Skool is a platform that allows you to create your own community and courses. It's a great way to share your knowledge with others and make money from it, especially if you already have a following.
I've been using the platform for 2 years - first as a customer, and then I started my own community. So this comprehensive guide will walk you through everything you need to know about the platform - from creating the community to monetizing your content.
What is SKOOL?
SKOOL is a platform that combines course creation with a strong community aspect. Unlike traditional course platforms that focus solely on courses, SKOOL emphasizes the social aspect of learning through its community-centric approach. The platform enables creators to build, monetize, and scale their online communities while providing comprehensive educational content.
Who is it for?
The platform is ideal for those who already have a following: it is especially popular YouTubers and Instagram influencers. But, you don't need a large following to start. A lot of people are acquiring customers exclusively from the platform itself, without uploading lots of content on other platforms
You could just monetize your passion. There're a lot of successful groups on very niche topics: a community for
- Beekepers 🐝
- Skaters 🛹
- MMA enthusiasts 👊
- Business owners 💼
- Astrologers 🔮
- Heavy Metal fans 🎸
- And so much more...
There's nothing you couldn't find here - a large variety of niches
But how do you start your own group?
Pick your niche
The niche for your community needs to be both in your field of expertise, and in demand. There're several recommended steps to find your ideal niche:
- 1) What am I passionate about?
- 2) Do I have the authority and experience to teach others?
- 3) Is there a clear demand for it?
- 4) Am I able to monetize it, to cover the costs? ($99/month)
There's no right answer to these questions - to each his own. You can go broad (general self improvement, business tips), or you can go niche (a community for editors, or salespeople).
Treat your community like a product - if you're going to charge for it, make your value proposition as clear as possible. If you're a complete beginner, don't overthink it, just start and improve it over time.
How to create your community
Choose a name, upload an image, set the price for the group, and you're all set (kind of)
If you want to get free training for Skool community owners, which consists of 30+ hours of training with Alex Hormozi and Sam Ovens, you should complete all 4 tasks:
- ✅ Write the first post
- ✅ Set cover image
- ✅ Add group decription
- ✅ Invite 3 people
If first 3 are pretty straightforward, the last one can be difficult for some - "How do I get the first 3 members?"
You can invite your friends from Instagram, just send a message to them. This is the tactic that most of the people use.
If you want to 'cheat' the system - you can just create your own 3 accounts, and get access to training with Hormozi.
Hormozi training & The Skool Games
Alex Hormozi is an American entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist. By age 32, Alex and his wife Leila’s net worth crossed $100M in net worth. The couple’s new mission is to make business accessible to everyone. They fulfill this by making content across social media and publishing books and free courses for entrepreneurs.
He's also a co-owner of Skool, with Sam Ovens.
These guys sure know a lot about building communities, as they both are selling information online and making MILLIONS while doing it.You get 30+ hours of recordings with them, which includes lots of practical tips on how to grow your community and make money from it.
You'll get tips on EVERYTHING you'll want to know - from generating traffic to your group, to optimizing the "About Page" and improving your offer. Pure action-step-based money-making advice from great businessmen.
Monetization Options
Skool offers a variety of options to monetize your community:
A) Paid community - You set up a monthly and an annual fee, or a one-time purchase price, and wait for someone to buy. Pretty straightforward. But what's cool about the Skool platform, is that it processes the payments by itself, and if your client stops paying admission fee, he gets kicked out. It's all automatic and convenient - both for users and community creators.
B) One time purchase - You could create a course inside your free or paid community, and charge extra for it. The prices you can charge are from $1 to $999.
C) Affiliate commision - When a person from your community launches their own community, you get a 40% comission every month. You could even make money by making a free group and without monetizing it - if a member of your group creates his own group, you will still get commission
How to Grow Your Community
You can earn more from your Skool community by:
- increasing your traffic (organic content or paid ads)
- improving your about page
- decreasing churn (improving the quality of your product, adding new courses)
- upselling, downselling and cross-selling (make new offers to your existing customers)
SKOOL vs other platforms
When it comes to comissions, Skool has the best offering:
Compared to Patreon, Discord, Substack and similar platforms, Skool is a lot more enjoyable to use both for community-owners and clients.
If we're taking into account that every client is going to stay longer on Skool than on Patreon (which is the case), switching to Skool becomes a great long-term decision.
From my personal experience (I was using Discord and Telegram before), switching to Skool made my conversions better, and customers stayed longer. The "About" page of your community can act as a good-converting landing page, especially if you'll make a good Video Sales Letter (VSL) and make your offer truly irresistable - it will be converting better than a similar page on Patreon or Substack.
Downsides of Skool
This platform is not ideal, there're downsides:
- Steep pricing - 99$/month is not that easy to cover, especially as an early-stage entrepreneur, and some platforms (like Patreon or Substack) are free to use. But Skool is worth it, because your customers will enjoy it more, hence they'll be churning less, and you get more Life Time Value out of each customer. The community features, gamification, enjoyable course-watching experience will make your customers stay longer.
- Lots of bots and "slop" because of the Gamification - if you're going to incentivize your community to post more via gamifying the process, botting and spam occurs. It is especially evident in large Skool groups - like Skool community. Most of the people engaging are not even real(!) But when it comes to paid communities, the situation is a lot better, so it's neglegable.
Benefits of Skool
For 99$/month (first 2 weeks are free), you get:
- - Your own community platform + course-hosting place
- - Improved long-time customer value - because of the community features & overall quality of the platform
- - 30+ hours of courses with Alex Hormozi & Sam Ovens
- - Lowest comissions
- - A chance to win the Skool games and win a mastermind ticket for Hormozi's workshop
- - And a lot more..
Join now and get 14 day for free: