How to make you pay for a founder community?
Hey guys,
It's been a month since we went live and a few months of research and building a waitlist before that.
Now, we're a community of 52. Then I turned on the paywall to get more serious members and to improve the quality. But 0 members joined ever since I turned it on.
Tbh I'm providing the max value for a community, from detailed feedbacks, working with members 1-1, offering advice, managing their projects and tasks to add some peer pressure and to make sure they ship, growing resources to help them, so much more. I have put these all on our landing page (join.coulf.com) too.
Again honestly, I lost focus and motivation for a period of 2 weeks but regained track after speaking to a member and got back to work, shipping almost daily.
So where am I going wrong? What makes a founder/product maker pay that I'm not offering?
I worked hours and hours for this, I don't wanna see it fail. I've also got tremendous feedback from here about the landing page and improved it 💯, that can't be it. Is it that I'm starting from scratch — no audience or the community itself?
Personally, my reasons for joining a paid community might be —
Super valid.
We're doing a few of these and trying to reach influential members as in point 2. Wrt engagement, I'll make sure to respond to you if you asked for feedback for example. In cases where I can't, I'll ping someone in the domain, they'll be happy to respond (this has happened). Developer questions are an example of this coz I'm not a dev so I point to someone who is.
Have you taken a look? (join.coulf.com) If I ask you to pay and join what objections do you have in mind?
Thanks for sharing with me and as always, if there's something I can help you with, ping me. My Twitter's at my profile.
Just FYI — I was giving general reasons to your question and less specifically about your particular community. 🙂
I had a look but I'm afraid I'm not looking for additional makers' communities at the moment
Sorry it came that way. You don't have to join, I was asking like your first impressions because your previous comment (tho valuable) was a bit general.
That's fair, it was general indeed. 🙂
Maybe if I had to pick one reason (as that may be what you're after?), it would be #1: Exclusivity and originality of the content. I hope this helps?
Yes, definitely it helps. I'm taking a closer look at all your points and the originality of the content. Few I have spoken also recommended to focus on content, so I'll try and do my best.
Thank you so much for sharing with me.
Creating high-quality content is a long process, it won't happen overnight.
I can help with content strategy and creating content. Maybe you can get value out of us: https://vowelmagic.com/
Thanks for the offer, Indrek!
We own a marketing agency ourselves, everyone said an audience/viral/$ is needed to grow. I'm personally undertaking this and trying to build without any of those. I have added a note of Vowel Magic. How long have you been offering? It'd be nice if you put up more info.
I agree with your #1 reason. Communities are everywhere, why would I join yours? I see you mention a lot of reasons why your community is awesome. But what is the #1 reason someone should join yours?
I checked out the community and here are my observations:
The value prop is not clear- you have mentioned personal relationships, guidance and project management. It's not clear how it would help with these things?
Testimonials are not present- if I were you, I'd wait till I received testimonials before going behind paywall especially because the competition is stiff. If not testimonials then go for case studies. Exactly what benefit people derive from this community?
You should also highlight how this is better than the facebook and indiehackers/reddit communities out there and hence worth paying for.
The copy needs to highlight everything that you've done for members with examples on how they benefitted.
I agree with a few points too. Thanks for sharing.
It's personal because we keep it that way, I don't want to scale this to 1000s. Only a few 100s, the community will remain an inner circle of founders sharing projects, discussing and chatting like they normally converse.
100% yes for testimonials. I shared it below as well. This is common across all my projects, I find it uncomfortable to ask for reviews or such. But today I came out of it to ask our members, so hopefully, I'll put up testimonials in a day or two.
I think I did a good job in highlighting benefits now I may want to rethink that, let's see. Thanks again, Subro :)
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Can you run an open community with premium sections / support for paid members. You could introduce that now & see how many of your current free users base upgrade without hurting your free signups - which have stopped due to paywall.
