Not gonna lie… growing my membership (Field Notes) hasn’t been easy.

I started it, kinda sorta, back in 2023. I called it “The Vault” then.

It was just a collection of courses that members got access to for a measly $19/month fee. The name was apt.

I thought if I bundled up all my courses that each cost anywhere from $100 to $400, and offered them for $19 a month, people would just snatch ’em up.

Did they snatch ’em up?

Hell no!

Turns out paying $19 every month for a few courses that anyone can access any time they wish isn’t as attractive as I thought it would be.

A few people joined, and some even paid for lifetime membership, but that was it.

The membership kept struggling, and no matter what I did, I just couldn’t figure out a way to grow this thing.

And then, in April 2026, things finally started to shift. Finally!

But a lot had to change before things turned around for me.

So…

This post is about how my membership has transformed over the last couple of years, and what I’m doing now that has breathed new life into its growth.

If you’re planning to start a membership or a subscription business focused around sharing your expertise and knowledge, or you already have one but it’s not growing, then buckle up. I have a lot to share.

First, I’ll tell you about the mistakes I made (so you do not make them). Then I’ll share the changes I made to the core offer that turned things around earlier this year. And finally, I’ll share where my membership stands now, and what you must remember if you want to start or grow your existing membership.

The Mistakes I Made That Suppressed The Membership Growth

I’ve been running an information-based business for 8+ years at the time of writing this. Here’s one of the most crucial things I’ve realized in this time: Contrary to newb belief, most people do NOT like to consume a mountain of information.

Especially if they can get the same benefits in a much shorter period of time, with fewer things to read or listen to or watch.

Remember school, guys?

Except for a few psychotic people, most of us didn’t love reading boring textbooks. Just because we’re older now doesn’t mean that has changed. Heck, if anything, things are worse now.

Not because people don’t enjoy learning, but because we adults have a crapton of other stuff to take care of.

Family, friends, obligations…

So, if we want to be better business owners, we have to understand that about our potential customers and clients, and yes, members and subscribers, too. Not because they don’t care to learn or improve their lives… but because they’re just… BUSY!

And that, my friends, was my first mistake… I forgot that simple thing when I launched my membership.

And I forgot a few other things, too, in my haste to launch.

(That’s who I am… most people plan and then act… I have to act first if I ever want to plan anything. So, that’s what happened. I launched the membership with a half-assed plan that wasn’t really a plan, and my no-plan plan was full of holes.)

So, in no particular order, these were my mistakes:

Mistake #1: Static content (bundle of courses) with zero urgency for ultra cheap ($19/month starting price)

(In retrospect… WTF WAS I THINKING?!?!?!?)

Marketing 101 that I forgot when I launched my membership:

Most people need a reason to act now. A.k.a., urgency is a big factor when it comes to selling anything, and especially information-based products.

My membership had ZERO urgency baked in because the courses were the membership. They were just sitting there, for anyone to consume, at any time… for $19. Per month.

In hindsight, I was being a dum-dum.

Not only did the membership have no urgency, but it was also cheap.

Speaking of…

Mistake #2: I made the membership too cheap

Marketing 102: People judge value (or quality) by price. It’s just how our brain works. We see a high price tag, and suddenly we believe the thing must be oh so good!

And vice versa.

So bundling all of my courses that previously cost anywhere between $100 and $400 and then offering ALL of them for $19 per month practically killed their appeal overnight.

Talk about taking an axe to the feet.

Except for a few die-hard fans of mine, nobody wanted this membership.

Mistake #3: I piled on and on, thinking that would solve the problem

Worst decision ever!

When the bundle of courses turned out to be ineffective, I thought maybe adding more to the membership would solve my problem.

Guys… volume of content in the membership was never the problem.

Here’s what happened:

I added a monthly live workshop component to the membership, and decided to make the recordings available to all members, even to all future members.

Remember what I said in mistake #1?

You can’t sell static content without urgency. The workshop recordings were simply adding more to my static content library, and adding ZERO urgency.

AND at $19/month, the perceived value of the membership only went down.

Mistake #4: Piled on more that didn’t align with how I do things

When adding workshops didn’t work, I thought, like a true dum-dum, that I must not have added more… 🙃

So I added a monthly live group coaching component, AND an online community for my small number of members to hang out amongst themselves, ask me questions, etc.

Guys, I do NOT like group coaching. It’s just not my thing. I can do live workshops, but to just be on Zoom while people ask me all sorts of different things? That’s not how I like to do things.

And the community?

Ugh.

That’s not exactly my field of expertise either (not yet, anyway).

I like being in other people’s groups or communities, but running my own is very cumbersome.

