Course Creators

Kajabi Course Creators are Launching Paid Memberships on Mighty Pro and Making Six-Figures. Here’s How You Can Too

The top Kajabi course creators are making six figures on paid membership communities, but they aren’t hosted on Kajabi. Here’s how they do it.

By Phillip Russell

April 25, 2022

8 min read

Right now, highly successful online course creators are making more money than ever before by building online communities for their courses. Building a paid membership community is a proven way to continue monetizing the great content you offer within your online courses.


At Mighty Pro, we’ve helped hundreds of successful online courses creators add hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional revenue to their businesses year after year by creating online communities. Building your own paid membership for your courses will allow you to spend less time creating content because each member who joins your community provides their own unique insights and ideas that further increases the value of your brand long after they’ve completed your course.


Ahead, we’re breaking down how you can launcha paid membership for your Kajabi courses with Mighty Pro.


Migrate your communities away from Facebook Groups


While Kajabi offers its own online community product on its platform, time and time again, online course creators have told us that it is too barebones. So, where do these Kajabi course creators end up building online communities? Facebook Groups.


In fact, you probably have one already for your online course. Facebook Groups were a solid alternative for course creators who wanted to build an online community for the members of their courses to stay connected to their brand. And it makes sense, to use a social media platform all of your members will be familiar with, a place where members will most likely already have an account. While the basic message board functionality of Facebook Groups worked in the past, it simply isn’t the best option anymore.


To put it simply, I’ll breakdown why migrating away from Facebook Groups is the right move today:



  1. It’s hard to monetize a Facebook Group. This is the most obvious issue with Facebook Groups if you’re trying to launch a paid membership community. Monetizing content or membership to your Facebook Group isn’t possible on the platform which will leave you to use a secondary platform to take payment if you’d like the Facebook Group to be private. You’re already juggling a number of different platforms, why add another one solely to keep using community building software that is behind the times?

  2. The algorithm is not your friend. Increasingly Facebook has become a platform where the organizations that spend the most advertising dollars come out on top. And even then, they might not! I’m being cheeky here, but what I’m getting at is the algorithm is your major roadblock when using this platform to build an online community. I talk with so many successful creators who are frustrated with Facebook Groups because their content simply isn’t being seen by their members. Why continue to use a platform that de-emphasizes your content, and actively promotes the work of your competitors to your members?

  3. You have little control over your content. Finally, so many creators have told me that even within their private Facebook Groups content they or their members have posted has been censored, removed, or at worse creators have been completely locked out of their accounts. This is a huge problem for folks trying to build paid memberships for their Kajabi Courses. Instead of renting space on a platform with a horrible landlord, you could move to an online community platform that gives you ownership over your content and community.


Code Red


Cristy "Code Red" NickelCristy "Code Red" Nickel


A great example of a successful online course creator we’ve worked with is Cristy “Code Red” Nickel the founder of the Code Red network on Mighty Pro. Nickel has been in the health and fitness industry since 1994. She’s a personal trainer and retired professional boxer who has competed all over the world and trained top celebrities, business tycoons, models, and professional athletes.


She used her decades of experience to help others on their weight loss and fitness journey with her Code Red programs. The Code Red app is a one-stop shop for all of Cristy’s dedicated members to engage with one another, take personalized health programs, and more. But before moving her fitness and nutrition coaching and course business into Mighty Pro, Cristy says “every single day was strain and stress.”


Cristy’s team used six different platforms to run their courses, group coaching, and host their products and video content. And the core tools they used to deliver their programs—ClickFunnels and Facebook Groups—kept failing. “My clients weren’t having good results with all the algorithms, ads, and getting constantly locked out of our accounts.”


Since moving to Mighty Pro and leaving Facebook and ClickFunnels behind, revenue is going up and up. Members now have “one app, one platform, one community” to achieve their fitness goals with unmatched access to Cristy’s inspiring livestreams, nutrition plans, and fitness coaching.


She told us a bit about her experience moving her community, “We’ve migrated 20 Facebook Groups into Mighty Pro with 12,500 members joining in the first 30 days. Offering members ONE app for our coaching experiences, livestreaming, and community has changed everything for us.”


