What’s your favorite type of community?

My girlfriend says yesterday’s email was confusing as hell.

Fair enough.

In hindsight, it probably could have been three different emails.

So today, we’re going to slow things down, zoom in a little bit, and focus on the structure of community. Since I’ve been entertaining the idea of using community as way to both attract more aligned clients into my business and serve them better, I want to get your opinion.

Because if you’re here, then what you think matters.

After all, an email newsletter is simply a form of community. It’s not just a one-way communication, it’s a two-way conversation. All you need to do is hit reply, and boom, instant connection.

So when it comes to membership communities, how do you like them structured?

At the time of writing I can think of three primary models:

Free, paid, and freemium.

Now, free communities on their own, in my opinion aren’t that useful. Personally, I don’t value them as much. And I find the people leading and creating them have little incentive to make them truly valuable in their own right. On one hand they tend to lack quality content, but more importantly, they lack structure and direction.

The only time I’ve seen free communities work really well is when they’re hyper specific.

Create a complete solution to a narrow problem that’s at the very top of the funnel in your business, and the people who effectively make their way through are now ready to solve the next bigger problem. And perhaps they’ll consider taking you up on one of your paid offers or services to solve it.

All to say, free is not bad, but is that really what you’re looking for right now? If so, I’m all ears, but you gotta let me know what problem actually needs solving.

Next up, we’ve got paid.

Straight up, paid communities, by their very nature, have people invested in making them great.

I don’t think I need to add more detail, other than “who really wants another paid subscription right now?” being the major drawback. And so the responsibility of articulating it’s value in advance takes much more work, but I’ve found in general, the content can cover a broader range of problems, and dig at each one more precisely and more deeply over time.

Then we’ve got the freemium model.

Which on paper, sounds ideal.

Get started for free, then graduate to paid when you’re ready. Best of both worlds, as they say. But in practice, you end up mixing the free crowd with the paid crowd in the community section. Which has both benefits and drawbacks depending on how you look at it.

Invested community members help the newcomers along, and the newcomers bring all the new exciting energy.

But for the seasoned member, it can sometimes feel like sitting and the kids table.

Which is always fun, but might not be the exact needle mover you need right now in your business.

Of course, all these can be mixed and matched, separate groups or tiers created, and various membership platforms allow for different customizations. (I.e. everything is possible…)

But in general…

How do you prefer to participate in communities?

For me I get the most value out of the paid communities I’m in. Enjoy a good free trial, but after that, I’m all in. What about you? Most of the free communities I’m in seem to get ignored, have fewer actual resources available, and less engagement from members. But I’m open to hearing about how I’m wrong on this…

And then the freemium model…

It’s new, it’s different, I’ve less experience with it… maybe it’ll suck me in, maybe it won’t.

But that’s why I want to hear your experience.

Which do you prefer?

Free, paid, or free-then-paid (i.e. freemium).

Best,

Kevin Hood