Setting up an Online Community
Hi Folks,
Looking to build up an online community for a specific use case / segment and trying to understand the revenue models that I can look to explore down the line.
Would love to hear from your ideas around things that have worked for you and ones that haven't
Advertising is definitely one - but what are some other novel ways to tackle the revenue piece - at least enough to pay for the infra and management costs
Thanks a bunch!
The way I did it was to build up the community first then figure out what to sell them. I ended up doing a mixture of paid events, sponsorship/advertising then a paid membership model.
i agree with @rosiesherry — don't worry about monetization until you have a community that is "working"!
and you can boot up one without having to pay a lot of costs.
Thanks @rosiesherry and @8bit really appreciate the response. That's the thought process at this point for sure.
I take that y'all are using services like AWS on the backend to manage sites? Database costing seemed a bit pricey but its pay as you use - so I wanted to kind of get a sense of it from your experience
I'd imagine I will have to sustain it for at least a year to see the uptake etc before even thinking about a potential revenue model
you can start earning revenue fast. you just need to know where you're going:
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/celebrating-6-short-and-amazing-weeks-0-to-177-in-mrr-36784986fa
This + bear in mind that organizing a "working" community takes more time and effort that you expect.
omfg. you are totally right. it is NOT easy!
A lot of our customers build up a community then once the members understand its value and love being a member, start charging membership fees for premium content and access to parts of the community. If you decide to go that direction and need a platform to do so, check out Panion. https://panion.com Happy to demo it for you :)
I haven’t solved this yet, but wanted to chime in to say I’m currently working on it too. One thing I’m exploring right now is offering the product for free as lead-gen up to a specific community scale. Then converting it to a paid model at that point.