Guides → Build a membership site on SGEN in 30 minutes

Build a membership site on SGEN in 30 minutes

A 30-minute walkthrough for creators, communities, and educators â€" subscription tiers, member portal, gated posts, recurring billing, published.

This tutorial takes a creator, community organizer, or independent educator from a fresh SGEN account to a live paid membership site in about half an hour. The build covers six visible pages, three to four subscription tiers, a public sales page describing what each tier includes, a member portal showing locked and unlocked content, one gated post as a working example, a community area for member discussion, and a cancellation flow that respects the member. Every step lists the click path, the expected screen, and the time budget.

What you'll have at the end: a live membership site at a *.sgen.com preview URL (or your own domain, if you have one), six pages published, three to four subscription tiers wired to recurring billing, a public sales page that converts, a logged-in member portal showing tier-gated content, one fully written gated post visible only to paying members, a community area pre-seeded with welcome content, and a cancellation flow that closes accounts cleanly. The site is responsive, accessible, and ready to take its first paid signup.

What is this for?

This page is for creators and educators who sell ongoing access â€" newsletters with premium tiers, online communities with paid membership, course archives sold as a subscription, or any other product where the customer pays each month or year for continued access. The thirty-minute target assumes you already know what you are selling and what each tier includes; the build is the publish step, not the offer-design step.

The structure is opinionated. A membership site needs five things working together: a sales page that explains the offer to a cold visitor, billing that handles the money, a portal that lets the paying member sign in and find what they paid for, content that lives behind the paywall, and a cancellation flow that respects the member's decision to leave. The template covers all five out of the box and gives you a place to extend each.

This is a tutorial in the strict sense â€" you build the example, then keep it. Unlike the five-minute quickstart, the membership site you publish here is meant to take real signups. The sample data slots are placeholders for your actual tiers, posts, and welcome content; swap them inline as you go.

If you have shipped a paid newsletter on Substack, a community on Circle or Mighty Networks, or a course archive on Teachable, the SGEN path will feel familiar in structure. The ownership and routing characteristics differ, but the authoring flow is recognizable.

Good use cases

Reach for this tutorial when:

You are an independent newsletter author launching a paid tier and you want full control of the sales page, the billing routing, and the archive of premium issues.
You are a community organizer running a paid community and you need member-only discussion areas with tier-gated read access.
You are an independent educator selling access to a growing library of course material on a recurring basis rather than a one-time purchase.
You are a research analyst or commentator publishing a paid subscription product with daily, weekly, or monthly tiered content.
You are a podcaster offering a premium tier with ad-free episodes, bonus content, or member-only audio drops.
You are a working professional with a paid expert community â€" coaches networking with coaches, designers networking with designers â€" and you need tiers for member directory access plus event signup.

What NOT to use this for

This tutorial does not cover:

One-time-purchase course sales. That is an ecommerce build with a single product and a different starter.
Pure SaaS access (software a customer logs into and uses). That is a SaaS landing page tutorial with an external app linked from a public marketing site.
Donation-based membership with no gated content. That is closer to the nonprofit tutorial â€" use the donation flow there and skip the tier gating.
Hardware product subscriptions (a physical product mailed monthly). That involves shipping logistics outside the SGEN CMS.
Free communities with no payment step. The cancellation and tier logic here assume paid signups; for a free community, start with the community module on its own.

How this connects to other features

The membership build touches six surfaces. Each is named here so you know where to come back when you extend the site later.

SG-Builder â€" the visual editor where the sales page, member portal, and gated posts get arranged. Most of the thirty minutes is spent here.
SG-Modules â†' Memberships â€" the tier-and-billing module powering subscriptions. Pre-built tier presets cover the common shapes; you swap names and prices inline.
SG-Modules â†' Forms â€" the form module powering the cancellation feedback step and the contact form. Default forms route to the email on your account.
SG-Core â†' Media â€" the image library where tier-thumbnail art, welcome banners, and post imagery live.
SG-Core â†' Members â€" the member directory showing every signup, tier, billing status, and last login. Skip on first pass; revisit when you have your first ten members.
SG-Dashboard â†' Analytics â€" the conversion-rate-on-sales-page dashboard. Available once the site has visitors; not relevant during the build itself.

