Are you community entrepreneurs?

Though communities are as ancient as humanity, online communities are only as young as the medium in which they exist.
Facebook introduced its group feature about ten years ago, and it took the users some time to realize the power that these groups held.

This exciting feature enabled anyone to create their own “tribe” — people with common hobbies, interests, beliefs, professions, or preferences. It brought people closer together and it still does.
Since technical skills were hardly required and starting a group was only a click away, millions of users created groups and invited their friends to join. Some of these groups remained empty while others grew into thousands and even millions of members.
Being a community leader, which started out as a hobby, gradually turned into a demanding daily task, usually performed alongside the leader’s day job.
Community leaders who were wise enough to understand the commercial value of their community became community entrepreneurs.

Who is a community entrepreneur?
Community entrepreneurs are one or more independent individuals who create or administrate an online or offline community space in which members meet to share common interests and motivations.
These individuals realized that community members can be a very engaged and focused target audience, and, so, they looked for opportunities in which to profit from the community commercially while providing value to the members and maintaining the intricate web of connections between the different members, which forms the community.

Normally, when entrepreneurs introduce their product to the market, they labor over every new customer. This challenge doesn’t exist for community entrepreneurs, since they embark on their business journey with an engaged, devoted and trusting audience. Of course, not anyone who has opened a Facebook group can do that — only those who have powerful, engaged communities that give huge value to their members.
Notably, not all thriving communities are community entrepreneurship. For example, when a community of users forms around a great product launched by a company, it cannot be considered as community entrepreneurship, as the community was created around the product rather than the product or service being created to answer needs and demands brought up by the community members.

Outlining the map of interests of the community members
Community leaders who begin to think of their community as a business have to adopt a business way of thinking and identify the interests that motivate their community members.
In some types of communities, these are easier to identify than in others. Let me give some examples:
A high-end designers community provides a great audience for recruiters or design software companies. In this case, it is in the interest of businesses outside the community to reach the community audience as customers or employees. The community leaders can easily profit from this motivation, while they provide their community members with employment opportunities and relevant product offers.
On the other hand, in a local neighborhood community, owners of small local businesses will probably agree to pay a certain fee to be featured in the community and access new relevant customers.
Some business-owner communities will be willing to pay the community leaders for leads; others will pay for knowledge; and yet others, for the benefit of being a part of an exclusive social group.
To summarize, community leadership is a demanding task, but once community leaders change their perspective on this task and view it as a business rather than a hobby, the sky is the limit.
All they need to do is ask themselves some simple but significant questions:

1. is my community meaningful for its members?
2. Do these members perceive me as an opinion leader and do they appreciate me personally?
3. What value do they get from being a part of this community?
4. What problem or need do my community members have and how can I solve it for them?
5. Who will be willing to pay, how much, and for what services?

I would love to tell you more about my product - Comonetize. Feel free to ask :)