My freemium community isn’t working… Did I do something wrong?

“Start with a free community, then upsell people into your paid offer.”

Sounds smart, right? It’s one of the most common community growth strategies out there, and in this episode of Dear Bri, I’m explaining why it usually backfires.

I break down the biggest flaw in the freemium community model, why mixing your audience and alumni in the same space creates confusion instead of connection, and what actually drives engagement inside a paid community.

You’ll also hear real client examples, including how one nonprofit community generated 78 paying members in its first two weeks by offering people a “taste” of the experience instead of unlimited free access.

If you’ve been wondering whether your community should be free or paid, how to structure your offer ecosystem, or why your community engagement feels flat, this episode will help you rethink your strategy before you build the wrong thing.

⏳ Timestamps

00:00:00 | Why Freemium Communities Rarely Work

00:01:15 | The Problem With Mixing Alumni and Audience

00:04:18 | The Myth: Understanding Good Community Strategy

00:05:14 | Charging for Community Changes Member Behavior

00:07:34 | Replace Your Freemium Strategy with This [Framework]

00:10:37 | Full Recap

📌 Resources Mentioned

Join the email list: https://www.emberconsulting.co/newsletter

Ligare Case Study: https://www.emberconsulting.co/post/case-study-launching-a-thriving-membership-community-on-heartbeat-from-idea-to-78-members-in

4 Types of Community - The Masterclass: https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/775267/185716772091987335/share

S3E5 How much should I charge for my membership community? https://www.emberconsulting.co/post/how-to-price-a-paid-community 

Season 1 episode with Alli Ball: https://www.emberconsulting.co/post/if-i-build-it-how-do-i-make-sure-they-come-with-alli-ball-founder-ceo-of-food-biz-wiz

