You can approach creating content for your paid membership in two different ways. Whether you focus on personal connection or premium production, each offers unique opportunities and works better for a different creator type. Let's examine them in more detail.
1. More of You
First, you can make your subscription an opportunity for your followers to access more of you and build it on your interactions with subscribers. If you're popular in your niche and have a big personality, this can be ideal for you. If you don't have a super fun personality, you can still make this work by leaning more into sharing your thoughts and expertise if you're in a field where followers find it valuable. You want to make your subscribers feel they have exclusive access to you - which they will! But you have to be genuine - you won't be able to fake it for long if you don't feel excited about it. You should try to target and attract people you will actually enjoy being around.
It usually consists of exclusive videos addressing a topic or the latest events, Q&As where you answer subscriber questions sent to you live or submitted earlier, and participating in the written discussion with your subscribers.
On the other hand, you can adjust the publishing frequency to the rate that works for you and your subscribers, and this content isn't usually super-produced. People are used to their favorite creators doing paywalled content from their laptops using the built-in webcam and mic, which makes it look very authentic. Typically, it's just the creator sharing the thoughts freely, without the pressure to quickly deliver the message or capture viewers' attention within the first three seconds, as it's required on social media. People know the creator from highly produced videos, and watching him talking to a webcam gives it a very authentic vibe. This allows the creator to answer even very detailed or peculiar questions.
The solo videos can include reactions to recent news everybody is talking about. If you're already addressing this in your public videos, you can dive more deeply into it in the paywalled videos and address the most frequent comments from the public video.
Since it's about you, consider sharing some photos, too. If you're often on the road, post quick updates like pictures of where you're heading or some behind-the-scenes content from interesting places.
If your brand is professionally oriented, most of your followers will presumably be in the same field of work as you. They would definitely appreciate it if they could submit their work and have you critique it or give some feedback or advice. This would work best in fields where you can evaluate their work fairly quickly, ideally on the spot. It would work great for all kinds of designers, filmmakers, architects, and other visually-oriented professions.
If assessing subscribers' work would take longer or require a deeper dive, instead of evaluating all that are submitted, you can pick three or four and review those. It would be interesting for your followers to see how you think and what things you notice. You can also create a segment where you give opinions on the work situations or challenges they submit. You can do these specials once every two months, for example.
None of these content types require significant - or any - preparation on your side, so it's really just about dedicating time to making them and then sticking to the schedule. For example, it would take you 8 hours a month to make two one-hour weekly streams.
💡 Keep in mind
Personal contact is absolutely essential to creating a community.
2. High-quality content
Your subscriber area can be a place solely for your highly produced premium content. If you're a podcaster, you can cut your episodes and put the second part behind the paywall. People will subscribe either to access the rest of the one interview they liked or to access a whole collection of these paywalled interviews that you will build over time.
If the content is timeless, which means it isn't tied to a specific event happening at the time of recording or just before or after it, the amount of content behind the paywall will gradually rise, hand in hand with the value the subscriber will get. If you stop creating more of it or substantially slower your pace, it will still be relevant for new subscribers and keep generating money long after you stop publishing, which means it doesn't need your constant engagement to retain its value.
Creating this content usually takes more effort, but it largely depends on what "premium content" means in your niche. In some cases, the production process is the same as for everyday public content.
This second approach has an increased risk of having big churn. People can subscribe only for a month, watch all they want, and then unsubscribe. This happens if they have a purely transactional relationship with you - you give them value, they give you money, and that's it. There's no sense of community because it's not actively built and fostered, which affects their loyalty. If you can build a closer connection, more of them will stay subscribed for longer just to support your work and help you keep doing what you're doing.
Combining the approaches
Of course, you don't have to choose one or the other - you can combine these two approaches. If you're primarily doing More of You, you can occasionally create highly produced content, but that will take longer than you would be used to with your More of You content.
If your main approach is creating high-quality content, integrating some More of You content won't take you a lot of time and can be a welcome addition for your subscribers.
Should you need help figuring out what to create or whether your ideas are valid, ask your audience what would make them subscribe to the paid membership or what content they would be willing to pay for. There's nothing wrong with asking this, and your audience will at least see you have a genuine interest in providing something valuable to people who would pay you.
💡 Keep in mind
Whatever new or out of the ordinary you decide to do, don't forget to share it on your social networks.
Remember
👉 The More of You approach is ideal for creators with a strong personality or expertise their audience wants to access.
👉 It requires authenticity and connection with the community.
👉 High-quality content requires more production effort but can remain valuable over time, even if no new content is being created.
👉 If there's no community, subscribers aren't as loyal and will see the relationship as more transactional.
👉 Having a connection with subscribers can keep them subscribed longer just to support your work.
👉 Don't be afraid to ask your audience what they value and would pay for.
Homework
1️⃣ Think about how your audience perceives you, look at your current content portfolio, and decide which approach would work best for you or in what ratio you should combine them.
👏 Great things ahead!
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