If and when you decide to set up payments within your Mighty Network, there are a few common use cases for how you can structure your Mighty Network and the Plans you create.
Definitions to Know
As you consider setting up payments in your Mighty Network, you'll want to know a few key terms:
Plan – the mechanism for setting up paid access to your Mighty Network or Courses/Groups within your Mighty Network. A Plan can sell access to your main Mighty Network, an individual Course or Group within your main Mighty Network, or a Bundled Plan of multiple Courses and/or Groups.
Visible Plan – Plans on a Mighty Network can be either Visible or Hidden. A Visible Plan is available to anyone on the Plan Landing Page, or the page where a visitor or member will be able to see and buy a Visible Plan.
Hidden Plan – A Hidden Plan is only accessible via a shared link that you'll be able to generate once your Plan is set up. A Hidden Plan is there to set up different prices for the same offering, or even create a link that will get visitors or members into that Plan for free. Hidden Plans are also how a Mighty Network today handles coupons, which are not yet available.
Internal Plan – An Internal Plan is a Visible or Hidden Plan accessible to members of your Mighty Network. It's also the mechanism to use to offer a free, public Mighty Network anyone can join, while selling paid Courses or Groups for people to purchase. On an Internal Plan, your Plan Landing Pages are contained *within* your Mighty Network. This means if you want your Mighty Network to be private, only people who have joined your Mighty Network will see the prompts to purchase an Internal Plan.
External Plan – An External Plan is a Visible or Hidden Plan that's available to all visitors. An External Plan must contain access to the main Mighty Network, and has a Plan Landing Page that is visible to all visitors.
All Plans will prompt you to choose whether it is Visible or Hidden, or Internal or External.
For a tutorial on the differences between External and Internal Plans, check out the video below:
3 Most Popular Ways to Set Up Plans
Here are three of the most popular ways to set up Plans in your Mighty Network. While there are some limitations and edge cases that you may need to consider (and you can review those here in our payments FAQ), we hope this guide will give you more clarity around what’s possible when you decide to start earning revenue directly from your Mighty Network.
Paid Membership to Your Mighty Network
If you want to structure your Mighty Network so that all members are required to pay a fee to get access to the overall Mighty Network, follow this formula:
- Create an External Plan that grants access to a Network Membership.
- Make that External Plan visible as soon as it’s approved.
- When you make any External Plan visible (even an External Free Plan), it will automatically switch your Mighty Network’s privacy setting to be paid, which means your overall community can no longer be public, private, or secret.
- Now, anyone who visits your Mighty Network’s landing page directly or via an invitation will see an option to purchase membership via the External Plan you made visible.
Note: With this configuration, you can still offer upsell experiences inside your Mighty Network by creating Internal Plans that sell access to individual groups or courses (or bundles of groups and/or courses you want to sell as a package to existing members). Or, you can always make your groups or courses public within your paid Mighty Network, which means that anyone who is a member of your paid community can join those groups or courses without requiring additional payment or approval.
Want to offer some people the option to join your Mighty Network for free even though it’s paid for the public at the front door? Create a hidden External Free Plan and send those people the share link for that hidden Plan so they can easily join for free through the special link.
A "Freemium" Mighty Network with free access to the main Mighty Network and paid Courses or Groups within it
If you want to structure your Mighty Network so there is no payment required when someone joins the overall community, but there are paid experiences people can purchase as groups or courses (or bundles of groups and/or courses) once they are a member, just follow this formula:
- Set your Mighty Network’s main privacy setting to be public, private, or secret.
- Once you’ve created at least one group or course inside your Mighty Network that you want to sell as a premium offering to members, create an Internal Plan that’s associated with that group or course and make that Plan visible as soon as it’s approved.
- Now, members of your Mighty Network will be able to purchase premium experiences inside your community as individual groups or courses (or as a bundle of groups and/or courses you want to sell as a package).
Note: With this configuration, if your Mighty Network is set to be private or secret, then visitors will be required to join your Mighty Network first before they can see or purchase any Internal Plan. If your Mighty Network is public, visitors can still browse your network and see that there are paid experiences available to purchase.
A Mighty Network with a single transaction for overall free or paid access to your Mighty Network and paid Courses and/or Groups within it
The benefit of this formula is that you have an External Landing Page to which you can send visitors to where they will only have to purchase one bundle:
- Create an External Free Plan that grants access to a Network Membership and make it visible.
- When you make any External Plan visible (even an External Free Plan), it will automatically switch your Mighty Network’s privacy setting to be paid, which means your overall community can no longer be public, private, or secret.
- Create an additional External Bundle Plan (or several Plans) that grant access to a Network Membership plus individual groups or courses you want to sell as a package upfront to people who are ready to join your Mighty Network. Make those Plans visible when they are approved.
- Now, anyone who visits your Mighty Network’s landing page directly or via an invitation will see an option to become a member via the External Free Plan *or* via purchasing one of your External Bundle Plans.
Note: With this configuration, you can still offer upsell experiences inside your Mighty Network by creating Internal Plans that sell access to individual groups or courses (or bundles of groups and/or courses you want to sell as a package) to members who didn’t purchase your External Bundle Plan upfront. Just keep in mind that members can only be on one External Plan at any given time.
Ready to get started?
Read more about our Plans or go to Network Settings > Payments in your Mighty Network now.