Book Your Discovery Call Today Hire a Skilled Community Manager

Bri Leever

🖥️ Website

📩 Newsletter

📹 Youtube

📱LinkedIn

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Freemium doesn't work for community. I know. Bold statement. Maybe even a little controversial because this strategy is everywhere. Start a paid community, then have a free community, upsell them to your paid offer. It sounds like a funnel where your paid members do the work of selling the community for you. But here's what actually happens. You end up with a big, disengaged community, a confused audience, and a paid offer that is not converting the way that you want it to. Stick around because in this episode, I'm going to show you exactly why this model breaks down, and at the end, what to do instead. Welcome to Deer Brie, an advice column for community conundrums, fiascos, and drama. Season three is brought to you by Ember Consulting. That's my community strategy agency, where we help coaches, consultants, and creators build paid online communities that are good for their people and good for their business. This season marks the first time Deer Brie is available in video on YouTube. So if you want to put a face to the voice, come find me there. The link is in the show notes. And this season is solo. No guests. Just me, Brie. And that's because after two seasons of hosting this podcast with guests and 10 years of doing this community work, I've been able to crystallize the most confusing conundrums and darkest dramas into a few simple insights and frameworks, which is what you're gonna find in this season. Simply put, I had too much to say and not enough time. So it's just me and you on this one. And finally, I usually record this podcast from Hawaii Island, so a special thank you to the Kanakamale people on whose land I currently reside. Welcome back, or welcome if this is your first time here. I'm Brie Lever, the community strategist and founder over at Ember. This is Dear Brie, the show where we talk about the real questions, the sticky situations, and the hard truths of building community-powered businesses. Season three is all about building with intention, because the decisions that you make at the start of your community journey, they either echo in a positive way or haunt you for a long time. Hit subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. Which brings us to today. We're talking about freemium and why the model most people assume will work usually doesn't. Today's letter is a question I get all the time in different forms. It came up just yesterday in a live workshop I host once a year called Couch to Connection. Make sure you're on the email list because this is like one of my favorite programs that we run. The letter went something like this: Dear Brie, I'm launching a paid community on Circle. We've had a paid community before, but prior to now, they just got put in a Facebook group so they could interact. Now, when folks pay, it will add them into Circle. But we still have this group in Facebook. Should I just make the Facebook group free for anyone to join so that they can get a taste? But then if they want the real transformation, they have to pay to join the circle community? Is that a good strategy? Or what would you recommend doing with this Facebook group? Signed Facebook Frenzy Infargo. Well, my friend Infargo, let me paint you a picture that I see all the time. You've got a service-based business. You run a program, a course, or a coaching container. You've got clients who've been through your work and they've gotten results. And then you have your broader audience, people who follow you, who are interested in what you do, and who are in the exploratory phase of deciding whether or not to buy. Someone says, and maybe it's you, what if we created a community where both groups could mix? The people who've already done the work can inspire the folks who are still figuring it out. The newcomers get access to the real proof, and the alumni get to feel generous and seen. It's a win-win, right? It sounds so good. I had a client with this exact thought process. Their organization is called the Forum for Theological Exploration. And they built a community on Mighty Networks specifically for folks who had already gone through their programs. And it was doing okay, but it wasn't great and was not inspiringly engaging by any means. And then the thought came, what if we open this up? What if people who haven't bought in yet could also join? Maybe that will spark this community into action and give the alumni someone to inspire. And as a bonus, the FTE team would only have one place to have to share their updates and information. They thought maybe they could even cut out social media entirely. So they opened the doors to their email list, and the community went from a tight-knit group to over 800 members. And the engagement, flatlined. What went wrong? Here's the thing: on paper, mixing your alumni with your audience seems like it should create energy. But in practice, it only creates confusion. Because those two groups are not trying to solve the same problem. Your alumni have already made the decision. They've already done the work and arrived somewhere. Your audience is still in the is this for me phase. They're at completely different points in the journey. And when you put them in the same room, even the most skilled community facilitator will struggle to get these groups to know how to show up for each other. Because the alumni feel like they're in a waiting room that they've already graduated from, and the audience feels like they're crashing a party where everyone else already knows the inside jokes. This is the myth. My community can serve everyone in my funnel in different ways. Your marketing funnel and your offer ecosystem are two different things. And trying to use one community to serve both. At best, you end up building two different communities, which is a ton of work. At worst, everyone gets a pretty mediocre experience and it eventually dies off. We think the nature of good community strategy is connecting a lot of different people in a lot of different stages, each experiencing different problems, hoping that they will spontaneously interact and find new solutions. But it's a recipe for your community to flop. Good community strategy means bringing, yes, a diverse group, but also a specific group of people together who are trying to solve a common problem. This season of Dear Bree is brought to you by Ember, my community strategy agency. Most of our clients come to us for one of two reasons. Either they are launching a brand new community and they need it done right the first time, or they're ready to make a significant change, either because they've outgrown their old model or they're getting ready to migrate to a new community platform. Either way, every project runs through the same five-milestone roadmap. We look at discovery, making sure your value proposition aligns with your business model in your community and your customer needs. We look at your community business model, the tech you want to use. We dial in your onboarding strategy, and create a robust launch or pivot plan. Every project with us starts with two initial strategy sessions where we get clear on your model, your platform, and exactly what needs to happen next. You walk away with two things. First, a customized ecosystem map. This is where we get aligned on your model, your value proposition, and really wrap our hands around