Lessons from my $62,397 Community Launch

Last Sunday I wrapped up a community site launch with a large YouTube client of mine named Essential Craftsman.

As their name suggests, they're a craftsmanship oriented brand.

The "face" of their brand is a gentleman named Scott who's been in the contracting game for about 45 years, and is a father figure to many in their audience.

His son Nate used his video and branding skills to work with his dad to grow the channel like crazy...and here we are today.

Anyway as you can see, during this launch we did over $60k in total sales! (Numbers always given with permission)

(If it isn't obvious, the halfway point where the graph ticks upwards is the launch)

Most of that is annual revenue, but a good chunk of total sales is monthly recurring.

So, including future monthly recurring revenue (what you see are just current payouts), we approximately added $80k-$100k to their yearly revenue in just the first ~12 days!

And the community is only going to get bigger with time - it's still getting sales every day after the launch.

Here are some take-away lessons from the whole launch:

1) 80% of the work was already done

This is the truth about monetizing any quality brand.

Now, obviously I know how to make clients a lot of money.

But as cool as I am, we did well largely because they did a lot of hard work first.?

For one, they have 100,000s of active subscribers on YouTube (they have over a million subs from over 5 years, but when looking at their metrics not a huge percentage are seeing their new videos for some reason)

But, even if they still have 300,000 active and semi-active subscribers, that's a lot. And?their followers absolutely love them.

That's what I mean by 80% of the work was already done - they have a great brand, and that paints the path for monetization.

This isn't to say creating the offer didn't take effort - it absolutely did.

But I must give tons of credit to the work they did before I entered to highlight the importance of a powerful brand FIRST.

2) The Offer is King (The remaining crucial 20%)

If you've followed me for a while, you know how important the offer is.

This was the remaining 20% that Essential Craftsman didn't do before me, and it's a common issue:

People build up awesome brands on YouTube, IG, Twitter, etc, but they aren't sure how to monetize them properly.

And if they do monetize them, it's typically very unoptimized and a lot of money gets left on the table.

So they hire me.

(Often times I can make minor tweaks in their offers and they can make considerably more money)

Anyway, we decided to make a community for several reasons:

• It's predictable recurring revenue for them
• It's scalable
• It fits into their brand

And to make this community appealing, I wanted to absolutely load it up with features.

Popular older courses. New courses. Brand discounts. Zoom calls with the face of the brand, Scott (who's a huge pull for the brand). Community features. Etc.

All included for a tiny fraction of their actual value - the key to a great offer.

We didn't get to put in everything I wanted YET - but it's an ongoing process.

Communities evolve with time and the source of all the market research you'll ever need is already paying you to be inside.

3) Urgency is key

Most of your best customers won't require any type of urgency or other arm twisting to sell to.

But without any urgency in sales ever, 99% of marketers would be broke. People buy when there's a deadline.

As you can see below, over 75% of our sales came in the last few days after we announced there'd be a deadline.

(Again, the halfway point where the graph ticks upwards is the launch)

With most launches, you can expect to 2-4x your sales in the last few days.

4) Use longer launches if there's less pre-hype

We actually didn't hype up the community a lot before it was released. Just a few mentions a few days in advance.

Why? Because we had been working on it for a while, and my partner from the brand, Nate, was occupied with just getting it done.

Therefore we just made the launch period longer - it came out to 12 days, which is pretty long for a launch.

The reason why is because it takes people on average 7 reminders to purchase something.

We sent multiple videos, emails, and YouTube posts (or whatever they're called, they go into the channel's community section).

So during the launch itself we're building demand, showing off different features of the community site, showing how valuable it is, then we're capitalizing at the end of the promotion when we say we'll raise the price.

5) A bigger audience can crush with a less expensive product

In my List Money Multiplier program, we typically build irresistible?high ticket offers.

As I've explained before, it's because it's the biggest needle mover for those that have 1000s or 10,000s of followers.

(With exceptions of course - Joe Hart skyrocketed to $40k/month with a community offer at about 25,000 followers - but this is much easier to do with a money making offer like his)

But big audiences can do numbers with less expensive products.

In their case, it makes sense to have a recurring?revenue offer.

This community was only $9/month or $87/year to start.

We could have made MORE money if we really wanted to (more about this in #7) - but we wanted to keep the offer accessible.

That said, they would still benefit from something high ticket, and maybe we'll put that together one day.

6) Ignore (Most) of the Complainers

EC has been around for 5 years and has put out over 500 videos.

There was no way around it - a sale was going to make some long time viewers complain because they're not used to being sold to.

We had dozens of complaints about marketing and "selling out."?Many people don't respect how much work gets put into this type of thing and expect everything for free.

Others complain because they're nervous that the free content quality will drop because everything will go behind a pay wall.

Those complaints are meaningless as long as the brand still puts out high quality content the way it always has, which it will.

However this does make the case for monetizing sooner so the audience is used to this stuff.?

Either way, they'll either get used to it or leave.

And the vast majority will stay, especially because they'll see over time that the brand isn't going to lose any integrity. They just have to deal with a little more marketing so the owners can rightfully get paid for the content they create.

7)?We could have made a lot more

$60k is a solid haul, and since it's recurring revenue, the total lifetime haul is easily in the $100,000s - all from just the first 12 days.

But we could have made quite a bit more if we wanted.

I'm not concerned about this because it was only the opening promotion and the community will only gain more recurring revenue as it grows.

Also, we wanted the community to be particularly accessible for their audience, especially the first version.?

Again it started at only $9/month or $87/year.

But aside from making it more expensive, how could we have made more money?

Upsells and cross sells.

In other words, options after they buy such as a $37 course, $500 1 on 1 with the owner, $3000 "retreat," etc.

A good upsell would have likely have brought us to a 6 figure launch.

Obviously we want to make as much money as possible, but getting rich in 12 days wasn't the #1 goal. Having a solid launch for a flagship offer was.

Future Goals

My future goals with Essential Craftsman are this:

Make the community absolutely amazing.

It's already good, but I want to make it incredible.

People in there should be raving about it.

The community is designed to help create a lasting legacy for the brand, and having raving customers is excellent for business.

Automate their sales.

We'll make a lead magnet (a free gift that they give their email address for) with an email sequence that will teach them about the brand, give some tips on craftsmanship, introduce the community and sell it on autopilot, and continue to give them valuable and entertaining content.

Automate everything else as much as possible.

Customer service, community events, etc.

I want this to take as little time of theirs to manage as possible, while still making the community excellent.

Keep content quality the same or better

I have little say in their channel content, and that's fine with me. I'm not an expert in craftsmanship.

But people who follow the brand should see no changes in content quality - except that they may see a short message at the end of their videos pointing them to a free lead magnet.

Case in point?

This community will eventually make them millions of dollars while providing an awesome service. Period.

Hope you learned from this.

Do you have a brand that you're looking to scale online, and you have 10,000s of followers and/or you're already making at least 6 figures a year from it?

Click here to get on a call with me where I'll show you where you could make at least another $500,000 from it.