The argument in one line.
People no longer pay for information because it is free everywhere, so a creator's real product is proximity, support, and community — deliverable through a Skool community that costs as little as $9/month to run.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- A YouTube creator with an existing audience and active comments who has never tried a paid community because they assume free content undercuts a paid offer.
- A creator relying on AdSense, affiliate links, or one-off brand deals who wants monthly recurring revenue that doesn't depend on how any single video performs.
- Someone with an email list or comment section they've never systematically funneled into a paid product.
SKIP IF…
- You have no existing audience yet — this is a monetization model for people already watching you, not a cold-start audience strategy.
- You want a purely passive income stream — this model runs on DMs, calls, and active community management, not a set-and-forget product.
The full version, fast.
Brian O'Neill argues that giving content away free on YouTube doesn't stop people from paying — it's what earns the trust that makes them pay. AdSense, affiliate links, and brand deals are all rented income with no recurring floor; a Skool community, startable for $9/month, turns that same audience into monthly recurring revenue instead. People don't buy the information, since it's already free; they buy proximity, direct access, accountability, and community with others chasing the same goal. He tours his own free and paid Skool groups, Skool's pricing models, and a three-post framework — a quick-question poll, comment mining, and call posts — for learning exactly what to sell before building it.
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00:00 – 00:39
01 · Intro
He gives away everything free on YouTube and asks why hundreds of people still pay him monthly.
00:39 – 01:23
02 · You've been told a lie
Names the belief that giving too much away on YouTube kills your ability to charge for it, and calls it the most expensive lie a creator can believe.
01:23 – 03:06
03 · Why AdSense and affiliate links fail you
Breaks down why AdSense, affiliate links, brand deals, and courses all leave a creator renting income with no floor and no control.
03:06 – 06:51
04 · Why the $9 Skool model works
Explains the shift to a Skool community three years ago and why an existing audience already solves the hardest problem in business: attention.
06:51 – 08:05
05 · What people actually pay you for
Argues people no longer pay for information because it's free everywhere; they pay for proximity, support, accountability, and connection.
08:05 – 08:35
06 · Your comments are already a community
Points out a creator's YouTube comment section is already an unmanaged community that can be moved wholesale into a paid group.
08:35 – 09:10
07 · The sellout myth (ignore this person)
Warns that launching a paid community will draw a 'sellout' comment, and explains why that commenter was never a buyer anyway.
09:10 – 10:25
08 · Proof: $24,000 in three days
Tells the story of a member with 70k subscribers who made $24,000 in three days, then opened a Skool community because buyers wanted support.
10:25 – 14:47
09 · Screen share: inside my communities
Walks through his free lead-magnet community, a one-time $27 workshop community, and his $49/month recurring community, and how members flow between them.
14:47 – 17:26
10 · Every way to get paid on Skool + the classroom
Tours Skool's pricing models — subscription, freemium, tiers, one-time — and shows the classroom, including a $147 bookable call inside a group.
17:26 – 19:00
11 · Validate ideas that actually make money
Demonstrates a validation post — polling a community before building an offer — used to fill a waitlist for a 90-day sprint.
19:00 – 20:56
12 · The stat: 7% free-to-paid conversion
Shares that his free community converts about 7% into paid members, above the typical 2-5% benchmark for free-to-paid communities.
20:56 – 21:50
13 · How to start your own for $9
Shows Skool's signup flow and the Hobby plan at $9/month ($7.50 billed annually) versus the Pro plan's lower transaction fee.
21:50 – 26:26
14 · Set it up: the 3-post framework
Details the three-post framework: a 'where are you' quick-question poll, a comment-mining post, and a call-booking post that surface exactly what to build.
26:26 – 27:38
15 · Build the door
Closes on the idea that the audience is already waiting; the only missing piece is building the paid community and telling them it exists.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- AdSense pays half a cent to two cents per view, and the algorithm — not the creator — decides how much a given month is worth.
- Affiliate links hand years of earned audience trust to a third party for roughly a 3% cut.
- A Skool community's entry-level Hobby plan costs $9/month, or $7.50/month billed annually, and includes unlimited members, courses, videos, and live calls.
