Hello, and welcome to Beyond The Broadcast.
I'm your host.
My name is Seth Resler.
I am the community building consultant for Paragon and the founder of community marketing revolution.
And this beyond the broadcast is a series of conversations that, uh, I have with people who are outside of the public media industry, but we talk to them because we want folks who were working within the public media industry to learn about the world of community building.
And we figured the best way to do that is to go outside of our own industry and talk to some folks who are professional community builders.
This is what they do and see what we can learn from them.
I'm excited about today's conversation because today, we are tackling a topic that I'm sure, uh, is on the top of minds of a lot of public media broadcasters, and that is monetization.
How do you actually generate revenue from communities? And so my guess here today to talk about this is the founder of Women and Tech SEO.
It is a global community in marketing and tech.
It was founded in 02/2019, and Women and Tech has over 10,000 global members and 50,000 followers who connect through online groups and in person conferences in The UK, in Europe, and in The USA.
She is also an international speaker, a Google Women techmaker Ambassador, a UN Women UK delegate and the author of a brand new book called Community Building For Marketers.
I want to welcome Areej AbuAli.
Welcome.
How are you? I'm great.
Thanks so much for having me.
Yeah.
Thank you.
And congratulations on the book.
That's really exciting.
I know.
Thank you.
Yeah.
It got published last month in The UK and just a few weeks ago in The US.
So, yeah, it's been really, really exciting.
Oh, that's that's absolutely fantastic.
I'm so glad that you could join us today, uh, because I think it's really going to be, uh, to the benefit of public media broadcasters to gain some of your insight.
Uh, I wanna start by this.
Tell me a little bit about women in tech SEO.
What is the community all about? Yeah.
Women in Tech SEO was, like, a passion project that I started almost six years ago now.
I work in the SEO industry, which is part of, like, the digital marketing landscape, um, and I was struggling to find a sense of belonging and have my own network and community and group of people.
Um, so, you know, I kind of put together this group of folks and it continued growing from there on where a lot of other people felt very similar to me where they were looking for a space that was judgment free and that was safe and where they could discuss their career goals with one another mentor and be mentored.
Um, and it has in the last, uh, two to three years become my full time job, which is running this wonderful community, um, and all the events and conferences that we do alongside it.
So there's a little over 10,000 of us online from all around the world, and we also host conferences in London, Philadelphia, Portland, Berlin, and Melbourne, um, which is which is super exciting.
Very cool.
Uh, talk to me about the shared mission of all of your members.
I mean, what are you all there to do? Yeah.
So we're all we have, uh, to discuss and amplify, you know, our collective career goals and to help support and amplify one one another is kind of how we how we put it, uh, for folks who are struggling to find a sense of belonging within the digital market think industry.
Um, we have a very, very strong code of conduct that we top as the WTS way, um, and its values are to be kind, helpful, respectful, and a judgment free zone.
Um, and we're all there to help support one another and to amplify our work with with the rest of the industry.
Yeah.
Now as we're recording this, you just hosted a conference in Portland, Oregon.
Yeah.
Tell me about what happens there.
Yeah.
So our full day conferences, we've been running them for the last five years now.
We started with where I'm based in London, and that became, like, our annual flagship conference.
Um, and then in the last few years, we rolled it out to Philadelphia, Berlin, and then this is the first year that we do Portland.
We wanted to go to the West Coast because we have a lot of folks.
A lot of our community members are based in North America.
Um, and our Philly One was becoming very popular.
So we wanted to host in in the West Coast.
Our full day conferences, it brings like, 10 speakers on stage, um, discussing different elements of marketing and tech, um, and has different, like, networking breaks and activities.
And we get to meet our partners and sponsors and just spend, like, a full a full day together in person.
It's such a great way of bringing this, like, online community in in person where people can meet one another and interact with each other.
One of the things that strikes me about this group is it's not that old.
I mean, you know, what? We little over five years at this point.
Yeah.
Or joining six next month.
Congratulations.
Happy birthday.
Talk to me about the growth trajectory.
I mean, did it look like a straight line? Was it something that took off? And you knew you had something right away? Did you, you know, what did that look like? Yeah.
