For the past year, I've been running a paid membership community called The Creator Club. I've learned a ton, what worked, what didn't, and why I'm now completely switching things up by making The Creator Club free. If you've ever considered starting a paid membership community, this episode is for you because I'm gonna break it all down. And by the end of this episode, you'll know why I'm making this change, what it means for you, and the lessons you can apply in your own journey. I started the creator club in October of 2023. It's been right around 14 months in total that I've been doing it. To be honest with you, at first, I was afraid nobody would join. I have a, I don't know, relatively engaged audience. Numbers wise, you know, I reach a lot of people every week, every month, but I didn't know how many people would join. I didn't have a wait list for the creator club. I had a domain and a dream. Before it was called the creator club, it was called content creator circle because I didn't know if I wanted to pay the money for the premium option of having the creator club.com. I think it was a 1,000 plus dollars, and I wanted to validate my idea that anyone would join before I spent that type of money and Content Creator Circle was the minimum for a dotcom domain. But people joined pretty quickly, and my fears were at ease. The days were long during that period because I was just hoping that it wouldn't be like one person and I would have to have this weird, hey, it's just us. Because I was having weekly live calls and there were a lot of resources in there. And if you've ever done any type of online launch, I'm sure you can relate with that feeling. But right away, I started quickly AB testing various landing pages to dial in the messaging, and I think I ended up with around 15 new members that 1st month. So fast forwarding to now, the creator club has gone through stages of growth. It hasn't been as explosive of a transformative community I initially envisioned. I work in marketing. You know? I am victim to the marketing brain, which if you haven't heard this before, but, like, marketers are great at envisioning what's possible and then sometimes thinking beyond, you know, what actually happens, which is needed. Right? You have to be a little bit unrealistic when you're starting to build something that's never been built before, but there are some truths and hard lessons that come across with that. And that's all on me. You know, I learned some hard truths about what content creators truly want and how they engage with communities. One of the obstacles I ran into right away was the messaging, which, like I said, I was AB testing on landing pages, in promotion through paid ads, in my email newsletter, things like that. The main two obstacles I would run into with messaging, which isn't unique to the creator club, but I'm sharing it here because you will run into these options at some point is number 1, who's this for? And number 2, why do they need it? The better you can answer who this is for and the better you can answer why they need it, everything sells easier. You can make things clear as possible. But the lack of clarity, especially when I started out content creator circle, made the messaging to dial in difficult up until, I would say, maybe a month or 2 ago, and I'm continually refining it. But when I started out, it was like, is this for, you know, entrepreneurs? Is this for podcasters? Is this for content creators? Just those 3 alone are 3 different categories of people, I will say, and they have different needs. And so articulating in the messaging of who this is for, you have to be pretty agile with the testing and messaging on the landing pages and ads, and that was just something that I had to figure out as I'm building it. Oftentimes, people will do that research before they launch something, but I'm like, let's just build it as we go. And then answering that why they need it piece, I developed all of these resources which I put in the creator club, but just because you make a tool doesn't highlight why someone would need it. Just kinda like you could go to Home Depot and maybe buy everything you would need to build a house. Doesn't mean that people are gonna just start building houses because they can get access to Home Depot Even if you just gave them, like, a credit card where they could just buy everything, money almost even isn't the objection at that point. It's answering that deeper part of why do they need it. And then to wrap a little bow on that, how does that all apply right now in the age of AI and, you know, it's an election year and there's, like, just so much always going on. It doesn't matter really what season you're in. You're constantly needing to make a case for why this is needed, and this is for that person right now. And targeting a paid community at a low cost, like say $20 a month or so is an interesting scenario because paid memberships require constant value delivery and a clear ROI. Doesn't matter if it's $20 a month, $200 a month, $2,000 a month, $20,000 a month. The mission is still the same. Constantly add value, have a clear ROI for the people that are joining. And again, this all comes back to the importance of, like, simplifying the messaging so that it aligns with audience's needs and is a complete balance, which is something that, you know again, this is all on me. It's something that I was struggling to nail in. And I had done member surveys, people that didn't join, why they weren't joining, and got some really interesting feedback. And a lot of that is what I'm sharing with you right here in this episode. There is a reality of sustaining engagement in a busy digital space, which the creator club was hosted on Circle. And if you're not familiar, Circle is kinda like, Kajabi, Mighty Networks. These places where you can create online communities, and they cost around, like, $49 and up per month to host. But just like last week's episode where I was highlighting these different social platforms and there was 10 of them, having a community is just another place where people would need to go. And if you're already going to a few different social apps, you have your email, you have YouTube, you have Reddit, you have any other online sources, there's only so much time in the day for people to check-in. A majority of people are not familiar with a community like Circle. So many more people are used to it today than ever, but the fact remains, like, it's not in someone's habit of checking in communities, which leads me to the 1% rule, which is basically a rule that says 90% of people in any online community space, something like the creator club, Reddit, even social media apps, 90% of people just lurk. They don't actively contribute. 