Creating an online teacher membership is an untapped way to make a monthly recurring income while serving teachers and making their lives easier! I’ve learned the secrets to a successful membership through trial and error of building my own vibrant membership community. I believe that the only way to succeed is through learning, hard work, and persistence, but I’m here to help make your journey a little less treacherous! Have you thought of creating an online membership for teachers?

Secret 1: Your Teacher Membership Should Solve a Problem

The first step to creating your teacher membership is focusing on your ideal customer avatar and determining how you can solve their biggest problem. When we are customer-focused, they can see themselves in our brand story as the heroes, and they will join us! So, how do you know what your customers want?

Before and during the creation process of your membership, poll your email list with a short (two-question) survey. Use the data from that survey to create a membership your customers want. You can also poll your social media followers and do research in Facebook groups and community forums (like Patreon) where your customers hang out, but please know that data won’t be as pure as your email list.

If your membership doesn’t solve a problem, your customer won’t need to join it. Or worse, won't need to stick around. But, if you listen to your people and create with your ICA in mind, your people will be lining up around the block for your teacher membership!

Secret 2: Use an Online Membership Program That Works

There are several online membership platforms that you can use, but I recommend Kajabi one hundred percent! I’ve used Kajabi since the beginning, and I’ve never looked back. Kajabi has all of the features you’d want when creating an online course or membership. And if you have questions or problems, the customer service is amazing too!

I love Kajabi so much that I walk you through how to set up your Kajabi account for your program step-by-step in the CEO Teacher® Membership. Kajabi takes the guesswork out of getting your teacher membership set up. There are tons of options and customizations to make it work best for you! No matter what, you need an online membership software of some sort on which you can build your membership.

Secret 3: Keep Your Online Teacher Membership Simple 

Wanna know the biggest problem I see when it comes to online memberships? The creator is giving too much away! When you overwhelm your members with too much content each month, one of two things will happen. Either they will get overwhelmed, not know where to start, and cancel because they’re confused or stressed out by everything. Or, they get so much content from you for a couple of months that they don’t need to continue their membership- the content you’ve given will help them for 6 months instead of just two.

This is why it’s crucial to KEEP IT SIMPLE. Don’t give them too much in your teacher membership  – just give them what they need! That could be 4 PDFs to use in their classrooms, a weekly check-in call, and a Facebook group to join. You get to curate what your members get; just remember that we need to hold back and not give everything away right away. This will be beneficial for you and your members!

Secret 4: Create an Online Membership Community

This is a powerful tool that I recommend for your membership. Form an online community for your members to connect with each other, ask for support, and get information from you about the membership. Facebook groups are the easiest way to do this!

However, you don’t NEED to have a Facebook group for your teacher membership site to be successful! It’s a big job to keep engagement up in a Facebook group, so if you choose to create one, carve out time daily or weekly (or hire someone to help!) to answer questions, schedule engaging posts, and more to keep the momentum going. Patreon groups, and IG subscription channels can also work to add value to your membership for teachers.

Secret 5: Use the Teaching Resources You’ve Created in Your Online Membership

There is NO NEED to reinvent the wheel here. Do you have a successful product line on TPT you would like to turn into a membership? Go for it! Do you want to use what you’re creating for your ICA in both places? Please do! If something is working, let’s diversify your income and keep using it in your teacher store and membership.

Your teacher membership should also include some things that are exclusive to it, such as a private community group, 1:1 coaching, and a few bonus activities that aren’t found on TPT. You want teachers to see the value of your membership and the added support that isn’t found when they purchase the resources on TPT. 

Secret 6: What to Do Before Launching Your Teacher Membership

You want to make sure you have a strategy in place to launch your online teacher membership before you do so! Everything I do in my business is calculated and planned months in advance. That’s how I want you to be, too! I have a calendar content strategy where I plan the months leading up to my launch to build hype and excitement so that when I finally open the doors to my program, my customers are ready to purchase. You don’t want to be the broken record of launching every couple of weeks because you haven’t taken the time to prepare before the launch!

However, if your first launch isn’t as successful as you’d hoped, tweak it and keep going! Just because someone didn’t purchase then doesn’t mean that they’ll never purchase from you. It just means you have some experimenting to do! See what works best for your audience and keep doing that!

Secret 7: Love Every Yes and Nurture Every No

Once you’ve closed the cart for your membership, the real magic begins! Now it’s time to love on and support every teacher who said YES and joined your membership. Whether it was three people or 300, you build a loyal community by supporting them, being present, and overdelivering!

And those on your email list and social media who didn’t purchase?! Well, keep on nurturing them! Keep sending emails, connecting on social media, and positioning yourself as a thought leader. Make sure you don’t become an afterthought in their minds… keep sharing, keep chatting, and keep posting. Use the “no’s” as learning experiences, and move forward!

I’ve got more secrets for you in my FREE guide: Start or Expand Your Teacher Business in 2025! I want to share all of my secrets to success with you so that you can build a resilient teacher business, too! And, as you can see from this blog post, I whole-heartedly believe that one of the best ways to make your business resilient is through a teacher membership. So, what problem will your online membership solve for teachers?