I think, uh, like, I probably had no specific expectations initially, especially when it was, you know, just like a side project of mine, and I didn't expect it to grow on scale to this extent where it has now become, you know, my full time job.
Um, there was a a really nice tipping point.
I think around the one year, two year mark where I realized that it's not me putting the work in anymore.
New folks are coming in organically, purely based on word-of-mouth, um, you know, friends telling friends, friends, friends telling colleagues, bosses telling folks, um, and it just and I no longer had to go in and, like, be involved in conversation, even the moderation at some point where it almost became so organic, um, that it was it just had a life of its own.
Um, I would say it was, like, the the the tipping point around, like, sometime between, like, year one and year two mark.
A little over 10,000 of us now.
It probably, um, I would say maybe around year three, year four kind of reached a point where, you know, the growth isn't as, um, as fast as it was because we are fairly niche industry, uh, but then in terms of monetizing it, which is, you know, the main thing that we'll be talking about today, that trajectory has been really interesting to see how it's changed over time with, you know, the, as we grew in numbers and engagement.
Alright.
That's, uh, so exciting to hear.
And that's a great segue into our topic today, which is five ways to monetize a community.
Pretty straightforward, pretty simple.
Uh, less actually get right into it.
Here is the first way that you suggest to monetize the community, and that is paid membership.
Yeah.
So paid membership, which is what we don't do, actually, but I know that the majority of communities do, but, you know, it's one of the it's one of the ways that crosses one's mind right away when it comes to community monetization, which is having some form of subscription based model, whether it's like an a monthly fee, an annual fee, or I've even seen communities do like, a lifetime joining fee, like a one off fee, you pay it, and that's it.
You're, like, a lifetime member.
So the majority of communities tend to monetize through that, like, having some form of paid membership model, And with that, there could be also the option of you could join as a free member or you could join as a paid member and you kinda get, like, different, um, things added to your plan based on that.
We don't do that at WTS.
We are, uh, completely, and our mission is to continue being free for all of our, uh, members, but I know that that's a very popular way for, uh, communities to monetize.
Yeah.
And this makes a lot of sense.
And I could see, obviously, public uh, radio stations or television stations doing this because they are already, you know, I think they've moved largely from that donation model where people write one time donations to the sort of reoccurring subscription.
And so they've already got a lot of the infrastructure built in for that.
Are there some types of communities where this particular model works better than others? Yeah.
So I think specifically with independent communities where there is this expectation of, you know, there's a lot of work and effort that is being put behind or support them.
And there is a lot of benefit that comes to members from joining.
Like, they get actual perks that they can say, this is what I benefit from on a month to month basis.
This is the kind of knowledge I get.
This is what I'm exposed to.
This is the network.
I manage to build for it to make a lot sense for then members to be willing to put money in.
Um, I think it's for companies and brands though that are, let's say, within the technology industry or, like, SAS platforms or so forth, it doesn't make sense to have a paid model or a paid membership because then, um, you there is a lot of you want you're using it as a marketing vehicle, and it doesn't quite make sense to have this expectation that members might pay to be a part of this, where they will then hear more and read more and learn more and get exposed more to your services or what you're offering or or so forth.
So if I'm hearing you right, when you use this model, the community itself is the product.
I mean, that's the thing that you are selling.
Yep.
And and so if you are in a model where you have some other thing where it's a product or a service, the data is what you're selling, and the community is just marketing for it or even customer support for it, then you would still probably wanna keep the community free.
Is that right? I would say that's an excellent summary.
Yeah.
I think in general, even just seeing the general trend of how, you know, a lot of communities are built.
Like, that tends to make a lot of sense.
What I where I see challenges happen is some communities that are brand new would right away, like, launch a paid offering.
They're not even giving an option for folks to know what's under the hood, almost.
Um, so that's something that I would encourage unities that are thinking or considering having, like, a paid model for all, at least having some form of, like, free trial or something so that folks can know what is behind those doors to whether it's worth being a part of it or or not.
It's very, very difficult for folks to decide to just, like, put their card down for something that they don't quite know what what is happening behind closed doors.
Yeah.
That makes sense.
It's like a visitor ring that people can come sort of check out.
