8 Proven Ways to Increase Membership Community Revenue

If your membership community is not

growing, I've got news for you. You

probably don't need a bigger audience or

more followers. What if I told you you

already had everything you needed for

significant growth? You just weren't

leveraging it properly. Today, I'm

sharing my eight proven ways to grow

your membership community revenue based

on what's working for my community, my

clients communities, and the hundreds of

community founders that I mentor. I've

also packaged these into a handy free

guide that you can grab via the link in

the video description. Growing

membership revenue comes down to two

main levers. Number one, increase

customer lifetime value or CLV. This is

getting more revenue from the members

you already have. And number two,

increase the total number of members

that you're serving. Let's start with

number one. Improving retention is the

single best way to get more revenue from

your current members. Ultimately, better

retention means members stick around for

longer and you increase the average

revenue per member. To achieve better

retention, you have to reduce your churn

or the number of members who are leaving

your membership. And in my experience,

people leave membership communities for

two reasons. Overwhelm and lack of

connection. So, let's solve overwhelm.

There are three key levers. Strong

onboarding. The better you can make your

onboarding and that member experience

from day one, the more those members are

going to stick around for the long term.

Less stuff. I see so many community

builders who just pile in a ton of stuff

into their membership communities

because they think it's going to be more

value for their members, but the

opposite is true. More stuff means more

overwhelm. Use the 80/20 principle.

Figure out the minority of things in

your community offer that members really

value and try and cut everything else.

Structured pathways. Members really,

really don't want to figure out what

they should be doing next. So instead,

if you can create a structure or a

pathway or guide for them, this works

wonders. I'm currently rolling out

structured training pathways inside

learn community and the response and the

engagement with these has been

incredible compared to our legacy

content library. What about solving a

lack of connection? Ultimately, when

your members form deep relationships and

connections with each other, they're

exponentially more likely to stick

around. Here are three levers that are

working right now to improve member

connection. in-person experiences.

You've probably seen that more and more

online communities are adopting a hybrid

model. If you introduce inreal life

events into your membership, connections

will deepen, engagement will deepen, and

retention will go up. Pods or groups?

I'm rolling out mastermind groups inside

learn community right now. And based on

a recent survey, these were the number

one thing that members were asking for.

We're putting members into groups of

four to six people so that they can

connect more deeply with peers who are

at their level. And there's clear data

that shows that participants in groups

like this are much more likely to

actually stick around. And finally,

focus on the value of the collective

over just cramming more content into

your membership. This means the value

generated by and between members.

Instead of you just pouring resources

into your membership community, you need

to become a great facilitator. Connect

members. Look for opportunities with

shared wisdom or support. The more you

can help members to help each other, the

more your retention is going to improve.

Tactic number two is upsells. I find

that everyone obsesses over just adding

more and more members into their

community, but they're completely

missing the revenue opportunity with

their current members. Let's say you

have 100 or 200 members in your

community. I guarantee there's going to

be a small but meaningful minority that

have surplus income to spend and want

more from you. They want more access,

more depth. Here's three tactics to

capture that potential revenue. Number

one is one-on-one coaching or

consulting. It's very likely that some

of your members will be willing to pay

you to work with you directly

one-on-one. In fact, with my community,

this has been the biggest single driver

of clients for the consulting arm of my

business. A number of our members have

actually approached me inbound asking if

I offer this kind of service. And when I

start working with them and get great

results, they then refer me to their

friends and peers. As a result, I

haven't even needed to have a sales

page, even a contact form on my website.

and I do no campaigns or content around

my consulting work, but I've generated

hundreds of thousands in consulting

revenue and been booked up for a full

year. So, how is this possible? Well,

this is possible because members of your

community are the perfect kinds of leads

for this sort of offering. They already

know you, they probably like you, and

they probably trust you if they're

already in your community ecosystem,

which means more inbound interest and

less selling is required. I've seen

several members of learn community who

love the experience but definitely want

more access to me more depth and more

onetoone attention. So I would try to

find some of your members who may be a

suitable fit for this kind of offering

and think about charging between 10 to

30x what your membership fee is for that

deeper high ticket service. And if you

don't want to open up a whole consulting

arm to your business you could consider

what my friend Jlaus does with the lab.