For the build steps alone, the only three surfaces you actively work in are SG-Builder, SG-Modules â†' Memberships, and SG-Core â†' Media. The others are flagged so you know they exist when you need them.

See also the SGEN quickstart for the foundational five-minute account-creation flow, and the coaching tutorial, artist tutorial, and SaaS landing tutorial for adjacent vertical builds.

Before you start

You need five things gathered before you begin. Each is a one-time collection; once you have them in a folder or a doc, the build is mechanical.

An SGEN account with at least the Launch tier active. The free trial covers the thirty-minute build; recurring billing connects to your payment processor once you upgrade.
A connected payment processor. Stripe is the default; the test-mode toggle lets you build and verify with test cards before opening real billing. Connect it under SG-Dashboard â†' Billing â†' Payment Processor before step 3.
Three to four tier definitions. For each: tier name (one or two words), monthly price, optional annual price, three to five included benefits in a short bullet list. Write these in a notes doc before the build session.
One example gated post. A two-hundred-to-five-hundred-word piece you would publish to your paid tier today. The build wires it as a working example; your second post is the start of your actual archive.
A welcome message. Two to three paragraphs that greet a brand-new paying member by name, set expectations for the first week, and point them at one thing to read first. This becomes the first post in the member portal.

You do not need:

A logo. A typeset wordmark in your project name is a strong default for a personal membership site and the template includes one.
A merchant account separate from Stripe. The Stripe integration handles every common membership shape.
A custom domain on day one. The *.sgen.com preview URL is shareable and takes real signups from the moment step 8 finishes.

Where to find it

Every step in the build starts from one of these three URLs:

Step	URL	What lives here
1 (template)	`https://dashboard.sgen.com`	New-site flow, Membership Starter pick
2-7 (build)	`https://.sgen.com/sg-admin`	Per-site editor, pages, memberships, media
8 (view)	`https://.sgen.com`	The live public membership site

Steps

Eight steps. The first six are the build. Step seven is the cancellation-and-feedback flow. Step eight is the publish-and-view. Time budgets are per step; the total runs about thirty minutes for a first-time SGEN user with tier definitions and a sample post ready.

1. Pick the Membership Starter template (â‰¤ 3 minutes)

From SG-Dashboard, click Create New Site. The starter grid shows six templates; pick Membership Starter. The thumbnail shows a hero with a value statement, a tier comparison strip below, and a member-portal preview â€" that is the shape you will publish.

Name the site with your membership brand (for example, "Studio Letters" or "The Tuesday Brief"). Accept the suggested preview subdomain or pick a shorter version. Click Create Site. SGEN provisions in about five seconds.

What you'll see at the end of step 1: SG-Admin loaded with the Membership Starter pages already in place â€" Home (sales page), Pricing, Member Portal, one Sample Gated Post, Community, and Cancellation.

2. Define your three to four subscription tiers (â‰¤ 6 minutes)

Click SG-Modules â†' Memberships in the left sidebar. The Memberships panel opens with the default tier preset â€" three tiers named "Free Reader," "Member," and "Founding Member." That preset is the structure; you will replace the labels and prices.

Click the first tier. The right rail shows tier settings â€" name, monthly price, optional annual price, included benefits (bullet list), badge color, and tier slug. Replace each field with your real tier definition. The free tier should keep its zero price; the paid tiers each get a real monthly amount (commonly five, ten, twenty-five for the spread) and an optional annual amount (commonly two months free if billed annually).

Click Save Tier at the bottom of the right rail. Repeat for the second, third, and (optional) fourth tier. When all tiers are saved, click Activate Memberships at the top of the page. SGEN wires the tiers to Stripe in test mode by default; the test-mode banner stays visible until you switch to live mode in step 8.

What you'll see at the end of step 2: the Memberships panel showing three or four tiers with your real names, real prices, real benefits, and the Active (test mode) status badge at the top.

3. Customize the public sales page on Home (â‰¤ 5 minutes)

Click Pages â†' Home in the left sidebar. The Home page loads in SG-Builder as the public sales page â€" hero with value statement, tier comparison strip, social-proof testimonial block, and a "What you get" feature grid.

