Mike Morrison of the Membership Guys joins us in this episode of LMScast to talk about building engaging online courses and membership sites with Chris Badgett of LifterLMS. Chris and Mike talk about the ways you can use your knowledge and expertise in order build membership sites that generate recurring revenue.

Mike is a part of the Membership Guys, which is a membership site that teaches people how to create and manage their membership sites. They also have a podcast where they share strategies and tips for creating engaging membership sites.

Chris and Mike outline the differences that exist between online courses and membership sites. They discuss the mentality that you need to have when creating an online membership versus building a course. Membership sites are like marathons that provide continuous, ever-evolving value, and an online course is more of a finished product that you will generally buy once and gain access to all of the content inside.

Creating a community around your membership site is one of the key factors to its success. Mike shares some examples of events you could host to build your community online. Holding a non-topical event, such as going bowling with local members of your online community, can help establish your brand and break the ice with people. You could host a meal at a restaurant with members of your community where you let them ask you questions for a few hours.

When you have a membership site, it is expected that you provide ongoing value, but that does not mean that you have to continuously produce video lessons or new concepts. You can create things like worksheets and checklists for your students to aid in their progress. Chris and Mike talk about redefining ‘providing value’ so that you can remove the connotation of feeling pressured to constantly be producing more and more content.