I always think of, uh, here in America often before you decide what university you're gonna go to, you will go tour the campus and go see is this where I wanna spend, you know, four years of my life or whatever, uh, and and and get to see that.
Do you have recommendations for people if they are launching a new community.
Uh, is there an advantage or a disadvantage to starting it for free? For example, for for six months or a year that is open, and then switching over to paid? Is that good idea.
Is that a bad idea? Do you have any thoughts? I think it's a good idea as long as things are transparent and laid out from the beginning.
So I've advised communities before that, uh, are planning on being paid and have that plan in mind that they're going to be paid six months, twelve months down the line, um, but but their plan is to bring some folks in, have them experience it, get feedback and so forth before they switch that model.
So as long as you're transparent to your members about that from the front, where this is a brand new community, it's going to a switch to a paid model within the next year, but for now, we're opening doors for everyone to join us.
Then I think it's perfectly fine.
But I think the problem comes is that something you kind of set that expectation that you're free.
You bring folks in and then you switch off the lights right away.
At that point might lead to, um, a lot of folks deciding not to be retained and deciding to to leave at that point.
Got it.
And I also heard you mention a lifetime membership model where essentially people can pay a one time fee that is obviously much larger than what a monthly your annual fee would be.
And then they get access to the community for a lifetime.
Is this a good idea? Are there advantages or disadvantages to doing this? I think if I were ever to launch a paid membership myself, that's what I would probably do a lifetime fee.
I think there's something so smart about it because then you're not worried, um, from a monetizing factor, you're not too worried when it comes to retention.
Uh, because then, you know, you've and it's it is very enticing for members as well where it's like, oh, I pay this and I get access forever, you know, and it becomes it's just something that's not thought of as much as do I sign up for this monthly or annually or is this something that I wanna keep paying for? Um, I think it's a very, very smart a smart model.
I think the only problem is how do you then kind of balance between, well, you have those folks in supposedly lifetime, but how do you ensure that they continue to be engaged over time? Because it is very easy to pay for something one time and then completely forget you were ever a part of it.
Uh, and so I think they will struggle when it comes to retention.
Might be the only thing that you need to kinda counterbalance.
Got it.
Uh, alright.
Let's take a look at the second way to monetize a community.
And that is paid events.
And when you talk about this, are we talking about virtual events? Are we talking about in person events? Tell me a little bit more about this.
So it can be a mishmash of however way, like, your community is is set up.
Um, a per personally, with WTS, we have paid events.
So these are we sell to we we have specific tickets that we sell using different tiers, um, and that is one way that we monetize our communities through having paid conferences and and paid events.
Our webinars and our online events are all for free.
Uh, but I've seen other communities kind of change things up and do things differently where, um, you know, you can you also pay to access certain webinars or or so forth.
Forth.
Events in general are just such a crucial part of any community, whether they're virtual or in person, it's such an important touch point, and just a generally really important initiative for folks to be a part of, where it's not just about going into a group, seeing a bunch of conversation, asking questions, answer your questions, you're also being involved in, you know, something that's bigger than that through the form of events.
So our conferences that we run are probably one of the main ways that we monetize the community not just through ticket sales, but also through sponsors and exhibitors as well.
Um, and so that's some folks have, uh, who have paid membership might then have discounted rates for their events or might have ticket sales that are, uh, one way to entice is, like, if you're a paid member, then that's it.
You can join us for free, but then anyone from outside needs to pay for tickets, for example, or might be selling at the same rate for for everyone.
So, yeah, that's definitely one think about and consider.
Got it.
Uh, you know, obviously, when you're doing a big conference and in person conference, that is a lot of time and energy and capital invested upfront in order to do that.
How did you know when you were ready with women in tech SEO to start doing these in person events? Yeah.
So we initially started doing monthly meetups in London was how we first gauged the interest.
Um, and so I remember the very first one, like, 15 people at ten it, and then 30 people attended.
And after almost nine months of running those were towards the end, we were like, you know, we had 9,100 people attending, we we wouldn't be spending any on these meetups because we'd host them in, like, office spaces.
Um, so we'd get the, you know, the space for free and so forth.
