I started a community where you get kicked for inactivity
As a community builder finding people who will really participate in a community is hard.
I'm a member of many free and paid communities. I don't participate in most of them, even if I have good intentions to do so.
Building a community in the pandemic is hard. People are distracted. And have huge choice. People love the idea of participating but rarely commit.
Community builders feel forced to keep trying to pull people in. Find new interest. Yet it is almost like a vicious downwards spiral — the more inactive members you bring in ends up making it a worse community experience for those who truly want to get value out of it.
The more members there are, the harder it is to actually build relationships. Whilst we love content and benefit from sharing ideas, deep down many of us want to connect a deeper level.
We've never had access to so many communities, we are lonelier than ever and the value of most communities are just not there anymore.
So I started a community for indie founders where people get kicked if they don't participate within a 30 day period
The community has purpose for me, I want to connect on a deeper level with indie founders. Once an indie hacker always an indie hacker!
Here is how it happened.
First I tweeted about the idea of kicking people out of a community
I wrote about the idea of community debt and that it's ok to clean up your community
Within this post I decided to launch a pre-order for the community. I emailed it out to my newsletter and I tweeted about it too.
Within about a week I got my first 20 pre-order subscribers.
I've been experimenting with pricing
🤣 Launch price was $9 — lifetime membership (as long you participate)
⬆️ I raised the price to $19 after the first 20 orders
⬆️ After setting up the Discord Server and inviting people in I increased the price to $49
🤔 I think I will probably continue nudging the price up as more people join
💰 I realised it was easy to set up affiliates with Gumroad, so paid members can make money from it too. There's no pressure, but as indie hackers, this is fun! 🥳 We had our first affiliate sale yesterday.
❌ I'm not interested in monthly memberships, lifetime makes it so much less stressful for me to manage and people churn so much more with monthly/yearly subscriptions. My goal is to keep people staying.
🤑 I've made $325.50 so far from 27 sales
It's the most fun I've had in setting up a community in a long time
Bloody hell.
6 days after launch - 27 people have signed up, 23 have so far participated.
Engagement can often be a vanity metric, but in situations like this, it's such a nice experience (for me and the members) to have people showing up. Wanting to participate. Connecting. Getting to know each other. And putting in requests on things we can do.
I am showing up to the community and landing into active conversations. The pressure of instigating conversations is not there.
And I'm loving it. 🥳
Of course, it's early days. BUT people are down for the experiment. Everyone who has signed up understands the deal.
We are there together. And it just feels so good.
I don't look forward to kicking people
But it's also part of the fun, it's almost gamifying it.
The fact that I don't want people to leave will force me to reach out, connect, support and pull them in.
Discord has a feature to cull people who don't participate in a 30 day period, but I'll actually be using Savannah to track activity, it has much more data and context of a member's profile.
Tech Stack
No email list 🥳
Discord
Gumroad
Orbit
My personal Twitter.
🙏🏽 Thanks for reading, I hope it's helpful and happy to answer any questions.
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As member of this one, I'm enjoying the experiment so far! Feels great to have an incentive to show up. Not in a "I will be punished if I don't" way thought. More like, "People actually want me to show up," way. Helps me build community muscle 💪
Yes, and I really want you to show up. ❤️
Happily!
Hey Rosie. I like this idea. When you put in thousands of hours of time to create something you love for your community, you want people to care as well. I'm the same as you, great intentions when I join networks, but I rarely myself engage with them.... I'm interested in 'Orbit', I haven't used it but just checked it out. Interesting. Mark
Yes, and when there is so much choice, it is hard to commit.
Having other members who don't participate can actually be a negative experience.
I'm also glad to be part of this "experiment". As I said to Rosie yesterday, it's a win-win-win deal.
The community is bound to remain at a reasonable size and alive for quite a while, which is a win for community members. The entry price is a win for the community host and doubles as a useful noise filter for the community. Loss aversion also plays a useful role.
And since we can even become affiliates and help keep the community alive and well, it's one more win.
I like it a lot ❤️
Happy to be a participant along with the fine people in the comments!
❤️
🙏🏽
Brilliant Idea! Thanks so much for sharing!
Haha I saw you mention this over on Twitter as well, Rosie! Great write-up here.
Was the idea behind launching with paid to up the stakes for people who did sign up? It's easy to join a community and peter out/lurk if you can just get in...but if you've paid for it, then it's a community you've invested in financially. And then why not make a similar time and engagement investment as well, right
Yes, I would say so. Paid on it's own is not enough. I don't think 30 days engagement rule is enough on it's own either.
Combining the two, in theory, will get people who truly want to be there and who want to connect on a deeper level.
In theory!
This is awesome. I was thinking about having an activity policy where in order to stay a member, people had to participate on some level. I was just thinking about it, however, you actually did! Awesome, & Inspiring.
This sounds great as a gamification mechanism.
I'm wondering about the purpose of the community though. I'd join it for accountability.
An incentive for myself would be other people building things who can give me feedback on what I'm building. Building in public comes with a great disadvantage for most of us - in many cases you have no audience to share to. Plus, with everybody doing it, so even as an indiehacker you can barely keep up with every product. I'd pay for a dedicated group where I can share updates and get feedback.
