📶 How the best online communities monetize
Money-making lessons from Makerpad, Lenny Ratchisky, Visualize Value, Trends.vc, Nomad List, and Bankless
We think that the future is community-owned.
We’ve found that creating a place to gather is hard, but monetizing should be the easy part.
We’re trying a new type of content this week, and we’re breaking down how six of the best online communities are trading value for dollars.
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Biggest takeaways from this research:
Layering monetization options makes communities antifragile. If you are too reliant on one source, that source becomes a liability.
“Build distribution, then build whatever you want.” All of the community builders featured here used their followings to attract a community of likeminded people. Build content magnets, then use your community to satisfy the attention demand from your magnet.
Community builder monetization software is a massive market. Companies like Pallet (job board infrastructure), Memberspace (private memberships), Podia (paid courses), beehiiv (premium content), BuiltFirst (software perks and discounts), and AngelList (syndicates and rolling funds) make it easier to capture value created.
Makerpad (Ben Tossell)
Ways Ben monetizes:
Cohort-based learning community
private community + instructional videos led by experts
$50k in software discounts
Co-sponsored content
companies pay to tell their story on the Makerpad website through tutorials and guides
Job board
companies feature their job postings in front of the Makerpad community and pay a fee for the distribution help
Rolling fund
LPs pay a quarterly fee in order to access Ben’s deal flow and invest with him
Lenny’s Newsletter (Lenny Ratchisky)
Ways Lenny monetizes:
Private content and community
writes long-form essays on growth
free subscribers get one episode per month; paid subscribers get one per week
Job board
companies pay money to be featured on the job board and included in the newsletter. Lenny will tweet featured roles to his 100k+ Twitter followers.
Paid course
cohort-based learning course for people to accelerate their product management career
Visualize Value (Jack Butcher)
Ways Jack monetizes:
Digital products
sells three courses
NFTs
has turned his designs into NFTs on Rarible
Merch
sells clothing related to meme culture and crypto
Consulting
sells his time via high-ticket consulting
Trends.vc (Dru Riley)
Ways Dru monetizes:
Private content and community
writes in-depth research reports on topics that people are interested in
free subscribers get a lighter version; paying subscribers get more actionable items to capitalize on the trends + access to 1,200 community members
Digital products
if people want access to reports but don’t want to become a subscriber, they can buy them as individual products on Gumroad
NFTs
created a collection on Open Sea that gives holders lifetime access to Trends Pro
links new pieces at the top of the newsletter to make sure it is seen by a huge audience
Nomad List (Pieter Levels):
Ways Pieter monetizes:
Paid database and community:
private database of information on different places to live
private community of other nomads
Job board:
companies pay money to be featured on the job board and have their roles shared in the Slack group (members have to pay to post within the #hiring channel)
Ads:
companies pay to be featured and promoted to the group (airlines, insurance companies, etc.)
Bankless (Ryan Sean Adams + David Hoffman)
Ways Ryan and David monetize:
Premium newsletter and Discord:
premium writing with actionable advice for readers to make more money
Job board:
also run a job board and talent collective where businesses can subscribe to get access into their talent pool of readers interested in crypto, Web3, and DeFi.
Ads:
companies pay to be featured and promoted in their weekly newsletter, podcast, and YouTube videos that go out to tens of thousands of subscribers every day
Affiliate links:
recommend products in their daily newsletters and get a kick back on business generated
DAO:
creates and rewards contribution from members through $BANK tokens
➡️ Check out the full list of companies we looked at here. ⬅️
📢 P.S. If all of that was interesting to you…
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Creating a community from scratch
Convincing people to join
Scaling the right way
Monetizing your work
…and we’re just getting started.
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