[Thoughts] How to Monetize "Your" Community?

You can build a community, but you can’t own or monetize it.

I’m tired of hearing the phrase “monetizing your community” so much so that it pushed me to write again after a year. I wanted to publish this because we desperately need to change this mindset.

To start, a person can’t own a community. It’s a living organism that belongs to the people who are part of it. But we can lead a community by earning people’s trust. We can gatekeep it to provide safe space. We can set boundaries to help it grow in the right direction.

We can’t monetize a community either. But we can create valuable activities and content for people who choose to pay for our services. We can find people who want us to continue our community efforts. We can create opportunities that lead to mutual wins. So yes, you can earn money by building a community business but "monetize" isn’t the right explanation.

You can own and monetize a business by building a product, service, or content, but not a community. In a community, ownership, decision-making, and financial opportunities should be shared by people involved, not centralized. I emphasize this because many community builders (including me) mistake their services for a community, making it harder to sustain one.

If you agree with me (or don’t? Tell me why, I’d love to learn 🙏) and you're considering or already building a community business, I’ve come up with five possible mindset shifts. I’ll share these with short explanations, examples, or ideas on how to apply them to our efforts. With your help, we can add even more examples, ideas, and mindsets to build thriving communities.

Prioritizing Transparency

How open are we when it comes to sharing the decisions we make about the community, especially financial details like revenue and expenses? Can we trust our people enough to share this information? If not, how can we expect them to trust us?

One of the biggest roadblocks I see in building trust is a lack of openness and transparency. I believe we should normalize sharing important details with our people to build a trust bridge. Transparency isn’t just about being honest, it’s about shifting how we see our members. We should start seeing them more as stakeholders, not just consumers or customers.

💡 Creating regular financial and management reports to share with the community shows that our intentions are clear and that we are ready to be accountable.

🔗 I couldn’t find direct examples, but you can check communities and projects on Open Collective to get some ideas.

⚠️ Should I be fully transparent with every member of my community? My honest opinion: No. Transparency doesn’t have to mean sharing everything with everyone. You can decide what to share and with whom based on their level of involvement. Transparency can even be an incentive. As people move closer to the inner circle, they can gain access to more information.

Collective Ownership

As mentioned above, a community can’t be owned by one person, so why don’t we act accordingly? All the effort we put into building a community becomes more meaningful when we let members step up and take part in shaping it. When people take responsibility in areas where they excel, or start their own initiatives to create deeper engagement, it doesn’t just strengthen the community, it inspires others to do the same.

But ownership is more than just sharing responsibilities. It should also create real opportunities for the people contributing. Whether financially, through leadership roles, or by having a stronger voice in shaping the community’s direction, those who put in effort should be recognized and deeply involved.

Don’t hesitate to see your members as potential successors, partners, or teammates, and treat them that way. The more we build together, the stronger and more sustainable our communities become.

💡 Hiring active members for the community-related jobs as a full-time or freelancer instead of looking outside

🔗 DAOs and community-led cooperatives explore ownership in unique ways.

⚠️ Values first, actions second. Involve people who align and deeply understand the community’s values and mission.

Leading as an Elected Steward, Not a Boss

How certain are we that, if there were a trust vote, our members would want us to continue as community leaders? What if we saw ourselves as elected stewards rather than founders with permanent authority?

Community leadership isn’t about being in charge. It’s about being entrusted with the role to help the community thrive. And just like in any trust-based relationship, that role should be earned, maintained, and even passed on when the time comes.

Let your members feel that they have real power to influence change. Think of them as voters, and think of leadership as something that must be renewed through trust, not just assumed by default.

💡 Hold a closed trust vote to see whether your members still wants to see you as their leader. It could be a fun and intriguing way to collect feedback as well.

🔗 Foundations and NGOs conduct trust votes regularly to maintain leadership accountability.

⚠️ If you want to build a sustainable community, it shouldn’t depend solely on you. A thriving community should continue to exist, even if you lose interest in leading it.

Designing Opportunities for Everyone to Benefit

Do we have a marketplace inside our community? Can an active member promote their services or products and gain visibility? Do we give members a chance to start their own paid initiatives within the community?

When building a community, we need to think of it as an ecosystem. A living, evolving space where people form partnerships, share knowledge, and create value for one another. A community isn’t just a place where people follow a leader—it’s where they take initiative and actively shape the experience themselves.

Opportunities shouldn’t flow in one direction. They should be many-to-many, ensuring that value circulates among members, not just from the leader to the community.

💡 Introduce a community marketplace where members can showcase their skills, services, or products.

🔗 Rosie.Land, Led By Community, Talkbase are partnering with their members to create content.

⚠️ Are opportunities fairly distributed? Step back and ask yourself—who is getting the most out of this community? If it’s always the same people, you should rethink the systems.

Separating Personal Services from Community Efforts

Is the community still a community without our service, or have we just gathered our customers on a community platform? Can someone else in the community, offering a similar service, get the same visibility and voice as we do?

I believe this is the hardest mindset shift to make, but also the most fun to think about. A community’s purpose shouldn’t revolve around serving our personal benefits. It should serve everyone’s interests. And that’s only possible if we can separate our personal services from the actual community.

Community efforts are about keeping the space safe, connected, and thriving. It’s about facilitating conversations, planning routines and rituals, and helping members create their own community journey.

Service efforts are about creating value for members that serve us. They involve marketing the service, gathering feedback, and identifying patterns to refine or launch new offers.

Although this is the hardest shift to make, it’s also freeing. It allows us to build a community that exists beyond us while also making our personal services clearer. There, we can own and monetize however we want. :D

💡 For your next community digest, highlight an active member who offers a similar service to yours.

🔗 MoT has a page named “Open To” for its members to provide voice for everyone - which is also a good example of “designing opportunities” - Thanks Rosie for sharing

⚠️ Separation is hard, and I’m no expert—but here’s one thing to think about. Revisit the first mindset shift on transparency and ask yourself: "Which revenue streams am I comfortable sharing in reports, and which am I not?" That distinction might show us the way.

Final Thoughts

Thank you for reading this far. When I started writing this piece, my intention was to challenge how communities are commonly viewed and highlight what feels off to me. As I thought and researched more, I also wanted to offer possible mindset shifts. But for me, this is just the beginning of the conversation, and I’d love your help in exploring it further.

If you have thoughts, counterpoints, examples, or new ideas, I’d love to chat and even co-create something together. I hope this blog post is enough to start the conversation between us.

Excited to hear your take.

See you soon (and I promise, not next year 🙈).