what's going to happen in this community. Second, you get a personalized roadmap scoped for your specific community. We assess where you're at with each of our five milestones and lay out the steps for what you'll need to do to work through each of them. Two calls, two deliverables for $999. When you're ready to stop throwing spaghetti at the wall and start building with an intentional plan, book a discovery call. The link is in the description. And when you're ready to find someone to run it, Ember Fractionals can help you find and even certify your next perfect community manager for the job. Link is in the description. Now back to the show. So now we know why the freemium model breaks down. And we know that mixing your audience and your alumni in one community is a recipe for disengagement, but I promised I'd show you what to do instead. And the answer is actually much simpler than you think, and it doesn't have to mean you can never offer anything for free. Now I'm gonna tell you about a client I worked with to get this right and who had every reason to default to free. Ligare is a nonprofit. We worked together to create the Christian Psychedelic Society, a community for people navigating faith and psychedelics. And when Megan came to me, the idea of charging her members was deeply uncomfortable. This was a mission-driven community. These are people navigating something vulnerable and personal. And charging for that, it felt yucky and wrong. But here's what we worked through together. Charging isn't commodifying connection. It's actually protecting it. When we started building the Ligare community on heartbeat, we didn't default to free just because it felt safer. We designed a membership that's paid annually or quarterly with one very specific strategic move to help get people in the door. Periodic, free events that give people a genuine taste of the community and what it's all about. Not the whole buffet, a curated sample plate. To kick things off, this looked like a launch welcome party that was free to join. Within the first two weeks of launch, they had 240 people registered for that free kickoff event, 80 of which showed up live, and 78 paying members joined. Shortly thereafter, they also happened to get featured in the New Yorker, which was massive for them. But it's not luck. That's what happens when your pricing, your model, and your community design are aligned. And here's something that Megan said that really stuck with me after. The members who showed up were super open-hearted and thoughtful. That's not a coincidence. When people pay to be a part of something, even just a small amount, they show up differently. There's a commitment signal, there's skin in the game, and we are culturally wired to value the things that we invest in. That's not manipulation, it's just true. A paid community changes the energy in the room. And when the value you've promised is dependent on how people show up in that room, a paid community ultimately serves everyone. So let's break down what we did with Ligari to show you what to do. Because I'm not just here to blow up your freemium strategy. I do enjoy that, but I want to give you something to replace it with. So step one is to determine the type of community you are building. If you're sitting here realizing this is somewhat foreign to you and you're not sure where your community fits in your funnel versus your offer ecosystem, that is exactly what my masterclass on the four types of communities is for. The link is in the description and the framework I use with every single client is the foundation of every community and its strategy. So go check it out after this episode. But here's the short version. Free communities work best for product-based businesses. If your business sells a physical product, a SaaS tool, a CBG, a free community can absolutely work in your marketing funnel. Think brand communities, super user communities, customer success communities. They exist to support the product, new sales, or repeat customers. Paid communities work better for service-based businesses, where the community itself is one of your offers. That means the community lives inside of your offer ecosystem, not just in front of it. And when this is the case, how you design your offer ecosystem matters enormously. I'm covering that in our next episode. So make sure you subscribe so you don't miss it or click on the card in the corner. Step two, if you have a paid community, now the job is to give people a free taste, not free access. This is the key distinction. A taste is boundaried. It's intentional. It's a specific experience that shows someone what it feels like to be inside of your community without handing them the keys. This can come in the form of a free event, a challenge, a short boot camp. It's a short window. Think of it like Alison Ball, who I featured in season one of Deer Bree. Allie opened her free Facebook group once a quarter for 24 to 48 hours for a mini boot camp. Not forever, not all you can eat, a sampler plate. And that approach converted people into her paid program far more effectively than an always open free community ever did. Because here's the problem with the all-you-can-eat buffet. When your free community is genuinely good and working, people get what they need there and they never feel the pull to upgrade. And when it's not that good and not working, because let's be honest, your time and energy are going into what's bringing in money, it's not exactly a compelling advertisement for what's on the other side. So for my dear letter writer, Facebook Frenzy in Florida, let go of your free Facebook community. Embrace the new container you are facilitating in Circle. You can always open up your old group in Facebook one to two times a year to give them a taste, but don't keep it always open. Let's bring it home. Freemium doesn't work because you can't serve everyone in your funnel with one community, at least not in the beginning. Your alumni and your audience are solving different problems. They have different needs, and mixing them doesn't create energy, it creates confusion. The free-to-paid pipeline sounds logical, but in practice, your free community either works too well and no one upgrades, or it doesn't work well enough and no one wants to. Neither scenario gets you or your members where you want to go. What works instead? Know which type of community you're building and design it for one specific group at one specific stage with one specific problem in mind. Then give them a taste, not full access. If you want help figuring out which type of community is right for your business, my free masterclass in the four types of communities is the place to start. The link is in the description. Go check it out. And if this community building journey is revealing that you don't know what you don't know, I encourage you to book a discovery call with my team so that we can get your strategy right the first time. Happy building! Thank you so much for sharing some space with me on this episode. Please like and review wherever you listen. It genuinely helps more community builders find the show. To stay connected between episodes, sign up for the Ember newsletter. That's where I share what I'm building, what we're learning, and the things that don't make it into each of these episodes. It's also where you can hit reply and let me know what community conundrums are haunting you right now. Link is in the show notes. Aloha, and we'll see you in the next episode.