If you have a community, you can easily monetize your community and earn money. There are several ways to monetize a community including selling videos, selling memberships, creating premium content for your community, and organizing events! Do you have creative and quality content that you want to share with your community, and are you seeking new ideas? Well, this article can help you to monetize your community. In this article, we will discuss how you can monetize your community in 7 ways.
Before you start, if you would like to know more about building an online community, don’t forget to read How to build an online community? for great ideas!
Are you ready? Let’s dive in!
Why should you monetize your community?
Depending on the context, the definition of monetization can vary. But monetization generally refers to the process or action of converting non-revenue items into cash. In other words, it is the conversion of an aspect of any asset into revenue-generating items and activities.
You should monetize your community because:
- First and foremost, what you are doing is work, so monetizing your community might be a good idea to generate income. Creating content for your community, selling digital products, or other ways are not easy tasks. Thus, generating money is not an absurd idea.
- You provide a network for your community members, which is valuable to bring people with similar interests or passions.
- It is always joyful to do what you like and earn money from it.
- It is quite beneficial to monetize your community.
Talking about benefits, let’s see what are the benefits of monetizing a community.
3 Benefits of monetizing your community
1. Improves brand image
It will boost your business, especially if you offer a service or sell a product. Your brand will be recognized as valuable by your community. You basically tell your community that you provide high-quality service by putting a charge.
2. Provides increased control and security
If you decide to monetize your community by creating a membership site, it will give you more control over your community in terms of security and data management. It is not like creating a group on Instagram or Facebook where your control is limited compared to using membership management software.
3. Provides extra income
It generates a stable revenue and you have complete control over it! As you grow your community, you can increase your revenue as a result. With the help of an online community platform, you can grow your community and also focus on improving your business image.
Don’t forget to be consistent
Though some people might think that now earning money online is easy, in fact, most bloggers quit before they even make an income from it. The key is the combination of dedication and a good strategy.
First, you need to build your community. So, you should be consistent in publishing your content. It is also a good idea to have a good social media integration and strategy.
Second, it is essential to be realized by the target audience. To do that, your website should contain good content, have an optimized SEO and engage with the target audience on a regular basis. In the end, you can finally earn money online. Let’s see how you can do it!
7 Easy Ways to Monetize a Community
There are several ways to monetize a community. Depending on your brand and the type of your community, you can choose the right ways to monetize your online community after assessing your needs. Let’s explore some of them together:
1. Sell paid memberships
You can set up a paid membership. Through creating a paid gated community the members can engage in forums, workshops, and discussions. It is a great way of offering exclusive and unique content to your audience. Membership site monetization allows members to access the content through payment.
It is crucial to give members consistent content updates if you want to keep them as members. You can do it by offering:
- Create content and updates that are unique and attract people. Netflix, for instance, do it by offering not only movies and series but also a user-friendly, ad-free interface. Moreover, a new update like “TeleParty” allows you to watch a movie with your friends simultaneously and chat at the same time and users love it.
- Do what you do best. Do not force yourself to do what other successful content creators do. It is good to follow your own ideas rather than others, even if it is popular. It is important to be sincere, people appreciate that.
- Don’t forget to engage with your community. You can do it monthly or weekly. You can reply to the comments, create discussion rooms, Q&A sessions, and so on.
- Track your performance. It is a good idea to review your performance, and feedback from the community and brainstorm how you can improve yourself. It is useful to care about what your audience thinks about your content and wishes to see more.
If you would like to read more about increasing member engagement in your community, you can check out 5 Ideas to Increase Community Engagement.
Do you know that Raklet offers user-friendly all-in-one membership management? Raklet guarantees the best experience for your digital journey with your members and monetizing your community.
2. Sell Digital Products/Services
One of the ways to monetize a community is by selling digital products or services. If you have something valuable to buy, your community will surely want to do so! It can be anything but selling videos online is a widespread option. Particularly, demand for online courses fairly increased with the pandemic.
As digital products, you can sell:
- Online Courses and Webinars: If you are an expert on a subject, you can share your knowledge with the world! It can be anything related to musical skills, painting, philosophy, history, cooking… Options are endless.
For more inspiring ideas, you can check the Benefits of Online Learning! You can also read How to Create an Online Course – Raklet to start your online course!
- Digital downloads: Digital downloads can also be ebooks, audiobooks, templates, digital art, audio files, and printables like journal prompts. These digital products can be a passive income without depending on ads and sponsors. For example, you want to guide people on how to bullet journal, which is popular these days. You can create your printable calendars, checklists, customizable templates, etc., and sell them online.
- Premium Content: As Spotify does, similarly, you can offer free and premium content. Premium newsletters, articles, or photography can be other examples of what you can sell.
Photo by Caio from Pexels
3. Do Affiliate Marketing
Another great way of monetizing a community is affiliate marketing. This digital marketing model is based on performance and commissions. It is a widespread monetization type and affiliate marketing spending in the USA is expected to reach $8.2 billion by 2022.
Affiliates, also known as publishers, are reviewing products, and making comparisons or tutorials on their YouTube channels, Instagram posts, and blog pages so that the product is promoted and attracts customers.
Brands are getting more and more affiliate programs as it is effective as a marketing strategy. It is also easy to do it when you gain the trust of your audience. After joining an affiliate program, all you need to do is link the product and collect a commission from a purchase done through that link.
Even though it is a great way of making extra money, it is always good to not rely on one source as the terms of the affiliate program might change. You can consider other ways of monetizing your community.
4. Charge for Sponsored Content
Sponsored content can be a good source of income, too. To explain simply, you collaborate with a brand or business to publish a review, tutorial, or comparison. You can recall it as ‘influencer marketing as well. It is a very popular way to monetize a community.
As long as you make sure it’s useful to your community, sponsored content is a win-win. You get paid to post it, and you get more valuable content to share with your community. If your community like what you share, they will likely stay in your community.
5. Sell Ad Space
You can sell space for ads on your webpage if you are not interested in affiliate marketing or just want to create content independent from sales.
You can decide on the layout. Don’t forget to make it clean and simple so that visitors would not get irritated by the ads! One of the perks of selling ad space is that it allows you to earn money from ads without promoting or selling any products.
6. PPC (Pay-per-Click)
In this model, a monetization platform or ad network finds the advertisers that will publish their ads on your website. Simply, the ad network displays relevant ads on your website, and with each click on the ad by a visitor, you are paid a small fee. The most popular ad network is Google Ads. Similarly, Microsoft Advertising is also widely chosen.
It is a beneficial way of monetization as your ad will be displayed on the first results page when someone searches for a related term, so it provides instant traffic. Overall, it is a great digital marketing and monetization strategy.
Photo by Mikhail Nilov from Pexels
7. Organize Events
Another great way to monetize the community is by organizing events. It is not only great for increasing engagement within your community but also for generating income.
You can charge a fee for attending the event and sell tickets. You can set up themes for events, organize seminars, or start fundraising. It doesn’t have to be significant at the start. First, even a small gathering would be a good start.
And, that’s all!
Now you know how to monetize a community! You can rely on Raklet when you monetize your community. If you want to explore more about Raklet, you can schedule your demo and talk to one of our specialists.
Moreover, you can see our transparent pricing plans and go through what our valuable clients think on Capterra, G2, and Sourceforge!
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