- One paying member at $27/month already covers the entire $9/month cost of running a community.
- People don't pay for information anymore because it's free everywhere — they pay for proximity, support, accountability, and connection.
- A creator's YouTube comment section is already an unmanaged community; moving it into a paid space just puts someone in charge of it.
- Free-to-paid community conversion typically runs 2-5%; this creator converts about 7% of his free community into paid members.
- A creator with 70,000 subscribers and a 10,000-person email list made $24,000 in three days selling a course built entirely from free YouTube content.
- The number one piece of buyer feedback after that launch was 'I don't care what it costs, I just want support when I have questions.'
- A three-post framework — a 'where are you' poll, a comment-mining post, and a call-booking post — tells a creator exactly what to build before they build it.
- The commenter who calls a creator a 'sellout' for launching a paid community was never going to buy anything anyway.
The Case For Selling Proximity, Not Information
WHAT TO LEARN
The information in this video is already free on his channel — what people actually pay for is proximity, support, and a $9-a-month door that turns an existing audience into recurring revenue.
02You've been told a lie
- The belief that giving too much away for free kills your ability to charge for it is a lie many creators absorb without ever testing it.
- Believing that lie is what keeps creators dependent on ad revenue and one-off deals instead of building anything recurring.
03Why AdSense and affiliate links fail you
- AdSense pays half a cent to two cents per view, and the algorithm — not the creator — decides how much a given month is worth.
- Affiliate links exchange years of earned audience trust for roughly a 3% cut, with someone else capturing the rest of that trust's value.
- Courses built without audience input routinely become months of work nobody asked for, with no guarantee anyone buys.
04Why the $9 Skool model works
- An existing audience has already solved the hardest problem in business — getting attention — so a paid community only has to redirect attention that already exists.
- A recurring community payment keeps coming in during months when a new video underperforms, decoupling income from posting frequency.
- Starting before it feels 'ready' works because members are already engaged with the content; perfection isn't the gate to getting paid.
05What people actually pay you for
- Once information is free everywhere, what remains scarce and sellable is direct proximity to the person who taught it.
- Buyers are paying for accountability, faster and ordered access to the steps, and connection with others working the same problem, not for facts they could search for themselves.
06Your comments are already a community
- A YouTube comment section already functions as an unmanaged community; the opportunity is to take ownership of a conversation that's already happening.
07The sellout myth (ignore this person)
- The commenter who calls a creator a 'sellout' for launching a paid offer was never going to buy anything, so their objection costs nothing to ignore.
08Proof: $24,000 in three days
- A creator with 70,000 subscribers and a 10,000-person email list made $24,000 in three days selling a course built entirely from free YouTube content.
- The number one piece of buyer feedback was 'I don't care what it costs, I just want support when I have questions' — proof buyers pay for access, not new information.
09Screen share: inside my communities
- Running a free lead-magnet community, a one-time-payment workshop, and a monthly recurring community side by side lets a creator route people to the right offer based on where they are.
- A three-question join form (email, how they found you, what they want) doubles as both a lead-capture form and an email-list builder.
10Every way to get paid on Skool + the classroom
- A paid community can offer five different pricing structures — free, subscription, freemium, tiers, or one-time payment — and the right one depends on the audience's buying stage.
- Individual paid add-ons, like a bookable 1:1 call, can live inside a community's classroom alongside free content, without a separate sales page or checkout tool.
11Validate ideas that actually make money
- Posting a validation poll before building a product turns 'I think people want this' into a waitlist of people who already said yes.
- Filling a waitlist from a poll, then following up individually with everyone who raised their hand, removes the guesswork before launching a paid program.
12The stat: 7% free-to-paid conversion
- A free-to-paid community typically converts 2-5% of members; a well-targeted free community can beat that benchmark.
- That conversion rate can outperform typical email-list conversion because community members have already built trust through direct interaction, not just an inbox relationship.
13How to start your own for $9
- A community platform's entry-level plan being cheap (here, $9/month) means one paying member can cover the entire cost of running it.
- The plan cost and the price charged to members are two separate numbers — don't confuse what it costs to run the community with what you charge to join it.