But it was really obvious that, you know, this is something that a lot of people were looking for.
They wanted to come to these monthly meetups.
We had the same people coming back and forth is when I then took the step, well, wouldn't it be so to, like, hold an actual full day conference with, like, paid tickets, sponsors, and just have, like, that whole experience.
So it is always good to kind of test it out by maybe running something small initially.
That is a low effort, low price, testing, engaging the interest of the back of that and then deciding to turn it into something bigger, like a full day conference or so on.
Yeah.
So start humbly and grow over time is what I'm hearing from you.
Yeah.
And we did the same with our locations.
We held our London One.
I believe it was three times before we decided to take the first one to Philadelphia, and we took the first one to The States because we started having folks from the state fly in to London just to attend the France.
So it was obvious that the demand is there.
Um, and then it was similar with Berlin as well when we took it to Berlin as a in Germany as a location is because we started having a lot of, um, German members kind of meet on an unofficial basis, like in Berlin.
It was obvious that we were growing almost like a micro community is the way I like to think about it.
So it was obvious that there was gonna be a lot of demand for us to host, like, uh, one of our festivals there.
So I think gauging and seeing understanding more where your members are based and what their interests are and which which location seem the more the most engaged before kind of making decisions around, where can we host them and how do we host them and so forth? And with your event, do you have sense are people paying to attend out of their own pocket, or is this something that their company pays for as sort of professional development? And does that make a difference in how you would think about the event? I love this question.
I am always surprised by the number of people who pay out of pocket for our conferences.
I think versus a lot of other industry conferences.
And I think it's it's just it's sentiment, and it says a lot to how active our community members are.
How they really wanna go and meet one another and network with one another.
We do, I would say, maybe 40 ish percent pay out of pocket, and then the rest is, um, a company budget and folks who are sending their their teams to attend.
It is a professional conference where, you know, with technical topics.
So there's a lot to learn, uh, from going and attending, but then added on top of it is like the community feel behind it and the people you get to meet and the, you know, the network that you grow is, uh, so it's it is a bit of a mishmash of both.
And I think it's, um, it's always very interesting with any community to kind of, like, gauge and see what that feels like and how many folks there are coming out of, you know, out of poke it or work for themselves work on a freelance basis, for example, versus folks who, uh, may be part of, like, a big in house brand or agency or so on.
Yeah.
Uh, you know, there's a trend that I started to notice in my own behavior when it comes to events, which is that I used to go to these events, meet people for the first time, and then use the internet after the event to stay in touch with them.
Increasingly, I'm finding that it's happening the other way around, that people are meeting online, and then they decide to go to the event and say, and meet all these people that they have met, but never in real life.
What are you seeing in that? Yeah.
I I would say it's been interesting on different in different locations.
So a lot of our London attendees, for example, tend to be community members first and then go and attend the conference of the back of that.
Portland was a very interesting example where almost 70% weren't community members.
They heard about the event.
It makes sense though because it was a new location for us, and we probably didn't have a big member base there yet.
Uh, but something we always do is a month before any event, we start a Slack channel for all of our attendees, and we just put them all in there.
And it's such a great way of, like, pre meeting each other um, in an online space before you go and meet people in person.
And we tested different things before where we did, like, a random buddy system.
So we bodied people up to one another and then on for people who are attending solo.
And so when they went to the conference, you know, they it was like they already knew someone as opposed to going in and feeling really overwhelmed and not knowing someone.
So I think there's something very cool that you can do about kind of connecting folks, um, online with one another before actually the in person experience hop ins.
Yeah.
And then when you are sitting down to design the, uh, agenda for your event, what actually happens? How are you balancing content, you know, whether that's sessions or keynote speakers versus connection, places where people can actually, you know, connect with one another.
Yeah.
I mean, we we have just such a beautiful lift and shift template now, which is I'm so glad that we reached that point because Portland was our tenth conference.
And so we've been doing that for some time, but what we do every time is we we send such elaborate feedback forms and we speak to a lot of our attendees and we understand, like, what works, what doesn't work, and we we change stuff up.
But we have reached a point now where it's a one track conference, it's 10 talks.
