Creating a Tiered Membership Site with Mavenseed

Oct 4th 2022

Whether you're an active Youtuber looking to direct your followers to a place they can get the VIP treatment, have access to your customers, and or expand upon your existing community, let's walk through how you can offer tiered memberships with Mavenseed.

To get started there are a few housekeeping items to have handy;

Unlike other platforms, you plug your very own Stripe account into Mavenseed to process payments. This helps get your money to you sooner, instead of waiting on us. Grab your free Stripe account,
If you plan on doing any email marketing, Mailchimp integrates nicely with Mavenseed, giving you a direct line to your customers. They also offer a free account to get started.

Step One: Create your free Mavenseed Account

We've recently moved to an invite-only platform. Don't fret, we're still sending out invites and you can ask for one of those here. Once you have your invite code, create your account and proceed to step two!

Step Two: Setting your subscription plans (tiers)

Membership plans can be set up to renew monthly, quarterly, or annually. In this case, we're going to stick with Monthly for simplicity's sake.

Note: If you've not connected your Stripe account yet, you'll be prompted to do so before you can create your membership plans.

Let's click on Subscriptions in the left-hand menu,
Click on the PLANS tab,
Click on the New Subscription Plan button in the top-right corner.

Creating a new Subscription plan

This new plan will be what your customers subscribe to access your exclusive content. Let's give it a good name and set up some of the initial information. In this example, we're going to create a two-tiered membership-level site.

Plan name: Tier 1
Description: Here is where you'd describe what they're gaining access to. For e.g. Project files, new monthly materials, or member-only tutorials,
Supported Gateway: Stripe
Amount: For this Tier, we're going to ask our members to pledge $4 per month,
Recurring Setup: For the interval let's set this to Monthly, Interval count to 1, with zero trial days. This set's this plan up as a monthly membership,

Click Create and Continue.

Your membership plan has been created.

Now let's go refine it a bit further. Click on the Edit Subscription Plan. Scrolling down this will reveal a new set of options.

SUPPORTED FEATURES: Set which features of the site you'd like your subscribers of tier 1 to have access to. You're able to limit access to the community forums, download files, or access live streams,
SUPPORTED PRODUCTS: Products are the digital things you create on the site. This could be a download, streaming course, or bundle. Pick and choose products or check the Enable access to all products,
TEAM SUPPORT: If you'd like your members to be able to sign up as a team, you can control how many seats this plan offers them,
GAME BADGE: If the plugin is enabled, you're able to upload a badge to represent the Subscription Plan the member is subscribed to,
PLAN ACTIVE: If you'd like the plan to display on your pricing page or the subscription Page Builder leaf, leave this checked. If not, uncheck the box. Note: you can have members on a nonactive plan.

Click Update Plan

You've just created your first membership tier on your site. 🎉 Repeat the steps above to create other membership tiers.

Step three: Displaying your pricing plans

You have a few options to display your membership tiers on your site.

By default, Mavenseed will display all of your ACTIVE subscription plans on yourdomain.mavenseed.com/subscribe. To give you the most control this link is not automatically added to your navigation but could be tossed in the footer or main navigation as you wish.

If you're looking for a little more control over how your pricing page looks, you can lean on the Page Builder to create an in-depth pricing page. For e.g. CG Cookies pricing page

Logged in as an admin, path over to Content > Pages, and click the New Page button to create a new static page, we'll call it, "pricing". You'll then be able to link to your custom pricing page yourdomain.mavenseed.com/p/pricing where you see fit.
Additionally, you can drag and drop a Subscription Plan Page Builder leaf on your products page; courses, live streams, and downloads.

Congrats you've now just set up a tiered membership site. Customers can visit your site, find the pricing, and signup. Now the hard work can begin. 😅

The next steps are to do what you're good at; encouraging customers to visit your site through marketing, creating solid content, and offering a clear value exchange.

If you have an existing membership site and would like help migrating over to Mavenseed, we're happy to help, and just an email away!

Best of luck, we're here to help answer questions! Happy Building.

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Tips for growing your membership plans

The days of building it and they will come are gone. You could have built the most engaging content displayed on the coolest-looking page but without some manual work of communicating, and sharing it's just one of nearly 2 billion sites out there.

Create a social link page to use on your social profiles. Creating a single page helps funnel in your potential supporters to your website, giving you a direct line of contact,
Build a community around your brand and products. You can offer a community forum with your Mavenseed site, live stream, and blog to help your potential customers know you know what you're talking about, or share in the journey of discovery together,