7 things you need to know about your online membership from a lawyer
With the world moving online, you’ve no doubt spent some of your time in isolation joining online communities or courses, maybe even signing up for online gym classes. There is a distinct difference between an online course and an online membership, which you can read about here, but an online membership essentially allows members to pay on a weekly, monthly, or annual basis for something ongoing. It might be fresh content you create or new lessons every week.
Looking for template terms and conditions for your online membership? Find the legal template here:
The membership model has soared in popularity of recent times. It creates reliable, recurring income, rather than a one-off purchase for the creator and owner of the membership site, while consistently delivering new, fresh content to the subscriber!
But, don’t be fooled, this ongoing commercial relationship, between the owner of the membership and the member is actually a legal contract. To make things more complicated, there is often no particular end point to membership, with one of the parties having to choose to end it.
With this in mind, it’s important both the owner of the membership site and member know how:
The membership fee will be paid and when it will be deducted from their credit card or account; and
To interact within the membership site; and
How they can end the relationship.
Where the membership involves a community such as Facebook group, it’s also important to set the rules and boundaries for that group.
It’s not all rainbows and lollipops
So, you have a membership idea or you threw caution to the wind and started a membership site during covid19.
Congratulations! That is fantastic! While online memberships can be very successful, there are a few hurdles you might come across when powering up your big membership idea of which you should be aware, such as:
attracting members;
creating fresh and relevant content;
communicating clearly with your members; and
cancelled or late payments from members.
To help you get your head around these things before they become hurdles, we have written our 7 things you need to know about online memberships blog below.
Thing 1 – you don’t necessarily own your membership platform
If you use a third party platform like Kajabi, Members Vault or Simplero, you don’t control it.
You could be kicked off the site, or it could crash, potentially leaving you at risk if you’re content isn’t delivered on time or your subscribers’ information is used by the platform.
Protect yourself here by ensuring your online membership terms and conditions are in place at the time your members join up and ask them to acknowledge and agree to the use of a third party platform and inserting the necessary disclaimers.
Also ensure you save all your membership resources backed up somewhere that is safe so that if things do crash, you can get your membership back up and running with minimal disruption.
Thing 2 – protect your intellectual property (IP)
You work hard to create content. You might have years of experience behind you and you might spend hours, days, or even weeks creating something just for your members. You don’t want anyone to be able to swipe that information and set up their own online membership using your content.
It is vital to protect your intellectual property by including in your terms and conditions the copyright of the material. This protects your legal copyright and your moral rights and makes it easier to enforce or claim against others if there is a problem.
Thing 3 – keep your members and income stable and current
Keeping members and collecting recurring payments from them is how you get paid. Without that you would be running your membership site for free.
This can be tricky where their payment details change or they want to cancel but have already accessed that billing period’s content. What then? It’s important to decide when payment will be processed and what will happen if payment stops. Also ensure you have a notice period. For example, on a monthly membership you might decide that any cancellation during a particular month entitles the member to receive content for that month, but that content will cease as soon as the next month rolls around.
Thing 4 – disclaimers
Hands up who reads disclaimers on websites or membership sites? Most likely you are keen to get that streaming service and binge watch your favourite show.
But, put yourself in the place of the owner of that site, what if someone claims against them? What if your member does not access the resources or do any of the monthly activities your membership offers and then blame you because they didn’t create a million dollar brand or achieve the body of their dreams with the membership? If those claims come in, you want to make sure you are protected.
Disclaimers protect you from these claims, making sure people know there is no guarantee of success and that the information may not be specific to them!
Thing 5 – people don't always use your website how they should
The thing is, people are unpredictable. Your members could get online and leave nasty comments aimed at other members, or leave links to inappropriate content on the members area.
You want to make sure you are not held liable for this and you need to protect your website if one of your members decide they like it so much they want to download and copy all of your content and launch their own website or membership site. You want to make sure that the terms (or contract) signed when your member signs up allows you to stand strong against this kind of behaviour (and have the backing of the law).
Thing 6 – comply with privacy law
The privacy laws in Australia and overseas (particularly where the GDPR applies in European countries) require that you have a privacy policy before you collect information about people, including email addresses and taking payments online for courses. This is a non-negotiable aspect and you don’t want to leave yourself open for lack of a privacy policy.
Thing 7 – Facebook group Rules
With the majority of online memberships, there is an online group component, whether it is through a Facebook group or third party portal it is important that the conduct of the group is regulated and your course participants know what is and what isn’t acceptable and what you can kick them out for. You might also want to make sure your members know what is and isn’t appropriate in terms of friending you on Facebook or similar. There are no hard and fast rules here and we often draft very customised terms for people.
What’s next?
So, you have an online membership without online terms and conditions or you are launching a membership and need online terms and conditions for the membership.
The first thing to do is get in touch with a lawyer who does this sort of thing all the time (like me). You can book an obligation free chat with me here.
Or you can send me an email at hello@theremoteexpert.com to enquire further. I have packages available that include not only customised online terms and conditions and Facebook rules but offer further support via checklists and video support to help you implement them on your membership site.
Don’t get caught short just because you were so caught up in launching your membership that you forget about those legal aspects you needed to cover off. Ideally you should do it before you launch. But if you have launched and wanted to wait until you have enough funds from the membership to pay for them, that is okay too – but don’t muck about waiting too long to sort that out.
