Today I’m going to show you how to build a great ClickFunnels membership site from scratch.
I remember when I first wanted to build a membership site. I’d go from blog post to forum thread trying to understand what to include to give my users some actual value. It was super confusing and frustrating.
And in this no-nonsense guide I’ll cut out all the noise and BS and show you exactly how to build a great membership site using ClickFunnels.
Why a Membership Site?
What is a membership site, exactly?
A membership site is a place where you can store your best, most exclusive content. The type of content that you only want members to be able to access.
For example; let’s say you have website where you talk about stock trading. You know what’s working for you and you want to add more value to your visitors. You decide to create a membership site where you turn your best blog posts into videos and adding more in depth training about trading.
Not only that but having your own membership site can be a great way for passive income (depending on how you give access to it).
If you have enought valuable things inside your members area, you can charge people on a monthly basis as long as they stay a member.
Another way of doing things, which is common for affiliate marketers is to give away free access (as a bonus), host training using a specific software and earn commission whenever someone decides to buy the product. Thanks to the awesome training you provided.
Now that you understand what a membership site is, it’s time for me to explain more about how to get started with building it.
The Core of the Site
Your first step when building a membership site is actually to create a ClickFunnels account.
Because the fact is, unless you already have a host for your membership site, it’s going to be impossible for you to add your amazing content and training to the site unless you have a platform to host it on, that is easy to use.
To keep this guide as simple as possible and beginner friendly, I’ve decided to use an optin instead of a sales page. This means that this kind of members site will focus on lead generation. All the sales will subsequently happen inside the members area or over email.
Here’s exactly how to do it
First, login to your ClickFunnels account (if you don’t have one, you can get one here for free). Once at the dashboard, have a look at the Quick Links and click on Build a Funnel.
Next, when the popup loads, select the Collect Emails option. (Don’t worry, you’ll understand why I do it like this in a minute or so).
From there give your funnel a name and assign it to a group (if you have any).
Then click on Build Funnel.
For the sake of keeping things simple at the moment, all you got to do now is to select the template that you feel are closest to what you want. Hover over the template and click the Select Template button.
Do this for both the Optin and Thank You page.
Don’t worry to much about the final design right now, you can change that later. I’ll cover that in a bit.
For now just go with something that you feel like you can work with.
This is what it should look like when your done.
At the moment all we have is a bridge page, two simple steps, and all they really do is capture leads and growing your list.
“That’s no membership site!”
You are a sharp eyed one, nothing sneaks past you, so let’s add the membership area.
Adding ClickFunnels Membership Area
From your funnel, click on Add New Step and give your new funnel step a name (remember to include it in your funnel).
Then click on Create Funnel Step.
In the top menu bar, hover over Memberships and select Members Access.
This is the page where your users can log in to your membership area.
As before, select a template that is close to what you need, then click on Select Template.
Repeat the same process for creating the membership area.
When you are done you should have four funnel steps in your membership funnel.
At this point you have the basic outline of your membership site funnel done. Next we’ll start working on the actual content and design of the funnel.
Customizing the funnel steps
Right now (if you haven’t skipped ahead) you only have the premade templates ClickFunnels provided on each funnel step.
Even though they are good templates, they probably aren’t exactly what you need.
Now is the time where you add your own copy, images, fonts and integrations.
This is the point where I can’t show you exactly what you need to do. This is not because I don’t want to, it’s because I don’t know exactly what you need.
However, I will show you the most important things you need to setup on each page. I’ll leave the design aspect up to you.
Oh, I almost forgot, remember to add your brand logo to every page, that’s very important.
Optin page
The whole idea with an optin page is to get people to optin, aka. give you their email address.
So the most important things you need to have on this page is:
- Attention grabbing headline
- At least one input field (for email address)
- A submit button
Now, to be able to collet email addresses, you need to add your email integration to the funnel. This will ensure that the leads will end up on the right list and on your list!
Add an email integration
First click on the Edit Page button to open the editor (on the optin page).
From the editor, navigate to Setting and click on Integrations.
This will open the Email Integration Setting.
Now you need to select what list you want to add new contacts to. If you are a ClickFunnels Platinum member you can use ClickFunnels Internal (Auctionetics) integration, this is the built in email automation function.
Here’s what everything means:
- Integration – This selects which integration you want to use (Aweber, ActiveCampaign, etc). Of course you must link your email provider to your ClickFunnels account first.
- Action – Selects what to do, here you’ll mot likely use Add To List or Add To List With Tag.
- List To Add – Which list do you want to add the contact to. If you only have one list, select that one 😉
When you’re done, close the menu by clicking somewhere in the editor field.