14Set it up: the 3-post framework
- A recurring 'where are you right now' poll surfaces exactly what stage most members are in, which then dictates what content or offer to build next.
- Feeding raw member comments into AI to find common patterns can produce an entire offer and customer profile without hiring a research team.
- People buy what they explicitly say they want in their own words, not what a creator assumes they need.
15Build the door
- An audience that already trusts a creator can't buy something that was never offered — the missing step is usually the offer itself, not more content.
Terms worth knowing.
- Skool
- A platform for running an online community that bundles a discussion feed, a course/classroom area, a calendar for live calls, and built-in payment tiers.
- Hobby plan
- Skool's cheapest pricing tier ($9/month, or $7.50/month billed annually) with unlimited members, courses, videos, and live calls, but a higher per-transaction fee than the Pro plan.
- Pro plan
- Skool's $99/month tier, worth upgrading to once membership revenue is high enough that its lower transaction fee outweighs the higher monthly cost.
- Three-post framework
- A recurring content pattern inside a paid community — a 'where are you at' poll, a post that mines member comments for patterns, and a call-booking post — used to learn what members want before building an offer.
- Validation post
- A poll posted inside a community asking members whether they'd want a specific product or course, used to gauge demand and build a waitlist before creating anything.
Things they pointed at.
20:56productSkool Hobby plan ($9/month)
Lines you could clip.
00:00
“I've got a YouTube channel and I give everything away for free. So why on earth would anyone pay me $27 a month?”
06:48
“People don't buy information anymore. It's free everywhere.”
07:12
“They're gonna pay you for proximity, for support, for accountability.”
09:30
“I don't care what it costs. I just want there to be support when I have questions.”
27:05
“Your audience can't pay for something that is not for sale. Your job is not to convince anyone. It's to build the door.”
Word for word.
Read-along
Don't just watch it. Burn it in.
See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.
metaphoranalogystory
00:00I've got a YouTube channel and I give everything away for free. So why on earth would anyone pay me $27 a month?
00:08If you've ever said that to yourself, I'm going to prove to you why that question is dead wrong. That's exactly why they will pay you. I've been making YouTube videos for over four years and there is nothing in my paid memberships that isn't already on my YouTube channel.
00:25Nothing. Hundreds of people still pay me every single month and the majority of them found me right here on YouTube. And in this video, I'm gonna show you how you can do the same exact thing.
00:37Before I do that, it's important to let you know that you've been told a lie. That if it's free on YouTube, and you give too much away, nobody will ever pay you for it.
00:47That you're supposed to keep your best stuff locked away, and heck, I believed that garbage too, and that lie was the most expensive thing that I owned, and it's the most expensive thing that you own right now. If you're tired of relying on pennies from AdSense, affiliate links, and the occasional brand or sponsorship deal to get paid every single month, stick with me through this entire video.
01:14I've been selling stuff online for over six years and once I figured this out, what I'm about to show you, my entire business changed. This is why every other business model has failed you. AdSense is literal pennies, half a cent to 2¢ per view, and you don't have any control over it.
01:32The algorithm decides what you make this month. You don't. And if you don't post videos, you make nothing.
01:39Affiliate links, You've spent years earning the trust of your audience, then you hand that trust to Amazon for like a 3% cut. You're monetizing your audience for somebody else. Brand deals and sponsorships.
01:51Waiting around, chasing promotional stuff that you probably don't even care about. That's the thing that actually makes you feel like a sellout, and that is also never consistent.
02:02Building a course, we can all relate to this one. Months of work on something that nobody asked for. No guarantee that anyone buys, and when it's done, you're right back to square one and having to sell it again.
02:16The real problem underneath all of this is that you're literally . You own none of it.
02:25Nothing recurs, and every month you are starting from zero. Okay.
02:29So how do we fix all that stuff and make money that isn't tied to us showing up and constantly posting videos?
02:38I made this shift to the community model a little over three years ago. About a year after that, I moved to the school platform, s k o o l.
02:48And I'm gonna share my screen in a minute and show you why this model works so well and a couple of different ways that you can take your audience from YouTube and move them to a community free or paid.
