Running an online challenge is a great way to connect with like-minded individuals and reach goals together. These interactions can significantly boost your engagements and earnings if it’s a paid one.
The right preparation and tools are important to run a successful challenge. Things like your progress tracking, communication, and payments need a platform with strong admin support.
In this blog, we’ll discuss how to plan, launch, and manage an online challenge that brings positive results to the participants.
Who can run an online challenge?
Anyone on social media can create an online challenge based on their niche, from fitness, finance, business, and content creation. As long as there is knowledge and skills to acquire and progress to make.
Coaches, community owners, and influencers can start creating online challenges and inspire their community to progress.
What to prepare for when running an online challenge?
Before creating the actual challenge, setting direction and objectives is important. They can determine whether or not the challenge is feasible and suitable for your community.
Purpose and end goals of the challenge
To set sail, first, you need a destination. That is why setting a purpose and your end goals is vital to the success of both the challenge creator and the participants.
Here are some ways to determine your objectives:
- Start polls and surveys to know what your community wants to achieve. A community with large memberships might have slight differences in their goals. It’s also important to remember that these can be the problems they want to solve to improve their life. The key is finding the common ground between them and creating a challenge that can accommodate those goals.
- Review your personal brand. People follow and join your community because they resonate with the brand you established. Go back to the vision you had when starting what you do now and gain more clarity as to where you want to go.
- Turn your vision into actionable steps. The same old SMART goals are still held today. To make sure that your participants can maximize their progress, apply the principles of specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-based goals.
How to come up with online challenge ideas
Using the objectives you established at the beginning of the planning process, you can now come up with specific challenge ideas. Based on your niche, what are the problems people want to solve?
You can use this guide to help you come up with a challenge ideas:
- Pick your topic. Narrow your objectives into one focused topic to ensure a more sustainable challenge. A specific topic you want to tackle will avoid overwhelming and confusing your participants.
- Quantify the result. Setting the numbers can help your participants determine if they are making progress. Challenges as simple as several steps a day are more attainable than vaguely stating what needs to be done.
- Use your existing content or courses. If you’re a creator, coach, or mentor and you have developed content in the past, you can repurpose it into a challenge. This is a great refresher for the participants and also saves you time and resources.
Check out some of the specific challenge ideas for different niches:
Fitness and Wellness Challenge Ideas
- 5K Steps a Day
- 10-minute Daily Meditation
- Crossfit Exercise
- 30-day Ab Exercise
Finance Challenge Ideas
- 30-Day Savings
- Weekly No Spend Day
- 30-Day Investment Portfolio Creation
Productivity Challenge Ideas
- Morning Routine
- 21-Days to Build a Habit
- One Major Task a Week
- Cleaning Routine
Creatives Challenge Ideas
- 30-Day Sketch
- One Book a Month
- 30-Day Journaling
- 1-Month Passion Project Creation
Depending on what you do, you can always come up with challenge ideas by just setting the time frame and specify the tasks.
Tools you need to run a challenge
Now that you have a goal and challenge idea, the next step is to determine the tools you need to run them successfully. It does not have to be complicated or over the top, a user-friendly platform can better help you with your challenge.
Here’s what to look for when you’re looking for a tool to run your challenge:
- Secure platform for content
- Checkpoints and activity tracker
- Landing page creator
- Payment processing
- Chat integrations
- Convenience and ease of use (i.e. a mobile app)
Challenges vs Courses
You might be asking why challenges are better than online courses when they have the same objective: to make progress. If you want to save time and resources, knowing the difference between the two can be beneficial.
Courses take time to develop. It includes formulating your modules, writing, filming, and promoting. They also take time to promote and sell despite having a limited life cycle.
To earn revenue again, you need to devise another marketing plan for the course. You can turn your online courses into paid challenges, which can promote more commitment from the participants.
Challenges create urgency and excitement. They are also much quicker to set up. Some platforms can help you set up and launch your challenge in a few minutes.
How to Run an Online Challenge with Nas.io
Running a challenge requires monitoring, so you need an app that you can access on the go.
Nas.io is a free community platform that has a mobile app where you can run an online challenge successfully. They have all the practical tools you need from start to finish.
