Run a membership or paid community — people pay monthly for my courses
Selling a course once is a good month. A membership is a good year: people subscribe — monthly or yearly — for ongoing access to everything you teach, and your income stops restarting at zero. Call it what your people would: a membership site, a subscription, a paid community, a members area, a community group. Platforms built around memberships and communities charge hundreds a year for this and often take a slice of every payment. Here it comes with your courses, and nobody takes a slice of anything.
How it works
- Describe the club. A name, a price, monthly or yearly, and what's inside — every course you have (Sell a course from my own website explains courses themselves), or a hand-picked set.
- Approve the join page. A page for the club appears on your site as a draft, with the price, what's included, and a join button. Like every change, it goes live when you approve it.
- People join and pay you. The join button takes them to a checkout on your own payment account (Where the money goes when someone enrols) — the money, the card details and the subscription itself all belong to you.
- Access looks after itself. New members get a welcome email per course with their way in — no passwords (Let learners in without accounts or passwords). Each renewal quietly extends their access, and if your club includes everything, courses you publish later reach existing members automatically.
- Members get somewhere to talk. Every membership comes with its own community space — a room on the join page and conversation under each lesson. See My community space — where members talk, and how I look after it.
Questions your members might ask you
Ask Bernard "how's my club doing?" for members, joiners and what the club earns, or "who's lapsing?" for anyone whose payment is struggling. A member who cancels keeps access until the end of what they paid for — that promise is built in, and it's worth repeating to them.
Leaving the door unlocked
The subscriptions live in your Stripe account, not ours. That's deliberate: if you ever moved away, your members and their billing would come with you. A membership should be a reason people stay, never a lock on the door.
The prompt
“Set up a membership called [the club name] at [the price] a month, giving members access to [all my courses / these courses: …].”
The [bracketed] parts are yours to fill in. First time? Connect bernard to your AI over MCP — a one-time setup in bernard → your site → Use your own AI — then paste the prompt above.
Questions people ask
- Can I run a paid membership, subscription or community from my own website?
- Yes. Whatever you call it — a membership, a subscription, a paid community, a members area — describe it to Bernard: a name, a monthly or yearly price, and which courses it includes. A join page appears on your site as a draft for your approval, and people join there and pay you directly.
- Who holds my members' subscriptions?
- You do. Every member's payment, card and subscription lives in your own Stripe account, not ours. If you ever left bernard, your members' billing would leave with you — nothing is held hostage.
- What happens when I add a new course later?
- If your club includes everything, new courses flow to existing members automatically at their next renewal. Nobody has to rejoin, and you never send access links by hand.
- What if a member's card fails, or they cancel?
- Nothing is cut off early. A failed card gets a grace period while they sort it out; a member who cancels keeps everything until the time they paid for runs out. Access simply lapses at the end, and rejoining picks everything back up.