How to Build a Kajabi Membership Site in 2024 (Step-by-Step)

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You’re thinking about building a membership website on Kajabi. Great idea!

Kajabi is one of the best platforms for launching and managing a successful membership site.

But how do you build one? What are the tools the platform offers, and how do you use them?

In this guide, we’ll show you step-by-step how to build a Kajabi membership site from scratch. We’ll cover everything from setting up your products to creating membership tiers and building a funnel.

We’ll also share tips and best practices to take your membership site to the next level.

Let’s start by discussing why using Kajabi for membership sites is a great idea.

Why Is Kajabi a Great Option for Membership Sites?

Kajabi is our top choice when it comes to choosing a membership platform. It gives you a wide range of features that make it easy to launch, manage, and grow your membership site.

Let’s go over the key benefits of building a Kajabi membership site:

All-In-One Membership Platform

Kajabi is an all-in-one membership platform, so you can create your products, build your website, run a blog, and handle your marketing on the platform.

This helps reduce dependency on third-party apps, allowing you to create and run your membership site easily and quickly.

Kajabi all-in-one platform
Kajabi all-in-one platform

Multiple Product Types

Kajabi is the most versatile membership builder in terms of product creation. It lets you create online courses, coaching programs, communities, and podcasts for your members.

Moreover, you can combine these products in any way you want, so you have great flexibility with your membership content.

Product types in Kajabi
Product types in Kajabi

Free and Branded Mobile Apps

Kajabi provides free mobile apps for your end-users, making it easier for them to consume your content on the go. You can also get white-label membership apps to create a fully branded experience across devices.

Additionally, features like push notifications for community mentions and creator announcements help increase your member engagement.

Flexible Subscription Pricing Options

Kajabi allows you to create weekly, monthly, or yearly subscriptions, provide a free trial, and collect an initial setup fee. The platform also supports both Stripe and PayPal for recurring payments, making it a great option for subscriptions.

Additionally, it’s easy to set up multiple membership tiers and give members access to content and community depending on their chosen plan.

Creating a subscription
Creating a subscription

Powerful Subscription Reporting

Kajabi has fantastic reporting and analytics tools to help you make data-driven decisions.

Besides key reports, such as member progress and net revenue, it has a separate report for important membership subscription metrics like monthly recurring revenue (MRR), average revenue per user (ARPU), and churn rate.

Now, let’s go through the steps in setting up your Kajabi membership site.

1. Create Your Kajabi Account

The first step is to sign up for Kajabi and create an account. If you already have a Kajabi account, you can go to step #2 directly.

Go to Kajabi.com, and you’ll see a page like the one below. On this page, you’ll see a special offer for a 30-day free trial of Kajabi. Click on the free trial button.

Kajabi free trial page

You’ll be taken to a page to sign up for Kajabi. First, you’ll need to enter basic details like your name and email address. Then, you’ll need to enter your payment details in the next step.

Kajabi create account step1
Creating a Kajabi account
Creating a Kajabi account

Once you complete the above steps, you’ll be asked to verify your email address and answer a few onboarding questions before you can access the admin area.

Kajabi’s user interface is simple and easy to use, and you can access all the tools from the sidebar menu. It will take some time to get familiar with these menu options, but don’t worry; we’ll walk you through everything in this guide.

Kajabi’s user interface
Kajabi’s user interface

Now, it’s time to start setting up your Kajabi membership site.

2. Set Up Your Membership Products

The first step in building a Kajabi membership site is to set up your products. Kajabi allows you to create a few different types of products, and the most popular one is online courses.

To create a course, click the Products option in the sidebar and go to Courses. There you’ll find the New Course option.

Creating a new course in Kajabi
Creating a new course in Kajabi

After that, Kajabi asks you to enter some general information like the course name and description and a thumbnail image. Don’t spend too much time on these. You can change these details later.

Providing general course information
Providing general course information

The curriculum builder will open once you have added the general details and selected the template. Here you can organize your course content into modules, submodules, and lessons.

First, you need to add modules to your course. You can do that by clicking the Add Content button and selecting the Module option.

Adding a new module in Kajabi
Adding a new module in Kajabi

After adding a module, it’s time to add lessons to it. You can do that by clicking Add Content next to the module title and selecting Lesson.

Adding a new lesson in Kajabi
Adding a new lesson in Kajabi

Once you have added a lesson to your course curriculum, the next step is adding content.

Click the Edit Lesson option next to the lesson title. This will open the lesson builder, where you can add video, audio, text, and downloadable files.

Kajabi lesson editor
Kajabi lesson editor

You’ll need to repeat this process to add all the modules and lessons to your course outline in Kajabi. Finally, your product outline will appear like the screenshot below.

Sample product outline in Kajabi
Sample product outline in Kajabi

The next step is to customize the course area. You can do this through Kajabi’s themes.

When you click on the Customize option in the course builder, it opens the theme manager. Here you can preview your existing theme or pick a new one from the library.

Managing Kajabi product themes
Managing Kajabi product themes

Click the Install Theme option to open the theme library. There are multiple themes, and you can choose the one that’s best for your brand.

