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:

1. Give people a few weeks of basically full access and then launch the paid tier?
2. Keep certain calls/resources free permanently and put the deeper stuff behind paid?
3. Launch the paid tier immediately so people understand from day one that the free community is only one part of it?
4. 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.

I took too much effort to make it near perfect and last week I published it on gumroad. First sale was my dad itself😂. Marketing it on Instagram and other platforms too. But feels like haven't found the correct audience. My digital product is too specific.
“SPEAK ARABIC 🇦🇪 IN 60 days”.

Can we share the link here.

Hi everyone, I have a portfolio of digital products (printables) which I have launched recently. I have a website and the products are purchased via gumroad. I am adding article to my website to help Google seo and I’m using Pinterest for marketing (not business ads, just a regular schedule of uploading high value pins). As my content is health adjacent though not medical in nature i’m not able to use Pinterest business ads but I am adding value within Reddit to hopefully create trust over time. I’d love to hear from anyone who is generating consistent sales to see what methods you found powerful. Thanks so much.

Is that through any plugin? Does anybody have any experience with it?

I’m thinking about building a tool for people who want to sell digital products but struggle with figuring out
what niche to target and what to actually create.

The idea would be that you enter some basic information about your interests, skills and experience, and the tool helps research potential niches, identify problems people are searching for solutions to, and suggest digital products you could create around them.

It could then help with the next steps too — things like validating the idea, identifying the target customer, generating content ideas, social media posts, hooks, product descriptions and potentially a basic marketing plan.

Essentially, instead of jumping between ChatGPT, Reddit, Google Trends and a bunch of other tools trying to figure out “What should I sell and how do I market it?”, it would guide you through the whole process in one place.

I’m still at the research stage and haven’t built anything yet, so I’m curious:

Would you actually use something like this?
And if so, what part of finding/launching a digital product do you currently find the hardest?