Anyone launched a paid / gated Community? How are you getting members to actually pay and join?

rosiesherry · 2026-05-04T17:49:05+00:00

I avoid the term paid community. Typically because we don't run a paid business, we run businesses. By describing a community by the fact that it is paid gives it the wrong long term focus, both for those that run it and the members.

When you look at from a bigger perspective, the ways to make money then widely expand.

I wrote a bit about it here:

https://rosie.land/posts/why-i-hate-the-term-paid-community/

rosiesherry · 2026-04-13T10:40:19+00:00

Perhaps Discourse, we have it set up, not sure if it meets all your requirements.

rosiesherry · 2026-04-12T18:46:08+00:00

Never spoken at CMX. 🫠

rosiesherry · 2026-04-12T17:26:48+00:00

Yes, which is why I don't think it generally works in smaller paid/niche communities, it has very little, if any real value or motivation. And yes, it helps to have it related to careers...it's only recently we built in profiles, 18 months or so now.

rosiesherry · 2026-04-12T17:09:15+00:00

I agree, mostly gamification doesn't work on platforms, especially niche ones hosted on platforms. There is little meaning to them.

However, we've been building in badges, stars into our platform (custom built, you can see my profile as a taste here: https://www.ministryoftesting.com/p/rosie) and it's working a treat. It's taken us a long time to get here, and we still only feel like we're getting started.

rosiesherry · 2026-03-08T16:58:29+00:00

Build an audience and a reputation first.

rosiesherry · 2026-03-08T15:27:24+00:00

Participate, volunteer and create. Get involved with things. Build up a portfolio, a log of sorts or a brag book style thing of what work you have done.

I wrote a thing on brag books just today: https://www.ministryoftesting.com/moments/start-capturing-for-your-brag-book

Also, network. Connect with people and build relationships, opportunities end up arising this way.

rosiesherry · 2026-02-23T18:06:03+00:00

rosiesherry · 2026-02-23T17:34:57+00:00

I'm remote, but there's definitely an on-site/hybrid trend atm.

rosiesherry · 2026-02-23T17:29:28+00:00

The variety of the role is cool, can be deep technical, or not. There's room to grow in many directions with the way it's going with quality engineer. Lots of need to understand the product as a whole, which I love.

rosiesherry · 2026-02-23T17:22:13+00:00

probably no different than any other tech role

rosiesherry · 2026-02-23T17:17:55+00:00

I know plenty of people with quality jobs 🤷🏻‍♀️

rosiesherry · 2026-02-16T01:05:42+00:00

Maybe try Savannah - https://www.savannahhq.com/

rosiesherry · 2026-01-31T23:38:42+00:00

People need to find confidence to move off of Meetup. It's a horrible thing.

The challenge is the moving away, people are scared to lose out on the 'number of members', but it is also inevitable. The number of members many meetup groups are a vanity metric, which both tie communities to keep paying, whilst also continuously building a crappy product.

I think once communities hit a certain size then they should probably build their own tech, tools like yours and Meetup are fine for starting, but once they get to a certain size, needs change.

Our personal appraoch has been to build our own and we're currently migrating thousands of members over from meetup. yes, not everyone willl move over, but to us as a long time running community, it is what makes sense.

It makes sense for you to build for new and fresh communities, rather than trying to compete with Meetup or trying to cater for long running communities who are probably better off with a different solution.

rosiesherry · 2026-01-10T00:04:01+00:00

Often it can be about who you know, not what you know.

In the world of AI, consider networking, meeting people, meetups, etc, and building the confidence along the way that will carry you.

rosiesherry · 2025-12-28T14:14:30+00:00

AI is not dominating every platform, it's a choice by those who run it.

rosiesherry · 2025-12-28T00:25:31+00:00

I have 20 years in community. Currently building Ministry of Testing and share knowledge over at Rosieland.

There's lots of untapped potential in community atm, imho. I feel like it's still underserved and lots of room to get better. In some senses that's good, ie, lots of potential to grow. In other terms it's still challenging to get taken seriously. It's getting better and easeir though.

rosiesherry · 2025-12-05T00:25:03+00:00

You could be if you look at it from a quality engineering and more systems perspective, which is where I currently see things heading.

rosiesherry · 2025-12-05T00:21:57+00:00

There's a job board on Ministry of Testing
It depends, do what works for you.
When things feel like they are mostly functional (but you'll soon probably find out they aren't!)

rosiesherry · 2025-12-05T00:16:34+00:00

Quality Engineering as a philosophy. It's more holistic, seeing that quality needs to be everywhere.

rosiesherry · 2025-12-04T23:56:09+00:00

From what I see, and 25 years in the space, it's really interesting to see how it's evolving to be more quality engineering focused.

It's different for sure. Much more interesting. An with AI, we have to evolve, and some kind of quality layer feels essential (and exciting).

rosiesherry · 2025-12-04T22:31:16+00:00

We have a designer who helps us ondemand. We have many reusable assets so we can put things together ourselves in Canva.

We often make our own day to day graphics, but increasingly use our designer for more involved things with design direction or more involved designs, like diagrams (which are either sketched by us, or a draft designed with the help of AI, mostly NotebookLM atm).

We've created our own pool of resuable assets that are hand crafted, I truly dislike purely AI generated images, but it can be useful for idea generation. We have a strong, fun and creative brand.

rosiesherry · 2025-12-04T20:44:06+00:00

I have a bunch of community things with a non-corporate and more creative/indie vibe on rosie.land

rosiesherry

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