03:01And, yes, they will pay you to talk about the same stuff that you talk about on your YouTube channel, and I am absolute living proof of that. Here's why the school model works so well. Number one is you can start before you feel ready.
03:16You already have the audience, so you're not building from zero. You have solved the most difficult problem, which is getting attention. You know how to get attention.
03:25You just have to now direct the attention. You can get paid before it's perfect. I've done this multiple times.
03:33By the way, perfect does not exist. You get to talk to your audience every single day. They're already in your comments talking.
03:42Now when we move them to a school community, we get to talk to them even more and learn more about them and find out what their real challenges are, what their problems are, what they want, and that is the opportunity to create products, services, solutions, offers that they are ready to pay for.
04:02As I'm telling you right now, there's an offer living in your YouTube comments right now, and your audience is waiting for you to sell them something. I love this one. You get to build an email list that you own.
04:14If you don't have an email list, a school community is a perfect way to start an email list without having to create, like, all these complex funnels. And I'll show you a very simple way to do that in just a minute. You get to validate ideas with real humans before you build anything.
04:30I love this. Remember what I talked about, making courses that nobody asked for because you thought they wanted it. In a school community, when you have a forum and when you have DMs and when you potentially do calls with people, they tell you exactly what they want.
04:46Or if you have an idea, you can run polls. You can run posts that ask people like, hey, would you want this?
04:52Is this something that you would be willing to pay for? I've done it. Every time I do it, I validate ideas.
04:58And when the idea is validated, I make money, and I'm going to show you that. This is going to be huge for so many of you. You get to convert your audience without feeling like you're salesy or you're becoming a pitch person, which is probably the number one thing I hear from my clients is they're afraid to ask for money because they don't want to sound a certain way.
05:20This model is recurring. Meaning that it shows up every single month whether you posted a video or not.
05:26Now, is not permission for you to stop posting videos, but it's not relying on that. If you if I have a video that doesn't perform well, if I have a month where my video my views are down, I still have people paying me every single month.
05:40And that's a great feeling and takes the pressure off of me. And probably the best part is you can start this business model, a school community for $9 per month if you use their hobby plan.
05:54Yes. I said it. $9 per month.
05:56It's a $100 per year, and you really don't need anything else. You can make YouTube videos and drive traffic directly to your school community.
06:07You do not need complicated funnels. You do not need to learn all this tech. I execute on this model.
06:12It works really well. I rarely send people to websites anymore because the school community is really easy to manage. So they pay you potentially $27 a month or whatever you are going to charge for your membership, and it cost you $9 a month to open the doors.
06:28That is the whole business. So you would literally need one person to pay you $27 a month or $17 per month.
06:35Again, whatever you're charging for your membership to cover the cost of running the community. There's a really important mental shift that I want you to make. And I think with AI becoming so relevant in our lives, like, people are really starting to feel this, that is people don't buy information anymore.
06:56It's free everywhere. And your audience already knows everything you teach is free on your channel.
07:02And that's a block for a lot of people, but I want you to stick with me here and understand that that is where your superpowers are going to come in. They're not gonna pay you for information. They're gonna pay you for proximity to you, for support, for accountability, for connection with other people that are going through the same thing or there or that are interested in the same thing.
07:23A lot of the times, people just want to be with the person that they are watching on their computer or, in in many cases watching on their 55 inch flat screen televisions because that is what's happening.
07:36People have literally told me I wanted to be able to be near you so that I could ask you questions, and I didn't wanna have to sift through your entire YouTube channel. Remember what I said in the beginning of this video is people want to get the steps faster and in order, and they want the ability to ask me questions and be around other people who are going through the same thing.
08:00And if you think about this logically, the light bulb's gonna go off right now. Your comment section is already a community.
08:08Go look at it and go read it. People are probably answering each other, making recommendations, and having conversation, and nobody's really in charge of that.
08:19You can do that. You can be in charge of that and you can move that entire comment section to a school community. Now, important and here's a myth I wanna break here.
08:29When you do this, k, when you open up a school community, somebody in your comments is going to call you a sellout. And here's what you need to know about that person who you are going to give a lot of attention to and it's gonna make you feel a certain way and validate and be like, yep.