I'm actually a member on the VIP tier,

which means that I pay for the standard

membership and then I pay a higher rate

to get quarterly access to Jay on a

one-on-one call. Jay's been able to

really maximize his annual recurring

revenue by having a minority of members

that upgrade to that top tier. Inerson

paid experiences. I'm doing regular

meetups now for learn community, but

I'll be honest, a typical meetup is very

low margin and it's not going to

meaningfully move your revenue. What can

do though is something like high ticket

retreats. I have several peers and

clients that are now running retreats

valued at thousands of dollars. And when

you have 10, 20, 30 plus members

attending some of these events, that

revenue can stack up fast. Again, you

don't need new people for this. This is

just an add-on experience that may be

enticing to some of your existing

members. And number three is cohort

experiences. Memberships by nature tend

to be quite evergreen and perpetual, but

sometimes what members want is a boost

of sprint style accountability. Cohorts,

boot camps, or accelerators are great

for this. And if you position it

correctly, this can actually be an

add-on service or offering for your

members. Quick shout out to Circle who

are sponsoring this video. If you're

building a membership community, then

Circle is handsdown the best platform

out there. It's enabled me to build a

six-figure membership community at Learn

Community. And what I love most is

everything is under one roof. Events,

workflows, AI agents, gamification,

email marketing. Circle really does it

all. That's why I recommend Circle to

everyone I know and you can try Circle

for free via the link in the video

description. Thanks, Circle. Tactic

number three is increase your price. A

higher price equals more revenue for the

same number of members. People get

really confused and stuck when it comes

to pricing, but my pricing approach is

simple. Pick something that feels

reasonable and then just focus on

steadily increasing that into the

future. How do you know when to increase

prices? Well, for me, it's a combination

of when you're seeing healthy demand at

your current price point, maybe you're

even a little bit oversubscribed, and as

you're adding more and more value to

your offering, and the value goes up, so

should the price. At Learn Community,

I've increased the price four times now

over a 4-year period. It's still super

affordable, and I'm looking at doubling

the price this coming year because we're

adding so much value now with mastermind

groups, training pathways, AI support,

etc. I'm getting indicators that I

should increase the price because we're

seeing record demand and signups and I'm

almost struggling to keep up with the

number of people now joining the

community. My advice would be never

increase the price for legacy members.

If you force a price hike, you're

probably going to see a lot of churn and

cancellations. Instead, increase the

price for new and future members. This

often means that legacy members are more

likely to stick around and retain

because if they leave and want to

rejoin, they have to do so at a higher

price point. And the beautiful thing is

churn starts to hurt less and less

because new members are more valuable to

your business than older members who may

cancel. Many of my clients have now

increased their price one to two times

each year, which means revenue steadily

creeps in the right direction. Okay, so

now you understand how to get more

revenue from your existing members. How

can you actually attract more members

into your community? Tactic number four

is strengthen your offer. I would check

out my wider content and leverage my

community compass framework to

understand how to properly research what

your audience actually want from your

membership. To give you an example, my

client Flo presumed with her new

membership that people just wanted more

learning and more tutorials. But when we

went through and did the research

properly, we understood that definitely

wasn't what they wanted. What they

wanted were the fundamental skills and

confidence to create original artwork

and develop their own unique style. By

doing the foundational research, we

created an offer that deeply resonated

with her audience and is performing

incredibly well. If you're running an

existing community, you probably haven't

looked to your offer in a while. Don't

presume it's perfect. It probably isn't.

Even small tweaks to your offer can

compound into huge gains in the future.

Another way to enhance your offer is to

open it up to a broader audience. My

friend Jay, who runs the lab, did this

by opening up a basic tier. For years,

he ran his standard tier for really

advanced creators, but he saw a growing

demand within his audience with more

beginners. By opening up the basic tier,

he didn't have to market as heavily. The

demand was already there and it opened

up a whole new level of revenue

opportunity for his business. As a note,

I do recommend starting with a single

clear offer and not stacking on loads of

tiers at first. Jay was only able to do

this after solidifying a solid signature

offer with his main membership and then

responding to growing demand for a more

basic tier. Tactic number five, improve

your positioning. Once you've hopefully

tweaked your offer, you need to position

it in the strongest way possible.

Probably my favorite exercise for doing

this is to get your offer, get your

sales page in front of prospects and see

what they think. way too many community

founders are just trying to tweak this

stuff in a silo and they never collide

it with real people. With all of the

community founders that I've supported,

offers that aren't converting usually

come down to two things. A lack of

clarity and a lack of proof. So, my

advice is make your offer crystal clear.

Show it to people and see their

response. See what they think and does

it make sense to them. From there, stack

on as much social proof as you can

muster. I'm talking testimonials, case

studies, statistics, indicators of

credibility, your background, your

experience. Just try and add as much as

you can because that is the stuff that's

the proof that is really going to sell

this community for you. And to give you

an example, recently with my client

Patrick, we did this foundational work.

We tightened up his offer and then we

really strengthened how it was

positioned and his overall sales page.

As a result, his revenue had this

massive upswing and shot past $500,000

ARR. Tactic number six is leverage

urgency and scarcity. Often when people

are failing to grow their membership

community, it kind of just sits there

always open. And when I ask them what

they're doing in terms of marketing,

they say not really much. This results

in a slow, uninspiring trickle of

signups. Now, two of the oldest

marketing levers in the book are urgency

and scarcity. And I want to show you how

to leverage these. The first thing you

might consider doing is actually closing

your community. As I say, if it's always

sat there open, people have no clear

reason to join in that moment. Instead

of having it always open, you could open

it periodically at key points throughout

the year. One of my clients, Alex, runs

an incredible community called Mic Drop.

Their community was always open and we

closed it, choosing to only open it a

couple of times a year via a cohort.

