your current newsletter, send a quick broadcast to your subscribers highlighting the topics discussed and providing a link to access the newest post in the vault.
Bonus points: Keep your email list engaged by inviting them to click through to the membership area to continue reading.
6. Private Podcasts
Podcasts are becoming increasingly popular, with 104 million people in the US tuning in each month!
For business owners, podcasts are a great way to reach their target audiences.
With Kartra’s Membership area, you can host and even monetize a private podcast using Kartra’s products. This platform serves as a secret vault for exclusive access and bonus episodes that aren’t publicly listed.
After recording your podcast, you can upload the audio or video file to Kartra’s media library. From there, you can add it to a Membership post for your subscribers. Remember to include shownotes, transcripts, and links to any resources mentioned in the podcast.
7. Crowdfunding – Behind the Scenes
If you’re crowdfunding a project, you likely have loyal fans eager to stay updated on your progress. To enhance their experience, consider offering an exclusive behind-the-scenes area for backers who contribute a certain amount.
As you make progress and have sneak peeks to share, Kartra’s Membership area can create a fun and engaging space for these dedicated fans to follow your journey and track your team’s advancements.
Bonus Engagement Tip: Utilize Kartra’s Surveys and Quizzes feature to gather feedback and preferences from your backers. This information can be invaluable for making important decisions throughout your project.
8. Directories for Client Connections
Your community is eager to connect with one another! Kartra’s Membership feature can be used as a directory, organizing members by location, profession, passion, or degree. Each post can include the information members choose to share.
Members can submit their desired information and contact methods (such as phone numbers, email addresses, social media handles, professional bios, photos, and more) using Kartra’s Survey feature. You can then format this information into a post following your template and publish it.
This provides your audience with an easy way to connect, establishing stronger relationships and a better experience in your program.
Conclusion
Kartra’s Membership feature is incredibly versatile, extending well beyond traditional online courses and memberships. It can be used to organize business SOPs, create retreat hubs, offer private coaching spaces, and host exclusive podcasts. The opportunities are limitless, and by thinking creatively, you can revolutionize how you deliver value, engage your audience, and increase your income potential.
Now is the perfect time to earn from your knowledge or expand your existing membership community. The creator economy, currently valued at $250 billion, is expected to reach $480 billion by 2027. To capitalize on this growth, you need an online platform with the right tools to create and sell your membership sites or products. That’s where Kartra comes in.
As an all-in-one solution for creators, Kartra serves as the central hub for your entire brand. Whether your goal is to earn an extra $500 a month or $5 million, Kartra has everything you need to start and grow. Get started with Kartra today and transform your financial future by creating impactful memberships. Your knowledge and insights are incredibly valuable— start making the most of them today!
Jessica Scotten
Pineapple Relations www.Pineapplerelations.com
Kartra Certified Business Consultant and Technical Expert
Jessica Scotten is the founder of Pineapple Relations. She is a Kartra Certified Business Consultant & Technical Expert partnering with coaches and course creators who use Kartra as their digital marketing platform and has been using Kartra since it was in beta in 2018. On her social channels, she shares easy to implement tips and tricks for Kartra customers to improve their experience and fast-track their learning curve. Follow her on Instagram.