(Disclaimer: I do run a community now, but it’s free for all to join, and because it’s free, I don’t feel the pressure to perform. Which, for now, suits me better.)

Mistake #5: I didn’t have a regular promotional strategy

I would promote the monthly workshops, but again, why would people join when I want them to join, if they know that they can go and watch the recording a year later?

This made promoting anything related to the membership extremely difficult.

In fact, every time I was promoting it, I felt like I was wasting precious time where I could be promoting some other offer with real urgency and actually make money.

My heart just wasn’t in it.

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As you can see… I was making way too many mistakes around this membership.

But, if you remember, I’m the type of person who has to do things first, and then learn the lessons.

So, I was learning my lessons.

The Changes I Made to the Membership Around February – April 2026 to Get More Members

By the end of 2025, I had realized that:

• Static content wasn’t helping the membership grow
• The low price was undercutting my efforts and the value I was bringing inside the membership
• I had to do something that added real urgency
• And I needed a regular promotion plan

So, I got to work.

Enter: Monthly Field Notes with forward-access only

In my defense, most memberships and subscriptions I know are like my old system: People just add and add more things. Whether these are Substack or Skool communities.

The only subscriptions or memberships that are different (that I personally know of) are these:

• Ben Settle’s Email Players (a monthly print newsletter for copywriters and marketers)
• John Bejakovic’s Daily Email Habit (a daily email prompt delivery service, via daily emails)
• Daniel Throssell’s Adventure in Copyland (a monthly digital newsletter for copywriters delivered via an app)

All three of these have one thing in common: Once a piece of content is out, it’s out. Only existing members have access. Future members do NOT get access to old stuff.

This is also known as forward-access-only content. It’s like a physical magazine subscription before the internet: you get the issues that come out after you subscribe, but you don’t have access to the issues that came out before you subscribed.

So, when thinking about urgency, I decided to fashion my membership after these guys’ subscriptions.

I introduced a web-based monthly digest called Field Notes, where I share various marketing, sales, and growth tactics for online business owners who use content to sell their offers and services.

And I also decided that every issue of Field Notes will ONLY be available to existing members, and anyone who joins the membership even a second after an issue has been published will NOT have access to what has already been released.

That was how it was going to be, but I ran into tech issues.

Ben Settle sends a print newsletter, so the format itself restricts future subscribers from getting old issues.

John Bejakovic sends a daily email, so, again, the format itself takes care of the access logistics.

And Daniel Throssell has an app, and well, I have no wish to tinker with apps.

Also, since I already invested in a membership website, and there were already a bunch of members using my membership plugin (that runs on WordPress), I wanted to stick to what I already had.

But how to implement a system where members are automatically blocked from accessing content that was published before their join date?

Adding forward-access-only functionality in MemberPress

Back in 2023, I set up my membership on WordPress, using a membership plugin called MemberPress.

It’s pricey, but it has everything I could think of to run a subscription or membership-based website… except the one thing I now needed: member access restriction based on member join date.

Before I made any drastic changes… like switching to a different platform or overhauling my entire membership setup, I decided to reach out to MemberPress support and ask if they had a solution for my dilemma.

Well, bless MemberPress because they went above and beyond to help me out with this, including setting up some custom codes on my site that would allow me to do exactly what I was trying to do.

All of a sudden, the biggest roadblock was gone!

By the way, if you use WordPress and want to set up your membership or subscription without having to use a completely separate platform, I couldn’t recommend MemberPress enough.

No software is perfect, but MemberPress comes pretty close. They have a superb support team that’s actually helpful, and the plugin itself is powerful and has most everything you would need to run your subscription- or membership-based business, and more! In fact, these days I use MemberPress as my default cart option as well.

Regular monthly promotion on the back of each new Field Notes issue

Now that I was publishing a monthly Field Notes (the first one went out on February 1, 2026), my promotion strategy was automatically fixed.

Every month, I now had to promote the Field Notes, because once an issue came out, that was it. Nobody would have access to it unless they were a member already.

This created the necessity to set aside a few days every month to promote the upcoming issue.

Now that I’ve been doing this for a few months already (at the time of writing this), I have realized a couple of other things I hadn’t thought of before.

Existing members are now more excited somehow for a new issue of Field Notes. (Could be because it makes them feel special knowing that they’re part of a select group of people who have access to this new thing, and only because they’re already members.)

Regular monthly promotions have now also created anticipation in my audience (newsletter subscribers who are NOT members). Toward the end of every month, they now expect this promotion and look forward to seeing if I’ll be sharing something in a new issue that will be useful to them.

