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I launched a paid community in one month

monicalent.com

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Re: I launched a paid community in one month

#61

Post by ZephyrBlu »

mlent wrote: post #36
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She has 12.5k Twitter followers which kickstarted her newsletter and subsequently led to this paid community.

Hey there, OP here - yes, that's true. If it's helpful or somehow relevant since you brought up Twitter followers, I started with about 9K when I launched the newsletter. Wrote about that process here, though maybe you've seen it already? https://bloggingfordevs.com/launch-a-newsletter/

I skimmed that article and your PH launch one :).

I brought up your Twitter followers because it seemed relevant to your accomplishments in this post, given that they were directly responsible for ~1/4 of your email list and likely indirectly responsible for many more subscribers (Signal boosting your PH launch, for example).

Having an audience seems to be the most important thing for a lot of product launches, so I'm always curious about how people built their audience.

Re: I launched a paid community in one month

#62

Post by gbrindisi »

grecy wrote: post #56
gbrindisi wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I can give you my perspective here, since I am part of Monica's community. I started blogging late this summer and quickly found how hard it is to write and be read. As an engineer I of course started researching how to increase my readership and I ended up down the infinite sewer hole of content marketing and "how to game search engines" aka SEO. (If you want to understand why the web looks like this and why…

> I of course started researching how to increase my readership Do you mind if I ask why you want to increase your readership? What is your goal as a dev who also blogs? I ask because I've spent a decade building my blog and social media following (which I have to say, is pretty decent at this point), but there has never really been a "goal" or "purpose", and I'm really only thinking aobut ways to monetize it well no…

Of course.

1. The main goal of my blog is to help me structure my knowledge and improve my writing. (I am a non native speaker and I am constantly struggling with my comms.)

2. Secondly, related to gaining readership, a goal is to maximize future opportunities: use the blog as a facility to expand my network, and consequently as a way to build a personal brand.

Re: I launched a paid community in one month

#63

Post by gbrindisi »

SaxoAnglo wrote: post #16
gbrindisi wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I can give you my perspective here, since I am part of Monica's community. I started blogging late this summer and quickly found how hard it is to write and be read. As an engineer I of course started researching how to increase my readership and I ended up down the infinite sewer hole of content marketing and "how to game search engines" aka SEO. (If you want to understand why the web looks like this and why…

How much have you spent so far?

The monthly fee.

And I got at least three thorough advises from Monica or a community member on how to improve various stuff on the blog, that I could've easily been billed for by a normal consultant.

Re: I launched a paid community in one month

#64

Post by cinntaile »

ramosu wrote: post #48

I appreciate how some people are able to release so much of their ego and write things like "I did this in just X days", or "I'm only 15 and did that". Not that I'm a genius like them. But sometimes having these ego bursts really helps getting some attention.

Don't be fooled by lines like that though. Usually this is a result of countless hours of hard earned experience that they can draw upon to produce something in a short period of time.

Re: I launched a paid community in one month

#65

Post by ganafagol »

mlent wrote: post #47
9387367 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

haha, you charge the content creators so they can share their expertise with the content consumers who then pay you!

I actually pay the experts who do the workshops or sessions :) All part of valuing the work.

Monica, for those of us trying to make up our minds about whether this is just more hot air or you are actually on to something of value, do you have a short list of say the top 10 topics that those workshops/sessions are about?

I don't want to be rude. We just get so much of this stuff somebody promoting something about talking about building something that helps people build something to talk about promoting stuff. That's so many nested meta levels that I'm as a dev calling BS after about 2 of them and go away.

Unfortunately I read your blog post as something similar. It was about how you funnel people into some community that helps others polish their writings so they get more reach. That's 3 levels right there.

Here is you chance to show that the chain ends after those 3 levels and there is actual non-meta content waiting at the end of that chain.

Re: I launched a paid community in one month

#66

Post by mlent »

ganafagol wrote: post #65
mlent wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually pay the experts who do the workshops or sessions :) All part of valuing the work.