9% of people will basically engage from someone else's post, and 1% of people will actively contribute new content to that space. So looking at the numbers, that basically means if you had a 100 people in an online community, 90 people are just lurking, 9 people are gonna comment on other people's posts, and around 1 person would make new posts that sparks the engagement. And this rule of thumb is super interesting because you start to see, like, the scale needed if you wanna have an actively engaged community. You need a lot of people, which leads us to the shift, the new direction. So after these 14 months, I'm pivoting the creator club to something more accessible, which is a free discord community for creators. The messaging is simple. The creator club is an online space for content creators who want to grow and connect with other creators. By moving to discord, this allows us to focus on connection, sharing resources and building a space where creators can help each other with less barriers. By making the creator club access free, it increases the reach. The operational demand will go down on me versus not doing weekly calls and not needing to really be thinking a lot about how much more I can cram into the creator club to make it worthwhile for the investment for the people that are paying to be a member. And having said that, future opportunities do remain open for being able to, like, re include resources that were once in the creator club, things like the weekly live calls, which I am going to miss, prompt libraries, things like that. I don't have a timeline for future opportunities beyond the creator club whole migration to Discord and starting to thrive there. That's gonna be my focus, But it is something that I do want to bring back in is more live calls and interactions, more so around the accountability and connection beyond just something text based, which is what Discord will be text based connection. So for those of you who are running or considering memberships in the future, think about this. Sometimes simplifying is the best move, and what's more important, complex offers or truly serving your audience. If you're seeing a paid membership community as a potential revenue generator, I would offer you this to consider. Number 1, the number of people in your audience. Does it make mathematical sense to have a paid membership community? And if it does, what do you need to charge? What's the amount that they would need to pay and what's the amount that you would need to earn to make it worthwhile? Setting aside marketing brain for a second which you need that, I wanna say delusional but unrealistic thinking like what it could grow into, it's not some lottery ticket when you do a paid online membership community that people wanna pay it. That just because you charge $20, you know, people will pay that. The fact of the matter is it could be just as easy to sell one thing for $10,000 than it is to sell 500 things for $20. If I didn't have my company content clips running the past couple years, I don't know that I would have been able to keep the creator club going as long as I have because of a need for revenue generation, but I've picked up so many lessons and insights over the past 14 months that doing things how I have done them have been so worth it. And last things I wanna just end on is remember to consider the core goals of your audience. If that's connection, like what type of connection? Is it live interaction? Is it quick check ins? Is it accountability? And then resources, do they want access to something? Do they need help doing something in their workflow or whatever it is? And when do they want it by? Thinking about like a paid membership community, that's something that's ongoing and usually long term. And if the goal of your audience is to solve a quick solution then something long term like a paid membership community might not be ideal. Also experimentation is part of the process. So whatever you're doing similar to what I've broken down in this episode, remember to document, remember to gather, remember to learn from your experiments because that's key to your own growth and how you're gonna be able to not keep making the same mistakes and finally get traction. And then last, it's okay to pivot. As creators and making something like a paid membership community, I've found it would be really easy to fall into the sunken cost fallacy. Thinking because I've been doing it for say 14 months that I need to keep doing it because I've already put in 14 months. It's okay to pivot and it's okay to want to innovate something knowing that long term, it could be better for everyone involved rather than focusing on, well, I put in this time. Nobody cares how much time you put in. Really, they care about the goals that they're trying to reach. And my job is to try and help people like yourself reach those goals faster and get unstuck and make less of the same mistakes. So you're invited, of course, to join the new discord for the creator club, which I'll make sure to link in the show notes. The whole goal with the creator club again is to just network and connect with other content creators. There's other communities, you know, Reddit and Facebook groups and things like that. I don't really trust them. I feel like there's ulterior motives with those places, and I found also some really bad advice. So you can see me as a bit of, I guess, a moderator of the creator club. And I think the speed at which we could share these new resources will be better served in Discord versus another community like Circle. I know I already said, like, last thing, but really the last thing is being a creator means evolving. This is just one step in my evolution, and don't forget to take the next step in yours. I'd love for you to be a part of the creator club, and I hope to see you in the discord. See you in the next one.