Click the hero headline and replace the placeholder with your one-line value statement (for example, "Quiet writing for working creatives. Three letters a week."). Click the sub-headline and replace it with your one-sentence elaboration. Click the primary CTA button and confirm it points to #pricing â€" that anchor scrolls to the tier comparison.

In the tier comparison strip, the tiers from step 2 already populate automatically. Verify the badge colors, prices, and benefit bullets render as you set them. If a tier shows the placeholder benefits ("Benefit one," "Benefit two"), return to step 2 and confirm you saved with Save Tier.

Update the social-proof block with one or two real testimonials from beta members, or delete the block entirely from the right rail if you have not run a beta yet. Update the feature grid with your four to six top-level benefits across all tiers (community access, archive access, weekly cadence, etc.).

What you'll see at the end of step 3: the Home page reading like a finished sales page â€" your value statement, your tier comparison with real prices, your features in your voice, and zero placeholder text remaining.

4. Wire the member portal and welcome content (â‰¤ 5 minutes)

Click Pages â†' Member Portal. The Member Portal page loads in SG-Builder with two states visible in the right rail â€" "Logged out" (redirects to login) and "Logged in" (shows the portal). Click the Logged in state to edit it.

The logged-in portal has four sections: welcome banner, "Start here" panel, latest posts grid, and community link. Click the welcome banner and replace the placeholder welcome with your two-to-three-paragraph welcome message from the Before You Start step. Use the Personalize dropdown in the right rail to insert the {member.first_name} token at the salutation â€" the portal renders the real name once a member logs in.

In the "Start here" panel, set the link target to your sample gated post (you will write the post in step 5). The latest posts grid pulls automatically from any post tagged gated-archive; leave it as-is for now and verify in step 8 that it populates correctly after step 5.

Click Save at the top of SG-Builder. The portal autosaves every two seconds; the manual save commits to the publish queue.

What you'll see at the end of step 4: the Member Portal logged-in state showing your real welcome message with the personalization token rendering as {member.first_name} in edit mode (real name on the live site), a "Start here" panel pointing to your sample post, and the latest posts grid showing a single placeholder row that will fill once step 5 publishes.

5. Write and gate one sample post (â‰¤ 5 minutes)

Click Pages â†' Sample Gated Post. The sample post loads in SG-Builder with hero, byline, and body block. Replace the placeholder title with your real example post title. Paste your prepared two-hundred-to-five-hundred-word post into the body block. Add a hero image from the media library using Replace Image on the hero â€" any relevant image works; you can swap later.

In the right rail under Access Control, set the gate level. Three gate levels are available: Public (anyone can read), Members (any logged-in member of any paid tier), and Tier-Specific (only members of a named tier or higher). For the sample post, pick Members so any paying member sees it. Add the tag gated-archive in the right rail so the post appears in the Member Portal latest-posts grid.

Click Save Post. The autosave commits within two seconds. The post is now gated; a logged-out visitor sees a paywall preview (first two paragraphs plus a "Subscribe to read more" CTA) and a logged-in member sees the full content.

What you'll see at the end of step 5: the sample post page showing your real title, your real hero image, your real body copy, the Members gate badge in the right rail, and the gated-archive tag confirmed in the tags field.

6. Set up the community area (â‰¤ 3 minutes)

Click Pages â†' Community. The Community page loads in SG-Builder with the community module pre-installed â€" channel list on the left, post stream in the center, member-online sidebar on the right.

In the right rail, confirm the channel list seeds the three default channels: #welcome, #announcements, and #open-thread. If your community has a different default structure, add or remove channels using the Channels â†' Edit button at the top of the page. Each channel is one click; budget thirty seconds per addition.

Pin a first welcome post to the #welcome channel using Channels â†' #welcome â†' Pin Post. The pinned post is what every new member sees on first portal load. Two paragraphs covering "what this community is for" and "what to post in each channel" is the working baseline.

In the right rail under Access Control, set the community access level. The default is Any paid tier â€" every member of every paid tier can read and post. If you want tier-gated channels (commonly #founding-member-lounge restricted to top tier), set per-channel access in Channels â†' Edit â†' Per-channel access.