Monica, for those of us trying to make up our minds about whether this is just more hot air or you are actually on to something of value, do you have a short list of say the top 10 topics that those workshops/sessions are about? I don't want to be rude. We just get so much of this stuff somebody promoting something about talking about building something that helps people build something to talk about promoting stuff.…

Hey there! I get the skepticism, though I should also point out...I didn't post this topic on Hacker News.

So I never intended it to be here, just trying to answer some questions as I get that people from HN have way less context about me or the community than people who've been following the community and newsletter for 6 months on Twitter!

So yeah, it's not meant as self-promotion. It's part of my effort to "build in public", as I mentioned in another comment.

My main takeaway in the article is actually that a lot of people skip the step of "providing value first" and jump to something paid.

Whereas I've been writing a free newsletter for 6+ months, which many people have actually offered to pay for and told me are "better than most paid courses". I've done weeks worth of free consulting over email for subscribers and they have had really cool successes.

Anyway, we do have a public events page if you want to see the kind of stuff going on: https://bloggingfordevs.com/events/

As I mentioned at the end of the blog post, I'm personally preparing an SEO Workshop which'll be given in less than two weeks. The membership is literally $12/mo and refundable, and a workshop like that alone would cost 10-20x that if given in a conference setting.

Not sure if this is "enough" for people here, but as long as members who are there are happy and feel like their investment is compounding, that's gonna have to be my metric for success.

Hope that contributes to the discussion.

Re: I launched a paid community in one month

#67

Post by mlent »

gnicholas wrote: post #53

Just in case others missed it, the lion's share of the revenue was not recurring — it was lifetime purchases ($3,420 @ $180 each). The recurring revenue for the first month was about $2k. I'm also not clear on the "in one month" aspect of this, since the author stresses that most purchasers were people that were on her 4,000-person newsletter list. Presumably that was built up over a much longer time period? Still, c…

Hey there! OP.

Yes, that's exactly my point -- that in fact reaching this point has been a six-month effort.

I didn't post on HN myself, and therefore did not choose the title either.

Anyways, thanks for pointing that out and I'm glad you got something out of the article!

Re: I launched a paid community in one month

#68

Post by fakedang »

robertlagrant wrote: post #60
pmachinery wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> About 20 years ago I was coming across a website called something like filthyrichguy.com (I can't remember the exact name). Possibly the Rich Jerk. I don't know how much money they had, but they certainly lived up to at least half the name. (Edit: It occurred to me that there were probably loads of these things; I always just assumed, maybe wrongly, TRJ was the original/worst/best.)

Maybe I should start a community of bloggers telling each other how to better compete with each other. But what to call it? The Something Jerk? Maybe...Circle?

HackerFeuds

Re: I launched a paid community in one month

#69

Post by viluon »

mlent wrote: post #66
ganafagol wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monica, for those of us trying to make up our minds about whether this is just more hot air or you are actually on to something of value, do you have a short list of say the top 10 topics that those workshops/sessions are about? I don't want to be rude. We just get so much of this stuff somebody promoting something about talking about building something that helps people build something to talk about promoting stuff.…

Hey there! I get the skepticism, though I should also point out...I didn't post this topic on Hacker News. So I never intended it to be here, just trying to answer some questions as I get that people from HN have way less context about me or the community than people who've been following the community and newsletter for 6 months on Twitter! So yeah, it's not meant as self-promotion. It's part of my effort to "build…

I guess the fact you couldn't provide a simple list of 10 topics speaks for itself...

The public events page does nothing to explain the aforementioned meta levels away.

Re: I launched a paid community in one month

#70

Post by RightTail »

phoboslab wrote: post #6

About 20 years ago I was coming across a website called something like filthyrichguy.com (I can't remember the exact name). This site described how rich the guy owning this site was and how you could become rich too. How? By just buying his book, of course. I was mesmerized by this site and it's audacious design for a solid hour or two. I searched around the web for more information and ended up in this circle jerk o…

It was TheRickJerk.com I remember reading their book.
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