I'm thinking of this too. I might take this path as a last resort to stay alive because now I think it's too soon to pivot.
Also, won't it have too many sections? Like free and pro will have its own q/a section, showcases etc. I'm thinking of the effects that a two-tier system will bring to the community too. What do you think?
Free & pro are not split completely. All participate in the free sections. Pro gain access to sections containing novel content /.services / support not replicated in free sections. I don't know your product so you have to decide but have seen it work in other popular long-standing forums. Could (should) upgrade all current users to Pro. Tiered communities work fine of course if all tiers get value.
Yea, got the point I'll try to apply this when we make this decision. I have seen it in several forums I participate too, freemium is quite popular in this space.
personally, I would only pay for this type of community if I knew for a fact that there were extremely successful entrepreneurs that I heard of in there that I would be interacting with.
Sounds so good to my ears. I'll get back to this comment when I have onboarded successful founders and entrepreneurs.
brb
Few quick comments:
When you start with free users, it's hard to get them to pay. There are people who are willing to pay, and others who are never willing to pay, and they are almost always different people. You probably need to find paying users in new users not existing ones.
You may also have accidentally acquired users that are not serious or don't have a budget. Founders starting out are often very frugal. Founders who already have revenue are usually more willing to pay.
Looking at your landing page, it's not obvious to me why this is better than Indiehackers or Makerlog which are both free. I personally almost never even use Makerlog even though it is free because I get everything I need from IH. If your differentiation is "detailed feedbacks, working with members 1-1, offering advice, managing their projects" then Coulf sounds more like startup coaching – this may be more valuable and something that people are willing to pay for (assuming that the coaching is good). But right now, those details are buried in text far down the home page.
You're probably aware of this, but your page's social proof needs work.
Hope this helps, and good luck!
I'm looking to find new paying users as well, I don't wanna charge our early members, without them the community wouldn't be here.
Others also suggested I need to highlight the core value/benefits. So I'm definitely thinking about it. As for makerlog or IH, they're meant to be big but we're meant to be a small, inner circle of founders. Which then lets us build personal relationships.
Social proof is an issue across all my projects I'm learning to get out of my comfort zone to ask, collect and display social proof today. Thank you so much for sharing with me. I have made note of your 3rd point especially.
You may want to check out this site for ideas: https://mastermindjam.com
It's for founder mastermind groups, but some of their goals/values sound like what you're trying to accomplish.
Good luck!
Thank you for sharing that resource. I'm checking it out as we speak.
Hi Dinakar,
I guess you've given the answer to the question here. You're a founder and you are seeking help of Indiehackers here for your problems. The kind of feedback you've received here is just priceless from experienced members.
Coming back to your problem, If you are approaching a free community to get answers, then why would anyone pay for a paid community of 50 members. Instead of asking "how to make you pay for a founder community", ask "why would a founder pay for a community?". Once you've collect answers from 100+ founders, refine Coulf and grow it accordingly. Once you've traction and daily engagement, then think about making it paid. Hope this helps.
All the best!
That helps.
The problem is, it is private, so no matter how much engagement I would drive I still have to convince the person who's just looking at our landing page. Things would have been different if it was free. So I'm trying to figure out if all the "fee-worthy" features are conveyed to you. Or the place where I'm going worng.
What you're trying to do is, trying to sell something which you think is beneficial. Like you want to build a community that has a more personal touch and focus on a smaller bunch of people rather than reaching a mass membership. You need to step out of this thinking and first understand whether people really want this?
Yes being private, it is difficult to make a decision whether to pay or not. You can aid their decision making by
Mr Rajan, love your insights here so much I am following you!
Dinakar, in addition, I'm wondering if you're providing value to the small community you have now. What is the engagement like there? How are you helping the founders? If there isn't enough value, no one would pay.
So first, think about how you can offer so much value to these 52 people, then grow to say 300 people. Then offer more value (via a paid version).
