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My paid community made $1.2K on the first day!

Edited to add: To be clear, I've run the community for free for a couple months. I've also been running the newsletter behind it since May. It was my first day of charging all new members, not my first day of running it 😅

This milestone came after personally emailing about 60 people from the waitlist out of roughly 120. About 11 people signed up the same day they got the email.

(If you're wondering about the numbers, it helps that a decent number of people choose the lifetime plan)

People on the waitlist had to fill out an application form, so they were comparatively "qualified" compared to a list of random email addresses.

Very soon, within minutes, I'll be launching it to the full email list, with over 4,000 subscribers 😱

I have no idea how many of those subscribers who'd be interested already joined the waitlist or have been following as I build it on Twitter, but we will soon find out.

The soft launch was also a great way to get feedback on the landing page from members. This is the final version...for now :)

https://bloggingfordevs.com/pro/

  1. 3

    Congrats on the great result @momoko!

    I've been in the community since the beginning and totally recommend it. People are very nice and the community is very engaging. Totally worth the money. If you're looking forward to stepping up your blog game - it's the perfect place to be.

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      Wow thanks Dmitrii, was not expecting this :) You actually were one of the first people I was sure I wanted as a member based on our email exchanges.

      I'm really excited to see how your blog develops during your journey of building in public over the next year!

  2. 2

    Congrats on the launch, Monica!

    I've got a lot of value out of your blogging for devs course, and now I'm super excited to join the community as well! Always great to learn more about SEO and writing when you're trying to build an audience.

    1. 2

      Thanks Thiago, glad you'll be a part of it :) Excited to follow what you and Stefanni are up to!

  3. 2

    That is awesome Monica!

    Seen you around in the Circle Community. I'm building www.localseocommunity.com on Circle, and plan on monetizing once I hit 1,000 members (currently at 730).

    1. 1

      Hey Davis, seen your community too. I'm a big SEO geek but know nothing about local SEO! Seems like you are on a super promising trajectory to monetize soon :) Interested to hear how it goes for you!

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        So are your early users staying free-forever then, or will they need to pay if they already joined previously?

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          They'll be free forever.

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            That's cool, that's what I plan on doing too

  4. 2

    Amazing work!

    1. 1

      Thanks for being Member #1, Dom! And joining the welcoming committee 🥳

  5. 1

    absolutely beautiful landing page!

    keep going! so cool.

  6. 1

    Congrats and well deserved! Very inspiring to see you growing, I ve been following you since the beginning :D I also started creating content for devs around UX!

    Launched my first course pre-sales and made 24$ so far 🤩

    Also published my first free tutorial about rapid prototyping and user testing

    Would be cool if you are up for connecting and having a call to discuss about our journeys :)

    Keep it up!

    1. 1

      thanks so much jim, all the best with your course!!

  7. 1

    Looks great!
    What tools did you use to build this web app?

    1. 2

      Thanks Brent! It's a custom theme on top of Circle, integrated with a website built with Firebase and Material UI. But the main discussions UI and what you're probably asking about is Circle: https://circle.so

  8. 1

    Congratulations! Love the landing page, I'd sign up even if I'm not a dev 😂

    1. 1

      Thanks Andre! Means a lot coming from a marketer :D

  9. 1

    Congratulations! Can I ask, what software are you using for the community? Cheers

    1. 1

      Thanks Jamie!

      It's a combination of things, but the main thing I'm using is Circle: https://circle.so

      It's heavily integrated into my website via API and I use a custom OAuth provider to enable a single set of login credentials between the two "sites".

      1. 1

        Appreciate that! Thanks for the info :)

  10. 1

    Amazing! Congrats on the success.

    1. 1

      Thanks Dominique, appreciate the support :)

  11. 1

    "Edited to add: To be clear, I've run the community for free for a couple months. I've also been running the newsletter behind it since May. It was my first day of charging all new members, not my first day of running it"

    Hi Monica,

    First, well done on the community launch. I am considering a paid-for community and keep wondering the best way to go about it. The above edit clears up some questions I had.

    But some other questions, if you do not mind sharing your experience.

    So you have seeded the forum with free users, which according to the LP number 100+. Will this 100+ be charged at all? Or will they have lifetime access for free? What happens if they do not contribute as you would like? And haven't you given up a lot of income by not charging these 100+ free users?

    Presumably these 100+ seed users are your most engaged users, so what makes you think the next 100+ (who pay) will be as engaged? Easy just to lurk than contribute on a forum. Will you remove paying users who 'do not give back' as per your LP? If I am paying for your community, then surely I can lurk if I want to.

