Increasing membership prices isn’t hard, but the fear of doing it is really big.
The mindset shift to convince yourself that your business deserves this and the process behind rolling out a price increase is where it gets tricky. Things like handling member objections, planning a price launch strategy, and driving growth post-price increase are the most time-consuming.
At Find What Feels Good, we’ve done a membership price increase and have been able to consistently scale our audience size and grow annual recurring revenue (ARR).
To help you roll out a smooth and successful price increase in your membership business, I’ve put together all the lessons, mistakes, and ideas in this guide.
We’ll go over the exact roadmap to launch your price increase, the unique approaches needed for different niches, and how to communicate a price increase to existing and new members.
How to increase membership prices in 3 steps
Step 1: Determine if increasing your membership prices is right for you
The idea of increasing your membership prices can bring out a mixed bag of emotions — fear, uncertainty, and excitement.
The reason we’re so reluctant to increase our prices is we hate it when it happens to us, and we’ve vowed to not do that to our members. But that vow doesn’t stop the inevitability of inflation.
What’s important to realize though is that, over time, everything gets more expensive. From marketing costs, platform costs, and overhead, to other business expenses, everything becomes slightly more expensive compared to the last financial year. If your prices don’t reflect these increasing costs, your profit margins shrink.
You need to look for signs your membership pricing is too low and start chalking up a plan for a price increase if you want to increase your revenue and keep pace with the increasing business costs.
For Find What Feels Good, we’ve increased membership prices from $9.99 to $12.99. If we didn’t raise our membership pricing, it would be miserable. We wouldn’t have been able to produce as much content without compromising our values or mission.
The $3 price increase across a certain amount of customers added up back then, and each price increase we did from there onwards has helped us grow our revenue while keeping our members engaged and satisfied.
Currently, we have two pricing plans available for Find What Feels Good members:
Consider your audience size when increasing prices for your membership
At Find What Feels Good, we grandfather existing members at their current price and only adjust prices for new customers. Here’s why: we’re dealing with thousands of members, some of whom have been with us from the very beginnings of Find What Feels Good. Not increasing prices for them is like a recognition of their early support, a sort of thank-you for believing in us for years.
Overall, increasing prices for new members allows us to maintain our commitment to our existing members while responsibly managing our growth and member retention.
But if we had a few hundred members, we would have taken this decision with a different approach and mindset.
For smaller, more tight-knit memberships, it’s easier and more important to increase prices; it’s a strategic move that acknowledges the deep, parasocial relationships at play. This closeness creates a sense of belonging and community that’s incredibly rare and frankly, impossible to scale in the same way in larger memberships.
In smaller settings, the more you can increase the parasocial content on your membership, the more valuable it becomes. To be able to produce more content and increase community engagement in its small setting, you need to raise prices.
And for those worried about the potential for backlash or member churn, it’s worth noting: in tight-knit communities where the value exchange is clear and appreciated, members are more understanding of the need for price adjustments and upsells. They’re more willing to support the creators they feel connected to, especially when they see how their contributions lead to a richer, more engaging membership experience.
Research your internal numbers and map them to your goals
Regardless of the size of your membership community, when you’re considering a membership price increase, take into account the time and energy it takes to run the membership.
Look at your internal numbers like average out per customer, lifetime value, and growth in a defined time. Once you’ve done that, map how they align with your revenue goals. Think about what additional value you can add in terms of cadence, content accessibility and visibility, audience preferences, expert access, tools and resources, exclusive perks, and discounts to justify the price increase.
Technically, there’s nothing to be scared of; the hardest part is justifying your work and what you’re bringing to the table. As a successful membership business owner, internalize that you’re in control of all the gears of your business — make sure you can sustain this business for a long time.
5 Signs Your Membership Pricing is Too Low + Expert Advice
Step 2: Set your membership pricing (or price tiers)
At Find What Feels Good, we opted for more accessibility rather than being elite and expensive. You should figure out how you want to be perceived and what your audience’s growth goals are. Scaling can be hard as you become more elite, but it’s important to find that sweet spot that communicates your brand’s value and helps you sustain business in the long term.
Research the market and nail down your price positioning
As a membership business owner, it’s all too easy to get caught up in a never-ending comparison game, constantly looking over your shoulder at what others are charging. Trust me, we’ve all been there at some point in our lives.
But here’s the thing— at Find What Feels Good we have always believed that there’s more to value than just undercutting competitors on price. It’s about striking that perfect balance between being affordable and delivering unbeatable value. That’s the sweet spot.
Sure, competitor research should be a factor in your pricing strategy, but not the only deciding factor. We all have a different story and there’s no way you can know the behind-the-scenes of a business unless you actually work there.
Now, let’s talk strategy at the strategy we use at Find What Feels Good.
For us, being one of the most affordable options in the wellness space isn’t about winning a price war; it’s about making our offerings as accessible as possible to a broader audience.
