4 Ways to Grow Your Health Coaching Business with Membership Programs
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In the wellness industry, you’ve likely come across quite a few different online membership programs—things like online courses, resource libraries, video archives, members-only forums, and other types of online membership communities on various wellness topics.
Membership programs and membership-protected content are increasingly popular in online health coaching, both as paid products in and of themselves, as well as free opt-in gifts used as a strategy to grow your business’ email list.
I’ve personally used online membership programs in my own wellness business, as well as consulted on many more as a web designer and business consultant for other health coaches and wellness professionals.
The reason we all love and use membership programs in our online health coaching businesses? Passive income.
Passive income for health coaches
Passive income does not mean “lazy health coach.”
Developing passive income products (like an online course or other digital wellness resource) takes lots and lots of work to put together, and some additional work to maintain. But the concept is: You do the upfront work sharing your wellness expertise in a membership-protected product. And then you sell that expertise many times over. This is “passive income” because you’re not trading your time for it each time you sell it.
Here’s how online membership programs benefit both health coaches and your prospective health coaching clients/customers:
→ 1:1 service providers (like us health coaches) can only serve so many people at once. When we reach the number of people we can reasonably serve in one day, we reach our income limit. Meaning, other than raising prices for our clients, we have no further way to grow our health coaching business.
Side note: Health coaching is very energy-intensive, and it’s most likely you’re not able to sustainably max out your possible work hours as a health coach. 8 hours of coaching, 7 days a week? Nahh, that’s physically and mentally exhausting. (Health coaches and other wellness professionals tend to reach our limit of client-facing hours closer to 4-5 hours a day, 4-5 days a week.) So, those human limits need to be factored into our “possible work hour” calculations too.
→ It’s notoriously challenging to find and connect with new health coaching clients (particularly as an online health coach casting a big net to the vast world of the internet). With solely a 1:1 health coaching business model, so much of a health coach’s energy ends up being spent seeking and onboarding new clients—which, of course, takes that time and energy away from actually serving people or earning income with it.
→ Private health coaching has many benefits for the client, but it’s a pretty expensive investment, and not all interested potential clients are able to afford to work with you in that capacity (or, they don’t feel that they can afford to work with you in that capacity—which is a slightly different thing, but same outcome for them and you). On the other hand, online membership programs and other digital wellness products are a more affordable, approachable, “entry-level” option for potential clients who desire to learn from you, but aren’t ready for the big premium health coaching program.
→ For online health coaches in particular, online membership programs and membership-protected content solve some logistical challenges, in that you may be attracting potential clients/customers in a different time zone or different part of the world than you. A key benefit of these “passive income” products is that they allow your expertise to be sold any time of day, any day of the week, to anyone, anywhere in the world—regardless if you happen to be available to work with them directly at that moment or not.
So! Online membership programs can be a helpful way to diversify your health coaching income streams, free up time for yourself as a health coach (so you can spend more time doing what you love)—and, it creates new ways for more potential clients to engage with your wellness products and services.
Types of online membership programs for health coaches
Here are some of the (many!) ways health coaches can use online membership programs in your health coaching business:
Online courses
Resource libraries
Video archives
Members-only forum
Membership communities & groups
E-books, guides & other downloadable materials
Client portals
Online membership programs (aka membership-protected content) are a fantastic way to grow your health coaching business and earn more sustainable income as a health coach. And, they can be a valuable addition to your existing health coaching services (for example, an online client portal with access to additional wellness content).
The best membership-protection tools for health coaches
There are an increasing number of technology options for creating membership-protected content that can be sold directly from your health coaching website. Here are more details on the different membership-protection tools available for health coaches, and how they compare.
My personal favorite, and the membership-protection tool I’ve used for years in my own wellness business and still recommend to other health coaches and wellness professionals is MemberSpace.
MemberSpace integrates with your health coaching website to password-protect specific pages or content on your site so those pages/materials are only available to users who’ve become part of your membership program.
You can host multiple different membership programs, and those can be free or paid, and MemberSpace supports multiple billing options including one-time payments, recurring subscription payments, coupons, etc.
Because MemberSpace is simply protecting content that’s on your website (rather than hosting your content elsewhere), you’re able to construct your programs within your website itself—which also means you get to maintain your website’s existing branding, and it’s one less tech tool to learn (woohoo!). They also allow for substantial styling customization so your sign-up process can fit the branding of your business and the rest of your website, creating a more seamless user experience for your customers and clients.
MemberSpace integrates with all major website platforms, like Squarespace, WordPress, Wix, Weebly and more.
And, they offer a free 14-day trial, so you can get started building your membership program before even paying for the service!
Pro tip: You can let their support team know if you need more time to build your program before it’s ready to launch, and they’ll extend your trial.
How to set up a health coaching membership program
There are many different ways MemberSpace can be used to set up a membership program for your health coaching business.
Note: It’s no secret that I love, love Squarespace websites as a beautiful and easy to maintain option for health coaches and wellness professionals. So, all the examples you’ll see below are built with Squarespace websites. Though we’ll chat through how these membership program types work with Squarespace + MemberSpace specifically, these examples can also be applied to other website platforms too (WordPress, Wix, Weebly, etc.), if your health coaching website happens to be hosted on a different platform instead.
Here are four ways membership programs or membership-protected content can be used in your health coaching business:
Resource library
One of the most common ways to incorporate a membership program in your health coaching business is to set up a password-protected resource library that includes archives of wellness resources like healthy recipes, fitness videos, healthy living worksheets or guides, or really anything else that makes sense for your particular area(s) of wellness expertise.
