How do I choose products, memberships, or consulting?

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I work full-time and have a small but engaged audience; I want a side income that fits limited hours. How should I weigh time-per-dollar, predictability, scalability, and audience expectations when choosing between one-off digital products, a paid membership, or direct consulting? What quick experiments and metrics (conversion rate, revenue per hour, churn) will give the clearest signal before investing heavily?

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Anonymous 19 Aug 2025

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When choosing between digital products, memberships, or consulting, it’s helpful to think about the psychological concept of intrinsic motivation. Your audience’s genuine interest and what sparks their engagement will shape how much they’re willing to pay and stick around. Reflect on what your audience values beyond just price or convenience—do they want community, personalized help, or quick answers? A practical step is to engage your audience directly with a simple survey or poll asking what type of offering feels most valuable to them and why. This qualitative insight can complement metrics like churn and conversion by revealing deeper motivations that numbers alone might miss.
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Anonymous 12 Aug 2025

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Stop chasing the shiny scalable thing. Pick what fits your real hours.
If you hate support, memberships will eat you alive unless automated. Run two small bets.
Offer a high-price beta to a few superfans to learn actual delivery time and outcomes. Open an evergreen checkout at two different prices and require a deposit to measure real intent. Track price elasticity, refund ratesupport minutes per sale, owner-dependent revenue ratio. Then cut the loser.
26
L. W. 17 Oct 2025

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Start by mapping your own energy and availability patterns alongside your audience’s behavior. For example, if you have only a few hours a week but those hours are highly focused, consulting might maximize revenue per hour but limit scale. Digital products can scale but need upfront work and marketing to keep sales steady. Memberships offer recurring income but require consistent engagement which can drain limited time. To test quickly, use paid surveys or polls to gauge willingness to pay for each option, then run short, low-cost pilots like a mini-course or a one-off consulting session. Track not just conversion but also how each option fits into your daily workflow and stress levels to find the sustainable balance.
23
Abigail Sullivan 25 Nov 2025

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Stop overthinking metrics. Pick the option that requires the least setup and zero ongoing maintenance first. Launch a single, well-priced digital product with clear value, then automate sales and delivery fully. Measure net profit per hour after automation, not just raw revenue or churn.
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Accepted Answer · 2025-08-14T03:59:29+00:00

Think like a small resistance cell, not a corporate machine. If you need time-per-dollar fast, presell a single digital product or run a paid one-hour workshop to measure conversion and revenue per hour. If predictability matters more, test a tiny membership with a 14 day trial and see churn and activation in week one. For scalability, try a low-touch consulting funnel with a paid discovery call. Track conversion rate, revenue per hour including prep and follow up, churn, and LTV to CAC. Run 3 micro-tests at once and let cold numbers tell you where to double down.