Make your membership more lively, more interactive, and a lot more fun when you run an online challenge.
çNow that the sun is showing up more regularly here in the northern hemisphere, I’m starting to get bombarded with ads and content telling me it’s time to get in shape before beach season.
You know the ones:
“Do this one thing every day for a month.”
“Join my 4-week ab challenge!”
“Cut out these 3 common habits and watch the weight fall off.”
And I’ve got to admit – as cynical as I can be about this stuff, I still end up clicking. There’s just something about challenges that pulls you in, right? I think it’s that little voice that says, “Well, what have I got to lose?”
That’s exactly why challenges work so well inside membership sites too. They give people a reason to show up, take action, and get value.
They’re also extremely marketable. People love the structure, the promise of results, and the sense of being part of something.
It gives you a natural hook for social posts, emails, or even ads to draw in new members who might have otherwise scrolled past.
And of course, fitness is just one niche, but challenges work well across all kinds of different industries and scenarios:
- Hobbies & Creative Communities: photography, art, writing, crafting, gaming
- Online Courses & Education: skill-building, certification prep, portfolio challenges
- Wellness & Lifestyle: mindfulness, nutrition, habit-building, mental health
- Coaching Programs: business, life coaching, career development, leadership
- Professional Associations: continuing education, peer accountability, industry certifications
- Entrepreneur & Business Communities: marketing sprints, product launches, client outreach challenges
- Nonprofits & Cause-Based Communities: fundraising goals, volunteer engagement, advocacy campaigns
- Faith-Based & Spiritual Groups: devotionals, daily practices, reflection challenges
Wish so many possibilities, I’ll bet your business can get a slice of this pie.
Below, I’ll walk you through three kinds of challenges you can run, plus simple ideas on how you might bring them to life on your membership site.
Ready for the challenge?
1. Time-Based Challenges
Time-based online challenges are top of my list for a reason – when you put a timeframe on something, it becomes much more manageable and easy for your members to commit to.
They work beautifully when you want to help members build habits, create momentum, or simply stop overthinking and start doing!
Time-Based Challenge Examples:
- 5-Day Mindset Reset: help your members shift their perspective with short daily tasks.
- 30-Day Sketch-a-Day: ideal for art, creative, or hobby memberships.
- 12-Week Fitness Commitment: for health and wellness memberships, a longer-term challenge members can chip away at.
Shorter challenges are a great way to draw in leads and tease your content to new or prospective members. Give them a sample of what you offer and show them that, thanks to you, they can make meaningful changes or achievements in a short space of time.
Longer challenges, on the other hand, are perfect for deepening engagement with your existing members. They give them a reason to keep engaging, stay accountable, and make steady progress toward bigger goals.
Plus, longer challenges tend to create more stories such as members sharing their results, their sticking points, or even how they fell off and got back on track.
That kind of member-generated content can be pure gold for building community and boosting retention.
2. Outcome-Based Challenges
Outcome-based challenges focus less on how many days it takes and more on helping members accomplish something tangible that aligns with their goals.
These challenges are fantastic for member satisfaction because they deliver a win.
Say your members have been putting off a project, or there’s something you know would make a real difference for them – outcome-based challenges shift the focus from daily tasks to simply finishing the thing.
Here there are no ticking clocks or daily streaks, just a clear goal to work toward.
For a lot of members, that actually feels more doable, and more likely to lead to real progress.
Outcome-Based Challenge Examples:
- Launch Your First Digital Product
- Create Your Morning Routine & Stick To It
- Build Your Email List to 100 Subscribers
Break up the challenge into clear stages, and set milestones and assignments to keep members on track.
Since there’s no fixed timeline, you’ll want to be proactive about keeping members engaged. Send out regular reminders, encouragement, and celebrate mini-wins.
Here, mobilizing your members-only community to share their experiences will come in real handy – giving peers the opportunity to share their experiences and spur each other on.
3. Community-Based Challenges
When members work on a challenge together, even casually, it’s easier for them to stay motivated and keep going.
These kinds of challenges work well when your goal is to get members talking, supporting, and inspiring one another.
Instead of strict completion community-based challenges focus on showing up together and creating a lively atmosphere inside your membership site.
Community-Based Challenge Examples:
- 100-Day Writing Challenge — everyone commits to writing daily and sharing updates.
- Monthly Book Club — read together, discuss together.
- Peer Accountability Groups — small groups that support each other through any personal or professional goal.
You can keep this kind of challenge really simple – a prompt and a space to share progress often do the trick.
Forums, group threads, or dedicated community spaces are usually enough. If you like, you can add optional milestones or weekly group chats or check-ins to help members track how far they’ve come.
Community challenges often end up creating lasting connections between members, which, in many cases, is what keeps them coming back well after the challenge is over!
How to Run Online Challenges in WordPress
Once you’ve got an idea for the type of challenge you want to run, the next step is setting it up inside your membership site.
The good news is you don’t need to duct-tape together a pile of external tools. Most of what you need can be handled right inside WordPress with a few well-chosen plugins.
Here are some of the most common ways you can bring your challenges to life:
Drip Content with Email and MemberPress
For time-based challenges, dripping content is often the simplest way to structure things. There are 3 ways you can do this.
- Use seu email service provider to drip content to your members’ inboxes.
- Automatically release content at predefined intervals using MemberPress’s drip content feature.
- If you want to add interactive content like assignments or quizzes to your challenges, use the MemberPress Courses add-on with it’s own super intuitive drip feature.
Dripping content helps members follow along at a steady pace without overwhelming them all at once. It’s perfect for challenges where you want to guide members step by step, like habit-building or learning a new skill.
Add Milestones, Habit Tracking, and Cohorts with CoachKit™
If you want to take things further, CoachKit™ lets you run challenges more like coaching programs. You can:
- Set up milestones for members to work through
- Track habits or recurring tasks over time
- Consolidate multiple courses and additional content into an easy-to-follow program.
- Organize members into cohorts to create smaller, more focused challenge groups
This works especially well for outcome-based challenges where progress is less about sticking to a daily calendar and more about reaching a goal.
Build Community with BuddyBoss or bbPress
Challenges and community go hand-in-hand. Whether you’re running a collaborative challenge or just want to give members space to share progress, an online forum can make all the difference.
BuddyBoss e bbPress both work well with MemberPress, letting you create protected community spaces for challenge participants.
Even something as simple as a dedicated thread or channel for a specific challenge can encourage members to stay accountable and cheer each other on.
Gamify Challenges with GamiPress
If you want to add a little fun, GamiPress is a great way to introduce points, badges, or even leaderboards.
GamiPress integrates plenty of plugins so you can reward members for participating in discussions in bbPress or BuddyBoss and completing lessons and courses in MemberPress.
This isn’t just for “competitive” memberships, even casual communities often enjoy collecting badges or seeing their name pop up in a leaderboard now and then.
O que vem a seguir?
So, your next challenge — should you choose to accept it — is to go ahead and run your own online challenge!
Pick the style that best suits your business and get creative. And remember, you don’t need to nail it perfectly the first time.
Try it out with your members and see how they respond. You’ll quickly learn what motivates your community and where you might want to add more structure, coaching, or community support next time.
Whatever style you choose, you’ve got plenty of tools to get you started.
Now, let’s see how your members rise to the challenge!
Obtenha o MemberPress hoje mesmo!
Which style of challenge will you choose? Got any tips or ideas to share with us? We’d love to hear from you in the comments section below.
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