Skool Membership Site Progress Report: What’s New?

Alston has been building two Skool communities for about a month, and in this video he pulls back the curtain on everything inside the paid community: the courses already live, the workbooks, the weekly coaching schedule, the co-working sessions, and a full roadmap of what is still in production. He also shares the pricing window that closes on April 1st and what the first 200 members get that nobody else will.

If you have been on the fence about whether a Skool membership site makes sense as a business, or whether the $39 per month for his community is worth it, this breakdown gives you the exact content list and the real numbers to make that decision yourself. Alston has been doing affiliate marketing, digital products, and online business for ten years. His whole purpose here is to get all of that into one place so members do not have to piece it together from five different corners of the internet.

What You’ll Walk Out With

Why Alston calls Skool a “blue ocean” right now and how organic discovery gives early movers a real traffic edge
Every course, workbook, and resource currently inside the paid community
The six-week “How to Monetize Social Media” course, broken down week by week
The live coaching and co-working schedule Alston is adding for paid members
Exact pricing: $39 per month now, $49.99 per month after April 1st, plus the 30-minute one-on-one bonus for the first 200 members
The full roadmap of courses still in production, including one on launching a software company and one on accounting for online business
How to figure out which online income path actually fits your situation at finder.platformproof.com

Why Skool Is a Blue Ocean Right Now

Alston’s core argument is that fewer creators are on Skool than you would guess. That matters because Skool has an organic discovery feature: when your community hits a certain engagement level, the platform can start recommending it to people browsing other communities. His free community, “Side Hustle Secrets,” hit the top 500 to 600 in the online business and general business categories within its first month, which is unusually fast traction for a new community on any platform.

He also expects Skool to eventually roll out paid ads and sponsored placements along the left and right sides of the platform, similar to how other social platforms evolved. Getting in before those slots get bought up by bigger players is part of the long-term play. Whether that happens depends on Skool’s own growth, but the early organic numbers Alston has already seen suggest the platform rewards people who move early and keep their community active.

The honest cost on the creator side: Skool charges $99 per month per community. Alston is paying that to run the paid community separately from his free one. That math only works once enough $39 per month memberships come in to cover the platform fee and leave money on the table. With a few dozen members, the $99 is already covered. The per-person share of that overhead drops fast as the community grows, which is why recurring membership income compounds in a way that one-time product sales do not.

What Is Inside the Paid Community Right Now

The paid community is built as a One-Stop shop. Alston did not want to limit it to just affiliate marketing because his experience shows that affiliate marketing, digital products, email marketing, and social media all work better when they are set up to feed each other. The courses reflect that: you can pick the piece that matters most to you, or you can follow the full sequence and build everything together.

Here is every course and resource live inside the classroom at the time of this video:

How to Monetize Social Media — a brand-new 2024 six-week course with hours of training per week. Covers TikTok, YouTube, and other platforms, with email marketing as the foundation and the platforms themselves saved for last.
Affiliate Marketing for Beginners — a foundational course on getting started with affiliate marketing from scratch.
Two-Day Affiliate Marketing Workbook — a compressed step-by-step walkthrough of the entire affiliate marketing process, designed to get you started fast.
Individual Affiliate Marketing Workbooks — roughly 13 workbooks total, each covering a specific part of the process: picking a niche, social media strategy, and other individual sections.
How to Create Digital Products — a complete module on creating and selling digital products, with a detailed workbook included.
10-Day Digital Product Workbook — made in 2023, walks through how to create and sell a first digital product in ten days with detailed step-by-step guidance for every phase.
YouTube Masterclass (“Inner Circle”) — hours of content on growing a YouTube channel, based on what Alston learned the hard way. Made in 2023, covers tips and strategies for building a channel that actually gets traction.
AI for Online Business — how to use tools like ChatGPT to speed up affiliate marketing and digital product creation. Covers building a digital product in half the time using AI.
Keyword Research — step-by-step keyword research training for content strategy and search visibility.
How to Use G Bolt Systems — training on Alston’s all-in-one marketing software, launched in November. G Bolt Systems handles the marketing infrastructure side of an online business.
How to Promote Alston’s Affiliate Program — specific training for members who want to earn by referring others to Alston’s products and programs.
Webinars and New Trainings — an ongoing library. Alston adds new recordings as he runs webinars, so the library grows over time.

The Six-Week “How to Monetize Social Media” Course: Week by Week

This is the cornerstone of the paid community and the sequence is deliberate. Alston built it so each week feeds the next rather than treating each topic as a standalone unit. If you want to understand how the pieces of an online business actually connect, this is the course that shows you.

Week 1: Email Marketing. Before touching any platform, Alston teaches email marketing. His reasoning: social media platforms change their algorithms, cut your reach, or disappear entirely. An email list is yours. Building it first means everything else in the course has a destination to drive traffic to.