Choose an online community platform that allows you to build it all in one place



So, where do you go if you’re trying to launch a paid membership for your Kajabi Courses? The simple answer is an online community platform that allows you to build all that you need within the platform itself.


The biggest pain I’ve heard from successful course creators whether they are on Kajabi, Thinkific, Teachable, or somewhere else is that as their business grows, so too does their tech stack. When you want to launch a paid membership for your Kajabi Courses, your tech stack starts to look a lot like Cristy Nickel’s before she switched, you have Kajabi, a CRM, Click Funnels, a Facebook Group, and more all to keep things afloat. It doesn't haven’t to be this way!


With Mighty Pro, you can build your own fully-branded mobile apps for iOS and Android devices, as well as have your community accessible on your desktop. Within your Mighty Pro apps you can host your courses, natively livestream, create paid memberships, host virtual events and conferences, and do all of this with community being the central tentpole tying it all together. Instead of juggling a plethora of platforms or managing different groups of your community that has been fractured across various social media accounts, Slack channels, and more, you can simply put it all in one place and build an ecosystem for your brand that you own.


Mighty Networks - Graphics - Live Streaming - MiamiMighty Networks - Graphics - Live Streaming - Miami


Lifebook



Another example of course creators who’ve built very successful paid memberships on Mighty Pro is Lifebook. Jon and Missy Butcher have founded 19 impact-driven companies. With Lifebook, they created a life-changing program that has helped 56,000 students design the life they want to live by executing a 12-category system that’s proven to work.


In their community, the Lifebook Mastery Membership, alumni of the Lifebook program come together to put their Lifebook learnings into practice alongside in-depth coaching with Jon and Mussy Butcher, as well as other Lifebook guides, in a growing network of Lifebook practitioners. Mighty Pro helped them turn their successful courses and globally recognized programs into a new Lifebook Mastery Membership.


Here’s what they told us about building their paid membership, “ Last year, we earned over $900,000 and helped nearly 6,000 members achieve breakthroughs in all 12 areas of their life. Our customers love the platform - which translates into our retention rate going up and churn rate going down continuously.”


The logistics of launching a paid membership community


So, how do you go about launching a paid membership community? That will depend on if you’re starting from scratch or migrating an existing community from somewhere else. Most creators I’ve interacted with have some form of community for their Kajabi Courses and it’s usually on Facebook Groups, so let’s roll with that.


We’ve created a full step-by-step guide for creators who are considering migrating from Facebook Groups that you should definitely check out. But I’ll give you the spark notes below:



  1. Do your research. I’m sure you did a lot of research before landing on Kajabi to host your online courses. The same should be true for choosing where to launch a paid membership community. I believe that Mighty Pro is going to give you the best experience for launching a paid membership business thanks to courses, livestreaming, branded mobile apps, and stellar 1:1 support services. There are a number of community platforms on the market now, but they all aren’t built the same.

  2. Announce your community in advance. Whether you’re creating a paid membership from scratch or migrating an existing one to your new community platform, you’ll want your members to know sooner rather than later. The key to launching a paid membership community at any stage is that your audience is well-informed about the awesome experience you’re building, and is clear about how they can join in on the fun.

  3. Invite your biggest supporters early. Another important step I’ve seen from our most successful course creators is zeroing in on who their most dedicated supporters are and having them join in on the paid membership early. Why? For starters, it allows you to better understand how people will interact with your content and the software. It also allows you to troubleshoot in advance many of the issues that will occur when launching a paid membership community. Finally, these early adopters turn into ambassadors when you open the gates of your paid membership for everyone to join. Instead of your team doing all the work managing your community, these ambassadors can help lessen the burden.

  4. Host a launch event. Just because you built it doesn’t mean people will immediately join your paid membership. A great way to entice people however is by hosting a launch event that gets people excited about your paid membership. Many creators we’ve worked with have gotten inventive with collaborative partnerships that leverage the audiences of other influential creators, as well as having guest speakers and events within their new community to spur surges in memberships.


These are four crucial steps that will help you launch your paid membership community to coincide with your Kajabi Courses. We’ve found that many creators who end up building their paid memberships on Mighty Pro to go along with their Kajabi Courses end up building new courses within their community. The reasons are often simple, it’s a much better experience for your members if there are fewer hoops they have to jump through to interact with your content.

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