Accessibility is the cornerstone of our philosophy. We want to ensure that anyone looking to improve their well-being can do so without the price being a barrier.
Does that mean we compromise on quality or the depth of what we offer?
Absolutely not.
We’ve creatively leveraged high-ticket items, like our exclusive live streaming events. These aren’t part of our membership and are technically part of Practice Yoga Austin.
The rationale with these live streaming events is that these aren’t just add-ons; they’re integral experiences that deepen our members’ engagement and provide them with value that far exceeds the price of admission. It’s a win-win.
At the end of the day, it’s not about pricing your membership just competitively, but contextually too. It’s about understanding your unique value proposition and making sure that your pricing reflects the quality, commitment, and passion you pour into your work. That’s how you make a real impact, and honestly, it’s the most rewarding way to run a business.
Focus on your membership community and ask questions like:
- What makes our business different from others?
- Why should anyone sign up for our membership?
- If we’re increasing prices for both our existing and new members, what’s in it for them?
- How are we positioned in the market contextually, not just competitively?
- How do we measure the success and satisfaction of our community, beyond just numbers?
- How do we communicate the value of our membership, ensuring clarity and transparency, especially when prices change?
Tailor your pricing to your audience and business patterns
This might seem like an obvious one, but I want to share some first-hand experiences and caveats that can give you more visibility and insight into how you can tactically tailor your pricing to your audiences and business patterns.
For smaller creators, consider introducing tiered pricing as it can improve the value you offer without alienating your existing members. Think of it as not just selling more, but offering more — be it exclusive content, special access to you as the creator, or unique community features.
For example, you could offer a base monthly plan at $12.99 and introduce a premium plan at $24.99/mo which includes a live event each month.
If your membership is impacted by seasonal or event-based factors, try and schedule your price increase around times when purchasing intent is high, like Black Friday. Offer discounts and early-bird discounts to gain higher traction from new customers or as perks to loyal members.
Remember, price adjustments are essential for the sustainability of your business and they should be tied to overall value enhancement.
Keeping things simple is very important for us creators.
It’s easy to go too far into sales and marketing strategies that work and are effective for other businesses but maybe aren’t as effective for creative businesses. It can overcomplicate things and come across as very salesy.
Keep your communications clear and direct. Your members want to know what’s going on behind the scenes – you could even tie your price increase into launching new content or the community feature. If you can tie price increases into added value, then that’s the way to do it.
Use our free tool to pinpoint your ideal membership price in just 3 steps, leveraging a decade of data.
Step 3: Communicate your new pricing to members
The technology side is very easy because it’s just flipping a few switches on the platform. The most important thing for us is keeping our marketing message clear and our branding consistent.
When we increase our prices, we make sure we clearly communicate it with our existing customers.
We send an email to everyone sharing they’ve been grandfathered in saying — you’re locked in at the founding member rate or whatever rate you joined us, so this price increase doesn’t affect your plan.
However, we don’t promote the price increase externally, because almost nobody’s going to notice if someone’s been waiting on the side.
We think about it this way: they’ve been waiting, thinking about it, and they happen to notice that there’s a price increase, that’s probably not our ideal person. If someone couldn’t join when it was $9.99, and they’ve only followed since it was $5.99, and they’ve never been a member before, we won’t worry much if they notice the price increase now.
Going from $11.99 to $12.99 isn’t that big of a jump in our industry. I work with people who are doing memberships that are more on the $200 a month plan which comes out to be a total cost of $2,400 a year per member.
And in their niche with the member experience and the quality of content they offer, that price is justified. They also tend to market their membership saying, “Hey! Get in at $1,800 a year because next year it’s going to be $2,400 a year.”
If you work in such a niche market, then this might be a good way to communicate your price increase. In that case, it’s your job to make sure members — both existing and new — are aware the price increase is tied to improvements that directly impact them.
A couple of ways you could announce include:
- Direct in-app announcement
- Your pricing page and landing pages on the website
- A dedicated post within your member community
- Your email list
- Social media channels
Ultimately, the channels you pick to communicate your price increase will depend on whether or not you’re grandfathering in your existing members, the increment in the price itself, and the attached value add that justifies the pricing.
One last thing to note: make sure you make your price increase announcement well in advance and not right before you actually start rolling it out within your systems. Especially when you’re raising prices for both existing and new members, time is of the essence.
Like us creators, money is a sensitive topic for our members too and we should aim to ease their transition into the upgraded pricing model as smoothly as possible. This can happen by giving them enough time to absorb the news, being open to their feedback, and tackling objections gracefully.
Ready to earn more and increase your prices?
Raising your prices is about transparency and showing your members exactly where that extra value is coming from. It’s about being upfront, not just about the ‘what’ but the ‘why’ behind the change.
If you’re ready to take that step, remember to lead with integrity, communicate clearly, and keep your community at the heart of your decision.
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