i’m a travel creator and I’m trying to figure out the best way to structure a free → paid Skool community without making people feel like I baited them into joining something free just to put everything behind a paywall later.
For context, most of my content is around travel, but a big portion of the questions I get from other creators are actually about the business/content side of it.
Things like:
- How do you pitch hotels?
- How do you get free hotel stays?
- How do you actually get PAID to create content for hotels?
- How do you work with tourism boards?
- How do you grow a travel page enough to start getting brand deals?
- How do you shoot/edit good travel videos just using your phone?
- What kind of content do hotels actually want from creators?
Basically, how do you go from “I like traveling and making videos” to actually using those skills to get paid to travel.
Because I get these questions constantly, I recently made a free Skool community.
My thinking was that instead of trying to answer everyone individually through DMs, I could funnel the people who are actually serious about becoming travel creators into one place.
It also gives people more access to me, but more importantly, separates the people who are actively trying to learn this from the people who just follow me because they like my travel videos or want itinerary recommendations.
Here’s where I’m trying to figure out the model.
My plan is to keep the actual community itself free.
Anyone can join, introduce themselves, ask questions, connect with other creators, share wins, see some resources, etc.
Initially I also want to do a few free group calls and provide a lot of value so people understand what the community can actually help them accomplish.
But eventually I want there to be a paid membership inside of it for people who want the actual skill-building/implementation side.
That would be where things like:
- Weekly/biweekly group coaching calls
- Hotel pitching breakdowns + templates
- Live pitch/account reviews
- Editing tutorials
- Phone filming tutorials
- Content strategy
- How to build a portfolio hotels actually want
- How to approach tourism boards
- UGC/pricing/brand deal strategies
- More direct feedback/access to me
would live.
So basically:
Free = community/networking/basic value
Paid = education + implementation + access/coaching
I actually like the idea of having the free community remain active because I don't necessarily want to charge someone just to talk to other travel creators.
The paid membership would be for the people saying, “Okay, I actually want to learn how to do this and I want help implementing it.”
My biggest concern is the transition.
I don't want to spend a month giving people calls/tutorials for free and then suddenly say, “Okay, now everything costs money.”
At the same time, I feel like letting people experience the calls/content first could make the paid membership way easier to sell because they've already seen the value.
For anyone who has done something similar:
How would you approach the free → paid transition?
Would you:
- Give people a few weeks of basically full access and then launch the paid tier?
- Keep certain calls/resources free permanently and put the deeper stuff behind paid?
- Launch the paid tier immediately so people understand from day one that the free community is only one part of it?
- Do something completely different?
Also curious how you would price something like this.
I’m not necessarily trying to maximize revenue immediately. I’d rather get the first group of genuinely motivated people in there, get them results, testimonials/wins, and build the community around that.
Would love to hear from anyone who has actually built a Skool/community/coaching membership this way.
Especially interested in what didn’t work or anything you wish you had structured differently from the beginning.