Sophie Bujold: Now we dive into some of the opportunities that we have for partners and on the recurring side that usually takes the form of sponsorships or collaboration of some kind.
There's the traditional sponsorship model. I have had. Community builders have great success, especially in spaces where they are trying to if I take some of the, we have an example I'll talk about later, but a community around a profession a community around a very targeted group of people that people want access to, community sponsorships can be a really great way to bring in those partners and say, okay, how are we helping one another over.
A year or whatever extended period of time. I have seen community builders also use the sponsorship opportunity to subsidize membership for their users. So they're actually lowering the [00:01:00] barrier to access by having a sponsor come in and pay for part of that membership that allows you, as the business person behind that community to still get compensated for.
What you need to deliver, but have a split revenue model in that way. Other ideas that have come out of that kind of partnership is really premium content or discussion areas. So creating exclusive lounges with a very special experience with the right partner. It can be another really great opportunity.
Joint ventures. I have had some of my community builders bring in experts who delivered free content, but then maybe developed a one day workshop that people could buy into. And, the community leader got a commission off those sales. And then good old affiliates. If you are a community that is recommending a ton of tools or books or things like that, linking up with affiliate links is a really good way of generating some passive recurring [00:02:00] revenue.
Depending on how those affiliates are. Really in the pipeline, but generally speaking, when you're looking at recurring, it's like I said in the sponsorship or collaboration space, and another way of sponsoring or collaborating is really on the one-off basis. So this is great for. Any type of event you might be leading in the community.
Special releases or product launches within the community. These strategies tend to be better for a long-term. Like once your community has matured a little bit because you have volume you also have partners that are a bit more interested 'cause they get access to a larger audience. So these are definitely for kind of more mature communities, but you're looking at things like.
Sponsored content or ads. Obviously you need to have a really healthy balance between ads and the experience in the community, especially if your members are paying. But it is still very much possible. One of the items in here that we will talk about [00:03:00] in a moment is community-led services.
I have seen communities actually develop a service based on. Curating what the member skillsets are. We'll talk a little bit more about that one in a minute. I have a concrete example of what that looks like. And obviously the other play that could be really interesting if you have enough volume in your community is market data, not necessarily selling your data.
That always feels really icky to most people. But creating industry reports or creating content around what you're seeing as trends in your membership around certain topics. So these are great for business communities. Places where people are looking for what are these consumers thinking or doing or wanting.
There's always an opportunity there to create a membership survey and actually start selling your reports saying based on our research, here's what people want in that industry. So these are the main categories that I have seen work in communities. There are obviously, as many ideas as there are people but these tend to be the hallmarks and the cornerstones of most of the communities that I've worked in.
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