08:45That's exactly why I haven't done this. That person was never ever going to buy anything from you anyway and they're not the person that you're building this for.
08:57So you straight up ignore them. It will happen. You don't give them any energy.
09:02I think it's important to share this story, and I've said it a lot. And I actually interviewed this person on my YouTube channel. She's in one of my communities.
09:09She has over 70,000 subscribers on YouTube and an email list that is over 10,000 people. She launched a course to her email list and made $24,000 in three days.
09:22The number one piece of feedback that she got from her members who bought the course was, I don't care what it costs.
09:31I just want there to be support when I have questions. And as a result of that statement, she opened up a school community and put everyone who bought the course inside of the school community so that they could ask questions of her.
09:48And then you have people who are all interested in the same thing and helping and supporting each other. It's a beautiful thing, and it is more proof that all the stuff that is on your YouTube channel for free, people will pay for it because she had all the steps in order.
10:05She admitted in the interview. You can go watch it. Every single step that was in that course that people paid for was on my YouTube channel for free.
10:15They paid to be closer to her, to ask questions, to have the exact steps in order, and to be around other people who are interested in the same exact thing. Now, let me show you exactly how you can execute on this model. This is one of my communities.
10:33This is my free community. I'm also gonna show you one of my paid groups, and then I'm gonna show you exactly how you can set yours up. When I do a YouTube video and I'm talking about helping people with their business idea, I point them right here to pick your online business.
10:48And this is exactly what it looks like when somebody comes to this page. It is a landing page. I've got images.
10:53I've got text. And when somebody joins the group, they have to answer these three questions. So this is the list builder part.
11:00What is your email address? They give me their email address. That email address gets sent to my CRM, and I'm able to email them.
11:08I wanna know how they found us. YouTube, school, uh, ads, because I do run Facebook ads as well. And then this question right here, really important.
11:17This is part of a three post framework that I teach is, what do you want your online business to do for you? This is the what do you want in a certain amount of time question.
11:28Right? You wanna know what their end goal is. So they get inside the community and they go right here.
11:35And this is the community feed. So people are in here, they're I'm posting. A lot of the times I put my YouTube videos in here because this is a free community.
11:43In my paid communities, I really don't do that. And people are commenting. Some people are posting.
11:49They're going through the stuff. And then this is the chat section right here, and these are the notification sections right here. So when someone comes into the community, I DM them, and I just basically ask them a question.
12:00I say something very, very simple, which is, hey, quick question. Do you already have an online business idea, or are you still figuring that out? And that starts the conversation.
12:12And this is the power of having a school community is that you can interact with them much faster than your YouTube comments, and it's just a little bit more personal.
12:23That's really what I like about this. I started this community in November 2025 and I am up to 1,186 members.
12:33Now, this really isn't a quote unquote community. This is more like a lead magnet. So this is where I send everybody to help them solve problem number one in the process that I teach for this particular group, which is I don't even know what business to start.
12:48So that's what I help them with. And then depending on where they are, I point them to some of my other groups. And I'll give you an example of what one of my other groups looks like.
12:58Now this is not a recurring revenue model group, but I have discovered a gap for people who have YouTube channels and for people who have email list that are not monetizing their audience. There's a lot of reasons behind that, but a lot of them just don't wanna ask for money or they don't know what to sell them.
13:16So I cover that in this community, and I do workshops, and it's joined for twenty seven dollars one time. So this is not a recurring model.
13:25Also, one of the things I love about school is there's a lot of different ways that you can charge people. And I'll show you what that looks like in a minute. The last community I'll show you is mindset school, which is my largest community.
13:36I have 252 members in here. It's $49 per month.
13:40So this is the recurring revenue model. And this is where I help people with their school groups, whether they have one or they just started one and they're looking for their first paid member or their next paid member, and I have a free trial, which is really a good way to get people into your group with low friction. So they would basically start a free trial.
13:59They can pick one of the plans, and you could put up to three different plans in here, and I'll show you how to set that up momentarily. So these people who are paying me every single month, like, this happens whether or not I post a YouTube video or not. And a lot of it starts right here in this group.
