Community
Your first hundred members don't come from the platform
No catalog is going to carry your launch. The first hundred come from people who already know you.
A membership platform is not a discovery venue. It's a conversion venue: it turns an existing audience into revenue. If the audience doesn't exist yet, there is nothing to convert.
- Existing audience61 %
- Word of mouth22 %
- Platform discovery9 %
- Web search8 %
What works at launch
- Write personally to your thirty closest people. Not a group message.
- Publish three paywalled posts BEFORE opening, so the page isn't empty on day one.
- Announce a date, and hold it.
- Offer a time-limited perk to the first members — a giveaway, special access, a name in the credits.
The first member is almost always someone who would have helped you anyway. The hundredth is the first real test.