Giving up my paid community

A year ago, I had decided to start my own community. But I wasn’t sure where to start. Chris Wong told me about Build A Community Business. I joined its very first cohort. The timing was serendipitous.

I learned a bit, and did the exercises, like interviewing potential members. I hosted weekly review sessions during the Building A Second Brain cohort, and offered my community as a place to continue after the cohort. More people joined than I expected. At most, there were about 12 unique members.

Right now, its at half that. I didn’t gain any more members in the last BASB cohort, even though I did the same thing of hosting free weekly reviews during the course.

I think it’s time to wind things down. I’m not marketing it as I should to bring more members and value.

The Circle subscription is quite expensive per month given how few members there, and that we aren’t active on Circle other than as a payment service.

So I will cancel Circle, and continue to host weekly reviews for free with the current members.

It was an experiment. It worked better than I thought it would. I learned some of the logistics for managing a community completely on my own. So I consider it a success. I’m not closing the community down. I’m just removing the paid entry.