Pricing courses inside and outside your membership

Once you have a course worth paying for, a pricing question follows quickly. Should it be part of the membership, sold on its own, or both? And if it is available both ways, what should it cost someone who does not want to subscribe? The answers affect how many people buy, how many join and how your existing members feel about the deal they are getting.

There is no universal formula, but there is a clear way to think it through. The key is to treat course prices and membership prices as a single system, not as separate decisions.

The four ways to offer a course

Every course can be offered in one of four ways:

1. Included only. The course is available to members and nobody else.
2. Standalone only. Anyone, member or not, buys it separately.
3. Included for members, sold to everyone else. Members get it with their subscription, and non-members can buy it outright.
4. Member price. The course is sold separately, but members pay less.

Which one fits depends on the role the course plays. The wider question of which courses to include, and the risk of members joining, finishing a course and leaving, is covered in bundling courses into a membership. Here the focus is on the price tags themselves.

Why sell a course outside the membership at all

Selling a course on its own reaches people who will never subscribe to anything. Some have a single, specific need. Others dislike recurring payments. A standalone course lets them buy from you anyway, and a good experience can be the first step toward joining later.

Take a hypothetical family history society with a membership at $15 a month. It has a popular course on tracing ancestors through old census records. Plenty of people want that one skill for a single family project and have no interest in a subscription. Selling the course on its own captures that demand, while members get it included along with everything else.

There are good reasons not to sell a course separately, too. If the course is the main reason people join, selling it alone may simply turn would-be members into one-off buyers. And a long list of separate prices can make your offer confusing. For each course, the test is simple: would a standalone option take buyers away from the membership, or reach people the membership never would?

Setting the standalone price

The standalone price should make sense next to the membership price. A useful check is to compare it with what a member would pay over the time it takes to complete the course.

Here is an illustration with round numbers. The census course takes most people about two months, so a member would pay $30 in subscription fees over that time.

• Standalone at $25: buying the course is cheaper than joining for two months. Some people who would have joined will buy instead, and your membership looks like poor value.
• Standalone at $90: the course is still reasonable for a one-off need, but anyone with wider interests can see that joining is the better deal.
• Standalone at $300: almost everyone joins instead, finishes the course in two months and may cancel, which defeats the point of selling it separately.

The middle option serves both groups. One-off buyers pay a fair price, and the membership looks attractive to anyone who wants more. Your numbers will differ, but the comparison is worth making for every course you sell.

Keep members from feeling short-changed

Whatever you choose, members should never feel they got a worse deal than non-members. A few principles help:

• Members should never pay more for a course than a non-member.
• If a course is sold separately and not included, give members a clear discount or early access.
• Avoid public sales on standalone courses that undercut what members pay, or extend the same benefit to members. Discounts have side effects worth thinking through, as covered in discounts and coupons without devaluing your membership.
• Offer a credit to standalone buyers who later join, so buying first never feels like a mistake.

A simple credit policy might read:

Bought one of our courses and now want to join? If you become a member within 60 days of your purchase, we'll credit what you paid for the course against your membership. Just reply to your course receipt and we'll set it up.

Present both options clearly

When a course is available both ways, the course page should make the choice easy. Show the standalone price, then show what the membership includes, and let the comparison speak for itself.

• Before: Census Records Masterclass, $90. Members: included.
• After: Buy the Census Records Masterclass on its own for $90, or get it included with membership for $15 a month, along with 11 other courses, monthly research clinics and our members' help forum.

The second version explains why the membership option exists and what else comes with it, without pressuring anyone who only wants the course.

Reviewing your course pricing

1. List each course and decide which of the four ways it should be offered.
2. For courses sold separately, compare the standalone price with the membership fees over the time it takes to complete.
3. Check that no member ever pays more than a non-member.
4. Write a credit policy for standalone buyers who later join.
5. Rewrite each course page so the two options are compared clearly.
6. Watch what buyers choose for a few months, and adjust prices if one option is being ignored.

Get the relationship between the two prices right, and each option makes the other look sensible rather than competing with it.