Reached $1K MRR for the community
by Monica LentAfter converting the Blogging for Devs community to paid (for new members) at the end of October, we've reached $1K in MRR.
A few metrics to color this number:
- Public launch on Nov 2nd
- 130 paid members (approx.)
- Most people subscribe to my newsletter (launched in May)
- 67 monthly, 32 annual, rest are lifetime
- Fewer than 5 cancelations so far
- $800 actually recurs monthly
- $10.8K total revenue
For now, the MRR almost covers the cost of running the community (tools + guests), minus my actual time 😅
But it does feel good to reach this milestone by the end of the year!
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Congratulations Monica! Happy to be part of the community! 😄
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Thanks Florin 🤗
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Congrats on this acheivement, Monica! 🍻
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thanks jatin! glad you're part of it :)
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So goooood. I'm having so much fun following your journey, because I firmly believe in your vision haha.
With my clients, I've been emphasizing the importance of personal blogging to build their brand and a moat around their product. If they're devs, I'll definitely refer them to your community haha.
Ultimately, SEO is a multiplier. Most of the time, you need an audience to make it grow. And it's not even because of compounding upon traffic. It's an indication that you're effectively communicating your message to folks who want to interact with what you offer. That's why community-based blogging is so important to gain traction.
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Hey Julian! Yeah it's interesting, on the one hand I am passionate about dissolving these severe misunderstandings about SEO developers seem to have.
At the same time -- it would make the landscape more competitive, so it feels like a well-kept secret 😂
At least in the software and programming niche, there is so much opportunity. It's wild when you're using to hanging out in more competitive SERPs.
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yeah! this is so cool.
i HATE that it's costing $10k+ per month to manage... that's so be pure profit!
love it understand more... can we chat?
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It's not $10K per month, but about $1K per month.
I shared a bit below about where the expenses come from (lots of tools + paying guests) but happy to chat if you have questions on top of that, John!
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I was one of the original members of the community (although I’ve fallen off a bit these days) and I know first hand the value you get from this community is immense.
Congrats Monica! I hope the next post is for 10K MRR.
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Hey Sean! Nice to see you here & thanks for the encouragement. Hope everything is going awesome for you ^_^
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Congrats, Monica.
Ending 2020 at a high note.
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Thank you Falak!
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Congrats, Monica! Great milestone to hit!
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Thank you Matt :)
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Congrats Monica!
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Thanks Davis! It's been cool to see your community grow as well ^_^
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This comment was deleted 3 months ago.
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Hey Marlon! TL;DR - Yes, there are a lot of expenses involved with running a community, in part because I'm running recorded, virtual events.
Tech is a few hundred bucks (Circle and ConvertKit are $99 each per month, then more tools I pay annually, like Ahrefs, Vimeo Pro, Otter.ai, Zoom Webinars, Adobe Creative Suite, etc). It adds up very quickly.
But I'm also inviting expert guests to join for livestreamed AMAs, and they are all paid. Doing two guest sessions per month + the tools easily gets me to $1K or more.
Does that clarify? I could also just do it with 100% material made by me, but I'm not an expert on everything, I think bringing in more perspectives makes the community more valuable.
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This comment was deleted 3 months ago.
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Haha yeah, it's not simple nor is it cheap. You quickly end up in "enterprise" territory with a lot of tools. Glad the response was useful somehow!
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Hi Monica, I've been following your journey and love what you're doing.
I started a paid community back in July and have done a number of expert AMAs including some big names but never even considered paying the guests. Perhaps this is a cost you could reduce. In general I don't like asking people to do things for free but if they believe in your mission or will get exposure, they may well do it.
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Thanks for your input on this, Kieran! I totally get your point, and sure, people have offered to do it for free.
Feels weird to me though, to pay some people and not others, for basically the same thing. It's only 2x per month so it's also not like this cost will grow with the number of members, so I'm fine with it.
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