Penny Power and Thomas Power distinguish community from network: community gives you belonging and being heard, while networks are just connections. Ecademy's paid members stayed engaged, but converting free users to paid was always hard.
Questions this video answers
December 7, 2002.
Leon Benjamin; £10 via PayPal.
36 paying members out of about 10,000 total.
30,000 subscribers.
30,000 paying members out of 650,000 total (noted as less than 0.5%).
Chapters
The other thing is that, you know, community is becoming huge. There's 10 million Facebook groups now and probably more than that stat that I heard. Plus all the other places, LinkedIn groups, people having communities on Disciple and Peer Board, etc. But actually they might call them communities, but I don't think many people know how to run them as a community. Many people run them as networks, not as a community. And I think it's really important to understand the difference. Now, I always come from an emotional place. You know, I, I am an emotional person. And, and therefore. And if you did psychometric tests with people, some people come purely from I want results, I want results. Other people say, I want an experience, I want feelings. What we believe community has is a feeling, a sense of belonging to, as Thomas said. And what's very interesting to us is that we've been running for the last 17 months a survey that people can take our business Health Check. There's a question on it. Are you lonely in business? And it's growing. And you wonder why, when we're more connected as a society than ever before, why are people feeling lonelier? And it really is down to the fact that they haven't got a sense of community anymore. Community, as Thomas says, it gives you a sense that you matter, that people are listening to you, that you can be yourself, that you can close the gap between this is my identity and this is my truth. But not many people know how to run communities very similarly to. You could have loads of pubs across the country and you can walk into some pubs and absolutely love the atmosphere in it. And the landlord greets you with a smile and he remembers your name the next day and he then starts to remember what drink you like. Or you can walk into a pub and no matter how many times you walk into it, nobody recognizes you. To me, one is a utility and one is a community.
Yeah, you're totally, you're totally right. And I love the analogy of the pubs with, with the, with communities. One thing that I wanted to, to tap into Penny and for the context of the people listening in. So Thomas, you said you always believe in paid, right? So for everyone's reference, Ecademy had 25,000 paid members at the time. So the free and the massive growth to 650 of those that were free came after before. How was that make up then? Just predominantly for the content? Because I know that many people will be interested to hear more about that.
It's interesting because I'm a historian now, a sort of digital historian, because I've been online for 30 years, but I remember the very first day, December 7, 2002, when we got our first paid member. So we had about 10,000 members by then. We started in 98. We mainly did physical events around the UK and then they spread into Belgium and the Netherlands and gradually spread across Europe and then around the world. But that very first paying member, Leon Benjamin, I even remember his name because he sent us our first 10 pounds on PayPal that month. In December 2002, we had 36 paying members out of about 10,000 total on the list or on the community. By 2006, that had reached 30,000 subscribers across those levels. The 2 pounds, the 10 pounds, the 100 pounds, depending on the level, bronze, silver or gold. So really the paying members grew as a tiny percentage, which you can see. 30,000 out of 650,000 is less than half of 1%. Yeah. So it's a tiny. So you've got like 1 in 200 people who want to contribute and get more by making a payment, and those people get a lot more because the moment you make that payment, the moment. The moment you give that piece of exchange, like you with bit 100, you give commitment of time. And communities only work if you invest time. I think the trouble with free is there is no commitment of time. And the trouble with free, I think, is you're rewarded with tokens now called likes and shares. And the more angry you are and aggressive you are and rude you are, and annoying you are, the more likes and shares you receive. So you get awarded for being an idiot or rewarded for being angry or rewarded for shouting, and that's not really how to behave in a community.
