8 Ways You Can Make Money With Skool

Skool offers a flexible platform where creators can choose different ways on how they want to build their communities and make money.

Through creative minds, course creators have found different ways to monetize Skool, using the platform not just as it was straightforwardly intended, but by adding a twist to it.

If you don’t yet know what Skool is, read our full review and explanation of Skool first.

Here are 8 popular strategies people use in order to generate an income from Skool:

1. Paid to Paid / “Swap to Save”

The most obvious way to monetize a community in Skool is to migrate a current community from places such as Discord, Patreon or Facebook.

This is obviously because Skool offers better engagement features and switching over to Skool almost immediately increases revenue, either by offering a paid community or through some of the other ways we are going to talk about in just a bit.

Example: A fitness coach running a Patreon community switches to Skool. By moving 200 members from Patreon to Skool, they eliminate platform fees and immediately capture 20% more revenue. With better engagement tools, members are more active, and the coach boosts monthly income without changing subscription prices.

2. Free Communities

Don’t think that you cannot make money from a Skool community just because your Skool community is free to join.

On the flip side, by moving away from traditional social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, where you need to pay to reach all your members or where competitors can run ads to your group members, Skool keeps a close lid on your community, allowing you to be the only one that have access to your members.

With this in mind, you can hyper-target your members in order to make them more engaged and increase their purchasing power for upsell products such as courses or services.

You can have courses inside of the classroom which can be locked behind a paywall for members that would like to access premium content.

Example: A photography enthusiast runs a Facebook group where members discuss gear and techniques. After moving the group to Skool, engagement skyrockets. Since all posts now reach the audience without algorithm interference, the group becomes more active. Members start purchasing the enthusiast’s photography courses and gear recommendations, creating new revenue streams.

3. Starting With Free, Moving over to a Paid Community

A lot of community creators are leveraging a free community in order to create momentum, before placing a paywall on the community. So once a group reaches a critical mass, switching over to a paid community both creates good-will with the members that got in for free, but also assuring paying members that they won’t pay for an “empty” group.

Announcing this as an “early-bird” offer by running paid ads to Skool could also leverage urgency, encouraging people to join while community access is still free.

Example: A life coach starts a free personal development group on Skool. They invite 50 initial members, carefully selecting individuals who align with the group’s vision. After growing the community to 200 active members, the coach switches to a paid model. The first members stay free as a reward, while new members pay a subscription fee, generating steady income.

4. Having both a Free AND a Paid Community

Another direction, instead of placing a paywall to a community could be to create a second community that requires members to pay. This paid community could act as an upsell and a more exclusive option for members who have already seen the value of the content you can offer them.

This way, you create a low-risk entry point for new members, but also a social proof created by members that are enrolled both in the free and the paid community.

The paid community should naturally consist of more exclusive and detailed content, preferably with a more customized solution, and give the members a more exclusive point of communication with you.

Example: A language tutor creates two Skool communities—one free for beginners learning Spanish and one paid for intermediate learners. After trying out the beginner group, students find value in the content and discussions. They then upgrade to the paid intermediate group to continue improving their language skills, which creates a natural upsell funnel.

5. Partnering With Influencers or other Already Established Channels

Imagine you’re someone with a nack for creating a Skool community but with little to no following. Then pair that with someone without the know-how of monetizing an audience and with no organized community.

This arrangement can create a win-win for both of you, as you leverage your skills and another person’s influence over a large number of people.

Although it’s a split in profit, it can easily become a great passive income stream for both of you.

Example: A marketer partners with a fitness influencer who has 500,000 Instagram followers but no dedicated community. The marketer sets up and manages the Skool community, where the influencer sends traffic. They split profits from memberships 50/50. With the influencer’s audience and the marketer’s management, the community quickly grows and generates significant revenue for both.

6. Bringing Outside Experts Inside Your Community

Who says that you have to be an expert on something in order to run a successful community? The sheer knowledge of how to optimize and monetize a community could be enough for you, as long as you are capable of bringing in outside expertise.

These experts can help you create course content and provide feedback to community members and aid their progress.

These experts will also most likely gain traction to your community by spreading it to their own network. And the more experts you bring in, the more traction you could potentially see.

Example: A technology enthusiast creates a Skool community for blockchain enthusiasts but doesn’t consider themselves an expert. They invite well-known blockchain developers to join the community and provide insights. These experts get exposure to a targeted audience, and the community benefits from their knowledge. The creator earns recognition for bringing everyone together and turns the community into a paid model.

7. Zero to Hero – Document Your Journey!

So you’re not an expert or an influencer, but how about documenting your own journey? Many have yet to figure out that there is value in progress, and being inside of a community where all members are growing together in order to inspire and hold eachother accountable could be attractive for many people with a newfound interest.

Don’t be afraid of showing that you have flaws and that you are on a journey yourself, people will find this genuine and passionate and most would love to join you on your journey, side by side.

Example: A beginner guitar player starts a Skool group called “My Guitar Journey,” where they document their progress learning the instrument. Members pay a small fee to join the group and either learn alongside the creator or follow their progress for inspiration. The creator invests part of the earnings into better equipment, which enhances the learning experience for everyone.

8. “Curating” through a Paid Group

You don’t have to offer anything exclusive in order to monetize something. As long as you can do it with the promise of helping people save time, you can curate free resources, compile the best ones and let your members focus on consumption instead of research.

This is a great way to charge people for the convenience of not having to sift through loads of information themselves.

Example: A web developer creates a Skool community where they curate the best free resources on learning JavaScript. They spend time finding high-quality tutorials, coding challenges, and guides. While all the material is freely available online, the developer charges a fee for access to the curated list, saving members countless hours of searching and vetting content.

Final Thoughts

Skool is proving that you don’t need to be an expert or have a large audience to make money online. Whether you’re curating content, partnering with influencers, or simply sharing your journey, the platform offers a variety of ways to monetize your community. The creativity of Skool users continues to inspire new strategies, making the possibilities for income generation practically limitless!