By Karen
In April 2019, I organized a cross-disciplinary reading group using EventPass for single-event registration.
The simple mechanism was that each participant needed to prepare a presentation with 20 slides, each capped at 20 seconds. Everyone had to present on stage, so each session was limited to 12-15 people with no audience members allowed.
The first event photo that appeared again and again.
In June 2020, I migrated the Cross-disciplinary Reading Group to Pressplay, adopting a subscription model for membership.
Simple Data Sharing
Gender ratio: 30% male, 70% female
Age distribution:
21-25 years old: 10%
26-30 years old: 30%
31-35 years old: 40%
35+ years old: 10%
In March 2021, the Cross-disciplinary Reading Group gradually transformed into the Cross-disciplinary Knowledge Community, featuring not just reading discussions but also cross-disciplinary meetups, internal training, and various clubs, all serving subscribers.
After a year of running the project, I want to share the comparison between these two operational approaches and how we used community mechanisms to manage members while overcoming the platform's lack of an in-person event registration system to achieve member management and event bookings. Some might consider our approach rather DIY, but I want to document it now before this experience is forgotten, hoping this article can provide valuable insights for others. (And if there are smarter solutions, please feel free to share!)
Learn more about Cross-disciplinary Knowledge Community
Table of Contents for This Article
- Why did I start a membership model?
- Was the transition to subscription smooth?
- How should membership grow, not just stabilize?
- Overcoming platform limitations: implementing a basic CRM through various platforms and Excel
(Chart: One year of subscription growth trend, with a redesign in February and growth spike in March)
Around March 2020, our event participation suddenly doubled compared to the previous year. To accommodate the growing numbers, I allowed everyone who registered to attend. We transitioned from holding events every eight weeks to eventually needing two events per month just to keep up.
A large-scale event held in early 2021.
However, I discovered a critical problem: there was no complete mechanism to keep these participants engaged. Although most would continue attending, the lack of stability meant I had to promote and recruit for each single-event occasion. The uncertainty about future events made me increasingly anxious.
Because once I got lazy and stopped organizing, the community would end.
And I'm actually a very lazy person. (Really.)
At this stage, we only had the "little angel" volunteer role—people who helped collect presentations and reminded everyone to submit them before events. I handled all other administrative tasks and hosting myself. I was the sole host for over a year of events. Later, as we transitioned, I began developing hosts and angels, with hosts able to upgrade to independent hosts and host supervisors, creating five different levels overall.
To overcome the single-event model's limitations and ensure stability, I explored many approaches.
Then in June, inspiration struck. I thought of a subscription model, though I wasn't sure if subscription-based reading groups existed elsewhere or if we even had the right to do this. So I simply Googled "subscription reading group."
Fandeng
Those two characters appeared on the search results page.
"So subscription-based reading groups really do exist in the world," I thought at the time.
Well, let me try it!
Within five minutes of searching, I logged into Pressplay, created a project, and submitted the application. I began establishing some "stability" guidelines:
Registration opens on the 10th of each month, events are held on the second and fourth weeks of each month, and participants receive different people's presentations each month.
Regarding pricing: previously it was 450 yuan per session, but with the subscription model at 299 yuan per month with unlimited attendance, that became the draw. Besides the pricing adjustment, these administrative mechanisms haven't changed until now—we've only added more rules.
With guidelines established, I began promoting to participants. But to my surprise, not everyone seemed to understand. (This led me to give early warnings before this year's transition.)
The psychological pressure during the transition came from failing to help participants understand the differences between pre- and post-subscription early enough. Additionally, as the innovation diffusion curve suggests, "late adopters" tend to be more cautious. Only after the plan officially started operating for a month—in August—did everyone begin to grasp that pre- and post-subscription really were different, including more streamlined and systematic registration processes, different content exposure methods, and increasingly diverse participant profiles.
Then the plan began to grow steadily, with subscription numbers rising slightly each month.
Stable reading sessions, stable participation, stable interaction, stable style and atmosphere.
But then what?
Between October and December, numbers increased slightly—this was when we executed our strategy: we opened events to non-subscribers who could audit and enjoy the same benefits like drinks and notebooks.
But again, open auditing was still single-event based, and I wasn't enthusiastic about it. While auditors could participate in discussions, they hadn't read the books like subscribers, making discussions less rich. Plus, some subscribers might feel it was unfair. So in subsequent sessions, to maintain quality, we didn't allow auditing, except for our unlimited mega-version events.
