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Social media channels are excellent platforms to showcase your expertise and establish yourself as a leader in an area. A very common way to monetize the online community you’ve built is through advertising revenue. If you’re considering a long-term strategy, it’s a good idea to explore a new avenue – your superfans.
Your superfans are those members of your online community who are strongly supportive of your content, highly engaged and interested in paying for your content or products. In this article, we’ll share ways through which you establish a direct connection with your superfans and create new revenues.
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6 Strategies on How to Monetize a Community –
1. A Members-Only Site
With a membership site you’re giving your superfans the opportunity to access exclusive content. This works best if there’s already a demand for your content. You can add a paywall and connect to options like Zapier, Stripe, or PayPal for payments. Survey your community and aim to create the right value for paying members. Besides bonus content, this exclusivity may look like access to webinars, archives, special prices, eBooks and so on.
2. Create an online course or coaching program
According to Statista, the number of users for online learning platforms is projected to be 244.00m by 2027. Online communities enjoy the value they derive from the accounts they follow. Designing an online course is a way to build on the tips, tricks, and hacks that you share with your community. Courses offer more value to your subscribers.
Self-development is a popular concept, and online courses/coaching make it more accessible. These two options are an excellent way to monetize a specific skill. Besides designing courses, you can even offer consultations or advice in a specific area. In these individual interactions with members of your community, you offer them your time and expertise in return for a fee. For common issues in a specific area, you could even transition to group sessions.
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3. Selling merchandise or products
Superfans often like to show their support for a cause, personality, or brand by wearing or displaying merchandise. You could offer products with your logo or brand colors for sale to your online community. Not only does this generate a stream of revenue, but it also makes members of your community feel like they’re part of a dedicated few.
Don’t forget that you can also sell digital products. In fact, these are easier to create and often require a lower investment. Examples of digital products include e-books, music, and so on.
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4. Tickets for events
Tickets are a popular option for monetization. It could be for a virtual or in-person event. A great part of the attraction people have toward events is the potential to forge new connections and expand their networks. However, in order to keep up this path of monetization, you will have to ensure that the event you plan goes off smoothly and offers your audience good value. Calling in a supporting organization or service to help with logistics, placement and so on, may be a good investment.
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5. Start Sending Out a Paid Newsletter
A product that requires a real commitment to sustain, newsletters are a good way to touch base with your audience. Especially since, in this case, you’ll be sending them specialized content directly to their inbox. You can use specific platforms like Mailerlite or Substack to design your newsletter and send it out to members of your community. These platforms also offer analytics and data that would be useful to you in understanding the types of content that are more popular amongst your subscribers.
The most valuable part of your business is the people of your online community. It’s your job to respect them and keep growing the size of your audience. The true test is being able to balance the relationship you have with your engaged online community with monetization efforts.
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6. Don’t forget to optimize the channels you already have
While developing these new streams of revenue, don’t ignore the channels of income that you’ve already established. These platforms are also the best way for new followers or subscribers to discover your profile. It’s a lot of work to maintain all your social media channels, and if you’re not able to, prioritize the most effective one. Cut down the channels that aren’t strictly useful.
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Double Your Revenue With Carrot
Carrot’s platform is designed to make your work easier and your community’s experience much smoother. On Carrot, you can share your very own personalized branded link that showcases all your collections and content. Your branded links can be shared on all your social media platforms, so it increases traction as well as revenue. Additionally, you can share affiliate links with your content. Besides this fabulous feature, on Carrot you:
- Have the tools to create content for paying subscribers
- Export a list with the email addresses of your subscribers
- With the above, you can publish directly to their inboxes
