7 Strategies to monetize Your Online Community

Sep 15, 2022

In 2021, YouTube creator, Mr Beast, made $54 million with his channel. With 103 million subscribers that's easy to understand why he raked in an enormous amount.

You might not have 103 million raving fans however, you are able to monetize your online community. If you've got a loyal following of those who are confident in your knowledge and are able to share your beliefs and beliefs, you are able to earn cash.

There are simple and practical strategies for creators to earn money from their communities, regardless of the size. In this post, we'll discuss seven of these strategies including:

1. Create a niche job board

If you have an industry-specific community -- for example, a software engineering group or social media management community You can make money from it through the addition of an industry-specific job board. It is an industry-specific job database with specific jobs for professionals with specific skill sets, like software engineers.

Hiring managers prefer niche job boards to generic ones since they allow them to get in touch with professionals who have been vetted, get better quality applications to fill open positions faster. This is also advantageous to your local community because they get exclusive opportunities that will help them advance into the next phase of their careers.

Superpath is Jimmy Daly's Content marketing group, is on track to earn over five hundred thousand dollars in the coming year, and the company's niche job board is a significant portion of this earnings. Superpath's job board offers four price plans that start at $299. Companies hiring writers and marketers can sign up to one of these plans in order to post openings and to reach around 10,000 professional in the field of content marketing. These job opportunities are shared in the group's daily Slack rounds and newsletters.

You can get a lesson from Superpath's book by following these easy steps:

  1. Develop tiered package options to your job boards. Make sure each package offers higher value than the companies usually receive with standard job boards. You could, for instance, provide the ability to join an exclusive list of email addresses or even offer pre-screening for candidates.
  2. Curate and publish an online database that lists jobs that are relevant to you. It is possible to find job openings through websites such as LinkedIn and even in conversations taking place in your local community. Publish these openings in Notion as well as in your monthly newsletter. It increases your audience's enthusiasm and can help you collect the early data you need to pitch to businesses.
  3. Put the word out in your local community as well as on social media sites to let companies you know that they have open roles on your job board. Here's an example of a niche job board announcement From Content Writing Jobs.

2. Charge a membership fee

In the Mighty Networks Survey, 77% of creators said they were able to make money has increased significantly when they created an online community that is paid. The truth is, most users are willing to pay to join a community as in the event that they receive additional value, like special content or networking opportunities. A Twitter user said that "if I get to connect with the best people within my field and engage in discussions with them, then it is true that I will spend money to join a community."

There is no need to attract a huge number of members before you are able to charge a membership fee -- communities with just a few members can earn up to $1,000 per month in the cost of memberships and subscriptions.

For example, professional expert in life development and coach Tiphany Kane, is part of an exclusive Facebook community of about 60 members whom she teaches how to grow and monetize their podcasts. They meet thrice monthly for one masterclass in monetization and podcast growth, one hot seat coaching session, as well as a collaborative group.

"Our membership is $42 per monthly," Tiphany says. Tiphany. "Occasionally we'll do an initial $1 month trial membership trial -- which it is super simple to conduct!" If you do the calculation, Tiffany makes about $2,500 each month from monthly fee for membership.

Your goal is to build your readers' trust before asking them to cover any membership or subscription fees. Kristen Bousquet, a content writer and coach to influencers offers:

"Before we started our paid-membership community, or paid advertisements in our FB Group, we invested long hours creating trust. This is something I'm convinced has been the key factor in our success. Through my social media channels I publish a wide variety of free content every single day that helps to instruct the people I am following so that they are comfortable to join our free FB community. We also trust our paid partners, and eventually investing in paying for our members ."

3. Charge for sponsored content

Sponsorship of brands is the sole source of income for around 27% of the creators who have communities, according to the results from The Rise of the Independent Creator. It can be a bit overwhelming to see online ads throwing a scream into the air and businesses will jump at any chance to get their services and products in front of a relevant and highly-engaged audience. The TL:DR: Brands want access to your community, and you should charge the right price for access.

Make tiered bundles for sponsored content. Companies can sponsor the community's events. Also, if you're publishing an annual community newsletter, they can also be a sponsor for one issue and promote their offerings -similar to what Terkel is doing on the Superpath magazine.

Source: Superpath Newsletter

With sponsorships, your community gets perks such as discounts and freebies. For example, Superpath members get free credits from Terkel. Perks such as these will make your community more attractive and will help you draw new members.

