Paid Community Pricing

Community pricing follows different rules to product pricing. A SaaS tool competes on features at a market rate. A course competes on outcome at a market rate. A community competes on access, peers, and accountability — none of which have a market rate. That's why generic pricing advice fails: "what do similar communities charge" is the wrong starting question. The right starting question is what would these members pay for the components separately, and what fraction of that does the membership represent?

The VALUE framework runs five steps. Value Audit inventories what members actually get — access, content, peer network, events, outcomes — and prices each at replacement cost (what would coaching cost? what would buying the courses separately cost? what would a mastermind cost?). The community price should feel like a fraction of the "if bought separately" total. Audience price sensitivity maps the audience to a tolerance band (students £9-29/mo, professionals £29-99/mo, business owners £49-199/mo, executives £99-499/mo) — because pricing a community for senior engineers at £19 doesn't attract more members, it attracts non-serious ones and devalues the room.

Level structure defaults to single-tier for most communities under 500 members because tiers add management overhead and confusion. Two tiers (free + paid) makes sense when there's a real funnel justification. Three tiers (community + premium + VIP) only fits established communities with diverse segments. Beyond three tiers is failure mode. Unit economics does the arithmetic that founders skip — target revenue divided by price equals members needed, and the skill checks whether that member count is realistic given the existing audience size, not just possible in theory.

Enrollment model picks between monthly subscriptions (low commitment, higher churn), annual (lower churn, harder to sell), monthly + annual offered together (best for most), lifetime (one-time sale, no churn but capped revenue), or cohort-based (urgency but requires re-launching). Founding-member pricing is the launch tool — a discounted rate for the first 20-50 members rewards them for taking a risk on an unproven community and creates honest urgency without manipulation. Built-in protections: a free tier that's too good removes the upgrade incentive, so the skill enforces that the best content stays behind the paywall. Prices should rise as value grows — existing members grandfathered, new members pay the new rate. The skill won't suggest a number without first running the value audit, because pricing based on what competitors charge instead of what members get is the most common mistake in the space.