Kajabi course player themes
Kajabi course player themes

If you’d like to see more detailed steps for creating a course, you should check out this Kajabi tutorial.

Besides courses, Kajabi also lets you create a community.

Kajabi Communities lets you build a private community area for your paying members and is great for driving engagement.

To create a community, go to All Products → Community from the sidebar and click the Get Started button. Then enter your community details, select your brand colors, and upload your logo.

Providing general community information
Providing general community information

After that, you’ll be taken to the community area in Kajabi. From here, you’ll need to create an Access Group, which is used to organize your community and even control access.

So, create groups as necessary to set up community structure and access.

Community access groups
Community access groups

Now, click the Go to Your Community button to access the community area.

Here you can add topics, create new discussions, host a live meetup, and create a challenge.

A community built on Kajabi
A community built on Kajabi

Your community is now ready and you can add content to it as you’d like. For step-by-step instructions on doing it, read this Kajabi Communities guide.

While courses and community are the two most important product types in Kajabi, you can also create coaching and podcasts. For example, Kajabi Coaching lets you create coaching products to include in your membership site.

3. Set Up Membership Plans

Now that your products are ready, it’s time to create membership tiers. Depending on your membership model and the number of products, you can create one or more levels.

Kajabi has what it calls Offers. You can think of an offer as a pricing plan. This is where you restrict access to the premium content to non-paying members and create multiple tiers.

To create an offer, go to Sales → Offers from the sidebar and click on the + New Offer button.

Kajabi Offers page
Kajabi Offers page

A popup will appear, and you’ll have to add the offer title and select the products. Make sure to choose subscription as the payment type and set the price and the billing frequency.

Creating a new subscription Offer in Kajabi
Creating a new subscription Offer in Kajabi

When you click the Save and Finish button, your plan gets published, and you’ll be taken to the offer page. For additional settings, you need to click on the Edit option.

Editing a Kajabi Offer
Editing a Kajabi Offer

On this page, you’ll be able to add a free trial and a setup fee. You can also set a time or quantity limit to the plan.

Kajabi Offer settings
Kajabi Offer settings

If you want different membership tiers, you’ll need to create a separate offer for each tier. For example, you can include your courses and content library in the Basic tier, while restricting community access to the Premium tier.

4. Build Your Membership Sales Page

Kajabi’s website builder has some fantastic features to help you build your membership sales page.

To create one, click the Website menu and go to the Pages section. Here you’ll find a separate tab for landing pages from where you can create your sales page.

For that, click on the + New Landing Page option to open the landing page theme library.

Creating a new landing page
Creating a new landing page

Here you’ll find a variety of landing page templates, including for sales pages. You can preview the templates and select the one that matches your brand style.

Kajabi sales landing page templates
Kajabi sales landing page templates

Once you create a sales page, Kajabi will take you to the page builder, where you’ll see a real-time preview of the sales page on the right and the page sections and settings on the left.

Kajabi page builder interface
Kajabi page builder interface

Kajabi page builder is easy to use but, at the same time, is super flexible. You can easily reorder existing page sections by dragging and dropping them from the left panel.

To add a section to the sales page, click the Add Section button and see all the available page sections.

Kajabi has 45+ different sections — including a hero section, pricing table, and multi-column layout — for building a good-looking page.

Kajabi builder supports dozens of page sections
Kajabi builder supports dozens of page sections

You can further edit a page section by clicking on it. You’ll be able to edit the text, add new elements, modify the layout, change spacing, and more.

Editing a page section and its elements
Editing a page section and its elements

One critical thing you must do on your sales page is connect the pricing buttons to the respective offer checkout pages. You can do that by clicking on the respective button and modifying the button action.

Linking a sales page to checkout pages
Linking a sales page to checkout pages

Before you can make your membership site live, you need to do a couple of other important things. So let’s go through them.

5. Set Up an Onboarding Sequence

The next step will be creating an onboarding sequence for your members, and Kajabi has exclusive email marketing tools to help you set it up.

Go to Marketing → Email Campaigns, click the New Email Campaign button, and then choose the Email Sequence option.

Kajabi Email Campaigns dashboard
Kajabi Email Campaigns dashboard
Creating an email sequence in Kajabi
Creating an email sequence in Kajabi

This will lead you to Kajabi’s email template library. While there are several templates, our favorite one is the Simple Text template.

Select a template and click the Get Started option.

Kajabi’s email templates library
Kajabi’s email templates library

Kajabi will take you to the email editor, where you can set a schedule, add a subject, and modify content.

To modify content, click the Edit Content button. Your email will then open in the same page builder interface, where you can add media elements, buttons, social icons, countdowns, and more.

Kajabi sequence email settings
Kajabi sequence email settings
Kajabi email content editor
Kajabi email content editor

Once you save the email, you can go back to the email campaign dashboard, where you’ll find the existing emails in the campaign, and you can add new emails as well.

To do that, click Add New Email and follow the same steps above. You can add as many emails and schedule them as you want.