What you'll see at the end of step 6: the Community page with three channels visible, a pinned welcome post in #welcome, the access level confirmed in the right rail, and the page status pill at the top reading Draft (autosaved 2s ago).

7. Wire the cancellation flow (â‰¤ 2 minutes)

Click Pages â†' Cancellation. The Cancellation page loads with a three-step flow already in place â€" confirmation prompt, reason-feedback form, and goodbye message with a one-click "Come back" archive link.

In the right rail, confirm the cancellation confirmation prompt reads in your voice. The default is honest and respectful ("We're sorry to see you go. Cancellation closes your access at the end of the current billing period. Continue?"). If you want a softer or sharper tone, rewrite the text in the field above. Do not add retention dark-patterns ("Are you sure? You'll lose...") â€" they hurt long-term reputation and SGEN explicitly does not ship them.

In the reason-feedback form, the default options are "Too expensive," "Not enough time," "Not what I expected," "Found something better," and "Other." Edit, remove, or add options to match what you want to learn from departing members. The form delivers responses to the email on your account; add a CC recipient in CC Recipient if you want it routed to a partner or a research lead.

The goodbye message at the end thanks the member, confirms the access end date, and offers a one-click "Come back" link that re-opens the same tier at the same price within ninety days of cancellation. Leave the default unless you have a specific reason to change it.

What you'll see at the end of step 7: the Cancellation page reading in your voice, the reason-feedback options matching what you want to learn, the goodbye message confirmed, and the page ready to publish.

8. Publish, switch billing to live, and view the site (â‰¤ 1 minute)

Return to Pages. The page list shows every page in the site with a status column reading Draft for each. Click Publish All at the top right. SGEN publishes the pages in sequence; the status column flips to Published in green within about five seconds per page.

In SG-Modules â†' Memberships, click Switch to Live Mode at the top of the panel. The test-mode banner clears. A confirmation modal asks you to verify Stripe is connected with a real account (not a test account); confirm. Memberships now take real signups against real cards.

Click View Site in the top right of SG-Admin. The live membership site opens in a new browser tab. Click through the Home â†' Pricing â†' Sample Gated Post (verify paywall preview on the public view) â†' Community (verify the logged-out state shows a "Sign in to participate" prompt) flow.

To test the full signup, open the site in an incognito window, sign up for the lower-cost paid tier with a real test card from Stripe's dashboard, log in, and verify the Member Portal renders your welcome message with the real name token, the sample post is fully visible, and the community area unlocks.

What you'll see at the end of step 8: a live membership site at your *.sgen.com preview URL, six published pages, tiers active in live mode, a working signup-and-portal flow verified end-to-end with a test member, and a working cancellation flow.

What success looks like

You finish the build with seven concrete artifacts:

A live membership site at https://.sgen.com, publicly accessible
Three or four subscription tiers wired to Stripe in live mode, taking real card payments
A sales page on Home that reads like a finished offer, with your real tier comparison and your real features
A logged-in member portal showing a personalized welcome and a working latest-posts grid
One fully written gated post, visible only to paying members, with a paywall preview for the public
A community area with three channels, a pinned welcome post, and the correct access gating
A cancellation flow that respects the member, collects reason feedback, and offers a ninety-day come-back link

If you can sign up for the lower-cost paid tier with a test card, log in, see your welcome, read the gated post, post in the community, then cancel â€" and have that whole loop complete in under three minutes â€" the build worked. That is the verification.

Variations

Seven adaptations of the base build, each suited to a specific membership shape.

Free-tier-included community. Add a fourth tier at zero price with Community read-only as its single benefit. Free members can sign in and read #welcome and #announcements but cannot post or read #open-thread. Most paid communities benefit from a small free top-of-funnel that lets people try the community before paying.

Annual-only billing for a high-ticket tier. In step 2, leave the monthly price field blank on the top tier and set only the annual price. The tier comparison strip and signup flow automatically hide the monthly option for that tier. Use this for tiers above one hundred dollars per month where annual billing reduces churn and processing fees.

Course-archive style (downloadable rather than streaming). In step 5, change the post gate from Members to Tier-Specific and set per-tier downloadable file attachments using Add Attachment in the right rail. Each tier gets its own attachment set; lower tiers see a "Upgrade to access" badge instead of a download link.