Each talk varies between twenty to thirty minutes, and we have nice long breaks.
So we have an hour in the morning, and then we have forty five minute break, and then we have an hour and fifteen lunch, we have an afternoon break, and then we have a three hour pre, uh, like, a post networking event.
And it it just gives such a nice balance between your attending 10 talks.
We're all attending the same talks together.
It's all one track, and then we have these nice long breaks.
And there's a lot of different things you can do in the breaks to kinda keep people.
We, you know, encourage have an area for solo attendees to kind of interact with one another potentially host some round tables, um, give, uh, make it easy for people to go up to the speakers and ask them questions.
So it's, like, uh, a nice mix of different things.
Another thing we tend to do a lot as well is, like, have a pre conference day evening event.
So for example, like our headline sponsor or so on would, like, host us in their HQ or host us in, like, an event space or so on.
And it it gives a chance for a lot of people to meet each other the evening before.
And again, it feels a lot less overwhelming going in the conference day.
And then we have so many just general community member, like ideas that come up.
So, um, we a lot of people decide to meet up for breakfast the following morning, you know, or decide to do a weekend thing together or so on.
So it's just, uh, we encourage our members to kind of also, like, take the lead and, like, host a lot of their own, like, events that are surrounding event week, basically.
Yeah.
So if I'm hearing you, right, you are purposely not cramming it with wall to wall Yeah.
Cent.
You've got spaces in there for it to breathe.
Oh, that's really nice.
Uh, alright.
Let's take a look at the third way to monetize the community, and that is paid initiatives.
Tell me what you mean by this.
Yeah.
So I think, you know, it when people say, oh, how do you obtain members or how do you keep them around more? I think it's about diversifying your initiatives as much as possible.
It's so easy to bring folks in, like, have a community and then kind of leave them there.
There if there isn't anything that's kind of exciting to them or making them come back, then they're not they will likely not stick around.
So different initiatives can include things like, um, you know, webinars, courses, your newsletter, your podcast.
One of our most popular initiatives is like our mentorship program.
So we've been running it since 2020 now, and we run it twice a year, um, and we we put an application out.
We get hundreds of submissions for folks who wanna mentor and folks who wanna be mentored.
And then we do a matching process, and we match them with one another.
And they end up being in, like, cohorts, um, where we give them lots of training and guidance as well.
This is one of our most popular initiatives, and what it does is it's, It just it it helps a lot of people go beyond connection, but it also brings a lot of new members in and it retains a lot of our current members.
Um, now a community might choose to, um, have these initiatives be paid.
So you can access the community for free.
But if you wanna be part of, you know, our mentorship program, our, um, webinars, our courses, you need to pay a fee in order to access them.
Or another thing you can do, which we will talk about in a little bit, is get sponsors for some of these initiatives.
So, you know, have someone sponsor your mentorship program, have someone sponsor your webinars, your podcast, and so on.
So that could be like way to monetize it without, um, charging your your members themselves.
Got it.
So this is closer to the idea of you've got products that you sell and the community becomes marketing for those products or a way to bring those customers in, how do you figure out what initiatives to to do? Are you listening to the community to find out? Are you trialing things? What does that look like? Yeah.
I mean, we do we run annual community survey always where we we test new ideas and we ask, you know, we're thinking about doing this, what do you think? We're thinking about doing that, what do you think? How do you how would you rank our current initiatives, you know, and so on to see, like, what comes on top and what doesn't, and just general, even I've been feeling of what are people sharing more, what are people most excited about.
So I'll give you an example of when, you know, we ran a podcast for a little over two years, and then we stopped it because it just it was a lot of time and effort, and it consumed a lot of energy, but it just wasn't getting as much of ability as some of our other initiatives.
And what we decided to do instead is, um, we had a monthly newsletter.
We switched it to be weekly.
And I'd rather be running that weekly newsletter that's bringing us a lot more subscriber is a lot more eyes, has a lot more engagement, um, than putting all this time and effort and, like, producing a podcast that doesn't get as much traffic as some of our other initiatives.
So I think it's always important to kind of, like, experiment on different stuff, test and learn, and just ask your members, you know, what is it that they're looking for, what is it that they're interested in, what is it that excites them, and just trialing different things and seeing which ones stick, and then making sure that those become, like, recurring.
