How Pack Hacker Turned a Niche Idea Into a Membership Program

When Tom Wahlin first documented his travels, little did he know that his content would resonate with so many people—let alone that sharing his passion would be the key to starting his own business.

Tom is the founder of Pack Hacker, a website and membership platform dedicated to creating gear reviews, guides, packing lists, and other content to help people travel smarter and more efficiently.

Below, learn more about how Tom grew from a solo founder to running a content and membership business with a full team of travel experts. Plus, he shares his best tips for building a successful membership program of your own.

Lessons from Tom

• Passion and consistency beat perfection—launch before you’re ready and iterate based on what resonates with your community
• The key to building an audience from scratch is delivering consistent, valuable content
• A membership model requires focusing on people over data
• Members don’t just consume content; they bring their own expertise that drives product development

From Viral Article to Viable Membership Business

Tom spent 11 years as a UI designer and front-end developer before getting the itch to break out on his own and travel the world. During his travels, Tom wrote an article on Medium about the backpack he was using, the GORUCK GR2. “I lived out of that bag for two years,” he recalls. “One day, I laid everything out and wrote an article on everything I carried with me, because that's pretty much all I had to my name at that point.”

The Medium article went viral and ultimately shifted the trajectory of his career, marking the beginning of what is now Pack Hacker. “It’s one of those things where I just did it for myself, for fun, and people ended up liking it,” he says.

Fast forward to today, and Pack Hacker is now run by a full team of travel experts, with a studio based out of Detroit. The website has built such an engaged community around its gear reviews that when Pack Hacker launches a video review of a single travel item, around 1,000 people view it on the first day.

How Pack Hacker Used Membership to Support Growth

By December 2019, Pack Hacker had built a strong community of travelers and gear enthusiasts. After experimenting with early monetization strategies through Amazon affiliate links, they decided the best way to formalize the community and content strategy was by adding a paid membership option to their website. They launched Pack Hacker Pro in April 2020, just as COVID-19 halted global travel. But the community showed up anyway. Nearly 100 people signed up for a membership when they launched.

“I think those people understood it was going to be a tough few years for us and they were excited to get on the Pack Hacker bandwagon and support us,” Tom says. Those early members provided critical stability during the travel industry’s most challenging period, allowing Pack Hacker to survive and ultimately grow.

Built on Memberful, a Pack Hacker Pro membership entails everything from exclusive content to discounts on gear to access to the Discourse community. Below are the benefits Pack Hacker members receive as part of the community:

• Expert guidance: Members get access to the Pro Video Library which includes gear deep dives and detailed packing videos showing how the Pack Hacker team fits over 60 items in a single bag.
• Practical tools: Pro members also get access to a custom packing list builder, complete with weight calculations and airline compliance requirements. “As a member, you can go in and put together your own packing list and share it with the community,” Tom explains. “You can talk about it and figure out ways to improve it.”
• Community and connection: Pack Hacker’s private Discourse forum enables member-to-member expertise sharing and provides direct access to the Pack Hacker team for personalized gear recommendations. Tom compares it to Reddit: “I love Reddit, but our community is more tight-knit,” he says. “You get to know people and get to know their preferences.”
• Financial value: Pack Hacker also offers member-exclusive discounts on gear. “If you end up buying a certain number of items from one of our packing lists,” says Tom, “you can usually pay for the membership with what you save.”

What an Exclusive Membership Community Made Possible

The membership model transformed Pack Hacker’s relationship with its audience. Rather than chasing view counts and algorithmic favor, Tom now focuses on delivering value to a defined community of invested members who provide qualitative feedback and product ideas.

“When you’re publishing public content, it's easy to get lost in the numbers,” Tom explains. “But when you start to think about the actual humans that are consuming your content, you get more invested in the community, and they become more invested in you.”

He explains that having a group of people invested in your brand means that they bring their own feedback, ideas and passion to your community. For example, Pack Hacker’s curated packing list tool—now a cornerstone membership feature—emerged directly from community conversations about what members actually needed. Member input helps prioritize which bags to review, which features to test, and which tools to build.

The community also serves as a constant reminder of the team’s mission. Tom describes an in-person interaction he had with a fan who visited the Detroit studio. He walked them through Pack Hacker’s collection of over 1,000 tested bags, helping narrow down options based on specific travel needs. “That’s what membership does: it lets you connect with someone individually and helps you remember why you started doing this in the first place.”

From Membership to Acquisition

Tom didn’t know it at the time, but establishing a membership model ultimately built the foundation for Pack Hacker’s next chapter. In January 2024, Pack Hacker was acquired by AllGear Digital, a leading publisher of outdoor and active-lifestyle media brands. Pack Hacker joins a growing network of top media brands, including GearJunkie, Switchback Travel, The Inertia, and more.

The acquisition validates what the membership program helped Pack Hacker become: a trusted voice in the gear enthusiast community with proven business results. By building the content business steadily and strategically adding a paid membership program, Pack Hacker was able to grow on its own terms before scaling with additional resources.

Rather than compromising editorial independence or financial control, the membership model helped prepare the business for acquisition while still maintaining the community trust that made it valuable in the first place.

Lessons From Building a Membership Platform

For creators curious about starting a membership website, Tom offers practical advice about building a membership model:

Launch before you’re ready

Tom quotes LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman’s famous advice: “If you aren't embarrassed when you launch your first product, then you waited too long.” He views membership and content in this way—just start with something small.

He adds to this sentiment by recommending the iterative “how to build a car” approach. Start with a minimal viable offering and add features incrementally based on member feedback, rather than waiting for perfection.

“One thing that’s beautiful about the world we live in now are no-code tools and plugins,” says Tom. “You can get up and running really quickly, and figure things out as you go.”

Plan for the long game

While Pack Hacker was ultimately acquired, it wasn’t built for a quick exit. Tom spent years grinding through 12-hour days, weathering negative YouTube comments, and creating content with uncertain outcomes. He recalls feeling like only about 10% of early content gained traction. “You spend all this time creating content that doesn’t get a ton of feedback in the beginning,” he reflects. “You have to have your passion drive you through to continue building it. I don’t think it makes sense to start a content business with an exit strategy.”

Focus on human connection

Data and analytics matter, but the real power of a membership model is creating direct relationships. Members bring their own expertise, ideas, and passion, ultimately turning your community into a collaborative space rather than a broadcast channel.

For creators worried about finding their audience, Tom offers encouragement: “The internet is just so big,” he says. “If you’re starting a membership, you’re going to attract people that are like you,” he says. He points to Stitchdown, another Memberful customer, as proof that passionate niches exist everywhere.

A Membership Program Built for the Long Term

Pack Hacker’s membership success stems from a simple formula: deeply understand a specific audience, consistently deliver value they can’t find elsewhere, and maintain authentic relationships rather than optimizing solely for metrics.

The membership model allowed Pack Hacker to survive an industry shutdown, grow a full team, and build products driven by actual user needs rather than assumptions. For Tom, the financial sustainability of a membership model matters, but the daily interactions with real people who care about the work matter more.

“You can rally some passionate people around a single idea, just like we did with our one-bag travel community,” he says. “It’s incredible.”

Memberful helps independent creators, publishers, and communities run paid membership communities without giving up control over their revenue, brand, or audience. See how Memberful can support a sustainable, member-first business.