Engagement is good for the size. We have like 13 inactive members, few lurk but few really participate in the community tasks and work with me for their projects.
As said in my post, I'm offering value in every way to have them start and grow. Feedback, advice, peer pressure in project completion, managing their tasks... it's going pretty much good with them.
It's like I'm wondering what's stopping a new member from paying. I say all this in the landing page too. I curious to know what stops someone to pay after seeing our landing page.
Thank you so much for sharing with me, raja.
Working on asking and collecting testimonials as we speak. Many in this thread have shared this feedback and it makes sense.
Trial is something that got me thinking, existing members value privacy, today I saw a member share about something and asked us not to share anywhere. So letting people in for a trial is straight-up disrespectful towards that member.
They can just come in spam, looks at our discussions, cancel and repeat. I'm trying to avoid that. This is why we've got a 30-day money back instead. I want to talk to our members regarding trials in our first meetup this month, if we have time.
If that being the case, you can try something like trial members can only read the pots but not publish or reply to posts. This will keep the community spam-free.
That's a good idea. I'll think more about member permissions such as this.
Have you asked your members for feedback? What's preventing them from converting to paid users? Their feedback will be more useful.
Check out latkasaashackers.com if you haven't yet. I actually joined and paid the annual membership fee(not cheap) primarily because 1) opportunity to network with a thousand other like-minded individuals/founders and 2) valuable content from credible founders who I want to learn from.
I'm not looking to convert them actually, they joined for free. Without them, the community won't be here at all. So I want to honor their relationship and ask new members a fee to join. We have our first meetup this week, I want to ask their opinion/feedback regarding this if we get time.
I could've aimed something like that too, but I aimed at keeping it a few 100s to make it more personal. Our concept is validated actually which is why I'm wondering what's stopping a visitor from trusting us with a membership fee.
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Where did you see their pricing? I couldn't. I don't see a Twitter/LI, they only show their Slack, what am I missing?
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I think of it every day about landing pages saying "network" there is a whole thing called LinkedIn for that.
However, as you said, they're paying for it, will likely take it more seriously and respond. It's a plus to have other benefits such as discounts, interviews and amas.
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A paid community is a business in the end. You’ll deffinilty want to run it like a business. One question is, why are you wanting to make it paid? Are you building a business or a community?
I think usually a founder is strapped for cash at the beginning. Would you consider a free trial for a few months for them to see if it provides enough value?
I'm considering a free trial but months is a lot. Our members share/discuss privately with us so you know, letting someone for months is disrespectful to them. I'm going to talk about this in our first meetup this month.
Now it's an early bird but still, I think the price is very low for the value offering and is the future also it'll quite low. There are other ones that charge in $1000 for context. Plus, more members = relationships gone and unmanageable (because I do it 1-on-1).
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Thanks for the offer to your course. Hope you'll get some sales.
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I'm happy with our 50 members but as early members, they joined for free. To move forward I gotta have some cash coming in, which is why the paywall.
Yeah, I thinking of ways to drive traffic. Do you think we offer enough value to justify the payments? Or say if I ask you to pay and join, what objections come to your mind?
Re edit: coulf.com is the old one, I don't share that anywhere and have to update. join.coulf.com is the landing page.
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A lot of our buying process comes from just hunting for deals i.e what we want and not what we need
I could get more conversions with FOMO and deals but I need people who need us. People who want us also would be fine but I believe they'll eventually dislike us because they were induced by FOMO
I can word it differently if you want. I simply want to say, "don't hunt for deals on us, think if we're the right decision and invest in us"
Funds: Again, I want to help people who need help not who needs funds. For them, a bank or a venture fund might be best.
Customers: I'm wrong about the customers part, yeah. I want to change that to Our member says once we have like 3 - 4 reviews. For some reason, I feel shy to ask for feedback but I'm breaking that barrier to ask for feedback today so mostly I'll update that section this week.
You've been so much help in this journey of mine, man. Thank you so much.