Why do people pay for exclusive communities?

Figure this, a person creates an awesome product that everyone loves. People are clamoring for it, because they’re getting so much value out of it. They thank the creator or founder for the product and give the creator all the lauding and praise.

But there’s only one problem. The founder is not being paid.

After a while, with no way to monetize their business/tool, they eventually decide to shut it down.

The same thing goes for paid communities like Weekend Club, Starter Story and Ness Labs. There is always going to be a person managing the communities, and whether this person is visible to outsiders or not, they are the lifeline of these communities. They help create meaningful conversations, engage with community members and make sure that the community feels welcoming to those who decide to join it.

In another vein, think of the paid community as an investment. Having a paid structure means that the community builder can actually make a living out of managing the community, instead of relying on volunteers who might have little time to dedicate themselves to the community.

Moreover, having a paid and gated community just changes the quality of discussions generally, because people seeking to make a quick buck and promote their tools literally need to pay to get into the community first.

Source: I pay for some communities, and the discussions and friends I make there make the investment worth it. I'm not saying that free forums like IH or Reddit are any less great, but they provide a different function.

👋 Kirill. Late to the party but just wrote this: Trends #0014 — Paid Communities

🔍 Problem
Free communities tend to be noisy without a barrier to entry.

💡 Solution
Paid communities have requirements, financial or otherwise.

As Derek Sivers says, the higher the price, the more they value it.

Barriers change these groups. Members are more engaged. They aim to justify their investments. Not fuck around or troll.

*******

The report continues on to Players, Predictions, Opportunities and Summarized Links to dive deeper

Ministry of Testing is partly a paid community. It also runs events, previously physical conferences, but now switching to online.

We do so much for free, articles, forum, Slack, AMAs, Masterclasses/etc, even developing a friggin curriculum where much of it can be attended for free.

Our other option, apart from paid tickets that we do (and I just see events coming under the banner of 'paid community'), is to go after ad/sponsorship revenue. It's a terrible business model. You end up being in the hands of the companies. They push their agenda non-stop. Waste so much time. And ultimately drive businesses to not deliver the value that the community deserves.

MoT prides itself on doing the best it can to deliver real value with a very dedicated focus on trying to positively change the industry for software testers. With 9 employees, this does not come cheap.

So people have to pay, do do pay. Really, especially now, we need more people to support it. But they pay because the content is relevant and it can't be found elsewhere. They pay because it supports the community. They pay because it helps them become better testers. They pay because they know we invest in everyone as much as we can to create a better testing world.

And many of them pay because life without MoT would just be pretty miserable for them. They would have nowhere to gather. And they would be stuck with googling for help and only coming across shit content.

FWIW, I'm part of 4 paid communities atm. I see it as my education and sometimes just as a way to support people who deserve to be supported. I figure so many people have supported MoT with such generosity, it's only right I do the same back for other people.

The only thing I could think of is this analogy: if you organize a party and ask people to RSVP at no cost, there is a lot of network effect that tends to determine if people show up. "Didn't cost anything, are you going? Yeah, I know, I'm still open to do whatever. Let's see. It might rain". And then there is parties that cost €€ to get into. People are literally bought into it. Start discussing wardrobes "what will you wear? Let's ride together". Etc.

Money buys buy-in.
If it's free, you need critical mass. Critical mass can hardly be bought. People then often only come to get, rarely bring.

Nice thought-starter though!

I paid $30 a month to Fizzle for over a year mostly because I enjoyed their podcast. I went through a few of their video tutorials, like the one on blogging but mostly I liked Corbet, Chase, Steph & crew and wanted to support their work.

Providing something useful and/or entertaining is probably the most important factor, but affinity for the creators is also a huge factor.

If an expert in a particular topic creates the community, markets the community, and adds a lot of their expertise, then they can decide to put up a pay wall and charge money for it. It's basically their business in the community format. This is a scalable method of knowledge transfer compared to one-on-one consulting or coaching.

Also, some customers prefer to enter an exclusive community and are willing to pay for someone else to do the filtering. For example, a dating website meant for professionals can charge a monthly fee for access to their filtered community.

To understand more why people pay for subscriptions in general, I recommend the book The Automatic Customer. In it, the author presents nine different types of subscription business models and how customers benefit from them.

I'm not a member of a community that I pay monthly for. However, I can see some value. The biggest is that everyone there is serious about whatever topic the community is about. Very few people are going to spend money on something they have at most a small casual interest in. This cuts out background noise, and improves the kind of advice and support you'll get from fellow community members.