Add an input field
You will also need at least one input field. This needs to be the Email Address field.
A good rule of thumb is to not add more input fields then necessary. Do you really need both email and name or does email do just fine.
I personally see a higher conversion rates if I only use the email input, because people tends to be more generous with their email addresses then their names.
First, hover over the element where you want to add the input field and click on the [+] button. (The input field will appear under the element you hover over).
Next, select Form in the menu and then click on Input. This will add the input field to the page.
Now it’s time to set it up. Hover over the input field and click on the gear icon in the right top corner.
When the menu opens, go to Input Type and select Email Address.
From here you can also change the font, font size and placeholder text.
The submit button
After you’ve added the input field, you need to add the submit button. And it should only take a few minutes.
Hover over the input field and click on the [+] to open the elements menu.
From there click on From and then Button.
When the button is added, click on it and go to the Set Action to the right and click on it. This will open the menu for button actions.
You need to set the action to Submit Order/Submit Form.
Once your done, click on Back. From there you can change font size, colors, button size etc. Make it look pretty, but don’t overthink it.
Once you’re done, click outside the menu to close it.
Now you have made all the necessary changes to collect leads on your optin page.
I’ll wait while you finalize the page design…*whistling*…are you done?
Good, let’s move on to the thank you page.
Note: Remember to hit save before you leave the page.
Thank you page
The thank you page is really simple, in fact the most important thing you need on this page is a piece oy copy that states something like:
“Thank you for subscribing, I’ve sent you an email with the link to (insert members areas name) to the email you provided.”
You may also want to add a button that will take them directly to the login page from this page.
This is only to ensure that there is no way that you new subscriber can miss that he or she has gained access to your members area.
If you want to be really fancy, you can add a auto-redirect page that will take them to the sign in automatically.
Or if you want to take it to the highest level, you could add a video telling them the same thing.
Note: Forcing someone to go and check their email will rule out everyone that provided a fake email address just to get access. Have that in mind at least.
A button with a link
First, go to your Thank You page and open the editor. Once inside the editor, hover over the element you want to add the button under and click on the [+] icon.
From the menu, select Form and then Button.
Now click on the button and go to Edit Action, there you want to select Go To Website URL. Here you will enter the Secret Sign Up URL from the members area page. (Just copy and paste it form the members area page).
Then you’ll need to add a appropriate text to the button, something in the style of “Create My Account Now” is an option to consider.
Once you’re done with all of the editing of the button and you feel satisfied with the design, close the menu and smash the Save button.
Now, with the Thank You page done, we can move on to the fun stuff, building your members area.
Members access page
This is the simplest page of them all, it does not require much. To be honest, in most cases one of the premade templates ClickFunnels provides will be enough.
They already contain everything you need in order for someone to create an account and login to it.
Actually I’m not even going to add an image for this, just change the logo to your own and change the copy to make it sound like you.
That’s it, you done with the access page.
Let’s move on to more interesting stuff, namely the members area where you will contain all of your juicy training.
Members area
Alright, the moment you’ve been waiting for, building and structuring your own members area inside ClickFunnels.
This is the fun part where you get free hands to create content that you believe will add value to your members lives.
Here you hava a two option of what type of content you can add, video or resource. Let’s talk a bit more about each:
Video
This is exactly what it sounds like, it’s a video.
Since ClickFunnels doesn’t have any build in video support, you’ll have to use external resources to upload your videos and then link them to ClickFunnels.
There are a few ways you can do this:
Vimeo and YouTube is by far the most commonly used way to display videos inside ClickFunnels.
YouTube is free to use and I think it does just fine for displaying videos inside my funnels.
Some like to use the other alternatives, but they do cost money. So I believe this is a preference thing more then anything else.
I think it’s a shame that ClickFunnels doesn’t support video uploads on their platform, because it would make it more complete. Maybe it will be added in the future…I sure hope so.
Resource
This is a fancy way for ClickFunnels to say “You can write text here”.
With the resource you can add text, images, and buttons.
In essence you have access to almost every element that you would find in the funnel editor.
This way you can create mind maps, guides, checklists, resource link buttons, etc.
You can use this to build a gallery of share funnels, have downloadable content linked from Dropbox or Google Drive, the sky is the limit.
With that said, I thinks it’s time to add your first lessons to your ClickFunnels membership area.
Adding your first lesson
When you first open your members area you’ll see that ClickFunnels has added the First Section and Lesson#1. That’s a good starting point for most.
Note: One thing that I like to do is to take note of the settings in my first lessons, so I can get the rest to look the same.
So stick with me while I walk you through how to add and edit a new video or resource lesson.
First, add a new lesson by clicking on the Add New Lesson button.