    What motivates the 100+ seed users to stay? Yes, they have free access, but you have already collected $1.2k on the back of their forum contributions. So, why should anyone contribute to the forum but only you make money from the subscriptions? How do you explain that to your community? And what can I get on your forum about blogging that is not available freely on IH or elsewhere?

    This risk I see with paid-for communities in general is that readers have already been conditioned to you supplying the content (to create the audience in the first place), and the forum simply becomes a paywall for extra premium content, where the users sit back and expect you to generate more content, rather than actually participate to a high standard.

    Sorry, quite a few questions there, which I hope do not come across as critical. Would be interested to know your thoughts.

    1. 3

      Hey there - this question is super long, but I cannot find a reasonable way to answer it without writing something even longer :)

      I'll just put a bit about how I'm approaching this, which I hope will answer your main questions:

      My focus is on building a community with a strong positive, constructive, and learning-focused culture which includes both total beginners and seasoned experts.

      The value proposition is not that I'm going to make tons of fancy content, although I plan to add it -- I'll be focusing on quality over frequency. For the audience, developers, it's fine -- they are blogging in their free time and don't need to read a 10,000 word guide to X every week.

      Re: Learning the same stuff anywhere on the internet. Well, you can't. That's why my newsletter became so popular. No one (in terms of developers) who doesn't rely primarily on Twitter for blog traffic has ever really covered these topics. I'm filling a "gap".

      The value proposition is accountability, inspiration, quality and thoughtful feedback, meeting and learning from successful bloggers you otherwise wouldn't connect with, and helping the next generation of great tech content creators. And you get to have this discussion in a quality environment, free of spam and shameless self-promotion, because people pay to be there.

      My role is to reinvest in the community. I can do that by paying community members to do expert livestreams and AMAs. I can do that by writing original content and running workshops. I can do that by giving them in-depth feedback, or tagging other experts in the community who know more about a topic than me.

      I hope that makes sense how I approach it!

      P.S. No problem with lurkers :) Only people who do hit-and-run self-promotion. What people eventually learn is the more you help others, the more they want to help you. Who would've thought!

      1. 1

        "My role is to reinvest in the community. I can do that by paying community members to do expert livestreams and AMAs. I can do that by writing original content and running workshops. I can do that by giving them in-depth feedback, or tagging other experts in the community who know more about a topic than me.

        I hope that makes sense how I approach it!"

        Yes, many thanks for the reply. Got a good feel for your approach.

        The paragraph above is instructive. Does seem as though the forum's income will be used to create extra original content by experts to help ignite discussion -- so the venture does appear (at least in part) driven by members paying for fresh content.

        The conclusion I am reaching is that paid-for communities can't really work unless the money is indeed reinvested into the main contributors. In that way, the approach is not really that different from a typical paywall blog -- other than a private message board is tacked on. That said, I hope your site works well and will read your updates with interest!

        1. 1

          LOL I still don't think we see it the same way, but it's alright. I will be posting some updates :) Good luck with your decision about whether to go for a community for your project!

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            Yes, please do post updates. Would love to see the concept work out for you!

  12. 1

    Congrats that's amazing

    1. 1

      Thanks Rodney :)

  13. 0

    You made 1200 dollars from 11 people? This seems a bit unlikely.

    1. 2

      Why would that be unlikely?

      I have a lifetime plan for $180, and an annual plan for $96. Most people chose those options.

      1. 0

        No problem, I'm happy for you if you have this much success. It's just incredible that you have such a high conversion rate at that price level 100$+.

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          Yeah, I can qualify it by saying most people are not totally "cold signups". I've been sending a free newsletter for 6 months and invest a lot of effort to build personal relationships with subscribers. As I wrote originally, all the invites were sent personally :)

          It is a high conversion rate, but I also built the waitlist by asking people to describe what they wanted out of the community and what they could contribute back.

          I think this heavily filters who ends up on the waitlist in the first place!

          Hope that gives some clarity on the conversion rate. I'm not expecting this conversion rate to apply to my full email list, but we're going to find out in the next few hours :)

    2. 1

      She said that 11 people signed up in the same day she sent the emails, not that she only have 11 paying users in total.

      1. 2

        Hey there! Thanks for jumping in :) Indeed, those 11 were my only paying members on Day 1, which helped me reach the $1.2K.

        By now it's closer to 20 and Stripe says $1.6K as the balance, and I've sent out more invites.

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    This comment was deleted 2 years ago.

    1. 2

      So glad we met Stefanni!

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