Cohort-based with a fixed start date. In SG-Modules â†' Memberships â†' Tier Settings, set the Enrollment Window for one tier to a fixed date range (for example, January 5-19). Outside the window, the tier shows a "Next cohort starts February 5" badge instead of the buy button. Use this for educator memberships that run on a teaching calendar.

Gift subscriptions and gift codes. Enable Gift Subscriptions under SG-Modules â†' Memberships â†' Settings. The Pricing page automatically adds a "Gift this tier" button next to each paid tier. Gift purchases generate a code the gifter delivers; the recipient redeems it on the same Pricing page. Annual gifts work best.

Pause-and-resume rather than cancel. In step 7, replace the cancellation flow with the Pause Subscription flow under SG-Modules â†' Memberships â†' Settings â†' Member Lifecycle. Members can pause for one, three, or six months without losing tenure benefits; cancellation becomes a secondary option behind the pause button. Use this for high-touch communities where churn is mostly seasonal.

Affiliate or referral tier discounts. Enable Referral Codes under SG-Modules â†' Memberships â†' Settings. Each existing member gets a unique code; referrals using the code get a one-month discount and the referring member gets one free month added to their billing date. Code generation is automatic; the dashboard shows top referrers.

Common pitfalls

Four things go wrong most often during a membership build. Each has a one-step fix.

The tier comparison strip shows placeholder benefits after step 3. This means the tier was edited but not saved. Return to SG-Modules â†' Memberships, click each tier, scroll to the bottom of the right rail, and confirm the Save Tier button is greyed out (saved) rather than active (unsaved). If active, click it. The home-page comparison refreshes within five seconds.

The gated post shows full content to logged-out visitors. This means the gate level reverted to Public during a save cycle. Open the post in SG-Builder, check the right rail under Access Control, set the gate level back to Members, and click Save Post. The paywall preview returns within two seconds. Always verify the gate after the first publish â€" the test signup loop in step 8 catches this.

Test-mode billing did not switch to live mode. This means the Switch to Live Mode confirmation modal was closed without confirming. Return to SG-Modules â†' Memberships, look for the orange Test mode active banner at the top, click Switch to Live Mode, confirm Stripe is connected with a real account, and confirm. Real signups now route to real cards; test cards stop working.

The welcome message renders {member.first_name} instead of a real name on the live portal. This means the personalization token was typed manually rather than inserted via the dropdown. Open the Member Portal page in SG-Builder, delete the literal text {member.first_name}, click the Personalize dropdown in the right rail, and pick First name. The token now renders dynamically. Verify with the test member from step 8.

Examples

Three real-shape membership builds, one per primary use case.

Example A â€" Independent newsletter (Studio Letters)

Anne is a freelance design writer with a free newsletter and a planned paid tier. She picks the Membership Starter, defines three tiers (Free Reader at zero, Member at eight, Founding Member at twenty-five), writes a sales page emphasizing "Three thoughtful letters a week, no marketing pop," publishes a sample paid letter on type history as her first gated post, sets the community to a single #open-thread channel for paid members, and ships a live site within twenty-seven minutes. First paid signup arrives within forty-eight hours of her launch tweet.

Example B â€" Working creative community (The Tuesday Group)

Marcus is a senior product designer running a paid community for staff-and-principal-level designers. He picks the Membership Starter, defines two tiers (Member at thirty-five monthly, Founding Member at ninety annual including a once-yearly in-person dinner), writes a sales page emphasizing "Quiet talk between senior designers who do the work" and the no-recruiters policy, sets up three community channels (#open-thread, #career, #critique), pins a community-guidelines post, and ships in thirty-one minutes. Founding tier sells out in the first week.

Example C â€" Course-archive subscription (The Weekly Drawing Lesson)

Sara is an independent illustrator with a five-year archive of weekly drawing lessons. She picks the Membership Starter, defines three tiers (Free Sampler with one lesson per month, Member at fifteen monthly with full live-archive access, Annual Founder at one-fifty yearly with archive plus quarterly office hours), structures the archive as gated posts tagged gated-archive, writes a sales page emphasizing "Five years of weekly lessons, searchable archive, no algorithm," and ships in thirty-three minutes. The archive is the differentiator â€" the sales page leads with the searchable-archive screenshot.

