SEO Community Side Gig = $891,000 Per Year

Check out Traffic Think Tank, an online membership community for SEOs.

The membership is $99/month and per a recent profile the business was sold for $1.8 million last year 💰

There were 750 paying members at the time of sale. 

750 x $99 x 12 = $891,000 per year 😎

Confirmed via the profile…

it was bringing in about $1 million in ARR (annual recurring revenue), according to one founder’s LinkedIn profile.

Matthew Howells-Barby, Ian Howells and Nick Eubanks are the founders of TTT…

The crazy thing is, this was always a side gig for the three founders. For six years, they were juggling it alongside their full-time jobs.

Why sell at all? “We didn’t have the time required to take it to the next level,” Howells-Barby told They Got Acquired.

🚀 Origin story…

Back in 2014, Howells-Barby got invited into a small, private Facebook group where top SEO experts shared strategies that had worked for them. The cardinal rule: Nothing was to be leaked outside the group.

Then…

In 2017, he and his two co-founders – who were all members of the Facebook group – launched Traffic Think Tank. They organized it like this:

– Charge a $99-per-month subscription for access to a private Slack community.
– Publish a new piece of educational content every week.
– Allow members to ask them questions directly.
– Host a monthly live Q&A on Zoom.

😕 They weren’t sure it would work, but it did…

They limited their community to 100 members at first, and they quickly maxed that out. While they focused on educational content, it became apparent that Traffic Think Tank was really in the business of personal connections.

The more connections it facilitated, the more valuable it became.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any mention of how they got those first 100 members paying $99/month. 

I assume all 3 founders had a bit of an audience already and leveraged that 💪

Matthew’s insight for anyone building a community…

Your customers are also the product. The less satisfied those customers are, the less valuable the community is as a whole.

At $99/month, TTT is also a nice contrast to the $9/month membership business we featured recently.

Both did well, so clearly this model can work at higher and lower price points 🤑

Also, I like how Matthew came up with the idea after spending time in another community on the same topic.

Are you part of any communities that you find lacking?

Could you start your own (better) version and charge for it? 🤔

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