Back when I started Four Wellness Co., we offered a free Wellness Library of healthy living guides and resources including both web-based and downloadable materials. The free library was password-protected by MemberSpace and used as an opt-in gift to grow our email list. (This is one of the strategies I used to grow our email list to thousands before ever launching a paid product!)
However, as it became increasingly valuable with additional content, we transitioned the Wellness Library into a paid product. This is done with just a simple adjustment in MemberSpace, which then begins to serve as its payment processor. (So, just a tip that you can start a membership program as a free product while building it, and transition it to a paid product later! 😇)
Sign-up process
Our Wellness Library guides are promoted on our website and in our blog posts, giving visitors an opportunity to sign up for access to them.
During the sign-up process, new members are required to agree to the program terms and conditions. (Make sure you have those legal policies in place!)
New members are automatically added to our “Wellness Library” email segment, for future updates and communication—we let members know when a new guide is published, etc. (Our email integration is set up with Flodesk, but you can do the same with Mailchimp or any other email software you use.)
How it’s organized
Each guide is constructed as its own page in Squarespace, using anchor links to create sections or “chapters” and a table of contents for easy navigation.
How it works
Each guide contains healthy living information and wellness tips, as well as links to additional reading, product recommendations, etc.
Though the content flows as one page, the section headers help break up text and orient the reader in the different topic areas.
Downloadable materials
At the end of the guide are links to downloadable materials, such as printable/fillable PDF checklists, workbooks, etc.
Online course
Though there are many online “course creator” platforms to choose from, there are a few benefits of using MemberSpace to build an online course for your health coaching business directly from your own website:
Because the course content exists on your own website (rather than being hosted on a third-party site), you have a lot more control over customizing the design and style of the course pages and materials. This means you can match your existing branding much better than using a third-party tool that hosts your content elsewhere (where the user interface tends to look a little different than your own website, making for a less seamless user experience).
You can mix and match membership types all within the same MemberSpace account and create different membership plans connected to the same pages/content—without having to duplicate content. (Yay!) This tends to be very useful for health coaches, who have a range of wellness content and membership types in our businesses.
MemberSpace also offers quite a bit of flexibility for your wellness course material and structure:
You can include webpages, videos, audio recordings, downloadable material—anything you can host on your website.
They also have single sign-on integration with useful tools like members-only forums and community directories (which means your members only have to log-in once to access those additional members-only features).
Courses can either be set up with all content available immediately upon sign-up, or with specific content “dripped” (released) at certain times—either specific dates/times, or a certain number of days after a new customer enrolls.
You can offer different pricing tiers (perhaps with specific upgrades in higher-level tiers), or different pricing plans for the same membership benefits.
Here’s an example of an online course set up with MemberSpace (sneak peek of our Health Coach Business School, coming soon—sign up for updates if you’d like to be notified when it’s here!):
Pricing tiers
During the sign-up process, customers can select their pricing tier of choice (pay-in-full or monthly payments) and each option links to its own sign-up form for that specific payment setting.
Member navigation
Upon logging in, members have access to the course’s “homepage”: a page constructed with easy links to each course module, as well as account information and other important course links.
Module pages
Each course module is organized into sections separated by section headers, and includes a table of contents built with anchor links, so members can easily jump to different sections within each page.
Downloadable materials
Each module includes downloadable PDF materials, such as checklists and cheat sheets.
Question portal
Members have access to a special members-only contact form to submit questions on the course content, or other health coach business topics.
Health coaching client portal
If you run a 1:1 or group health coaching program (either in-person or online), MemberSpace is also a great option to password-protect a “client portal”—a secure location where you can make health coaching materials, wellness resources and important links easily accessible to your coaching clients online, any time of day, from any type of device.
Some of the materials & resources health coaches can include in your client portal:
health coaching program documents, policies, FAQs
program handouts, worksheets, recipes
intake forms, progress forms, exit forms, etc.
link to your health coaching session scheduling calendar (this is a great way to make specific calendars private and only accessible by certain clients, rather than publicly visible on your Acuity Scheduling page)
members-only blog posts or videos
question portal (streamlines the way clients contact you between sessions)
welcome video and materials
link to a private Facebook group
private discussion forum (this can be set up in your membership-protected client portal with Muut or Circle)
Using a MemberSpace-protected client portal as a supplement to your health coaching program can be set up in two ways:
If you sell your health coaching packages through MemberSpace as your payment gateway, new members can be automatically given access to your client portal (or specific elements of your client portal) upon sign-up.
If you sell your health coaching packages through a different payment gateway (such as Acuity Scheduling or your website’s e-commerce), you can manually add new health coaching clients to your client portal—they’ll receive an email invitation to create their account and set their password.
How it works
Health coaching clients have access to an online portal where they can easily access program-specific materials and other wellness content from any device.
Digital wellness products
And, finally, MemberSpace can be used to membership-protect specific digital wellness products you’ve created in your health coaching business. Perhaps you offer a free healthy recipe book or a fitness video training as a lead magnet. Or maybe you sell a more in-depth e-book or video series as a self-paced coaching option. MemberSpace can password-protect both free and paid digital products (PDFs, videos or webpages).
Though they’re part of our Wellness Library too, our Anti-inflammatory Grocery List and Eat the Rainbow Daily/Weekly Tracker are both examples of digital products that are password-protected by MemberSpace.
Membership-protected download
For non-members, the “Download” button prompts a pop-up window offering the opportunity to sign up for access to the document, while logged-in members will have the download automatically open in a new window.
These are four of the most popular ways to incorporate membership programs into your health coaching practice! (And, keep in mind, health coaches often have a use for multiple types of these membership programs in our businesses!)
membership programs for health coaches
grab my free memberspace checklist for health coaches!
Build your own membership program with my free checklist for setting up MemberSpace-protected content on your health coaching website. ✨