14:15So they can come to this group first, and then I usually direct them to the workshop community, or I'll direct them to the to the mindset school community just depending on where they're at. Now for you, if you have a healthy email list and your videos are getting lots of comments, then I would not recommend starting a free school community.
14:35I would start a paid community, and I would start emailing your members, letting them know about the community, and send them to this page right here. This is your, uh, your school about page. And in these communities, okay, there's there's many different ways to get paid.
14:49And I'm just gonna show you what that looks like. So if I go into settings, I don't make any money with this group. This is a free community.
14:55But if I go to pricing, I can have a free community, which is exactly what this is. I can have a subscription model, which is a one price.
15:03I could charge monthly only, monthly and annual, or annual only. I could do freemium, which is you let people in for free and you they get some stuff, and then anyone who buys premium, they get other stuff.
15:16They might get calls, they might get more stuff in the classroom. Again, more access to you or access to stuff that you have in a very, specific order that they can follow straight away, and I'll show you my classroom in a minute. Then you have tiers, which is straight paid all the way.
15:29And you could do standard premium, and you could also set VIP. And I showed you what that looks like in my other group, mindset school. Then you have a one time payment, which is what my one community is, the workshop community, which is you just charge them one time to get in.
15:42This is not the most popular model, but this is one that I use for my YouTube to school community. Let's go into the classroom, and I'll show you what that looks like. K.
15:52And we're gonna show we're gonna do this as a member. And everyone comes in here into the classroom. I direct them to the start here course.
15:58And I have four very simple steps that I want them to go through. You can do text courses.
16:05You can do this is a video, a Loom video with also text below it, and all I'm doing is giving them help with the thing that they came for, which is I don't know what business to start. I got too many ideas, and I help them with that. And then I help them validate it, and then I move them to the next place, which is one of my other communities.
16:23A lot of people will just stay in here, but I'm also emailing everybody because 1,200 people who joined this group are now on my email list. You can charge for stuff in the classroom. One of the things that I have in this particular group, if somebody wants to get on a call with me, they can buy it right here for a $147, then they would get a call link and they would be able to book time with me.
16:46So if you're a coach and you're doing one to one stuff, like you can put calls in your groups. The possibilities here are endless.
16:53Now I don't do calls in this particular group, but they also have a calendar feature where you can put a call in here and you don't even need Zoom. I can go in here and set a day and a time for it.
17:04I can use the school call function. I can use Zoom. I can use Google Meet.
17:09I could do it in person if I wanted to. I would upload a a cover image, and then I would add this call into the calendar. And you'll see right here, it's a weekly call, there's the link.
17:18So if I click this link, I would actually start the call. We have calls. We have community.
17:23We have the classroom. We have all the features, and we can chat with them. Now I'm gonna show you something about how you can use the validation method that I mentioned to validate ideas.
17:33I'm just gonna go up here in the search bar, how to use a school community. This is one of the methods that I use, and it's basically just a vote.
17:42This is a validation post, and I did this back in January. I do this once a month, and it's a way for me to to check to see how interested people are.
17:51And I created a wait list inside of my school community for an offer that I did, and it was a ninety day execution sprint. And 72 people said yes, had me to the wait list, and then I just started having conversations.
18:07I tagged people, and I really learned a lot about what they wanted. And I do a lot of these posts inside of the community, and this is really a tremendous way to avoid having to guess.
18:19Right? Like, people are telling me, yes, I want that thing. I'm interested in it.
18:23And if I get enough people to raise their hand, then I'm launching the thing, and then I'm going back to every single person, and I'm telling them, hey, the thing that I said I was doing, it's ready, it's available, here's how you go get it. And you can either stick it in the classroom and charge something for it, or you can create another group and say, okay, it's over here in this community.
18:43Here's the link. Go sign up. I wanna share a very important stat with you before we move to how to set up your community, which is for the folks who have landed inside of this group right here, the pick your online business, my free community, I have converted 7% of them into a low ticket community, either mindset school at $49 per month or the one time workshop at $27 per month.
