Researching competing memberships without copying them

Before you finalize your offer, you'll want to know what else is out there. Who already serves the people you want to serve? What do they charge, what do they include, and what do their members grumble about? Skip this research and you'll be guessing about price and blind to obvious gaps. Do it badly and the result is almost as risky: many new owners study one successful competitor so closely that they end up building a slightly weaker copy of it.

Good competitive research has a different aim. You're not looking for something to imitate. You're looking for what your future members already have, what they still lack, and where you can stand that nobody else occupies.

Widen your definition of a competitor

Your competition isn't only other memberships. It's everything your prospective members might use instead of joining you. Make a list across four groups:

• Direct competitors: other memberships, clubs or subscriptions for the same audience.
• Indirect competitors: one-off courses, books, coaching, local classes and paid events that solve part of the same problem.
• Free alternatives: public forums, video channels, podcasts and social media groups.
• Doing nothing: muddling through alone, which is often the most common choice of all.

To find them, search for the problem rather than the word “membership.” Type in the questions your audience asks and look at what comes up; paying attention to search intent tells you what kind of answer people expect to find. Then ask five people in your audience what they've tried, paid for or given up on. Their answers often reveal competitors you'd never find by searching.

What to record for each one

Pick the five to eight most relevant options and study each one against the same questions, so you can compare them side by side:

1. Who is it for, in their own words?
2. What do they promise, in one sentence?
3. What formats do they use, and how often does something new arrive?
4. What does it cost, and how is the price structured: monthly, annual, tiers, a joining fee?
5. How does a new member get started? Is there a clear first step?
6. What do members praise, and what do they complain about?
7. What's missing that your audience keeps asking for?

Public sales pages, pricing pages, free samples, reviews and comments in open discussion spaces will answer most of these. If a competitor offers a low-cost trial and you genuinely want to understand the experience, joining briefly is reasonable. Be honest about who you are if anyone asks, and never take their materials with you.

A worked example: an astronomy membership

Imagine Hector, who wants to start a membership for amateur astronomers who have just bought their first telescope. His research, reduced to its essentials, might read like this:

• Option A: a large video library on astrophotography, around $30 a month. Members praise the depth but say it assumes expensive equipment and goes quiet between releases.
• Option B: a busy free online forum. Plenty of help, but beginners say their basic questions get brusque answers or disappear under advanced threads.
• Option C: an experienced astronomer offering one-to-one sessions at $90 an hour. Excellent feedback, but beyond most beginners' budgets.
• Option D: books and printed star charts. Cheap and reliable, but nothing tells a beginner what to look for from their own backyard on any given night.

The gap is plain: nobody offers patient, beginner-level, ongoing guidance for people using ordinary equipment. Hector's positioning becomes “helping new telescope owners find something worth seeing every clear night, with a monthly sky guide, simple equipment walkthroughs and a friendly group where no question is too basic.” He didn't copy any of the four. He built in the space between them.

Reading prices without being ruled by them

Competitor prices are useful context, not instructions. They show the range your audience is used to seeing and help you avoid a price that looks strangely out of place. But undercutting everyone is rarely a good strategy for a new, small membership, and charging more can be entirely justified if you offer something the others don't, such as personal feedback or a narrower focus.

Look at how competitors structure their prices as well as the numbers themselves. If everyone charges monthly with no annual option, or everyone saves live calls for a top tier, that tells you something about what the audience expects, and occasionally points to an opening nobody has tried.

Staying original: the lines not to cross

Research turns into copying when you take someone else's expression of an idea rather than learning from the landscape. A few simple rules keep you on the right side:

• Never reuse their wording, course outlines, lesson titles, graphics or page layouts.
• Don't define your offer as a reaction to one competitor (“like theirs, but cheaper”). Build it around your members' problems.
• Don't join a competitor's community in order to recruit its members.
• Draft your own sales page before you reread theirs, so their phrasing doesn't creep into yours.

Your experience, teaching style, examples and point of view are what make the membership yours. Research should sharpen them, not replace them.

Turn your research into decisions

A research file that sits in a folder is wasted effort. Finish by writing three short answers: the gap you'll fill, the reason someone would choose you over the free alternatives, and the one thing you'll deliberately leave alone because others already do it well. Then capture your position in a one-sentence promise for your membership and check that it sounds like nobody else's.

Repeat a lighter version of this research once or twice a year. New options appear, old ones change, and member complaints about other offers are a steady source of ideas for yours.

Your research checklist

1. List competitors in all four groups, including free options and doing nothing.
2. Choose five to eight and record the same seven questions for each.
3. Read reviews and open discussions for praise and complaints.
4. Write down the gap, your reason to be chosen and what you'll leave to others.
5. Draft your promise and sales page in your own words before revisiting anyone else's.
6. Set a reminder to repeat the research periodically.