Why the thirty-minute target works

The thirty-minute target is honest, not marketing. Internal timing runs on a membership build with prepared tier definitions and one sample post consistently land between twenty-six and thirty-five minutes for a first-time SGEN user and between nineteen and twenty-four minutes for an operator who has shipped one membership site already. The variance lives in three steps.

Step 2 (tier definition) varies the most when tiers are not pre-written. The build assumes you know what each tier costs and what each tier includes; if you decide pricing during the build, plan thirty extra minutes for the pricing decision and run the build session separately. Pricing under build-session time pressure produces worse pricing.

Step 5 (sample gated post) varies the second-most. The build assumes the sample post is written; if you write it during the build, plan a separate session. Writing under build-session time pressure produces worse writing.

Step 8 (switch to live mode) is the most-skipped step on first builds. Skipping it does not break the site, but the membership stays in test mode and cannot take real signups. The test-mode banner is large and orange on every Memberships page until live mode is active; if you see it on the live site, you forgot the step.

If any single step runs longer than its target by more than fifty percent, stop and check: you are usually solving a different problem than the build (deciding pricing, writing a post, debating tier benefits). Pause the build, finish the off-build task, and return.

After the build â€" second and third passes

The thirty-minute build is the publish step. Second and third passes are where the membership product sharpens.

Second pass (recommended: same week, 30-60 minutes):

Write the second and third gated posts. A subscription product with one post is a sample; with three posts it starts to look like a habit.
Send the welcome email to your first signups. SGEN sends a default welcome email automatically; the second pass is the moment to write a real one in your voice under SG-Modules â†' Memberships â†' Lifecycle Emails.
Set up the community guidelines doc as a pinned post in #welcome, two to four paragraphs covering what to post, what not to post, and what happens if guidelines are violated.
Run a small paid promotion or write a launch piece on your existing channels. The first ten paying members are the hardest; the next hundred follow if the first ten are happy.

Third pass (recommended: when you have your first twenty members, 30-60 minutes):

Point your custom domain at the site. SG-Admin â†' Settings â†' Domains. Add the domain, copy the two DNS records, paste them at your registrar, wait for propagation.
Set up the email-digest cadence under SG-Modules â†' Memberships â†' Member Emails. A weekly digest of the past week's gated posts re-engages members who have not logged in.
Review the cancellation reason data after the first ten cancellations. The reason-feedback form from step 7 collects the data; the top reason is your retention lever.
Add a referral program if signups have plateaued. The variation above covers the setup.

What to do if it does not work

Members cannot sign in after purchase. Confirm that member accounts are created on checkout — open Users and check whether the purchaser appears as a Customer-role user. If not, check the payment processor connection and the membership-tier configuration in Custom Objects.
Gated content is visible without signing in. Open the page record in the admin and confirm the visibility setting is set to Members Only (not Public). Gating is a per-page setting — a missed toggle on any page leaves that content open.
The subscription renewal email is not sending. SMTP must be configured under Site Settings → Email for lifecycle emails (renewal reminders, receipt confirmations) to fire.
The payment fails on recurring billing. Check the Stripe dashboard for the specific error. Common causes: expired card on file, insufficient funds, or a plan ID mismatch between SGEN Custom Objects and Stripe.
A member cannot access a page they paid for. Confirm their user role in SGEN Users. If their role does not match the membership tier they purchased, the post-payment role assignment may have failed — update the role manually and note the gap for follow-up.

What's next â€" pick your second read

The membership site is shipped. Pick one of three second reads depending on what comes next:

You want to add a one-on-one coaching offer alongside the membership. Read the coaching tutorial for the booking and intake flow.
You want to add a public marketing site with a feature-led landing page leading to the membership signup. Read the SaaS landing tutorial for the feature-led shape.
You want richer member analytics â€" cohort retention, MRR breakdown, churn-by-tier. Read the Memberships module reference for the analytics surfaces and the data export endpoints.

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Reference

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Roadmap