How to Build a Paid Membership Site From Scratch

How to build a paid membership site: what to sell, how to price it, and what Patreon, Teachable, Podia and Kajabi take at $500 and $2,000 a month.

To build a paid membership site, decide what members pay for every month (access, new content, community, or a mix), set a monthly price with a yearly option, pick a platform that handles recurring billing and gated access, and launch to a small founding group before you open to everyone. The offer matters more than the software.

The platform choice still decides how much of each payment you keep. shopspace runs memberships, community and courses on the Creator plan with 0% taken per payment, for a flat $19 a month billed yearly.

This guide covers what to sell, how to price it, how to launch without a big audience, and what the main membership platforms take from you at $500 and $2,000 a month.

What are members actually paying for?

Most memberships sell one of three things:

• Access. Members get something they cannot find elsewhere: a resource vault, a template library that grows every month, a private channel.
• Content. Members pay for a steady stream: weekly lessons, a monthly deep dive, a members-only newsletter. The value is the cadence and your curation.
• Community. Members pay to be in a room with each other, with you as the host: accountability, introductions, group calls.

Most memberships that last combine two of these. Content plus community is a common pairing, because members have two reasons to stay instead of one.

The test for whether a membership fits at all: does the problem come back every month? Staying current in a fast-moving field, accountability, ongoing skill practice: yes. A problem that is solved once is better sold as a course.

Start with a minimum viable membership

The most common mistake is building everything before anyone has paid. Start with one recurring benefit you can deliver reliably, such as a monthly group call, a weekly resource drop or a private channel. Charge for it and watch who stays.

If members stick around for two months, add a second benefit. If they leave, adding features rarely fixes it. The core promise is not landing, so change the promise before you add more.

How to price a membership

There is no correct number, but a few principles hold:

• Price the outcome, not the hours. A community that helps members win clients is worth more per month than one that shares interesting links.
• Very low prices cost you twice. A $5 membership needs many more members to reach the same income, and people value what they barely notice paying for.
• Higher prices need a concrete promise. Direct access to you, a peer group of professionals or live coaching can justify a higher tier.

50 members at $9 a month is $450; 50 members at $29 is $1,450. Same audience, more than three times the revenue. Online course pricing walks through tier anchoring, and the same logic works for membership tiers.

Add a yearly option (and get the math right)

Once you have a monthly price, offer a yearly plan. The standard framing is "two months free": the yearly price equals ten monthly payments. At $29 a month that is $290 a year instead of $348, a saving of $58 (about 17%).

You collect the year's revenue up front, and a yearly member does not face a cancel-or-stay decision every month. Show the yearly saving as a lump sum ("save $58") next to the monthly option.

How to sell memberships without a big audience

You do not need 10,000 followers. You need 20 to 50 people who have the problem your membership solves.

1. List 20 to 30 people who have the problem. Past customers, people who ask you questions, members of communities you are active in.
2. Offer a founding rate a little below your planned public price, locked in for as long as they stay.
3. Set a real deadline. "Founding pricing closes Friday" creates urgency without a permanent discount.
4. Open publicly once you have 15 to 20 paying members. Their feedback shapes the product and their results become your social proof.

An email list makes this far easier: 200 people who opted in for a specific reason usually respond better than thousands of casual followers. If you have not started one, build your email list as a creator first. For the zero-audience playbook in full, see how to get your first 100 customers as a creator.

What membership platforms take from you

Membership platforms charge a monthly subscription, a cut of every payment, or both. Here is what each one takes at two monthly membership revenue levels, using month-to-month prices as of September 2026 (sources: Patreon, Teachable, Podia, Kajabi). Card processing (Stripe or PayPal) applies on every platform, so it is left out to keep the comparison fair.

Billed yearly, shopspace Creator is $19 a month ($228 a year), which leaves you $481 and $1,981. Patreon also passes on its own payment processing, currency conversion and payout fees on top of the 10%.

At $2,000 a month in membership revenue, Patreon's 10% is $200 you never see, every month your members stay. Start a 7-day free trial of shopspace and keep it: 0% per payment for a flat $19 a month billed yearly.

Where other platforms genuinely win

Pick on fit, not only on fees:

• Ko-fi Gold is $12 a month with 0% taken (Ko-fi pricing). If a simple supporter membership is all you need, it costs less.
• Stan Store Creator is also $29 a month with 0% taken, and it sells memberships. Its email broadcasts and flows sit on the $99 Creator Pro plan; shopspace includes email campaigns and sequences on Creator.
• Kajabi includes a custom domain on every plan. On shopspace, a custom domain is Pro only.

Patreon has one thing none of these give you: it is where many fans already have an account. If your audience lives there, weigh that against the 10%. For a wider view, see the Patreon alternatives for creators.

How to set up a paid membership on shopspace

Everything below is on the Creator plan:

1. Create a membership product and choose monthly or yearly billing. Payments go straight to your own Stripe account.
2. Add tiers if you need them. Each tier has its own monthly and yearly price, so a "Community" tier and a "Community + calls" tier can sit side by side.
3. Offer an optional free trial to new members if you want to lower the barrier.
4. Decide what members get: community channels they can access, courses with progress tracking, and bookings for calls.
5. Set up the welcome. An automation on the new-member event can send a welcome email sequence, so nobody joins to silence.

Members log in to a member area on your store.

The verdict

If you are validating a membership idea, keep it small: one benefit, a founding group and a monthly price with a yearly option. Choose a platform that does not take a growing cut as your membership grows, because recurring revenue makes a percentage fee recurring too.

If your members need community, content and calls in one place, set up your membership on shopspace. The first 7 days are free; a card is required at signup and nothing is charged during the trial. After that it is $19 a month billed yearly, with 0% taken from every member payment.

FAQ

What should I sell in a paid membership? Access, ongoing content or community, and ideally two of the three. Content plus community tends to hold members longest because it gives them two reasons to stay.

How much should I charge for a membership? Price against the outcome for the member, offer a yearly plan at roughly two months free, and give early members a founding rate. Very low prices need far more members to reach the same income.

Can I build a paid membership site without paying a monthly fee? Yes: Patreon charges no monthly fee and takes 10% of your income instead. The flat-fee route costs less once a 10% cut is bigger than the subscription, which for a $19 a month plan happens above $190 a month in membership revenue.