Minimum Viable Audience; How to build a 1000+ paid member community; How to turn ideas into curreny
Where creators grow their businesses.
We’re Passionfroot and this is a newsletter featuring must-read content for our creator community. Our vision is to empower creators as the next generation of businesses and contribute to a future in which everyone can make a living by sharing their truest authentic self. If you enjoy the content, share it with friends.
On Passionfroot
Passionfroot was selected as one of the finalist no-code projects to pitch at On Deck’s Demo Day! 🥳 We participated in the fellowship and built within a couple of weeks the first version of our prototype to help creators manage their work. We are now running a private test phase with selected creators who have a combined reach of ~3m. If you want to save time and make more money as a creator, sign up!
Some learnings from us this week:
Ship fast.
During the fellowship, we really shifted our mindset to “just ship it”. You might have some assumptions about your audience but you will never know if you’re right, if you don’t put your content, ideas, products etc. out there to see how they will react to it. It doesn’t have to be a full-fledged product / course / video etc. but it has to be good enough to collect data and evidence if this could work before investing too much time & resources into it.Find your tribe and accountability group.
At On Deck we had “Mastermind Groups” whose members got together on a weekly basis to talk about the progress we made and our intentions for next week. As a creator you want to gather a circle of peers around you who keep you motivated, can advise and make you feel less lonely on your journey.Find your “allies” and evangelists.
Include your audience and community members in the creation process and let them co-create your content, next class or book. You will de-risk creating things no one wants and make your fans also part of your journey.
Curated gems for you
We are also building an all-in-one library simultaneously so that you can access the curated content and resources at any time. Another cool creator library.
⭐️ Northstar
Beginner’s guide to making and creating in the creator economy 🔗
Yi Hui is a product manager, no-code maker, and lifelong learner. She put together a guide summarizing what an aspiring / new creator can do in the creator economy.
You can find
What tools you can use
Ways to make some internet money (Content, curation, and digital products)
Real-life examples from real people
A creator-starter pack of resources and tools at the bottom
✍🏼 Content
The Generalist has 41K newsletter subscribers and has done $300K in revenue this year. In “Process: Solo and multiplayer”, Mario talks about his writing process.
TL;DR
Finding the rationalizing force gives the content piece a center of gravity, a weight, that often sticks with readers longer than the specific details of a company.
Multiplayer collaborations typically bring together 5-15 sectoral experts to work on a single content piece. Ideation has to occur far in advance of publication. Usually, you need at least 3 weeks to recruit contributors, host a discussion, and edit the content piece.
If you want to work with others on content creation, you should emphasize that these collaborations are (i) a chance to share their knowledge with a large, influential audience, (ii) an opportunity to craft and contribute to a narrative that hopefully has enduring value in their industry, (iii) a fruitful structure to meet other relevant leaders, and (iv) an active way to learn and sharpen their thinking.
🗣 Distribution & Building an Audience
8 takeaways from 1 year of running a newsletter 🔗
The most relevant learnings from Mario on his creator business. His takeaways can be applied to all types of creator businesses.
TL;DR
Take advantages of launches.
Find a social network to focus on.
Spend time on sharing. Put real effort into distribution.
Experiment. Play around with different content formats and business models.
Value over replacement. Lean into your differentiation.
Collaborate with other creators to learn and engage new audiences.
Finding your minimum viable audience 🔗
All content entrepreneurs need to start with an MVA, a minimum viable audience, before they launch products or diversify. Here's how to get started.
Stake out the smallest market you can serve and that can sustain you.
Identify who your audience is, what your differentiated content will be, focus on one platform and find and hit the minimum viable audience to validate.
💸 Monetization
How Dru built a paid community to 1000+ members in 10 months 🔗
With Trends.vc, Dru is building a community and newsletter for 40k entrepreneurs.
TL;DR
Use content as magnets (newsletter, Twitter account, internet challenges) and community as your moat.
Focus on rituals (e.g. Mastermind groups to support each other, Q&As, Demo Days).
Pace yourself (It’s a marathon, not a sprint!).
Make it your own. You need a vision, otherwise community members will pull you in too many directions with their feedback.
Use strategic friction. Low barriers to enter your community leads to noisy environments.
Decentralize leadership through team members and volunteers.
Learnings from Paddy on building his 6 figure /year YouTube channel 🔗
Paddy is a YouTuber (260k) & YouTube consultant working with multiple 1m+ channels.
TL;DR
Start with a business plan in mind.
Work out how many views per month you need to live on.
Start with Adsense, then look at Affiliate Marketing. You don’t need a big audience to start with this, find products you use personally and see if they offer an affiliate program.
Build long term relationships. Don’t see a brand deal as a one-off cash grab, only work with companies you can see yourself growing with.
Use financial tools to help building your business with sponsor rate calculators, financial forecasts, tax helps.
TL;DR
Collaboration is king. Sharing and promoting others’ work supports your own.
Find a business model that suits you. Your temperament, time availability and strengths
Test and iterate ideas and assumptions. Where you start is unlikely where you’ll end up, but if you listen to your audience, try new things and build in public you’ll figure out the perfect fit for both your content and your monetisation strategy.
Make use of the tools built for creators. Substack, Maven, Twitter, Gumroad, Pallet, Product Hunt…. the tools are out there to build a living online from your ideas so go use them to your advantage.
Follow your curiosity over trends. Its clear, a lot of work goes into the successful newsletters, courses and communities we’ve learned about. Pursue only topics you would write about for free (as you will be here for a long time!).
Stay in your own lane. Whilst we’ve heard about themes here there is no one-size-fits-all approach so trying to copy others is not going to give you the unique vantage point and perspective audiences crave. Find your own thing and keep at it — growth is inevitable if you keep showing up.
Favourite quote of the week
’Til next time, friends 👋🏽
If you have questions or comments, please shoot us a message!