Six of the best ways to make money from an online community are research, recruitment, exclusive content, search traffic, advertising and merchandise. If your following is big and dedicated enough, charging for membership is the obvious place to start, but each of the six is relatively simple to set up, whatever the size of your business. All of them depend on a thriving community first, and on engaging with it continuously so that it never feels sold to.
Why is an online community valuable?
In 2021, when this guide was written, the coronavirus pandemic had sped up the shift to online shopping and made people more confident buying even big-ticket items online, and communities had never been more valuable to businesses. You are much more likely to make an impact on someone already invested in your company than on someone new to it.
Communities are one of the best-known ways to get honest feedback on your products and services, because people talk there as freely as they would with friends. Their peer-to-peer nature brings ideas you might not have thought of, sometimes as simply as a comment in a forum that you spot and answer.
Members help each other, too, and every support ticket resolved in a community thread is one your team doesn't handle. A thread with 10,000 views is 10,000 customers who quickly found their answer at no extra cost to you: multiply that by your average cost per resolution to see the saving. Good moderation lets you listen and respond to customers, often unprompted, and reward the most active members and influencers. That builds a sense of partnership, which is why communities turn fans into brand advocates.
How can a community earn from research?
Consumer research underpins a huge number of decisions at businesses, brands, universities and NGOs, but affordable, reliable sources of it are hard to find. Communities make excellent hubs for focus groups and surveys: the leading sector-specific communities, in areas such as pharmaceuticals, make a great deal of money selling focus groups to interested companies. Approach the organisations relevant to your following and ask whether they would like to take part.
Can a community earn from recruitment?
Talent is the lifeblood of every organisation, and finding the right people is hard, especially in niche industries. Communities attract people of like mind or experience, which makes them good places to find employees and employers. A dedicated area for job seekers, where members pay to share their professional profiles, talk to potential employers and ask for general advice, is one source of income. Recruiters paying to feature ads on your channels is another.
What content will members pay extra for?
Almost anyone involved in a community for the long term is there because they feel positively about the organisation or the topic, so reward them. A community can be a gateway to more high-level content on niche topics, which many people will pay extra to see. A car fanatic would pay more for exclusive interviews, webinars or digital panels with leading technologists or manufacturers, especially interactive ones, where they can take part rather than just listen.
You can also offer brands and media partners packages to get involved with your community. For brands with a cult following, this nurtures customer relationships, with a sense of inclusion that encourages repeat purchases. The aim is as many chances as possible for brands to engage with your audience.
How does a community bring in search traffic?
Appearing at the top of search results is hugely valuable, and it is a benefit of a community that tends to be overlooked. In a busy community, members constantly add content and engage with it. Google and Bing notice, and rank your site higher, sending organic traffic back to your website. The more members write, the more likely it is that other people searching for the same questions land on your pages. New customers arrive through all manner of questions, and the cost of acquiring them drops significantly.
This is hard to replicate. It would take a team of marketers dedicated to SEO and content to produce what a community produces on its own, so let your customers do that work for you.
Who will pay to advertise to your members?
If your community is successful, brands will want to sell products and services to your members, and you can charge them for it. They know their advertising will be seen by people who matter, which counts for a lot when attention is hard to come by. A community can also be segmented, which makes its advertising more valuable, and any affiliate sales from that advertising are more income.
Why sell merchandise?
A community is, by definition, a place where people come together over a shared concern or interest, and we all like to feel part of something. Merchandise gives that a physical form: someone obsessed with baking would want a branded apron from their favourite baking forum. Your community is a brand, so treat it as a fanbase, not a user base.
How do you earn from a community without putting members off?
Keep engaging. A community creates a sense of partnership that a purchase alone cannot, and once your following is strong, there are plenty of ways to earn from it. But the last thing you want is a community that feels it is being sold to. The more you engage, the happier your customers, and the more room there is for growth and income: a virtuous cycle that benefits everyone. Done well, a community drives profit, creates sales opportunities, builds your brand in people's minds for the long term and gives you an advantage over your competitors.
This is adapted from our guide, A top tip guide to monetising your online community, which has a page on each of the six ways and two of 4 Roads' own community projects, for Olympus and Nordic Semiconductor: download it free. How 4 Roads builds online communities.
