MONETIZING YOUR COMMUNITY

HOW A NEW GENERATION OF “COMMUNITY ENTREPRENEURS” CAN MONETIZE THEIR COMMUNITIES

In the first of our series on monetizing community, Gali Meiri, Founder of Comonetize shares how her platform can help community builders add an invaluable resource – and generate revenue

FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) is a powerful motivator behind the “Great Resignation”. Over a very short period of time, our lifestyle and work habits were turned upside down and inside out, revealing the unique experience of working from home, managing our own time, being around the people we love, and even increasing our profits.

Millions of people suddenly realized that the only unrenewable resource is their time, and they want to make the best of it by leaving low-paid unrewarding jobs and seeking a remote or hybrid alternative that will allow them to manage their time and income better. The gig economy, on an upward trajectory for the last decade, got a steroid booster shot from the post-COVID working class.

The Great Resignation leaves the economy with a workforce of people who still need to make a living but insist on working on their own terms, giving rise to a new generation of entrepreneurs.

In my work, mentoring and advising community builders, I’ve come to realize these entrepreneurs split into two broad categories;

The creators and the community entrepreneurs.

Let’s talk about creators:

Creators are opinion leaders or influencers, with a devoted audience of fans, readers or followers, who are willing to pay for the content they create, share, or teach.

Creator economy is exploding, and it seems every kid has a profitable YouTube channel with a million subscribers, or has just sold their GIF as an NFT for north of $15,000.

There are hundreds of platforms that allow creators to connect with their fanbase and translate this connection into cash. Patreon, which started as a kind of “tip jar” for artists became one of the leading digital platforms, recently valued at $4B.

Creators and influencers can now profit from an audience of any type or size, but — and there is a but — the audience has to be there specifically for them. They must be interested in what they have to offer. It needs to be an audience that wants to connect with the creators, consume their content, learn from them, or be part of their specific network.

As a creator, there are almost endless ways to monetize an audience, most of which end up with the follower paying the creator a monthly subscription fee.

But what happens if you have a great audience, but without the guru status?

What can a community leader who doesn’t shine like a rockstar do when they know they can still provide great value for their community and profit from it? Enter, the community entrepreneur.

The community entrepreneur

Community entrepreneurs identify the needs of their community members and the business opportunities that present themselves in that particular audience. They develop solutions that benefit the community while they profit from them - a win-win situation.

Community entrepreneurs think of their community as a trusting, devoted audience, whose needs they are fulfilling by building a startup.

Some inspiring examples are NomadList, which brings together a community of 25K nomads and gives them tools to network and work remote easily ; “Freelancing Females” community, which recently launched a job board and a directory site and BIG Festival community of game developers, which launched a career site.

My point is, you don’t have to be gurulevel to create and monetize a community – you just need to open up your mind and seek a solution outside the “creator” product pool. Creators are generally quick to monetize their communities, whilst community entrepreneurs, whose primary motive has often been to help their members help each other sometimes fail to recognise the value they’ve created in bringing their tribe together.

If that resonates with you, I can help you understand how valuable your audience is for recruiters, companies and businesses in the ecosystem and establish efficient ways to convert this demand to income. We’ve created career sites for over 200 community leaders, delivering value for members and recruiters, and- of course- profit for the community leader.

Gali Meiri is the founder of Comonetize – community career site builder. She’s a community manager and a community monetization expert.