So what came next for growth?
Besides the annual unlimited mega-event, what else could I do?
I don't come from product or data backgrounds—I have media, communications, PR, and marketing experience. I can tell stories, but I can't set goals for myself or my team. So "pursuing growth" essentially can't be solved by my own thinking.
So I opened Google again to find subscription projects that had experienced growth. How did they do it?
The search results this time:
(Reference article: Running Content Subscription for 2 Years—Has Ray's English Improved?)
In this article, Ray detailed the differences between before and after redesign and how they transitioned from individual to team. With this template from predecessors, I started thinking about transitioning my plan.
Another factor was that our subscription fee of 299 yuan monthly for unlimited sessions was really too cheap. It was so cheap that members worried I couldn't sustain myself, so I decided to redesign and adjust the pricing.
Because the transition process involved so many details, I'll share specifics in other articles. Subsequently, we launched four plans.
(Cross-disciplinary Knowledge Community Project)
This covers member data synchronization, membership management, and internal operations.
First, let me show the chart. Our current four plans' retention rates: excluding the 1299 yuan plan we don't actively promote—the basic plan has 90.78% retention, the accelerated learning plan has 93.46% retention, the creator plan has 100% retention (though this plan just launched a month ago, so numbers may change).
First, let me define what I mean by overcoming platform limitations.
Pressplay primarily handles "content subscriptions," meaning projects involve embedding online videos and audio in articles, enabling creators to produce content.
The convenient part is that the backend allows selecting article access permissions, so different plan members see different content, which tier-ifies membership.
But the problem is we're stuck with in-person events. When I asked the official team if they could build an event registration system, they said they haven't built this yet but expect to potentially add it in the future.
To let subscribing members easily register for events after subscribing, we redirect users to an external registration system. Since we hold 5+ events monthly with different books, we face some limitations with registration forms. Below, I've listed three event registration systems we've used and documented the transition process.
- Google Forms
Initially we used Google Forms, but discovered that after registering, users' responses weren't saved in a way they could access, so many asked if their registration went through. This was exhausting for management, so we stopped using it. (If there's this feature, forgive my impatience.)
- Accupass
This is the most popular choice for events!! So we used ACCUPASS for a while, but faced an issue: the same event seemingly couldn't have different dates. So we created separate postings for each day's event that month to help users register clearly. (If I could solve this, forgive my oversight—I really did try.)
Eventually, for us managers, our brains were basically getting confused because we had to create five registration forms monthly, download five forms (with auto-naming and codes), and consolidate them into one table.
Not to mention later when we scaled to ten events monthly, registrants would receive five links and need to register five times (fainted), though reportedly they didn't mind and found it acceptable.
But to solve this, we switched platforms again.
- Beclass
I imagine not everyone is familiar with Beclass, and its interface is pretty basic! Special thanks to Xiaocai from Cite Publishing for City Publishing Group, who patiently taught us how to use it. (So touched.)
But it solved our problem of allowing the same registration form for different event dates. Plus, we only get one Excel spreadsheet of attendees, making data organization much simpler.
Of course, I can't say it completely solved our management issues, but it simplified things considerably. (Remember, I'm lazy, so simpler is better.)
Regarding Membership Management and Data Synchronization:
Basically there are no shortcuts—it's all DIY legwork. My team members are genuinely amazing. Because I don't know formulas and never worked with data during school or after, I never thought to use Excel functions. I kept telling my teammates: how can we not make this so labor-intensive!!
After repeatedly raising these problems, my teammate's Excel skills became incredible! Thanks to everyone's input.
We do it manually plus combining pivot tables (all in Google Sheets).
Step One: Sync member list monthly. Regularly review member eligibility for registration, calculate subscription dates, and cross-reference with Pressplay.
Step Two: Classify registration data using pivot tables. Mark an event with a Y symbol and it automatically syncs to other sheets.
Step Three: Master registration sheets auto-sync without manual categorization.
That's basically our simple member management system. Since Cross-disciplinary has many internal events limited to subscribers only, how we create a complete user experience and atmosphere through role-task allocation mechanisms, community platform management, and various in-person events will be shared later. (We'll also launch a personal brand monetization course that explains these mechanisms in detail—stay tuned.)
If you're thinking "wouldn't just building a website be better?"—yes, we'll share that next time.
Thank you for reading this article.
If you're curious about Cross-disciplinary, click here