And being okay to drop initiatives that it it's always like, um, I do a lot of, like, t shirt sizing, you know, time and effort, a large medium small.
And then, you know, what do you prioritize based on based on that.
You know, if something is low effort, um, uh, but, you know, has a lot of engagement, then that should definitely be something that gets prioritized and vice versa.
Got it.
Uh, you mentioned spy sponsors for some of these initiatives.
Uh, is that something you've done? And how do you walk that line between finding something that is appropriate and helpful for the sponsor, but also actually valuable for the community members? Yeah.
So I mean, I'm happy we can probably start talking about, like, the fourth way to monetize as well, which is this idea of paid partners because this is our bread and butter with WTS, like, that's the main way that we monetize is through partners and and sponsors And it is very, um, it can be hit and miss where you might end up partnering with, um, just the wrong partner.
Like, they're not, you know, they're they're being too sales y or they don't quite understand community marketing or so on, but I feel like over time you start knowing, you know, what works and what doesn't work and you share all that stuff upfront.
So something that works really well for us is, you know, we our we don't do the whole get get in touch for pricing.
We have everything, like, laid out on our website, you know, this is how much it costs.
You wanna be a six month partner.
It costs this.
You wanna be a five month it costs this.
You know, we put our sponsorship decks, like, on the website for anyone to just click download view and get in touch with right away.
Make it really, really simple and make it as transparent and honest possible so that you're not wasting their time and they're not wasting their time, your time.
And you have this general expectation of, you know, you'd we do this and you do this, you know, we do this and you get this.
And then there doesn't it doesn't there isn't, like, this false expectation or, like, discussions that's happened down the line on on what it means or how it works.
So our we try all different things over the years, and, I mean, different communities do it differently where initially everything was just by initiative.
So it would be like a specific sponsor for our mentorship program, a specific sponsor for this podcast season and so on.
And now what we do and what has been working best is this, like, all year round partner program, uh, where you can either sign up to be six month partner or a twelve month partner.
And what that means is, you know, you get monthly shares from our end, both on our socials and in our group, and we can collaborate with each other on initiatives.
For example, with one of our partners, we launched an entire course around JavaScript SEO, you know, which is very technical, all but just very, very valuable for for our members.
And everyone knew, you know, who is which partner is running this who for us.
Uh, so what we encourage a lot of our partners to do is, you know, we wanna make sure that we're sharing valuable.
It it because it is it it's a marketing channel, but it's it's massive when it comes to brand awareness.
Like, you are putting your name in front of this very, very engaged community of people.
And if you simply go in and you say, here's a 10% discount code for my product, the likelihood of anyone actually using it is very low.
But if you go in and you say, here's a four week course you know, that you can that you can take for free and we're literally delivering it only for this community, then the amount of sign ups that you get off the back of that and brand awareness that could then convert later on is is much much bigger.
So I think it's It takes time and effort to kind of work and it not every partner might necessarily know fully or understand the value of community marketing, but but we we have such good partner retention now that, I think a lot of folks once they've trialed it once, twice, they get a good understanding behind what it means to tap into such an engaged community.
Now, one of the things that's interesting here is that, you know, we're talking to a community of broadcasters or an audience of broadcasters, uh, who the word broad is right there in it.
You know, they're trying to reach the most people.
Uh, in this case, this is not about reaching the most people.
This is about reaching the right people.
Which I assume means that there are fewer companies that are going, you know, Coca Cola or Nike probably not calling you up saying, hey.
You know, we but for the people where it's a match, it makes a ton of sense.
Yeah.
I think what's so beautiful about community is they can be as niche as possible.
Right? Like, that's the just the wonderful, glorious thing about communities.
But when you think about a lot of companies and brands, they do have specific niches, specific niche audiences that they're trying to sell to.
Um, and what we always say is, you know, it's very easy to just because it's such a long term game and it takes a lot of time and effort for a big company or brand to even consider the time and effort that it takes to start their own community.
It's just a lot of work So instead by partnering and collaborating and tapping into engaged communities, that would make such a difference because they still get all the same benefits but from a lot less work.
