As a digital creator, you must have heard a lot about online courses and membership sites but you are stuck to just creating and selling online courses because you are not really familiar with membership sites.

Yes, membership sounds so complicated but it’s not as complicated as it sounds. 

Although these two digital products are similar in a few ways, they are different business models entirely.

You might want to look into creating a membership as your next info-product, hence why we compiled this post to guide you on your decision-making: whether to choose online courses or membership sites.

Read on to learn more about the pros and cons of online courses vs. membership sites, so as to build the best info product ever.

What is an online course?

An online course is goal-oriented where students achieve measurable results by the end of the course. 

Online courses are always focused on a topic and have a particular timeframe for completion.

The online course works well if you want to teach people a project-based topic, such as “how to make your first 6 figures as a digital creator”.

For online courses, you need just to create your content once and customers buy by making a single payment. 

Online courses can come in these forms; Videos, Audio, PDFs, Worksheets, Quizzes Assignments, etc.

The curriculum of an online course is broken down into modules and lessons to aid in faster assimilation for the students.

What’s a Membership site?

A membership site works in such a way that your members pay a recurring fee. 

With membership sites, you create content on an ongoing basis. 

A membership site does not have a definite ending point, you provide regular new content into the membership.

A membership site can also contain a collection of courses as one of the benefits of being a member. 

Also, the community is always attached to most membership sites, the community might be in the form of a discussion board, weekly live, or mastermind where members of your membership site come together to network with each other.

Online Courses vs. Membership Sites

Now, let’s dive into the key differences between an online course and a membership site.

Structure

Online courses are divided into sections with lessons, assignments, quizzes, etc. As we said earlier, online courses help students achieve specific and measurable results at the end of the course.

Membership sites on the other hand do not follow a direct structure, rather they offer a continuous path of learning about a specific skill without an end. The creator of a membership site keeps on adding new content on a regular basis. 

Revenue

If you prefer a recurring form of income stream, then membership sites are the best option for you.  

Payment for an online course is a one-off process. Although some course creators offer installment payments still, it’s not recurring.

The beauty of online courses is that you can set them up and keep getting revenue without extra effort. 

Membership sites help to distribute your revenue across multiple customers so that if a customer were to cancel her membership, the effect of it on your revenue would be minimal.

Because memberships are ongoing, it’s also easier for creators to implement referral and affiliate marketing with their members than with students who purchase a one-time course

Security

There’s a higher risk of piracy and theft of online courses since viewers can record or share your videos with friends unless you only make the course available on course hosting platforms like Selar.

Engagement

It’s challenging to sustain engagement for online courses since the students will be accessing the course on their own with no supervision from the teacher.

However, it’s easier to encourage and measure engagement for membership sites because it provides an avenue to interact with students in discussion forums. 

Membership creates a better relationship between you and your customers.

Membership sites tend to retain customers for the long term compared to online courses that tend to be short-term. The long-term membership makes it possible for the membership site owner to build relationships and get to know your members better.

Access to course

With online courses, you grant students complete access to your course content after they’ve purchased it for a one-time fee, either for a certain period of time or an extended period.

With membership sites, you grant members access to the content inside, for as long as they continue to pay their membership fees.

Once they stop paying the membership fee, they’ll lose access to the membership site and the other benefits they get.

Time and effort

Online courses need most of the creator’s effort during the production stage when you are coming up with creating the course curriculum, shooting videos, editing, etc.

After that, what’s remaining is the marketing effort, and little bits of updates on the course.

Membership Site on the other hand requires consistent supervision throughout their lifetime.

Deciding that you want to start a membership site is going to be a much more significant investment when compared to starting a basic online course that just includes 6 to 8 video lessons.

For this reason, if you’ve never started an online course in the past and aren’t yet recognized as a well-known authority on the topic that your membership site focuses on, we recommend you start an online course first.

Cost of production

The cost of production for both is quite similar. However, the production costs for online courses are one-off while you can spread out the production costs for membership sites.

To reduce the cost of launching either online courses or membership sites, you could try Selar for free today.

Selar is a platform where African creators can sell an unlimited number of online courses, memberships, webinars, and digital downloads from one site. No additional plugins, tools, or headaches to manage.

Now, Let’s Make A Decision, Is It an Online Course Or a Membership Site?

Now that we have looked at the differences between online courses and membership.

Let’s take a look at a couple of different factors, so you can decide what’s going to be the best option for you.

The first thing to note, though, is that membership sites and online courses are not mutually exclusive.

You don’t have to have just an online course or just a membership site. In fact, having both types of offerings tends to be a great way to build a business that’s scalable and a little bit more steady and predictable.

The best part about this strategy is that your customers might move from one to the other. This is a great way to build upsells and cross-selling into your business.

Remember, whatever business models you start with today can evolve and change over time.

Online Course might be the best option for you if;

• You are teaching one concrete skill or something that could be taught within a short period of time.
• You are teaching evergreen topics like “how to grow a medicinal herb garden” or “how to make  7 figures in 30 days”.
• You’re just getting started online because online businesses need a good cash flow, especially in the beginning.
• You would rather sell 10 ₦20,000 courses than 40 ₦5,000 membership subscriptions.
• You won’t don’t want to spend most of your time creating courses
• You would rather pay most of your production costs all at once

Membership Site will be the best option for you if;

• You prefer to have that long-term relationship with your customers and clients.
• You want a predictable cash flow monthly and annually.
• You are teaching multiple skills or skills that would take a longer time to learn.
• You want to have a community.
• You can devote time weekly to creating new content.
• You are in a niche that offers life-long learning opportunities that members can benefit from.

If you have finally chosen to create an online course, here’s how to create it

Creating online courses is not so easy nor is it difficult. Here is the simple process you can follow to create a successful online course as a newbie.

• Choose the right subject matter
• Test your idea
• Research the topic extensively
• Write a course outline
• Create the course content
• Create your course flier on Canva
• Launch your course on Selar.co on their pro plan
• Market your course online.

LEARN: How to Create a Profitable Online Course: Beginners Guide

How To Build Your Membership Site

If you’ve been through this article and decided you want to launch a membership site, first off, allow us to congratulate you on an excellent decision!

1. Pick a site-building platform

You have 3 options when it comes to choosing a membership platform. You can build your own membership site via WordPress, you can hire a developer to build a website for you or use a membership site platform, like Selar.co. It is more affordable to use Selar to build your membership site so I suggest you go with it.

2. Plan your content

Plan out your content for the members. The best content for memberships is videos. You can create new content or just repurpose your old content.

3. Choose a pricing structure

Do you want a monthly fee? Or perhaps an annual, or quarterly membership plan on an ongoing basis? By offering different membership levels, you can price out mid to high tiers for upsells as well. 

4. Launch and build your online community 

Share shoutouts, teasers, and previews of your video content in your own online community to generate interest and build rapport.

LEARN: How to Easily Create a Successful Coaching Membership Site

Conclusion

Now, you have more information to guide your decision about whether you should start a membership site or an online course.

In this post, we have covered the differences between online courses and membership sites

Also, we discussed the factors you need to consider when deciding between both options. 

This will help you to make a more informed decision.