It’s been a year! (My honest progress)
It’s been exactly one year since I launched my platform. Shifting to a community model was a move I thought about a lot, especially since my existing audience was entirely used to one-off seminars.
I took the leap with Fluent Community, and after a few months of dialing things in, it delivered exactly what I needed.
In the beginning, I was constantly tweaking settings, trying to make the community as "complete" and perfect as possible. But eventually, I realized something important: a community is a living, breathing organism that constantly evolves.
Today, my community sits at 972 active members. Trusting the Ninja team has completely paid off.
Challenges I've Faced
- Third-party Addons: I invested in some peripheral add-ons that got the job done initially but ultimately let me down in certain areas. I ll definitely be moving much slower and being more cautious before trusting external tools moving forward.
- PWA vs. Native App: We are currently operating as a PWA. I want to make the jump to a native mobile app, but I'm still running into some issues there.
- Mobile Media Display: Mobile needs a much more dynamic way to display videos and audiovisual material. I made an attempt using galleries, but users nowadays are conditioned by social media—they crave a more vibrant, visual experience rather than a traditional forum layout.
My Top Tips After Year One
- Set Clear Expectations: You need absolute clarity on your positioning and exactly what members should expect when they join.
- Nail the Onboarding: The onboarding process is the single most important part of your community—even more crucial than your technical setup.
A massive thank you to the entire team of Ninjas!
*if you have a tip to share or your progress, please share ❤️
Congratulations on your first year and reaching 972 active members! 🎉
Thanks for sharing such an honest reflection. We appreciate your thoughtful feedback on the areas you'd like to see improved.
Wishing you even more success in year two!
Congratulations.
Could you be kind enough to tell me how you grew your community members to 900+?
I have been paying Facebook for ads, but the result isn't converting the way I want.
Also, you made mention of third party add-ons developer. Most times this people are just vibe coders(Ai coder), they do it for fun and need your money as well.
They'll never take that add-on serious, since it was created without passion. Many of them don't offer customer's support because, what would they tell you when literally all codes is done by Ai and not even any was done by them.
I mean, imagine asking a vibe coder(ai coder) to find a bug? What do you expect he'll do? He'll just copy your ques and paste it on Ai, and since the Ai don't have history to remember, Ai will jeopardize the add-on.
I'm just saying, any add-on I create, I always release updates for them, I always add features requested by my customers.
Now do you know why it's easy for me to fix bugs and add new features? Because I don't rely on Ai to do it. I know exactly what lines of codes in a file to check and rectify it.
Vibe coders would produce add-on for cheap price because there was no labour and after getting lots of buyers, they varnishes.
Compare to me, who fix features request from my customers, head on😂
Even WPManageNinja don't use Ai to create their plugin.
Sorry for the long comment, I have a lot to say but I'll just end it here.
WiLson Eberechi I am a content creator for at least 6 years now, i have a big audience, maybe 600K followers across all social media. It's been hard to transition from online courses to a subscription based community but now i have a core with online and some offline events.
I give Zuckerberg a big allowance each month, i build organic and drive the ads to the warm audience. Pushing an ad for a community to cold audience it's pretty tough. Not a good plan for me.
I would be very cautious about the add-ons from now on, you are right!
Thanks for your comment
Ioannis Glossopoulos How many active followers do you have on social media? I'm just interested how many of these active followers converted to community members. I've been struggling to get people from social media to my community. People are engaged on social media, but they don't want to join the community.
Marek Its a strategy mistake. I made big mistakes along the journey. I kept giving all the sauce and sending complete structures and systems through dms. I am now having a concrete strategy with Tofu and Mofu content to attract and nurture and funneling to my community with bofu ads and dm sequences. You can give bits of your solutions and a lot of relatability and drive them to your community giving them a solid path to achieve their goals.
Thanks for your feedback ! good luck :)