8 ms·

I launched a paid community in one month

• dmonn 6y ago
  Very impressive. I think there's no better time than today to build niche interest groups like these – and it pays. Starting my dev career, blogging was what ultimately led to my first high-profile internship, which opened so many doors down the line. Big fan!
  • mlent 6y ago
    Totally agree, it can be a game-changer if you invest in it. Thanks for reading my post :)
• timjones 6y ago
  The "launch with 100 free members" strategy worked extremely well to avoid the classic "chicken and egg" problem. It's hard to quantify, but it set the tone for the community with friendly, intelligent, and experienced people. As a new member, that led to an amazing first-time user experience where I got high-quality answers to every question I posted. And now I'm motivated to help out other members just as the first members helped me. Launch revenue is great, but it won't survive unless it gets this right ^^
  • mlent 6y ago
    Thanks so much for sharing your experience, Tim :) I'm really glad that you like the tone (for which I can obviously thank the members). I still have a lot to learn, but excited about what's next for sure!
  • elliotbnvl 6y ago
    Great point. Cribbing this for my upcoming launch!
• phoboslab 6y ago
  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 of sites promoting each other. None with any substance. This feels similar. The blog post and the site is beautifully designed (really!) but I have a hard time figuring out what I'm buying. Is it access to a chat where everyone tries to sell you their "startups"? I guess it's not for me, but congratz to your success!
  • mlent 6y ago
    Haha that's totally a fair feedback, I know what you mean about those people who e.g. make more money teaching you to "be an entrepreneur" than ever doing it themselves. If you're wondering, the community is a private forum where you can get advice from experienced bloggers, feedback on your articles, and attend workshops and meetups. No one in there is selling stuff to each other. Actually you may end up getting access to other people's stuff for free exchange for thoughtful feedback :) Thanks for taking a look and reading, I appreciate it! As I shared in the breakdown, what your impression is could be why most people who join have done my newsletter first. Maybe that's something for me to think about, how to frame it for people who haven't read my newsletter or haven't been following me on Twitter for a while.
    • 9387367 6y ago
      haha, you charge the content creators so they can share their expertise with the content consumers who then pay you!
      • troughway 6y ago
        Yeah, snark aside I do see a lot of front page of HN pitches of products that are essentially this. Effectively a form of information dropshipping. It also speaks to the fact that over the last handful of years HN has been reduced, in a significant way, from people discussing tech-as-a-means-of-business, to something akin to those “business forums” where people share how they made money doing Whatever, But Online (tm). As if just about any way at all to scrape a bit of money from an online presence is a viable way to create a sustaining business that can generate good profits YoY. But I digress, here we are.
• gbrindisi 6y ago
  I love the idea of an aggregator of blogs written by engineers. One thing I noticed is that if you write a blog about tech topics, you will suddenly be competing with the shallow blogs of vendors in your niche. They have people and resources to waste in content marketing, you don't and it's a struggle to be discovered on google by other engineers. A good aggregator that optimize for "discovery" would be awesome!
  • mlent 6y ago
    Totally know what you mean! When I was researching the rankings, I found so many lists that are clearly made by people who are literally just googling other lists and copy/pasting them. The results so far are pretty cool and, in my opinion, should be a signal that it is TOTALLY possible for individuals writing great technical content to stand out for a specific technology.
• AlchemistCamp 6y ago
  It's worth pointing out that it's an Alexa 300k site already (prior to this HN post's effect), which is some objective evidence that author is skilled at building a site and/or community.
  • ZephyrBlu 6y ago
    She has 12.5k Twitter followers which kickstarted her newsletter and subsequently led to this paid community.
    • mlent 6y ago
      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/ https://bloggingfordevs.com/launch-a-newsletter/
      • ZephyrBlu 6y ago
        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.
• kerabatsos 6y ago
  When first visiting bloggingfordevs site, it looks, to me, like an infomercial. I'm not immediately convinced I need to give you my email address in order to gain some personal value. That's not to say it wouldn't possibly be a great experience if I did so - it's just that, from my initial impressions, it doesn't seem particularly unique and valuable. But hey, if it's working and growing, congrats!
  • mlent 6y ago
    Hey there! Thanks for your feedback, that's really interesting because most people have told me they like the conversational style of my writing. No worries if you're not into it, just curious what felt "infomercially" to you. Is it that the email form is kind of immediate? I changed that recently before launching on product hunt -- it used to just be a paragraph and two input fields. Thanks for checking it out in any case :)
    • passwordreset 6y ago
      I can't speak for kerabatsos, but when I see something like "How my paid community made $5K in it's first week", I tend to automatically add "... and YOU CAN TOO, with my special patented secret methods!" Writing like that is bait, because it will generate money from marks without even verifying whether the claim is true. If I take the bait, then I'm a sucker, and I'd rather keep my money and not be a sucker. To turn phrases in that way is sensationalism, and while I'm sure it works for you, I believe it trades short term cash for long term trust. When the next sucker finds that he can't reproduce your results, there's a good chance he'll feel shafted.
