Memberships and Courses

Memberships and courses turn content into something a client can sell or grant access to. You build a product (a course, a library, a resource area) made of categories and lessons, then create offers that grant access to it. A contact who is given an offer can log in and see exactly what that offer entitles them to, and nothing else.

The mental model is three separate things that people routinely confuse. The product is the content. The offer is the entitlement, which may be free, paid, time-limited or bundled. The member is a contact with a login. Most access problems in this module are an offer problem, not a content problem: the lesson is fine, the person was never granted the thing that unlocks it.

The delivery schedule is the fourth idea worth holding. Content can be released all at once or dripped (by days since enrollment, or on fixed dates) so a program paces its students rather than handing over everything on day one. Drip is a teaching decision before it is a technical one.

Products and structure

• Products, each a course or content library with its own title, description and cover image
• Categories or modules inside a product, and lessons inside each category
• Lesson content: video, audio, rich text, images, downloadable files, embedded pages and quizzes where offered
• Lesson ordering, and whether lessons must be completed in sequence or can be taken freely
• Prerequisites, so a later module only opens once an earlier one is complete
• Published and draft states per lesson, so a course can go live before every lesson exists

Offers and access

• Offers that grant access to one product or a bundle of products
• Free offers granted by workflow, and paid offers sold through a connected payment processor
• One-off purchase, installments or recurring subscription where the processor supports it
• Access duration: lifetime, fixed term, or until a subscription lapses
• Revoking access when a payment fails or a subscription is canceled
• Granting and removing offers manually, or automatically from a workflow action

Delivery schedule

• All content available immediately, or dripped on a schedule
• Drip by days since enrollment, so every student has the same experience whenever they join
• Drip on fixed calendar dates, for a cohort running together
• Per-lesson release rules, and notification when new content unlocks

The member experience

• A branded login and client-facing portal area, on the client's own domain
• Password setup, reset and magic-link style access where offered
• Progress tracking per lesson and per course, visible to the student and to the business
• Certificates or completion acknowledgement at the end of a course
• Comments or discussion on lessons where that is enabled
• Mobile access, which is how most students actually consume the content

Automation and reporting

• Workflow triggers on offer granted, course started, lesson completed, course completed and access revoked
• Tags applied by progress, so a stalled student can be followed up differently from an engaged one
• Enrollment, completion and drop-off reporting per product
• Revenue reporting against offers where they are paid

1. Write the curriculum before you build anything: the outcome the student should reach, the modules that get them there, and the lessons inside each module. The structure is the product.
2. Decide the access model first (free, one-off purchase, subscription, or bundled with a service) because it determines how many offers you need and how payment is wired.
3. Create the product and its category structure as empty shells, then review the outline with the client before any content is produced. Restructuring later means relinking everything.
4. Prepare the media outside the platform. Compress and host video properly, keep file sizes sane, and name files so a human can tell what they are two years from now.
5. Build the first module completely, end to end, including its downloads and its lesson descriptions, and have the client walk it as a student before you build the rest.
6. Set the lesson order and decide whether progression is enforced. Enforced sequence suits teaching; free access suits a reference library. Do not mix the two in one product without a reason.
7. Configure the drip schedule deliberately. Days-since-enrollment for anyone joining at any time; fixed dates for a cohort. Write the schedule down so the client can see what unlocks when.
8. Create the offers and name them so a human can tell them apart in a workflow action six months later. The offer name is what the team will see, not the product name.
9. Connect the payment processor and test a real purchase end to end, including the receipt, the access grant and what happens on a failed card.
10. Decide what happens when a payment fails or a subscription is canceled: immediate revocation, a grace period, or a downgrade. Then configure it rather than hoping it will not happen.
11. Build the enrollment workflow: grant the offer, send the welcome email with the login route, set expectations about pacing, and tag the contact as a student.
12. Test the login journey as a brand-new contact on a phone. Password setup, email arrival, first lesson playback and resuming where they left off are the four things that break.
13. Add the progress-based follow-up: a nudge for a student who has not started, a different one for a student who stalled mid-course, and a congratulation plus next offer on completion.
14. Brand the portal area to match the client's site and put it on their own domain, so students never feel handed off to a third party.
15. Check mobile playback on real devices and real connections, including whether downloads behave sensibly on a phone.
16. Agree who answers student questions and where (lesson comments, the conversations inbox, or email) before the first cohort arrives.
17. Review completion and drop-off per lesson after the first cohort. The lesson everybody stops at is a content problem you can fix, and it is the most valuable thing this module reports.

This module is where a build stops being marketing and starts being delivery. Funnels and order forms sell the offer, payments take the money, workflows grant and revoke access, email carries the welcome and the nudges, the client portal gives students a place to log in, and reporting shows whether anyone actually finished. It is also the most common way a service business creates something it can sell without more of its own time.

Paid course sold from a funnel

A landing page and order form sell the course. Payment grants the offer through a workflow, which sends the welcome email with login details and tags the contact as a student. Content drips weekly. A student who has not opened lesson one after a few days gets a different email from one who is halfway through, and completion triggers an offer for the next program.

Onboarding bundled with a service

When a client signs up for a service, the workflow grants a free offer containing the onboarding course: what to expect, how to prepare, how to get help. The practitioner's time is spent on the work rather than on explaining the basics, and progress tracking shows who has actually watched it before their first appointment.

Subscription library with access control

A monthly subscription grants an offer covering a growing resource library. A failed payment triggers a dunning sequence and, after a grace period, revokes access automatically. Successful recovery restores it. The content stays valuable because access is genuinely tied to the subscription rather than to goodwill.

• Access problems are almost always offer problems. Before you look at the lesson, check which offers the contact actually holds. A revoked, expired or never-granted offer looks exactly like broken content to the student.
• Restructuring a live course disrupts students mid-way. Reordering modules or moving lessons between categories can reset or confuse progress for people already enrolled.
• Drip schedules surprise clients. A client who expected everything available on day one will field complaints from students who cannot find lesson four. Show them the unlock schedule in writing.
• Drip by enrollment date and drip by fixed date behave very differently, and choosing the wrong one for a cohort means half the group sees content the others cannot.
• Video hosting is the main performance risk. Large files served badly buffer on mobile, and students blame the course rather than the connection. Host video properly and compress it.
• Content can be downloaded and shared. Gating controls access, not redistribution. If the material is genuinely confidential, this module is the wrong container for it.
• A failed subscription payment does not revoke access by itself unless you configure it. Clients discover months later that lapsed members still have everything.
• Revoking access is abrupt. Without a dunning sequence and a grace period, a customer whose card simply expired is locked out of something they paid for, and that is the complaint that reaches the owner.
• Login friction loses students. Password emails caught in spam, resets that do not arrive, and a portal on an unfamiliar domain all cause people to give up before lesson one.
• Completion is self-reported progress, not learning. Marking a lesson complete says a page was opened. Quizzes and real assessment are a different and much smaller feature set.
• Certificates imply accreditation. A completion certificate for a regulated subject can mislead, and in some sectors that is a serious problem. Word them carefully.
• Deleting a product or offer orphans the people who held it. Workflows referencing a deleted offer fail, and historical access records become hard to interpret.
• Bundled offers are hard to unpick later. If one bundle grants five products, removing a single product from a member's entitlement may not be possible without rebuilding the offer.
• Course content ages faster than the client expects. Screenshots, prices mentioned on video and references to old processes all date, and students notice. Plan a review cycle rather than treating a course as finished.
• Nobody finishes a course nobody chases. Without progress-based follow-up, completion rates are low and the client concludes the content was wrong when the problem was silence.