What are the metrics that your sponsors want to hear about? I mean, what are they looking for to see whether this is working, and, you know, they're getting their money sorted out of it.
So they want they wanna hear about metrics that I personally do not care for that much, which is number number of, uh, you know, of community members, um, open rate of your newsletter, uh, you know, things along those lines.
Like, the metrics that I care about are the fact that There's a little over 20,000 messages that are changed on WTS slack on a monthly basis.
Um, that these number of people have managed to get jobs off the back of that, you know, that, um, when people go and see one of our partners in another industry conference, they say, hey, thanks for sponsoring WTS because they literally remember who our partners are from how much they get plugged in the community.
Uh, but it it is very normal to gravitate towards quantitative metrics.
I that's fair.
And it makes sense because you wanna tie your investment to, like, a specific ROI.
Uh, but I would definitely encourage partners and sponsors to it's, you know, you're putting this investment in book.
You should also consider being an active member yourself of the community that you're investing in.
Um, and that's where we've seen, like, the most magic happen with some of our partners who literally spend time themselves being active community members.
And so it doesn't just become about company x it becomes about person y who works for company X.
We know them so well, and we trust them.
So then we definitely trust the company that they work for.
Yeah.
Uh, so that's interesting.
Is this mismatch between what you wanna measure with your metrics and what the sponsors, um, you're in a fairly forward thinking industry.
I mean, you're in tech.
So this is sort of the cutting edge.
Does that mean that we still have some way to go before companies realize the value and how to measure, uh, you know, and and just what they can get out of community? Yeah.
I I absolutely.
I think it's definitely heading in the right direction though.
And I think in the next few years, we're gonna see a lot more companies investing in community and taking a much more active role and really realizing the importance and the benefits of it, especially with, like, how fragmented social media is at the minute and, like, everything happening in the world, where we are losing sight of a lot of channels that we used to heavily rely on.
I do think that community marketing is on the rise, though, and it's, like, on the priority list of a lot of marketing departments as just a general marketing vehicle for for many brands at the minute.
Alright.
So that was your fourth way to monetize.
Let's take a look a fifth and final way to monetize.
And that is affiliates and referrals.
So for people who are unfamiliar with how this works, talk a little bit about affiliates and referrals.
Yeah.
So affiliates and referrals is not something I personally even had in mind when I started my community, but then it just started happening organically here and there.
So it's this idea of folks who wanna market through your community and give you, like, a cut back of it.
So let's say, uh, certain platform or a tool, uh, says, you know, if you plug this in your community for every sale that happens, you get 10% back.
You get 20% back.
So then it feels as simple as, you know, you're you're just all you're doing is you're kinda, like, marketing that across or you're sharing get across.
And then if it converts, great, because that's funny that just comes in in the background without you even realizing or noticing.
Now there's a lot of caveats to bear in mind with that, which is, first of all, you need to make sure that you're being really honest and transparent with your, uh, members like, members are your bread and butter and you you know, you upset them or they're not happy or or they feel you're being too salesy, then they're just gonna leave.
They're gonna stop engaging.
They're gonna stop being there.
So ensuring that you're being open and transparent and that, you know, you're sharing this because it is an it's an affiliate link, it's a referral or so forth, and being just, like, really open about that.
And then the second thing is also making sure that it's relevant to your members.
So, uh, we, a good example is we, we have a, a sub channel dedicated for freelancers because we have a lot of people who work for themselves.
It makes sense that we had, um, like, an accountancy firm, for example, that specializes in small businesses and freelancers get in touch with us and wanna share their offerings and, you know, give us, like, an affiliate 20% of anything that we manage, any of our products that we manage to sell.
Now this is something that will be who are also trusted and have been used by many of our active members.
Now this is something that I know will be helpful for our members, you know, for them to tap into it.
Um, and in a way, they are I mean, they're free members and they're also giving back then to the community because they know if this is something that they it's like it it's almost like recommended and also of the back of it, the community that they're a part of gets to make some money.
So I think it's it's about, you know, relevancy and it's about, like, ensuring that you're being honest and transparent and again partnering up with or sharing specific, um, you know, deals or links or so forth that are actually helpful for your community members.