19:10That is really high when you compare it to converting your email list, which if somebody gets a 10% conversion rate on email, like, they're gonna be really happy. The free to paid community model typically converts it somewhere between two and five percent.
19:27So I'm above that. I'm not happy with that. I want that number to be higher, but I am pointing people in the right direction, and it's really because of the model, which is they find me on YouTube where they're watching multiple videos, and I earn that trust and they like me and they're like, okay, I've made a decision on this guy.
19:46I wanna learn more. Then they go to one of my communities, whether it's the free one or whether they move to the paid community. Then I start having conversations with them.
19:53I learn about their situation. Sometimes they don't even know what their problem is. I have to uncover it.
20:00That takes a little bit of skill. That takes a little bit of patience, and then I'll usually get on a call with them depending on what the situation is. And that's really the entire model.
20:10I make YouTube videos about the stuff that I talk about in my groups. I drive them to the groups, build my email list, build the trust further inside the communities, and that's how I'm making recurring revenue every single month without me having to rely on AdSense or tens of thousands of views on each one of my videos.
20:33It really takes the pressure off when you know at the start of every month that you were going to make x amount of dollars. K. Now we are going to show you how to start your own school community.
20:45I will leave a link in the description. This is an affiliate link, so I do earn a commission if you choose to use this link to sign up for your school community. But you're right here and you would just click create a community and you choose between hobby and pro.
21:01I mentioned the $9 per month plan. This is it. Unlimited members, unlimited courses, unlimited videos, unlimited live calls.
21:08They do charge higher transaction fees, but that's okay for right now. If you are getting people at $27 per month, I would upgrade to pro because you're gonna pay a lower transaction fee.
21:19But like I said, you could start today with a fourteen day free trial, $9 per month. And if you do the the annual, it's $7.50 per month. So you get two months free.
21:29And just remember, it's $9 per month for you to run the community. That's not what you charge your members. If you have a healthy YouTube channel and your audience trusts you, likely I would start at higher than $9 per month.
21:41If you need help with that, you can check out mindset school, the seven day free trial. I'd get on a call with you and I can help you with the pricing. Now when you open up your group, here is the mistake that most people make, which is I've gotta have a bunch of stuff in here.
21:55And it's like, no, you do not have to have a bunch of stuff in here. You need to have a cover image right here. You need to have some text on your about page.
22:03You get a thousand characters and tell what the group is about. When I open this community, I I am not kidding.
22:09And when I opened up my paid group, I actually will show you my paid group because it's better mindset school. When I opened this community, I literally had nothing in the classroom except for some lessons. So if you if you were starting a paid community, you're probably gonna want a video, which will be no problem for you because you make YouTube videos.
22:27If you have any types of testimonials, you would put them here. I have a video testimonial as well, and then I have an image as well. This shows up on the discovery page.
22:36And then you have some text. Right? What what are they getting inside?
22:39And then you just drive traffic to this community. If you're paid, I like a seven day free trial because it gets, uh, it gets people to look around and try everything out before they commit to the monthly recurring.
22:50Then when we go inside the classroom, I'm just gonna go to my start of your course, which literally has been the same since I opened up the group. I've added a couple of things. I have a welcome post.
23:00I have how to use the community. I wanna know where people came from, like how did they find me. I don't ask that question in the membership questions for a paid group.
23:09I just ask them in a poll. This helps me tremendously figure out where people come from. So if everyone's coming from YouTube, like, where am I gonna spend all of my time?
23:17YouTube. I'm not gonna be screwing around with other with other platforms when everyone is coming here. And then I have all these comments, which is literal gold, and I'll talk to you about that in a second.
23:27I mentioned the three post framework about the three posts that you need to have in your community. This is one of them. Quick question.
23:34Where are you at with your business right now? What's your biggest block? Like, what it where are you at today?
23:39When you join my group, where are you at right now? I have 245 votes on this thing, and the majority of people who are looking at starting a business are in research phase.
23:49They did like, they don't know what to do, which is why that other community exists. Pick your online business that literally came from this poll. A 142 people, the vast majority said, I don't even know what business to start.
24:01So I created a lead magnet. I created a community just based on that one thing. I have all these comments.