Week 2: Digital Products. Once an email list is growing, digital products give you something to sell to that audience. This module covers how to create and price digital products that work alongside affiliate offers rather than competing with them.

Week 3: Affiliate Marketing. With an email list and at least one digital product in place, affiliate marketing becomes an additional income layer. You are not depending on commissions from one source to pay the bills because you already have other income coming in.

Week 4: Monetizing an Online Community. Once you have an audience and a track record of helping people, a paid community becomes a natural next move. This module covers how to charge for access, what to include, and what keeps members paying month after month rather than canceling after the first month.

Weeks 5 and 6: The Actual Platforms. Alston calls these weeks “the icing on the cake.” TikTok, YouTube, and whatever platform fits your audience are covered last because by week 5, all the monetization infrastructure is already built. You are not just chasing followers with no system behind them. Every piece of content is driving traffic to a real business.

Live Coaching and Co-Working Sessions

Beyond the recorded courses, the paid community includes weekly live coaching every Thursday at 5:00 PM. That is a predictable, recurring touchpoint where members can bring questions, get feedback on what they are working on, and hear what is working for other people in the community.

Alston is also adding co-working sessions on weekdays, and possibly Saturdays too. The idea came from a real problem he named: building an online business alone is hard because there is no one to bounce ideas off and no built-in accountability. The co-working sessions put a one-to-two-hour block on the calendar where members and Alston are all working at the same time. If you get stuck on a lead magnet, a landing page layout, or even something like color choices for your brand, you can ask in real time and get an answer instead of sitting on the problem until the next scheduled call.

For the first 200 members specifically, there is a 30-minute one-on-one call with Alston. You can bring your business plan, your landing page, your specific questions, and get direct answers. Alston notes that if you schedule the call during the 14-day free trial period, the trial expires once the call happens: a one-on-one call requires his direct time, and it would not be fair for someone to use that call and then cancel within the trial window.

Pricing: What Changes on April 1st

The membership is $39 per month right now, with a 14-day free trial. Joining before April 1st locks in that price permanently. That means if the price goes up again in the future, existing members at the $39 rate stay at $39. After April 1st, the price increases to $49.99 per month.

The first-200-member bonus is a separate consideration. Alston had not yet started promoting the community on TikTok, Instagram, or LinkedIn at the time of this video. Once he does, he expects the first 200 spots to fill quickly. When those spots are gone, the one-on-one call bonus disappears with them. If getting direct access to Alston to review your business matters to you, the timing of when those 200 spots fill is something to pay attention to.

Not sure whether affiliate marketing, a membership site, digital products, or something else is the right starting point for you?

Answer five questions and get a personalized recommendation at finder.platformproof.com. Takes about two minutes.

The Full Course Roadmap: What Is Coming Next

Alston shared a detailed roadmap of courses he is actively building. This is worth knowing before you join because some of these topics may be the main reason you are interested, and several are not live yet.

How to Create an Online Course — focused specifically on scoping a course so it does not become so big it never launches. Alston says the most common mistake is overbuilding: you keep adding modules, the course grows, and you never publish it because it is never “done.” The goal of this training is to show people how to create and launch a course they are proud of in one to two weeks.
Online Business Mindset — described as a mini-course or three-week course. Alston says mindset is one of the most challenging and most underrated topics in online business. Starting alone, making too many decisions, not knowing which direction to go — these are the things that actually stop people, and this course is built to address them directly.
How to Monetize a Skool Community — a standalone course on turning a Skool community into a revenue stream. This will be independent of the broader social media monetization course and will look specifically at Skool’s features and traffic patterns.
How to Grow a Membership Site — Alston mentions that his current Skool paid community is his fourth membership site. He has grown previous memberships to a solid monthly recurring income and wants to share the traffic strategies and retention tactics that actually worked across those iterations.
How to Launch a Software Company — covering how Alston built and launched G Bolt Systems in November, how to market a software product, how to get in front of potential customers, and the honest side of running SaaS: customer service load, churn, and the operational realities most courses do not mention.
Accounting for Online Business — Alston is reaching out to CPAs to find someone who can either create or co-create this course. He says accounting is one of the topics that can get online business owners into real trouble and is almost never covered well in the online business content space.

Honest Drawbacks of This Membership

Several of the most interesting courses on the roadmap are not live yet. The online course creation course, the online business mindset course, the software company course, and the accounting course were all listed as coming soon at the time of this video. If any of those are the primary reason you are considering joining, you are paying now for content that is not there yet.

Some of the workbooks and trainings inside the classroom are from 2023. Alston is clear they are not outdated in any serious way and that the underlying strategies are still sound. But if you want a library that is 100 percent created in 2024, the oldest materials in the current library are about a year old.

The platform cost is $99 per month for Alston, not for members. That does not affect your price, but it does tell you something about the business model. Alston has a real financial incentive to keep producing content and keeping members engaged, because the math only works if members stay. That is generally a good alignment of interests, but it is worth knowing the structure.

