#68 Should You Offer A Free Community?
99% of the time entrepreneurship feels like pushing a boulder uphill … but occasionally you reach a really incredible lookout with a nice bench to relax. You take in the view and find new inspiration.
I felt like I was chillin on the bench this week.
I attended Craft + Commerce with about ~300 other creator entrepreneurs and it was the best conference I've ever attended.
Recently one of my clients spoke to her community about the importance of raising your floor — a concept from Dan Martell.
When you raise your floor then you’re setting a new standard for yourself. You get to choose what league you play in.
At one point during the conference my friend Hollie (brand designer) and I were sitting on a bench with Ali Abdaal, Jay Clouse, & Amanda Goetz, and we said to each other “we are raising our floor right now”.
It matters what rooms you’re in, and it matters how you choose to invest in yourself. I’m not saying you need to join a 30k mastermind. C+C cost my business ~$2000 all in. The ROI? Priceless.
I’ll absolutely get new clients from being there but even more important – I made friendships that helped me raise my floor.
Go to events. Host events. It’s one of the best ways to grow a community.
Speaking of community…
One of my favorite sessions was with Gina Bianchini, the founder & CEO of Mighty Networks, a community platform.
Today I'm sharing one of my favorite takeaways from her talk.
Let’s get into it –
Regardless of what platform you use, Gina is an incredible authority on community building. Gina co-founded Ning with Marc Andreessen before building Mighty... so she's been around the SV block.
Here's a pic of me and Gina after my fan-girl moment
According to Gina (and me 💁🏻♀️) connection is the #1 driver of high retention. Gina said for communities that have 99% retention on Mighty, fostering connection between members is their main focus.
Connection. Not content.
Gina described community as peer to peer relationship building — aka don’t build a fan club. So if connection is the real value... how do you actually monetize that?
There are 4 ways to monetize community:
Memberships
Courses (or programs)
Challenges
Events
For all of these strategies you need to think about the experience you're curating and the connection that comes with that.
Should you offer a free community?
According to Gina, the answer is no.
Gina described paid communities as having 3 different models:
Freemium
Paid
Paid + Paid
Freemium
In the freemium model, the community experience is free and you pay for programs or courses on top of that.
Paid (my preferred)
In the paid model, you pay one fee to get access to the community experience and curriculum.
Paid + Paid
In the paid + paid model, you pay to get access to the community, and then you pay additional fees for things like challenges, events, and courses.
Based on their data analysis of customer communities, free communities convert significantly lower than paid communities into other paid offers.
The freemium model just doesn’t work for communities the way it does for software.
But why?
Even though customers often buy for content or curriculum, they find the real value in connection. If that’s free, there is much less incentive to upgrade.
Curate incredible experiences, help your members connect with one another, and charge for it.
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