24:07You put these comments into AI, which I've done, and you ask it to analyze and look for common patterns and what are people saying, like you could literally build an offer and a customer profile. I've had this for over a year. This is April 2025.
24:21You don't even need to do it for that long. So that this is a critical post and I it is this has been since day one. I have a call post, so people get to do a call with me.
24:30This is something I've been doing since day one, and I still do it now. Like, calls are the sauce. I'm just gonna tell you right now, if you do calls with your members, they're gonna buy faster, they are going to trust you more, and then they're gonna do stuff like this which is talk about how what what they got from the call with you.
24:46Like, people get on calls with me and they literally go out and they make money. Um, the other thing is this, right, what are you gonna cover? So this is the gap post in the three per post framework, which is this is the thing that's blocking us the most.
24:58Right? And in this particular group, when it comes to an online business, the thing that was blocking most people were these two analysis paralysis and overthinking, and I have all this data. This is the thing you solve for.
25:09So if I can help people with these two things, I can get paid. I I can make money. If I can remove this, then they can get to the dream, which is I want to start my online business so that I can quit my job one day, or I can supplement my income, or whatever it is.
25:25And that's exactly how I would have you set up your community. Just bring them in. Find out what they want.
25:32Talk to them. Ask them questions. Learn about them.
25:35Make the stuff that they said that they wanted, that they were challenged with, not what you think they need, what they actually said. People buy what they say they want, not what you think they need.
25:47Then you use the validation post like, hey, you guys are all saying this stuff. What if I made this program or this course or this coach or this cohort or whatever it is?
25:58Is this something that you would be interested in? And then you have them vote. And then you have them expand in the comments.
26:03And they literally build the entire thing out for you. Then you go make it. Then you go charge them money for it.
26:08Every single time that I have done that, I have made money. Not some of the time. Every single time.
26:16And it is a lot easier to do that when you're using the words that they gave you versus, oh, I'm just gonna make this course, so I'm gonna go try to sell it. That's really hard, and it usually doesn't work. Okay.
26:27We covered a lot here. In the AI era, content is everywhere, and it's pretty much worthless at this point.
26:35Community is very scarce. People want connection with other humans now more than ever because of AI.
26:43And this is such great news for you because you spent years building trust with your audience that already shows up for you like they're waiting for your next video. The door, right, the school community, the about page, that's the only thing that is missing.
26:57You gotta give that to them. Your audience can't pay for something that is not for sale. Your job is not to convince anyone.
27:05It's to , the school community, and tell them that it's there. I promise you that it can be that simple if you get out of your own way and just understand that your subscribers are waiting for you to make them an offer.
27:22And the offer is already living inside of your YouTube comments. And if you don't know what to say to your email list or your YouTube subscribers to announce your school community, I made a video about this. It's the next one.
27:36Watch it right here.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
He gives everything away free on his YouTube channel, yet hundreds of people still pay him every month. In this breakdown he explains why that isn't a contradiction, and screen-shares the exact $9-a-month Skool setup he uses to turn a free audience into recurring revenue.
Named ideas worth stealing.
21:50list
The Three-Post Framework
- Quick-question poll ('where are you at right now?')
- Comment-mining post (feed replies into AI to find common patterns)
- Call post (book 1:1 calls to learn what members actually want)
A recurring content pattern inside a Skool community used to learn exactly what members want before building anything, instead of guessing.
Steal forany community or email list where you want data before you build an offer
14:47list
Skool's Five Pricing Models
- Free community
- Subscription (monthly, annual, or both)
- Freemium (free tier + paid premium)
- Tiers (standard / premium / VIP)
- One-time payment
The five ways a community owner can charge members inside Skool, shown live inside the settings/pricing page.
Steal fordeciding how to price a new paid community or membership
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
20:56product
“Start your own Skool community for $9/month — affiliate link in the description”
Soft CTA woven through the whole video since his own communities are the product; explicit affiliate link and a live signup walkthrough starting around 20:56, plus two owned Skool communities pitched as next steps for viewers at different stages.
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
AFFILIATECommission earned if you click.
Visual structure at a glance.