The purpose is develop intentional and deeper relationships with each other, with a focus on 'indie founders', 'indie creators', 'indie hackers', whatever name you want to call it.
We've started accountability threads, we're giving feedback, we're operating with increased transparency, we're sharing things that many of us don't feel comfortable sharing in a truly open environment.
I want it to be a place where people get heard and truly make supportive friends.
Interesting to read about, but I don't get it myself ;). The last thing I want to worry about is that I haven't show up in some online corner of the internet.
Then it's not for you (right now), and that's ok.
I often think of how Masterminds don't work if people don't show up and particpate. This is the same kind of idea — people who sign up agree to participate intentionally. It makes it a safer and deeper community.
Not everyone wants that, and I get that. Communities shouldn't necessarily be designed for everyone.
Sure. How is it safer, though?
Anything 'behind a wall' and with a person's contact if is naturally going to be a safer environment than one that is open to the public.
Very interesting... In fact, I was thinking about applying that to my Fit Telegram group (recently created) where engagement is very important.
It makes no sense increasing the number of people there constantly if they don't participate actively.
My question is:
If you get X $ lifetime, how do you pay for the tools when the community grows? You know, the price of most of the tools (email marketing or hosting, for exemple) depends on the number of users you have in, the number of emails you send, the number of guests o the storage space.
I have my doubts about lifetime communities in that sense...
In this instance, the costs won't go up. Discord is free, I have no plans for an email list, or expanding things.
This could change.
I think this can be addressed by increasing the price and also people naturally churning. Not everyone will stay around forever and that's ok.
Also, an understimated aspect of community building is that new opportunities always arise from within the community. I bet I'll find more ways to create revenue in time.
I do this with Rosieland. I have a lifetime membership, but I also sell individual products too, these come as a result of serving the community.
Yeah, I agree with that.
Thanks, Rosie and Happy New Year.
I really like your mentality towards the lifetime membership position. It can get really tiring keeping with with all the subscriptions of todays day and age. The nice simple "pay once and participate" sounds so nice!
If people do not participate and get booted, I'm guessing they have to pay the full one time fee to get back in? If so, then I think it is an extra little motivation :)
Honestly, when it comes to community and all the various places we need up connecting, subscriptions are a pain.
I’m opting for one off fees for a whole bunch of reasons these days.
And yes, once booted they can come back, but needing to repay the fee.
I totally agree! And I love the idea!
Cool project! Is there going to be something like a vacation mode if somebody has to sign off for an extended period of time? :)
Dunno! Is one month not plenty of time for a vacation? 🤣
I’m definitely thinking about a farewell channel, where members can send their thanks to other members who choose to leave.
Excited to see how this community works out over time. Has faint echos of App.net's attempt to build a paid Twitter alternative, where I almost think people were more likely to contribute thanks to ... sunk cost fallacy, but in a good way?
At any rate, this felt like exactly the community I needed right now, so excited to be an early member!
Woah, this is a neat share Rosie.
I'm surprised that it's working, but I hope it works out for you. There is a forum that I want to participate in, but they have a rule like that. I don't have enough time to post there every month, so my account was deleted many years ago. I never bothered to sign up again because I won't be able to post every 30 days and the hassle of getting my account deleted is too much of a waste of time for me, even though it's a free site. So instead of getting huge bursts of activity from me when I have free time, they get zero posts.
I run forums, and it's very common for people to join and participate for a while, disappear for years, and then come back as life circumstances change. But maybe in your case, people will pay again when they return.
It's definitely not for every community, I think like people, communities can be equally diverse and exist in many wonderful ways.
Yeah, definitely. Unusual ideas can also be good for marketing, and if curiosity leads to an early burst of activity, it can be beneficial even if the policy eventually changes later in order to stop losing contact with new friends who temporarily get busy with other things in life.
I agree. I have just opened a digital marketing agency with a friend (along with thousands of others during this time, but hey you gotta go with your skill set!!) but its early days and I am not yet ready to make any large contributions.
Later I will contribute when I have been around enough to "write my story" and have earned my $$'s/stripes but will I then have been kicked off?
So yes kicking people off is a good thing as it makes an active community with those that are left, but then no because you will lose people who are early on their journey, and might otherwise be more active later on.
Also, is this community not for people exactly like me, ie have just started something and need to be involved in a community of people who have been there/done that?
I wonder the higher the price, the more kickback you'll get from the ones that were kicked out. Kinda like "dog ate my homework" or "I was so carried away with work." folks saying this is unfair. I know companies do this (not many) and I send nothing but kudos to them for doing so. I think this is a great approach for a community. Can't wait to see the growth.
I think it will be ok as the rules are clear up front. Everyone who has joined so far really seems to get it.
Saying that, I rarely so no when people ask for a discount. 😅
What do you think should be the member limit for a community like this?
Great question.
I don't know.
It will be interesting to see what it looks like at 150 members, the Dunbar number.
I think I'm totally ok stopping sign ups at times, to accommodate people joining and finding their place.
This comment was deleted 3 years ago.