Follow these steps to set up your challenge with Nas.io:
- Go to Nas.io/start and create your community. You can follow the “Getting Started” page to make sure you are all set up before launching your challenge.
- Next, go to the “Challenges” tab and click “Create Challenge”
- Create a name for your challenge and set the price. Paid challenges are recommended because they motivate paying participants to finish what they’ve started.
- Set up the schedule and checkpoints. Your challenge can last from one week to one month, or even six months.
- Choose the checkpoint frequency. Participants need to complete the current task before advancing to the next one.
- Add checkpoint details for each day. You can add a cover video as a walkthrough for the checkpoint or text instructions in the description box. In this section, you can upload PDFs, worksheets, or other resources securely.
- Track participant’s progress. Under the “Participants” tab, you can see who has joined your challenge and where they are currently at in the checkpoints.
- Go to the “Configure Sales Page” section. Add a description and customize a URL if you prefer to.
- Add a challenge group chat by pasting the URL. Nas.io lets you integrate popular chat apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, and more. Participants can join this to interact with others.
- You also have the option to add more challenge instructions or rewards to individuals who finished the challenge successfully.
Once you’re done, you can hit publish so you can have a landing page available to your participants like this:
Create your first online challenge with Nas.io
Member Experience on Mobile App
Your members need to download the Nas.io mobile app to join the challenge. They simply need to create an account and to the “Challenges” tab to sign up.
They can see all the details upfront on the landing page, like challenge duration, start date, number of checkpoints, and the countdown timer. You can also encourage them to invite friends and family to join the challenge for a more enjoyable experience.
To join paid challenges, members can pay on the same page. using secure local payment gateways. Apple Pay, Google Pay, and local e-wallets for a more secure and convenient payment.
Other Nas.io Tools to Manage Your Online Challenge
Nas.io is designed to have all the tools for growing communities and content creation businesses. Using Nas.io lets you access practical tools that can help you promote and track your earnings.
Email Participants with Magic Reach
Sending emails to participants is optimized using Magic Reach from Nas.io. It’s a feature that lets you send marketing or follow-up emails to different channels using only one tool. The open-rate tracker also helps you avoid ignored emails.
If you need to send reminders before the challenge starts or nudge your participants, you can utilize Magic Reach to save you time.
Money Tab
With the Money tab, you can track your revenue, transactions, discounts, and payouts. And for more in-depth insights, it provides information for your existing and new memberships and one-time purchases.
Review how your challenge is performing financially so you can make adjustments and add more marketing strategies to improve sales.
Other Ways to Make Money on Nas.io
Nas.io opens a lot of earning opportunities on the platform by just creating a community. These other monetization features can be an avenue to upsell your online challenge and vice versa.
Check out these opportunities you can start today:
- Turn your community into a paid-membership basis
- Sell digital products and online courses
- Offer 1:1 coaching session
- Create paid events
- Start a subscription-based newsletter
For example, you can invite your challenge participants to be a part of your community through paid membership. Or offer them a 1:1 coaching session for more extensive guidance after they complete the challenge.
With creativity, you can create a sustainable income using Nas.io.
Start earning from your online challenge now
Darshan’s 30-Day Martial Arts Challenge invited individuals to a transformative journey of discipline, strength, and self-discovery. It’s a paid challenge exclusive to those who want to master new skills and improve their martial arts performance.
For investors, SGbudgetbabe created the Dividend Investor Challenge with an SGD 150 participation fee. Over six weeks, participants went through various checkpoints to make sure they understood how to analyze their stock portfolio.
Create a community challenge with Nas.io
Conclusion
Running an online challenge can be a rewarding experience for both creators and participants.
By setting clear objectives, creating engaging challenge ideas, and utilizing the right tools like Nas.io, you can effectively manage and monetize your challenge while fostering a sense of community and accomplishment among participants.
Whether it’s a fitness challenge, financial challenge, or creative endeavor, the key lies in providing value, fostering engagement, and leveraging the capabilities of platforms like Nas.io to streamline the process and maximize results.
With the potential to earn revenue, build a loyal community, and offer valuable experiences, online challenges represent a dynamic and impactful way to connect, learn, and grow together.
Launch your online challenge here
If you find this post helpful for running monetizing an online challenge, check out How to Start an Online Coaching Business for more ways to earn.
