Community Revenue Models
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The speakers discuss two contrasting approaches to monetizing communities, drawing from their experience with Club LTV and other successful community businesses.
Key Points:
-
Free Community with Sponsorship Model (Club LTV Example):
- Invite-only, curated group of ecommerce owners
- Monetized through advertising/sponsors
- Value comes from network and information sharing
- Less operational complexity
- Company called Aventa used this model:
- Focused on Chief Information Officers
- Sold for $250M (17x profit)
- Generated ~$50M in revenue
-
Paid Membership Model (Examples Discussed):
- Pros:
- Can grow quickly
- Fun to run if interested in topic
- Low startup costs
- Highly profitable
- Cons/Learnings:
- Need slow, controlled growth
- Operationally heavy
- Complex people management
- Challenging to hire for
- Must be meticulous about member quality
- Pros:
-
Key Success Factors:
- Growth should be intentionally slow for quality control
- Longer growth timeline often means more sustainability
- Requires careful attention to member dynamics
- Need strong operational systems
The speakers note that both models can work, but require different approaches and have distinct operational challenges.
Sam Parr
Host of MFM and fitness influencer
Sam Parr is a serial entrepreneur and business media pioneer.
In 2016, he founded The Hustle, a business news media company that started in his kitchen with just $12 and grew to eight figures in revenue.
Sam led the charge in making newsletters popular when few believed in their potential.
After four successful years, he sold The Hustle to HubSpot, a publicly traded company. Now operating as HubSpot Media, The Hustle reaches 3 million readers daily, employs a team of nearly 100, and has been the launchpad for dozens of its staff to found their own media companies and newsletters.
Sam remains the host of the popular business podcast, My First Million, and continues to start and sell companies. He also co-founded Hampton, a highly vetted community for entrepreneurs, founders, and CEOs, and teaches people to write better through his platform, Copy That.