How to Launch a Profitable Side Hustle as a Membership Site Host—NEW for 2021.

Membership Sites. I debated whether to include these in the section about military side hustle courses, masterminds and bootcamps, but decided to give it it’s separate section, because I see opportunity here for you to make membership sites based on a singular area of focus. In other words, how to create a membership site for one specific skill you can share with others. So, for example, I have a membership site for people who want to learn WordPress. There is a tremendously effective membership site/course on how to use Mailchimp, there are websites on things like rock climbing, knitting, making vegan food, all sorts of things. Essentially, if you can dream it up, and there is a paying market for it, you could crate a membership site.

The biggest difference between a course and a membership site is the overall goal. A course is generally designed to take you from point A to point Z over a specific period of time, while a membership site is more geared toward bathing you in all that is that ONE specific learning task.

So, if you’re in love with some sort of crafting, Cricut for example, you could create a niche membership site and join the Cricut affiliate program. Once you have a website that talks about crafting with Cricut, you could then set up a membership site. I use Kartra’s membership site maker for each of my membership sites. Jennifer Maker, whose Cricut website has 375,000 members on the mailing list… yes, 375,000 pulls in six figures a month. That’s insane. Of course, she tapped into the Cricut niche early, owns the space in a sense, and hustles her rear-end off, as you’ll hear about on the Side Hustle Nation podcast with Nick Loper.

But, if Cricut isn’t your thing, perhaps the military family relocation consulting service we spoke about earlier would be best suited to a membership site that you could add to from time to time and that would foster a community. Again, there are multiple ways to do this, the key is to hone in on an idea that appeals to you and start there. Then, engage in your learning, and put the proper plan into place. Set aside your budget, and then go. All of these things take time and energy, but in each of these scenarios where you’re productizing a service, you can create a membership site with results and rewards that will surprise you.

Marketing and promotion can become a time consuming chore, but, as that part of your online business ramps up, you should be bringing in enough income to offload that areas of operations just like folks like Jennifer have done. Perhaps you could create a little You, Inc., and recruit a group of friends and family members to help you… like these women entrepreneurs, and perhaps, even recruit your active-duty loved one!

Check out some of the courses, tools and resources to help you launch your first membership site today. Good luck, should you pursue this military side hustle. It’s a fun one, and once you get things humming it *almost* runs on autopilot. 😉

As I mentioned, I use and love Kartra for my membership sites. They created a tool I wish existed years ago—it’s intuitive, feature-packed, and comes with campaign templates (to help you offload all that marketing and promotion I talked about) built RIGHT INTO the system. I use the starter plan (which is more than enough), for only $99 USD a month. I LOVE it.