• thinbeige 6y ago
  The story sounds quite impressive. Also the post itself, its writing and visual style, are surprisingly well executed. OP must be working 24/7. So, I don't want to be that guy but every time I had disclosed my secret sauce in the past, e.g. how my recent venture sky-rocketed, I disclosed it when the growth was over, never, really never, before. Why should I hand out my treasure map which was months of work to everyone? However, the author wrote that she wants to reach 20K and this will be still a challenge and so she seems quite credible but still, reading this post took some time and I am not sure if it was well invested. I feels like the typical r/entrepreneur post how-I-made-x-in-y-weeks but, again, much better executed.
  • mlent 6y ago
    Hey there! OP here. Yeah, I know what you mean. I'm trying this "build in public" thing which is more transparent than feels natural to most people. Who knows where it'll go, but I think it's cool and useful to see people's "early work", not only a final polished result. So, trying to contribute some of that stuff myself! That said, I'm not sure where I wrote I want to reach 20K? I don't foresee reaching that in terms of either revenue or subscribers in the near future. Thanks for reading, even if you aren't sure about it. Was there a part you think was redundant or it was just a bit long-winded?
  • striking 6y ago
    There's plenty of room for communities out there. Being willing to share your secret sauce doesn't necessarily ensure you have direct competitors, it means you are establishing a foundation that others can build on. And it means others may contribute to your efforts. It's a little like open source software. It's pretty unlikely that every SaaS provider needs to write their own DB and gain a competitive advantage that way. Why not work together to maintain one? Communities like these then succeed a little more based on their own merits and what they add beyond the table stakes instead of just happening to get the right combination together at the right time. I help run a community myself, but I'm tired of doing so for getting back very little of what I give. This post has given me some ideas on how to continue my journey a little more sustainably.
    • 6y ago
• elliotbnvl 6y ago
  After a brief skim through, Monica's content looks awesome. I subscribed and will be looking forward to her emails!
  • mlent 6y ago
    Welcome, Elliot! Stoked to have you :D
• DoreenMichele 6y ago
  Average pay for writing isn't that high. I think an angle you should focus on is that technical blogs are a means to develop technical careers. Most blogs don't make money or don't make much money. But if you have a skill, like programming, that can command an excellent wage or salary, a blog can help you learn your craft, show your expertise and network. However, you will need to back that up with real world examples, not just hypotheticals. That's the way to avoid being thought of as "Someone getting rich telling people to buy my book about how to get rich" when that's your entire schtick.
• _jy3k 6y ago
  Blogging for X "Learn to grow your blog as an X without an existing audience". I guess this is an ultimate blog. A fixpoint of blogs. Possibly a quine would be something analogical for actual computer programs.
  • antonvs 6y ago
    Appropriately enough, a Y combinator fits the bill.
• tomcam 6y ago
  Inspiring story, awesome lede.
  • mlent 6y ago
    Thanks Tom, glad you liked it!
• maz1b 6y ago
  Nice to see a Weekend Build fellow here! Great stuff Monica.
  • mlent 6y ago
    Haha hey Azib! Hope things are going well for you, looking forward to the next update on MedAngle :D
• BLanen 6y ago
  > Taxes and healthcare are super expensive here in Germany 1. It's actually not. I assume your primary audience is American so this is just a strange statement. 2. This is your personal after-profit spending and has little to do with your venture's numbers.
• nbzso 6y ago
  You are cool, talented with strong working habits. Please, rewrite your article and remove information how much money you have made. It feels wrong. How My Paid Community Made $5K in Its First Week. May be: How I started paid community for developers successfully. This may seem like good copy but in reality with this kind of "transparency" you are losing a lot of valuable members. Personally I don't understand the business model of this product. And have logical questions: People pay for access to closed community and knowledge. Did you share revenue with your members? Because if you'r product is access to closed information channel pricing is too high. As a customer I don't understand for what I am paying. There are a ton of resources in any form for topics that you provide, what is differentiation factor?
• xenihn 6y ago
  I really like the theme! But spending $10 on a Something Awful forums account sixteen years ago is the last time that I'll ever pay money for the privilege of producing monetizable content for others, with no forms of profit-sharing for producers (posters, in the case of a forum).
• ramosu 6y ago
  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.
  • cinntaile 6y ago
    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.
• finikytou 6y ago
  I don't understand. Once I suscribe am I one of the experts that others will pay for? Its sound like a pyramid scheme lol
• thih9 6y ago
  > I already spend over $300/mo on SaaS tools to run the community Would be interesting to know the details. Congrats on your project!
• gnicholas 6y ago
  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, congrats to @mlent for launching this, adding value for so many people, and taking the time to share her experience!
  • mlent 6y ago
    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!
• BMSmnqXAE4yfe1 6y ago
  I have noticed that the way to make money on the internet is to provide services to people wanting to make money on the internet.
• timwaagh 6y ago
  Congrats, it looks like you effectively monetised your network. I have met some people who wanted to do this, did have something to offer yet failed quite spectacularly to the point of becoming homeless and destitute. I guess it all depends on who you know. A lot of people (like me) are simply unwilling to pay more than something is worth in terms of time invested. But it proves that if you are popular amongst the right kind of crowd that is able and willing to spend, it is possible to do it.
• mindhash 6y ago
  I think community and habit is really what we pay for in education, we just dont realise it. If the Paid packaging of the product had been course + community, we wouldn’t have seen the negative messages here.