πŸ’Έ How to acquire your first paid members

A curated guide with resources to monetize your community.

Author

Sofia Terlesky
February 08, 2023

Hey there πŸ‘‹

So far, the month has been marked by big news such as Twitter API becoming paid and Bing and Google rolling out new AI upgrades.

We are all worried about those cool projects built with Twitter's free API, and I wonder how new pricing will impact the industry of third-party apps.

Many features will be gone for sure, and founders will need to change their membership tiers.

So today, our focus will be on creating community value that people are willing to pay for.

This newsletter addresses the process of switching to a paid community featuring Anthony Castrio, founder of Indie Worldwide.

Keep reading to explore:

  • Top profiles of founders building paid communities

  • Interview with Anthony Castrio, founder of Indie Worldwide

  • Latest tweets about audience growth and community

  • Best resources for founders

  • New community & monetization tools launched on Product Hunt

πŸ› οΈ Top profiles of founders building paid communities 

Eric is an SEO specialist and community manager of a network of 8,000+ founders and investors. He's helping business owners connect with investors and peers to unlock new opportunities. 

πŸ’‘ Strategy

  • Offers a job board as a lead magnet to acquire free users

  • Match co-founders, lead , peer-to-peer groups, events, and local chapters for paid members

πŸ† Featured Tweet

Danielle Desir created a niche community to support women of color working in the podcasting industry. She turned her experience as a podcaster into resources for all women looking to grow an audience and improve their shows.

πŸ’‘ Strategy

  • Picked a niche where she had experience

  • Built a support network that offer regular accountability spaces and training sessions with experts

πŸ† Featured Tweet

The Investing.io community born as a place to support entrepreneurial investors. Travis built this community to have a private place where people can "actually understand what you’re talking about" in business.

πŸ’‘ Strategy

  • Free newsletter where potential members can see what's happening inside the community before joining the waitlist and going paid

  • Private Discord groups where founders discuss potential opportunities and share growth strategies

πŸ† Featured Tweet

πŸ“£ Asking for a founder: How to grow and monetize an online community?

Unita asked Anthony how he switched from a free to paid community. Here's what he did with Indie Worldwide membership:

How did you monetize the community?

We didn’t charge any money for the first year and a half. Once I started doing the targeted 1-1 introductions, multiple members offered to pay a subscription fee. I was hesitant at first, but eventually decided to take the money!

Currently, it costs $490/year to join Indie Worldwide which includes:

  • Access to the Slack

  • Weekly 1-1 introductions to other founders

  • Access to all events and challenges

  • Over $20000 in free resources for your startup

We also have revenue from sponsors who pay for shoutouts in the newsletter.

Would you share your tips for effectively managing an online community, specifically for indie founders' communities?

Find a pace of content you can keep up with forever. Most communities fizzle out when the founder gets bored. You have to have some way to keep things moving and interesting.

For Indie Worldwide that’s been our monthly events and challenges. There’s always something new and interesting to keep people engaged. We have lulls and peaks, but we keep moving forward.

On the member side of things, you should always be looking for ways to increase the number of 1-1 connections between members in the groups.

Some ways to do that:

Every time someone introduces themselves in the group, tag 3-5 other members who you think they should meet based on some relevant criteria.

Collect data about your members and then make regular 1-1 introductions between them.

Host frequent live events where members get 1-1 time with each other.

Interview your members and then feature their story to the rest of the community so that people start to recognize each other.

✨ Latest tweets about audience growth and community

πŸ’¬ Best resources

πŸ‘‰ Explore paid communities in Unita

πŸš€ New community & monetization tools on Product Hunt

πŸ“† Events