Or click on Open Editor if you want to change something in an existing lesson.
From there you need to select which Lesson Section you want to add your new lesson to.
Then give your lesson a name, select a page template, set up drip delay, required time and release date.
All of these setting can be overwhelming, I understand. So here’s what they all do:
- Lesson Section – Selects which section the new lesson will be added to.
- Name – Give your lesson a name.
- Page Template – Select if you want to do a video lesson or a resource (text) lesson.
- Drip Delay – Set a delay for when the lesson is released after first signing up to your members area. Leave this at zero for instant release.
- Required Time – Set a specific time for how long a member must spend on this lesson before it’s considered completed. Works best with video lessons.
- Release Date – Overrides Drip Delay release schedule with a set release date – all members will get lesson on this date and time.
When you’re done, click on Create Lesson.
Video lessons
The first thing you need to de when adding a video lesson is to decide what 3rd-party video uploader you will be using.
I think YouTube works fine (but that’s just me).
When you’ve decided on that, it’s time to setup the layout of the lesson page.
First, give your lesson a good headline and sub headline.
Next, if you want to add a descriptive text or some downloadable links or buttons, you can do that in the field below the video (this works the same as the funnel editor).
If you don’t want to have any text or links, you can remove them by hovering over the outer edge of the field (turns green when you’re in the right spot) and click on the trash can to remove it.
Next, you need to add your video.
Click on the video player to open the menu, from there select your 3rd-praty video uploader (YouTube for this example).
Now, go to YouTube and copy the video link and paste it into the YouTube URL field.
For now, you can leave the rest of the settings as is, the video will work fine with the default settings.
Close the menu and click on Save.
Once the save is done, click on the Exit arrow and you’re done.
Well done, your first video lesson is added.
Let’s move on to adding a resource lesson.
By the way, you don’t always have to make your own videos. Sometimes when you find a good video on YouTube that you think your members will like, you can add that video to your members area as well.
Resource lessons
Alright, you want to add a resource lesson. I like to call it a text lesson because it makes much more sense.
Anyway….here we go.
When you add a resource lesson, ClickFunnels automatically structure it as a image-button resource list.
With this you can share resources like eBooks, share funnels or PDF:s.
The great thing is that you can clone these sections as many times as you want, building a missive resource list.
With or without a resource list, the first thing you need to do is to give your lesson a good headline.
If you want to build a blog post kind of lesson, the first thing you need to do is to remove all of the image-button rows (hover over and click on trash can).
Next you need to click on Add New Row, then 1 Column.
From there, click on Add New Element then select Paragraph. This will add a simple text block.
Now you can write a “blog post” sort of, adding images and headlines as you go.
Once you’re done, click on Save and then close the lesson editor.
Do this as many times as you need, until you’ve added all your video and resource lessons.
At this point you have at least a video lesson and a resource/test lesson. But sometimes you want multiple sections with different lessons, structuring your members area to perfection.
Adding more sections
Having more then one section can be very beneficial for you. For instance you might want to have one section that is focused on stock trading basics, another for trading software and one for your bonuses.
Sounds like a good idea?
Great, let’s add a section.
From your members area dashboard, select Add New Lesson Section. Give your section a name and click on Create Lesson Section. (Leave the other settings alone for now, that’s more advance stuff).
Done! Rinse and repeat for as many sections as you want.
If you want to change the setting of a section you’ve already created, click on the name to open the menu.
To delete a section click on the delete button to the right. But know that if you delete a section you will also delete every lesson inside it. Use with caution.
More advance section things explained:
- Product Requirements – Optional: Restrict Access to only people who have purchased one or more of these Products.
- Tag Requirements – Optional: If contact has one of these tags, they’ll have access to lesson section.
- Upgrade Offer Funnel Step – Optional: What OTO/Upsell Page can members visit to purchase access to Product(s) giving access? (Note: Don’t see the Funnel Step you’re looking for? Make sure it’s an OTO Page selling a product that gives access to this Lesson Section)
Conclusion
Thanks to ‘The Beginner’s Guide to Building a Great ClickFunnels Membership Site’, you don’t need to spend hours searching for membership site building guides anymore. You have everything you need to get started all in one place.
As you saw in the guide, building a membership site using ClickFunnels isn’t that hard. And with a membership site you can build a super valuable asset that you can either sell yourself or give away as a bonus with another offer.
When done the right way you can quickly leapfrog your income and grow your email list in the process.
Now you have everything you need to get started with your ClickFunnels membership site.
Before you start on your first link, make sure to leave a quick comment to let me know what you think of ‘The Beginner’s Guide to Building a Great ClickFunnels Membership Site’.
