and now I think I may have created a tiny marketing Role-Playing Game 😂 The vision is to gamify marketing and make it fun again. The whole thing is built around the idea of the “MMC Village”: - Every member is a villager - Levels unlock different villager roles - The classroom is set up like destinations around the village - Each level has quests/challenges so members can “play while they learn” The response has surprised me a little - people who I don't know are already excited and joining before I’ve even properly shared it yet. I know, nice problem to have. NOW I’m stuck at the next stage and would love input from people who’ve built communities before. Right now, everything is free while I attract villagers/members and build momentum. But I’m trying to figure out what changes at the monetized level without ruining the magic/community feel. For those of you who run memberships or gamified communities: - What became paid vs free? - What made people WANT to upgrade? - Did you keep one main community and add premium layers? - Any mistakes you made early on? I feel like there’s something really interesting here, but I want to structure it intentionally before I grow it too much. (If you’re curious and want to peek inside the MMC Village while it’s still in its early stages, here’s the link)

I have seen many people use this approach, on skool and many other internet sites and as from a client side, it makes me want to leave right then and there, yet still people use it: For simplicity, let’s stay with a skool community, call it „Write your story“. The one hosting it wants to earn money with it, obviously, since he/she has to pay for it to stay online and not be turned off. The simplest solution for it would probably be to just say „Membership is 5$ a month“. Can work great, but as for what I can say, people get scared if they have to pay upfront for something, without knowing what to expect. That’s where my warning comes in: Some hosts would make the community free, but in order to access the classroom, you must join a 5$ membership. This is the fastest way to lose someone five minutes after that person joins your community. Why? Because that client was expecting to get some help on the novel without paying money. So here is my solution I would recommend you (nit only on skool, you can translate it to most learning sites, probably: 1. Make the entry free 2. Offer something actually useful for clients for free (like a gpt to help you do worldbuilding, using my community example) 3. Make the start of the premium course free, too. Not just the bootcamp, one step further. Be careful to make those parts equally in quality as the rest of your course) Why this helps: • The client gets to see your content and what you have to offer and also gets a chance to try it out himself • If the client follows the free part of your course, he/she is already involved and chances are he/she wants to continue the started work I hope this helps and I didn’t just tell you obvious things!