TD;LR this is a breakdown of launching my paid community / private network last week and I'm seeking advice from other paid community owners of what I should do next.
For context: I started building my podcast about a year and a half ago. In that time we became a global top 100 podcast for Entrepreneurship and we rank in the top 1% of all podcasts out there. We’ve built a loyal community of women who are building their own CPG/DTC/ecomm brands and after interviewing them about what they wanted and needed, we decided to launch our (niche) paid private network that offers mentorship (from the uber successful women featured on the show), access to our resident experts like performance marketer, business coach, systems and processes queen etc and top business resources.
The numbers:
Beta group/founding members $39 per month of $349 annually
Full price $199 per month or $999 annually
**We want a price point that allows us to hire really epic experts intro the group / have healthy budget to do cool sh*t like give away $1000 small biz grants and also to have a generous affiliate payout for the people spreading the good word. In other words, we’re aiming for a smaller group of women at a higher price point rather than mass at lower.
Pre launch:
I started talking about the network (hype club) about 5 or 6 weeks before launching. That included:
12 podcast episodes that mentioned it at some point or another
6 newsletters that mentioned it here and there + another 3 specific emails in the 3 days prior to launch (and 1 on launch day) > our email database is 1100 folks as we only started building that more recently
Consistent mentions on personal + brand social media
I would say in hindsight we took a soft but consistent approach to this early stage, especially as we wanted a smaller group that could help shape the culture and magic before we start onboarding full price members.
The efforts of that looked like:
I had a waitlist of 130 people before we launched
Out of those 67 people signed up in launch week for FM rates (25 in less than a hour, 50 by the end of the first day and a few over the remainder of the week)
55 folks joined mon monthly subscription
12 folks joined with one off annual payment (this was more than expected)
My goal: If I have 500 people continually subscribed at full price that gives me a 7 figure annual rev business, (not taking churn into account).
IMO this is a modest goal that’s highly achievable through the following;
I’d love any further insights, tips or strategies if anyone in here has a paid community and open to sharing.
I’ve been on a few zooms with other people running paid communities and learnt a lot that way so happy to share anything in more detail or hop on a call if it helps someone :)
In summary: What would you do?
Your go-to-market plan is really solid, so it's hard to add much to it!
With your affiliate program, you could partner with other podcasts to be a guest on their show. I'm sure that other hosts would love an opportunity to earn recurring commissions. For smaller podcasts that don't have sponsors today, you may even be able to get the host to record a 30 or 60-second mid-roll about your community with their affiliate link in the show notes.
My Parent's Club community has grown mostly through paid ads on Facebook & IG. YouTube ads and Google PPC are next on my list to test.
Can't wait to see Female Startup Club grow! 🚀