These days, it’s not a matter of, “Oh, I’ll join the membership in a month or two or ten,” but more like, “Oh! This sounds great, and if I want it, I must become a member now!”

Allow me to insert a side quip here: Many newbie creators with no marketing and sales background think that promotions are icky… that people do not like being sold to. Reality couldn’t be further from that. People LOVE being sold to, as long as you, as the seller, know how to make selling fun.

Which brings me to…

I promote my monthly Field Notes using clever (and fun) sales bullets

Courtesy of Ben Settle, I guess.

(Regardless of what I personally think of Ben Settle, I have to say, this guy is just amazing at marketing and selling, and I can draw a straight line between stuff I’ve learned from him and the money I’ve made over these past year or so.)

I LOVE how Settle promotes his monthly Email Players issues.

Every month, he uses the same technique to promote an issue, and this technique is called sales bullets.

I honestly think sales bullets are by far the most underrated sales techniques here and now in 2026.

In fact, I was so fascinated by some of Settle’s bullets for his April 2025 issue that I ended up subscribing to his $97/month newsletter. That experience made me realize that I should probably use this technique myself!

And the results: Since April 2026, I have been onboarding multiple new members every month during a new Field Notes issue promotion.

Now, a little about writing sales bullets:

At the core of sales bullets is the ability to create such high curiosity that a reader won’t be able to sleep well until they’ve hit the buy button.

Writing that kind of bullet takes some know-how, and quite a bit of practice.

Well, I learned (and am still learning) to write fascinating sales bullets from my mentor, the marketer and copywriter, John Bejakovic. He has a course on this exact topic, and it’s called Copy Riddles (because he teaches you to write sales bullets using riddles! So fun.)

If you’re keen on learning how to write sales bullets that make your audience lose sleep until they get their paws on whatever it is you’re selling, consider buying John’s Copy Riddles. It will be, without a doubt, one of the best investments you’ll make in your business.

Got rid of everything else

If you recall, I said that packing too many things inside a membership is NOT the answer.

But then I proceeded to add yet another thing: The Field Notes!

How does that make sense?

Well, it doesn’t, which is why, after adding Field Notes to the membership, I slowly started to trim everything else.

I started by cutting the monthly group calls.

Then I got rid of the courses (I now sell them separately once again).

Then I got rid of the community (though, as I said, I do still have a free-for-all community, and members are encouraged to join it so they can ask me questions if they want to, and also mingle with other business owners).

And finally, just a few days ago, I decided to cut the monthly workshops as well.

So now, it’s just the Field Notes.

And honestly? I think that’s great, and enough.

Because I’m not trying to just pile stuff on my members. I actually want to help them make more money with their business. And if, instead of getting distracted by a bazillion things, I give them one thing every month, and they actually implement some of the strategies I share with them in a Field Notes issue, I believe they’ll improve their business circumstances and numbers much faster, and more sustainably, too.

Finally, the price: I increased it

In 2025, sick and tired of having to churn out content and coaching every month. I had already upped the price from $19/month to $27/month, and it still was way too low for the kind of work I was putting in.

I hated it.

Then, in May 2026 (a few months ago as of writing this), I decided to up the price even more… to $37/month.

My goal is to charge around $50/month… ish. But for the time being, especially after getting rid of all the other stuff, the $37 per month price is starting to feel justified and appropriate.

Where My Membership Stands Now

It’s just one monthly Field Notes issue that’s available to existing members.

When someone new joins the membership, they start receiving new Field Notes, but they do not have access to Notes that came out before their membership start date.

They also get a bonus: They can ask me questions over email or in the free community. (I got the idea for this from Ben Settle… he does this for his members, too.)

On top of that, members almost always get special rates for courses or workshops. (I believe Throssell does this with his members.)

These feel much more doable to me. I’m happy to help out members if they have questions. It only feels appropriate. But instead of monthly group coaching that nobody can coordinate, this is better. Members only ask me questions when they have a question. Which is perfect. And giving folks a discount on my other offers makes members feel special, while requiring ZERO extra work from me.

AND… as I said, the current membership price stands at $37/month as of writing this.

Also, not-so-surprisingly, while there are fewer things in the membership, somehow more of my audience is signing up every month when I promote a new issue of Field Notes.

Imagine that.

So, that’s where we are now.

For the first time, I feel like the membership is aligning with what I want it to be — sustainable, manageable, actually helpful to my members, and not just a bunch of stuff for show, and also in terms of who it is for — intermediate business owners who have some traffic and subscribers and are looking to grow and scale.

All in all, things are looking pretty good 🙂

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Before I go, if you want to check out Field Notes or become a member, click here or the button below.