Alston also mentioned he is thinking about starting a separate free Skool community for dads interested in fitness. He acknowledged this breaks his own rule about not crossing niches. Whether adding a third community affects the quality or frequency of coaching inside the paid business community is something to watch. He had not launched the fitness community at the time of this video.

How Alston Builds One Thing at a Time

One thing Alston said in the video is worth repeating because it answers the question people often ask when they see someone doing multiple things at once. He said he gets one thing profitable and then moves on to the next. Affiliate marketing first, then digital products, then a software company, then a membership site. Each new thing came after the previous one was generating real monthly income.

That is a useful frame for how to think about your own path. You do not need to build all of these income streams at the same time. You need to build one well enough that it generates consistent money, and then use that stability to start the next one. The sequence Alston teaches in the six-week course follows the same logic: email first, then products, then platforms. Each step makes the next step easier, not harder.

Find Your X

Before you commit $39 per month to any membership, it helps to know which corner of online business makes sense for you specifically: your current skills, the time you can put in, and what kind of work you can actually sustain week after week. Affiliate marketing, digital products, social media monetization, and community building all have different starting costs and different timelines to first income.

The Finder at finder.platformproof.com walks you through five questions about your situation and gives you a clear recommendation on which path to start with, so you are not guessing or trying everything at once. It takes about two minutes.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Skool and how does it work for membership sites?

Skool is a platform for running paid or free online communities with built-in course hosting, discussion boards, and event scheduling. Creators pay $99 per month per community to host it. Members pay whatever monthly fee the creator sets to access the content and the community. Skool also has organic discovery built in: active communities with high engagement can be recommended to people browsing the platform, which gives early movers a real traffic edge that is harder to find on more saturated platforms.

How much does Alston’s paid Skool community cost?

At the time of this video, the membership was $39 per month with a 14-day free trial. Joining before April 1st locks in that rate permanently, meaning future price increases do not affect existing members who joined at the introductory price. After April 1st, the price increases to $49.99 per month. Alston also mentioned the price could go higher than that in future rounds.

What courses and materials are currently live in the community?

The current classroom includes a six-week course on monetizing social media (new for 2024), affiliate marketing for beginners, a two-day affiliate marketing workbook, around 13 individual affiliate marketing workbooks, a complete digital product workbook, a 10-day digital product workbook, a YouTube masterclass, a course on AI for online business, keyword research training, G Bolt Systems training, and a course on promoting Alston’s affiliate program. New webinar recordings are added to the library on an ongoing basis.

What is the one-on-one coaching call bonus and how does it work?

The first 200 members to join get a 30-minute one-on-one call with Alston where you can bring your business plan, your landing page, or any specific questions you are stuck on. Alston notes that if you are using the 14-day free trial, the trial expires once the call happens, since taking that call requires his direct time and it would not be fair to offer a refund after the call has taken place. Once all 200 call slots are filled, the bonus is gone.

What live sessions are included for paid members?

Paid members get weekly live coaching every Thursday at 5:00 PM. Alston is also adding co-working sessions on weekdays (Monday through Friday, and possibly Saturdays), where members and Alston work on their businesses at the same time. If you get stuck on something specific during a co-working session, you can ask and get help in real time instead of waiting until the next scheduled call.

Is there a free community as well?

Yes. Alston runs a separate free Skool community called “Side Hustle Secrets.” At the time of this video it had 416 members and was already ranking in the top 500 to 600 for online business on the Skool platform. The free community does not include the full course library or the live coaching sessions. It is a place for discussion and community building without the structured curriculum of the paid membership.

What is G Bolt Systems?

G Bolt Systems is an all-in-one marketing software company Alston launched in November. The paid community includes a training course on how to use it for your online business. Alston is also building a future course on how he launched G Bolt Systems, covering the marketing strategy, how to find customers, what customer service looks like for a software product, and the financial reality of running a SaaS company.

What courses are coming to the membership in the next few months?

Alston’s published roadmap includes: how to create an online course in one to two weeks without overbuilding, online business mindset (dealing with decision fatigue and the challenges of building alone), how to monetize a Skool community, how to grow a membership site (drawing from his four iterations of membership sites), how to launch a software company, and accounting for online business. He is actively working on all of these and plans to bring in a CPA for the accounting course specifically.

Sources

YouTube: “Skool Membership Site Progress Report: What’s New?” — Alston Godbolt (https://youtu.be/1E4bmdJwMgM)
Skool platform pricing: $99 per month per community for creators (skool.com)
G Bolt Systems: all-in-one marketing software launched November (prior year) by Alston Godbolt
Side Hustle Secrets free community: 416 members at the time of this video, ranked top 500-600 in online business on Skool

Helping 1 million working adults make their first $3,000 online with the skills they already have. Alston Godbolt, Platform Proof.