Adding a new email to the sequence
Adding a new email to the sequence

Once your email campaign is ready, it’s time to connect it to your offer using Automations. Go to Marketing → Automations and click the New Automation button.

This will open a popup where you can create an automation rule to add your membership buyers to the onboarding sequence.

The automation will have Offer is purchased as the trigger and Subscribe to an email sequence as the action.

Setting up the onboarding sequence Automation
Setting up the onboarding sequence Automation

Now that you have successfully created your onboarding sequence, it’s time for the last step.

6. Create a Funnel to Market Your Membership

Kajabi doesn’t just offer you tools for building a membership program but also for promoting it, and the most important one is Funnels.

The funnel builder allows you to create marketing funnels for collecting leads and nurturing them before turning them into customers.

While Kajabi Funnels allows you to create all types of funnels, we recommend you start with a simple lead magnet funnel for your membership. The lead magnet funnel will have:

  • A landing page for users to get your lead magnet
  • A thank you page to confirm subscription
  • An email sequence to nurture subscribers and sell your membership

So, how do you create a lead magnet funnel using Kajabi?

To create a pipeline in Kajabi, go to Marketing → Funnels, and click the New Funnel button.

Kajabi Funnels dashboard
Kajabi Funnels dashboard

Kajabi will now show the different blueprints available. Select the Freebie funnel, add a title, and upload the lead magnet you want to promote.

Uploading a lead magnet
Uploading a lead magnet

After that, Kajabi will automatically generate the funnel with all the pages and the email sequence. This is already a functional funnel, so when someone opts in on the landing page, they’ll be subscribed to your list and can download the lead magnet.

Funnel builder and its elements
Funnel builder and its elements

The next step is to customize the pages and emails. You can do that by clicking on the respective element in the funnel builder, and it will open the page/email editor on the right side.

For example, when you click on the opt-in page, the Kajabi page builder will open in the same interface. It’s the same page builder you used to create the sales page, so you should be able to modify the landing page easily.

Editing a page in the funnel builder
Editing a page in the funnel builder

Similarly, you can click on the email sequence to modify existing emails and add new ones.

Once you’re done customizing the funnel elements, you can copy the funnel URL from the top right and start sharing it with your audience.

For inspiration and a better understanding of what the platform can do, check out our Kajabi website examples, which also include subscription membership sites.

Bonus Tips for Growing Your Kajabi Membership Site

Now that you know how to create a Kajabi membership site, it’s time for some actionable tips to grow it.

Build an Active Membership Community

Regardless of the membership type, we recommend you build a membership community. It can go a long way in boosting engagement and improving member retention.

Here are some ways to use Kajabi’s tools to build an engaged membership community:

  • Allow members to access your community via the mobile apps, making participation easier
  • Organize your community into circles to group discussions and members together
  • Create engaging discussion posts regularly to get the conversation started
  • Host regular live meetups and group chats within the community
  • Activate the member directory so that members can connect to each other

Gamify Your Kajabi Membership Site

Gamification is one of the best ways to engage your members, and there are a few ways to achieve this in Kajabi.

To start with, Kajabi Communities has a few gamification tools to create a fun experience for your members. It has an activity-based points system through which members can earn badges and get featured on the community leaderboard.

You can also create challenges inside your community to keep members geared toward the same goal — all while having fun.

Points for Kajabi community leaderboard
Points for Kajabi community leaderboard

Apart from creating a community, you can also use Kajabi Automations for gamification and engagement. You can use it to:

  • Do weekly check-ins with your members and ensure they don’t get stuck
  • Follow up with inactive members to bring them back to your site
  • Send a congratulatory email on lesson completion or passing a quiz

Collect Feedback to Improve Your Membership

The best way to improve your membership site is to collect direct feedback from your members.

You can use Kajabi Assessments to create a feedback form and then place them inside a course or share it with members via email.

However, the key to collecting feedback is the right timing. Here are a few suggestions for when you should collect feedback:

  • One week after someone joins your membership
  • When a member completes a course or makes significant progress
  • When a member cancels their subscription

Use Kajabi’s Sales Conversion Tools

Kajabi offers several sales-boosting tools, which you can use to improve your conversion rates and average order value. Here are a few of them:

  • Abandoned cart tracking: With Kajabi’s abandoned cart-tracking feature, you can send a follow-up email to customers who don’t complete their checkout.
  • Coupons: You can create coupons to discount your membership pricing during a launch or send single-use coupon code to customers when they cancel their subscriptions.
  • Upsells and order bumps: You can add an order bump to the checkout page and a one-click upsell to the thank you page to increase your purchase value.

Conclusion

This guide covered all the steps for building a Kajabi membership site. The process includes creating products, setting up tiers, making a sales page, creating an onboarding sequence, and building a sales funnel.

Lastly, we shared some bonus tips that you can use to grow your membership website.

If you’re not using Kajabi yet, sign up for a free trial to start building your membership site.

We hope you found this Kajabi membership site guide helpful. If you have any questions or suggestions, please share them in the comments.

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