This resulted in a 300% lift in revenue

in just 11 months. They didn't have a

bigger audience. They didn't have a

different offer. All they did was they

changed the model, added some urgency

and scarcity, and that gave them a

reason to properly market the community.

Suddenly, prospective members no longer

felt casual about maybe joining later.

They understood they only had a small

limited window if they genuinely wanted

to join. You can also impose member

caps. This could be done per opening.

So, you could open up a cohort and say,

"We're only going to let in 20 members

or 50 members or whatever it might be."

Or you can impose an overall member cap

to your total membership community.

Another client of mine, Joy, runs

Sustenance, which is just an amazing

community for poets and lyrical

essayists. We'd already leveraged the

closed model in our work together,

resulting in multiple soldout cohorts.

But in the last cohort, we did something

a bit different. We said we were going

to cap the membership at 250 members to

preserve the intimacy and culture that

members love so much. And as a result,

this last cohort sold out in 4 minutes.

Like seriously, 4 minutes. It was crazy.

This was a hugely profitable launch. It

took Joyy's revenue to new heights and

they've never felt better about the

stability of the community. People

recognized the urgency and the scarcity

because once it was full, they know

they're going to have to wait for

someone to leave before they get a shot

at joining. Tactic seven is

reactivation. People often presume that

once a member leaves, they're really

unhappy and they're gone forever, never

to return. But I think the statistics

often say different. I have several

clients including a huge photography

community and my client Patrick I

mentioned before and a big number of

their monthly signups are actually

reactivations that old previously

canceled members returning. Particularly

if you have a monthly plan, you will see

some members that drift away just cuz

life gets busy or stuff comes up but

they do want to come back at some point.

So I think intentionally marketing to

former members is actually one of the

smartest things you can do. It's a great

way to re-engage them and shift your

revenue in the right direction. And

finally, tactic number eight, referrals.

Referrals are consistently slept on, but

they are one of my favorite ways to

drive members. They're member-driven, so

members are doing the leg work instead

of you having to do all the marketing.

And often members that come in via

referrals are incredibly high quality.

They already have connection baked into

their experience from day one because

they know an existing member. And it

compounds because as you get more

members, you get more people referring.

You get more members, you get more

referrals, and you get this amazing

flywheel effect. So, how do you get more

referrals? Well, the first thing is

awareness. Often members don't even

think to refer people. So, tell them

that it's something you're looking for.

Put out announcements, bake it into your

community experience, and explain why

referring in friends is a great way to

strengthen the overall community

culture. Next, incentivize. give people

that extra nudge and they're more likely

to take action. You could give them

direct commission for referring a

friend. You could do a double-sided

commission so the referred member gets

some money off and so does the referring

member. And you can even bake this

commission into an upcoming renewal

which helps retention because members

want to wait around to earn back the

money from the commission off their next

renewal date. And finally, productize

it. So think about how to bake referrals

into the community experiences you're

already creating. I supported Misa who

runs the authentic Asian community and

she started really leaning into inerson

experiences including supper clubs. What

she did so well was she opened up some

of these events to non-members too. So

they'd have intimate dinners and members

would invite friends and people in their

network to come and attend. These

newbies would get to experience a taste

of what the main community was like.

They'd meet existing members. They'd

hear about how wonderful the community

was. And subsequently, the conversion

rate from these referred members into

signups was huge. In fact, it became the

single biggest driver and revenue upside

for Misa's whole community. We even

broke down the data behind the

authentication community. And it was

incredibly interesting. When members

were joining through these dinner

parties and in locations where they

happened regularly, they were way more

likely to stick around and retain versus

members that came in colder and were in

locations where these kinds of events

weren't happening. Okay, there you have

it. Eight ways to increase your

membership community revenue. Improve

retention, add upselles, increase your

prices, improve your offer, improve your

positioning, leverage urgency and

scarcity, focus on reactivations, and

drive those referrals. My tip would be

start with just one of these. Run it as

a bit of an experiment. This video has

hopefully given you real examples and

real tactics that you can apply. And the

upside of any one of these can be huge.

And if you start stacking a few of them

together, they can compound like crazy.

The bottom line is you can significantly

grow your membership community revenue

without having to go viral, drastically

grow your audience, or post a bunch more

content. You probably have all the

people and all the tools that you need.

You just need to optimize and leverage

these things properly. As a reminder,

you can get the free cheat sheet

outlining all of these tactics via the

link in the video description. And while

you're here, I would love to invite you

to join us inside Learn Community.

That's where you can connect with over

200 like-minded community builders,

access our deepest training, mentorship

from me, meetups, events, and so much

more. The value inside is huge, and

members continue to rave about their

experience there. Oh, and if you're new

here, please remember to like and

subscribe for more content like this. I

am so excited to share as much value as

I possibly can in my upcoming videos for

all of you. Drop a comment and let me

know which of these tactics you plan on

implementing. And I promise I'm here to

cheer you on and support you. May the

year ahead be filled with success for

you. See you in the next one.