There's an additional requirement: Sponsored content should be pertinent to your audience. That's the only way for your group as well as the company involved achieve the best ROI of the deal.

Beth Schubert, the co-founder of Own The Grill , says,

"I tend to be a bit discerning in the products I endorse in my newsletter. I select only companies that I truly like and ones that I feel would be appealing to my reader. As my newsletter stems from a website that is focused on cooking and I frequently advertise kitchen equipment, cookware as well as ingredients companies. Subscribers to my newsletter have a lot of faith in the products I suggest. ."

4. Create and sell digital products

Jasmine Womack, CEO of EMPACT Group, has made more than a million dollars through sales of digital products like paid courses, workshops ebooks, and other eBooks she has sold to her customers. Selling digital products is one of the fastest methods to make money from your community since you don't have to spend a lot of effort or cash convincing the people you want to purchase from.

There's a market waiting for you that you can tap into -- those who know, like, and trust you (they aren't in your neighborhood if they weren't).

Follow these five simple steps to start launching digitally-paid products to your audience:

  1. Determine the pain points of your customers. Go through conversations in your community to discover urgent issues.
  2. Check the concept to determine if the community is interested in it. You can put out an easy post such as such: "It looks like many of us have problems with [x]. Are you interested in a paid masterclass in which I will teach you [solution to X?"
  3. Create the product. The specific procedure will be contingent on the kind of product that you're planning to launch. In the case of an online class, you could start it by using .
  4. Promote your digital product. Make sure to inform the community you live in about your course is available or eBook. You can throw in discounts for those who sign up early.

5. Provide paid subscriptions as well as partnership with brands

If you find a business which is in line with your community's values, you can partner together to create new community perks and activities or increase the number of existing ones.

One great instance of a group that utilizes this strategy is Elpha is a social and professional network for women in tech.Elpha gives annual subscriptions to companies that are looking to employ more women. Community members can opt-in to be informed about opportunities for employment from Elpha members.

Speaking on why collaborations and subscriptions are beneficial for Elpha, Cadran Cowansage shares:

"it's important that we build our community on a sustainable basis with a monetization strategy which our members are supportive of. Elpha's mission Elpha is to create a level levels for women in the tech industry, so helping women discover ways to get involved in the top startups and tech companies fits in with our vision as well as assisting our members. If we work with an organization, that business is making an investment in diversifying their workforce and making the tech industry more equitable."

6. Do affiliate marketing

Based on Zip Recruiter the affiliate marketing industry within the United States make more than 150,000 dollars annually. Affiliate marketing allows you to earn money through advertising for another person's product or service in your community. You get a specific hyperlink or code which you can use for the promotional campaign for the product or service. In addition, you will earn a fee for every sale made through the code or link.

"Affiliate link are straightforward to create and follow, and most brands already have affiliate programs," says Katt Srinivasan who is the creator of SneakQIK. "And depending on the popularity of the creators the brands can also be paid a fixed cost for a period of time in addition to commissions that they pay."

Find out more about and join affiliate programs that are relevant to your area in order to begin earning money through affiliate marketing. If you're a content creator for travel, creator, you can reach out to hospitality businesses to find out if they offer affiliate programs. Start promoting your product or service using your affiliate hyperlink as well as coupon.

7. Run ads

Paid ads are one of most efficient ways of earning passive income from your community. Jessica Gury, the founder of Teuko.com stated, "we don't make our community members pay any dues or membership fees since many families can't afford the extra money to pay for. Therefore, we depend on advertisements that ."

In the case of example, if you own the YouTube channel, you can make money through the in-app ads embedded in your videos. YouTube offers between $0.01 or $0.03 per view of an advertisement.

Ad network partners like Ezoic and Mediavine will connect you to companies that wish to promote their products or services on high-traffic websites. It is all you need to do is create the necessary plugins to allow these ad platforms to display advertisements on your website.

How to choose the best monetization strategy for your community

Experiment! It is impossible to know which strategies will work best for you until you have tried them. However, there are two important things to bear in mind as you try various ways of monetizing your community.

  1. Niche: Certain monetization strategies don't work in certain particular niches. As an example, affiliate marketing is a great method to make money from lifestyle and fashion communities. However, it could produce less results for software-based enterprise communities.

At the end of the day, prioritize monetization strategies that bring benefits for the community. It's impossible to have a community without them!