Now how often when you're using affiliate links or things like that, is it a program where you actually have had to have a conversation with somebody, a human being in order to set that program up? And how often is it for example, I can go into Amazon and just become an affiliate and share an affiliate link.
How much of it is just sort of turnkey programs like that? So I, uh, I can't speak for other communities and how they work through it, but with everything that we've kind of partnered up with has been done through people, like, because it is so important for us to, you know, gauge and understand, you know, do they understand our community and our values and what we stand for and our code of conduct? And, you know, we once we decide or make the decision to partner up with who whomever it may be and share that across with our members, then we are kind of putting our name behind it and we're saying, this is something that we support, and this is something that we are happy to market.
Um, we personally haven't done in any work where it's just, you know, doing just general affiliate of of things that we can't really, like, get behind or know exactly who's behind it.
Uh, but I do know, you know, some communities who have done that previously and have found it very helpful for monetizing, but it's just something that I personally don't do.
Gotcha.
Alright.
So we've gone through these five ways to monetize.
Uh, you know, I assume they're not equal.
Is there one where you would recommend that people start or think about first or then maybe comes earlier in the process than others? I think in general, the very first one when it comes to the membership model that you have is probably one that you'll find yourself thinking of very, very early on, whether you plan for it to always be free, whether you plan for some form of freemium where it's free, but there are certain aspects of the community that are paid, or whether you plan for it to go completely behind the paid model, that's probably one that will be from the very early days.
You kind of need to have a plan behind even if you might change it up down the line, but it's because it it just your members will have certain expectations coming through the door and the more you have that fleshed out as early as possible, the the better.
So that's probably one of the very first ones to to consider and to think about.
Uh, well, this is awesome.
Thank you so much for coming on and sharing all of this.
With us.
And normally the last question I ask people is to recommend a resource for people who are brand new to community building.
But in your case, you actually have one and it's brand new.
Like you said, it's it just came out in The US.
Uh, let's talk about the book, uh, community building for marketers.
And let's start with this because you come from tech and so often in the tech space, I see community residing really in customer success.
And sometimes even when I talk to community managers, they're a little, uh, apprehensive about marketing.
Uh, and so I'm, you know, as a guy who considers himself a marketer and and my brain sort of works in that way, I love that you're specifically talking about community building for marketers, but you tell me what you had in mind and and what the book's all about.
Yeah.
So I mean, it was yeah.
It's just such an honor to write the book.
It was probably one of the hardest things I've ever had to do.
Um, it's, yeah, it's so hard to still years of what you've been doing, like, in the form of sections and chapters.
Um, and there's this curse of knowledge that always happens where you're kinda writing something up and you think, uh, oh, I'm sure people know about this, but then it's like, no.
There might be a big group of people who don't know.
So you have to really take a step back and make sure that you get as detailed and as thorough as as you can.
Uh, but I I really took it as a as a learning process for myself.
So there's a lot of things I've learned over the years and things that I would kind of encourage and I have done in a certain way.
But, uh, there I don't know everything.
And so what I did with this book specifically was I spoke to a lot of brilliant community builders from companies like HubSpot and buffer and sanity to understand, well, how have they, uh, build their community of audience and customers and clients as well? And I kind of then, you know, combine mind that with the work that I've done and split it into three main sections, which is growing your community, um, and, like, starting from the very beginning and then growing and then scaling and how that comes along.
And we visits everything from, you know, understanding your why and setting your mission and vision and your code of conduct to, you know, holding events and having partnership and having a feedback loop and, you know, what you do next and how you build for the future.
Um, so I've tried to make it as actionable as possible, um, and also not only rely on what I've done and what I've built in my learnings, but also the learnings of, uh, so many other, you know, brilliant people who have been doing this for years and years.
Oh, well, I I love it.
Congratulations.
Uh, that's a that's really a big deal.
Um, and thank you so much for taking the time to to join us.
I really appreciate this.
Areej AbuAli.
Thank you for having me.
Women in tech SEO.
It's, uh, out absolutely fantastic, uh, to have you on.
Thank you.
I appreciate you.
Thank you
