How to make money on Skool

Find your niche

The first step is finding your niche. A good way of narrowing this down is by asking yourself these questions:

• What do I know a lot about?

  If you know a lot about a particular subject. This is a great place to start. Being knowledgeable will allow you to provide real value to your audience. Which is the key for long term success.

• What am I interested in?

  If you pick something you are interested in you are more likely to stick with it. It will also be a lot more fun! Maybe there is a sport you are good at and can give tips on.

• Who is your target audience?

  Target a specific group of people. By doing this you make it more likely that those people will resonate with your message. And therefore join the group. An example of this could be a group that helps plumbers get more clients. Now there are lots of people out there who want more clients. But by focussing on plumbers you are resonating with a specific group. Imagine you are a plumber for a second. Which group are you more likely to join:
  • Get more clients for your service based business
  • Get more clients for your plumbing business
  
  The answer is obvious, isn't it? You would join the second one because it resonates more with you and is more specific to your situation. Think about how you can do the same.

Now remember, you can make a skool group about anything. It doesn't need to be business related. It can be about anything. Maybe you are good at a particular video game and can provide tips on how to become better. Maybe you are good at editing videos and can teach others to do the same.

Create your skool group

Now you have decided on the type of group you are going to create. You can sign up to skool. The great thing is you get a 14 day free trial, so if you decide you don't want to continue it costs you nothing!

Create your first posts

Now we want to start adding some substance to our skool group. There is no point growing a community if we have absolutely nothing to offer them.

Create a welcome post

The first thing you want to do is create a welcome post. This is a post that will go on your skool group, introducing yourself and the purpose of your group. In this post, outline why your group is good and how it will help your members. Encourage members to introduce themselves and say what they are looking to get out of the group.

Create a "what is to come" post

Create a separate post. In this post you want to outline what you will be creating in your course. This is where we want to reassure members that the course materials will be added in the future. This lets them know they should stick around in the group in order to see this when it is live.

Create scarcity

Now this step is important. We want to create scarcity. We do this by limiting the number of members allowed in the group. Or the number of members who are allowed in the group for free before it becomes a paid for group. This scarcity encourages members to join and creates a level of urgency. It's human instinct to want something that is scarce. This is why diamonds are so expensive, because they aren't easily available and there aren't many of them!

How to tell members about the scarcity

Its important that you let your group members know that opportunity is limited to only a specific number of members. Mention this scarcity in the group description. You can also write a post about this in the community section along with your "welcome post" and "what is to come" post.

Invite your friends

Get the ball rolling with easy wins

In the very beginning it is going to be hard to get users to join your group. This is especially hard when you have 0 users. Or 1 including yourself. This is why we want to reach out to people we already know. Ask me to join your group. I will join and get involved in the community. You just have to ask. Ask friends and family members. And ask them for a favour. Ask them to join your group. Ask them to post a comment or ask a question. Ask them to get the ball rolling. Tell them it would be a huge help.

People like to help people. Post this request on your social media too. The chances are you will get quite a few new members. Whether these members stick around in the long term or not. We don't care too much at this point. The main reason for this is because we don't want our group to be empty. An empty group is a big turn off for potential new members.

Drive traffic to your skool group

This is where the hard graft comes in. And this is where you will either sink or swim. We need to drive traffic to our skool group. But how do we do this? Well there are many ways, but this is what I'm doing:

1. Create a website

   We need to create a website. Why? Because with a website we can target people who have a specific problem. And then provide them the answer to this problem. And the answer to their problem is joining our group on skool! The important thing here is not to get bogged down in the process of building the website.
   What we want to do is get a site setup as quickly as possible and then focus on writing blog posts. The blog posts are what is going to bring in traffic, not the design of the website. My own skool group - LIVE on day ONE shows you exactly how to get a website setup and live in the shortest amount of time.

