Monthly Membership [Template]

UpdatedJanuary 28, 2025

Every template comes with a detailed checklist of every step needed to make it work for your brand. So make sure you have it handy when going through this process. The Help Doc enhances the checklist, it doesn’t replace it.

Have questions about the Membership template? Let us know! You can add a comment below, post in the Fern Brain Trust community, or reach out to us privately using the chat widget in your Fern CRM dashboard.

Overview

We built this template for a specific user while trying to make it as useful as possible for others as well. So the community itself works in a very specific way as-is. It can be modified to fit your purposes, but if you feel it’s too different from what you’re looking for, then ask us about our other templates. It’s possible we have another one that better fits what you’re looking for.

The way this template is set up, new members joining your community will get access to the current month’s content/community so members can discuss, comment, post, and engage with each other around that topic

This model works best for things like:

Serialized publishing ~ publishing a book one chapter per week, or a magazine once a month
Book club ~ where each week/month is a different book and you don’t want the discussion about the book 2 months ago to go on forever and clutter the discussion about this month’s book
Anything where the topic changes weekly/monthly/quarterly ~ for example, if you’re sharing farming or gardening practices and everyone wants to focus on what needs done this month, not 4 months from now; or if you share a new digital resource each month and you want the conversation to be focused on that specific resource; or if you ship out a subscription product each month and want a space for customers to share their unboxings, excitement, etc.; or monthly marketing support where you share new prompts each week and want everyone talking about the current prompts, not older ones.

If you’re having any trouble visualizing it, click to jump to these examples further down the page: Example 1 ~ publishing one resource per month and Example 2 ~ Discussing one topic per month

If, instead, you’re looking for a community membership template that isn’t based on changing topics regularly, then reach out. We’ll be building a more simplified version next.

Depending on your business model, you might want to change how members access the content, but here’s how we’ve organized it:

For the Serialized Book Funnel:

The “course” platform

We’re using the course platform to deliver bonus content and a welcome area.

Everyone who pays for membership will get access to one course ~ the “Fan Club.” This is where you can put any content they’ll keep for the life of their membership. It might be simply explaining the world the book is based in, explaining how other books tie into this one, links to your website, whatever.

Those who “pay in full” will also see their bonuses inside the course platform. This is where you can put the form for them to fill out for their custom-written chapter and add the chapter to their account when it’s done.

Content in the course platform is theirs forever, it doesn’t expire each month.

The “community” platform

We’re using the community platform for all the monthly content and engagement.

This is where you’ll publish the exclusive access chapters (that aren’t available for free yet) and drop teasers and conversation starters. Things like polls that ask, “What do you think this character will do next?” and “Here’s a teaser sentence completely out of context that will get you screaming and drooling for the next chapter…” And, “What would you do in this character’s situation? Would you have stayed to fight or run for help?”

And so on.

Each month, members will lose access to the previous month’s channel and get moved to the new month’s channel. They lose access on the day their subscription isn’t renewed. So, technically, if they join on the 28th of January, they’ll get access to Jan and Feb’s content for $3. But if they don’t renew, they’ll never see March’s. And since you publish one episode per week, they’re really only getting one free week’s worth for free because the other 3 would’ve already been published on the free site by then.

For other business models:

The “course” platform

We’re using the course platform to deliver content they’re allowed to keep from month to month. If, for example, they sign up in February and it’s May now, they can still access evergreen content that was published for members in Feb, Mar, April, and May because they’ve paid for each of those months.

You don’t have to call it a “course” of course! That’s just what it’s called in your Fern CRM dashboard.

Call it whatever you want. A resource library, archive, hub, or whatever you want.

The “community” platform

We’re using the community platform to deliver content/support/conversation that expires from month to month. If, for example, they sign up in February and it’s May now, they can only access May’s community content.

They’ll still have access to Feb, Mar, April, and May’s resources in the course platform. But they’ll only see the current month’s discussions in the community.

This way they know they need to look at the current month’s resources and use it right away instead of letting it collect dust. Because if they wait until next month, the conversation has moved on and they’ve lost their chance to see that discussion.

This is not intended to create a bad member experience or turn this into a false sense of urgency. If it feels that way to you, then it’s probably just the wrong template for your purpose. This model works for some topics and not others. We built this template for a specific Founding member after all!

But you can also change the rules and change how things are set up in your version of it.

If you need any help tweaking this for your vision, get in touch and/or come to Office Hours so we can help!

Quick example:

Let’s say you’re publishing one DIY resource per month, let’s call it a workbook.

Members who join in Feb will get Feb’s workbook in the course platform and they’ll have all month to discuss it in the Feb part of the community.

When March comes around, those who haven’t canceled will get access to March’s new workbook in the course platform and in the community, they’ll lose access to Feb’s discussion and gain access to March’s discussion.

This way, the conversation is always specific to the most current topic and not all over the place with new people coming in at a different point than people who’ve been there all year.

Members know they have until the end of the month to use the workbook and discuss it before the conversation moves onto the next topic.

But at the same time, members paid for February’s workbook, so they don’t lose access to the workbook, just the discussion.

This gives you the opportunity to publish bonus content, sneak peeks, supplementary content, and such in the community that keeps engagement and excitement high.

Another quick example:

Let’s say the current month’s topic is capitalism. Members will spend the month discussing capitalism in the community, knowing that it will be a new topic next month.

When the new month rolls around, everyone loses access to the capitalism channel in the community and they’re moved to the new channel with a fresh start and new topic.

The course platform could have evergreen content related to capitalism that they’ll want to keep long into the future (like a workbook of the lessons they learned and want to keep for future reference.)

OR, the course platform might just have one Welcome “course” that never changes. You don’t have to publish content in the course platform every month. We just need one “course” to live there for logistical reasons.

Make sense? Ok, let’s dive in and customize your course and community platform!