2. Post on social media

   We need to be spreading the word of what we are up to. But we shouldn't be spamming our skool group everywhere. Instead we should focus on creating engaging and useful posts. Posts that talk about the problem we can fix.
   So for example, my skool group is aimed at building websites quickly by prioritising what is important and not getting bogged down in minute details. So I create videos with titles like "Why does it take you so long to build a website?" In these videos I talk about the reasons why this happens, and what you can do to avoid this. I will then say, join my skool group for more help in doing xyz.
   The point is, my focus isn't on spamming my skool group. Its about creating valuable content with good info. This makes you look like you actually have something of value that is worthwhile joining!

3. Combine your website and social media posts

   This is what I am going to be doing to streamline the process. I will be creating a video, then writing a blog post. The blog post will be repeating the information for the video. And the video will also be embedded in the blog post! This means that I only need to think of one idea to create 2 pieces of content. Not only that, the video being on my blog post will add more value to the post. Some people prefer to read, others prefer to watch a video!

4. Don't over do it

   You want your content to be the main focus of your social media and website posts. You then want to mention your skool group and how it could benefit them by being a member. If your main focus is "join my skool group" it will probably come across too salesy - and people get put off by this. Instead, provide a ton of value. Then mention - for exclusive content on how you can do blah blah blah, check out my skool group.

Build out your course

Once you have the ball rolling with your content creation, you need to focus on your skool course. This is crucial as this is one of the factors that is going to make members stick around.

Exclusive content

You want the course content to be exclusive to skool. If you are reposting your publicly available YouTube videos to skool, there is not much of an incentive for people to join your group. After all they can just access your content on YouTube.

This exclusivity will be one of the main reasons people come to your group. So this is important.

Repeat and nurture

At this point you have a solid foundation in place. Now you need to keep on creating website and social media posts. And keep on creating course content. It is important that you do both of these things consistently and don't focus all your attention on just one. This is to continually drive traffic to your skool group. And continually retain members.

You also need to nurture your community. This will be more important in the early days. When someone posts a comment, make sure you interact with them. Try and help them and ask questions. Eventually once you have a healthy amount of members - the community will interact with each other. But your involvement here is crucial in the beginning.

Monetise - how to make money on skool

If you have made it this far. Congratulations 🎉. You have layed the foundations and can now look at how to monetise your group! There are different approaches you can take. Some obvious, some less obvious. You may also have your own ideas of how to do this. The point to remember is that your skool group is a tool that you can use in whatever way that you think is the best.

• Charging a monthly membership

  The most obvious way of monetising your skool group is by charging a monthly subscription fee. This can be done simply by going into your group settings and setting the price that you want to charge.
  I have noticed that many skool group owners have a free group and a separate paid for group. This can be good because you can advertise the paid for group to your free group members. The difference between the two groups is that the paid for one will offer more value than the free one. It's down to you how you decide to add more value. This could be in the form of more courses available. Or offering mentoring calls. It's completely up to you what you want to do.
  
  

  Pricing your monthly membership on skool

  
  Consider how valuable the information is that you are providing when deciding on a price. Do you want to have lots of members and charge a lower fee? Or have few members and charge a high fee?
  This will depend on what it is you are offering. For example if you are offering one on one coaching then you aren't going to want to have thousands of members. You simply won't be able to cope. Instead you might want 20 members each paying $100 a month. On the flip side if you are able to do a live call with hundreds of members watching you could charge less for this.

Using affiliate links

The next way you can make money on skool is by using affiliate links. Affiliate links are links that you use to refer someone to a product. If the link is clicked and the "clicker" goes on to make a purchase - you will make a commission on that sale.

There are many different affiliate programs out there. The key to success with this method is finding the right product fit for your group. An example of this might be an affiliate link for a hosting company when you have a group talking about how to make websites.

Charge for services

Charging for services is another way that you can make money on skool.com. Being a group owner of a group with followers is an indicator that you are an expert in your field. This in itself is a credential for you. It is proof that you know what you are talking about. Let's say you have a web development group with a thousand members. An external person looking to hire a web developer will look at that and view you as an authority. This will also enable you to charge more for your services.

The service you offer will, of course, be specific to your niche. Consulting would be the obvious route to go down with this. Where people pay you for one on one calls.