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building any business in the center of venture capital. I am Alex Edmonds, also known as supremerumham, on the internet. And this is the building indie business podcast. Okay. So today I wanted to talk about the revenue research community. I'm going to be talking about, like, why I put the why created the community on Discord. The problems with discord, how to promote a Discord server, and the benefits of discourse, or discord as well. discord not discourse I'm just gonna say that now, so every time I say discourse, I mean Discord. It's on Discord. There's a link to it in the show notes. Okay, let's get into it. On Discord. Um, so, my previous experience with communities and building communities is on telegram. Open podcast was a telegram group right so I thought I'd change it up a little bit and use discord discord has several benefits that I noticed immediately. Because, Ross Kincaid told me to try Discord. And so I just, I just said like hey let me, let me take a look at it. And I like it. Right, so it's it's a mix of telegram and slack. One problem with telegram is that it's only one conversation, which I don't like, right, because you can only have one conversation and telegram channel. You can have multiple, but with several different channels like in slack. You can do that. Right. So I have one for like content. The general trap. I'm planning to do like ama's. So, I'm gonna have like a channel for that section. Right. Okay. And then, I feel like the vibe is more casual, on, on discord versus slack. Because you have all these cool features like you can host a telegram telegram. You could, you could live stream it in Discord. There's audio channels. It's really cool. but like, when you compare it to slack, you're never going to be able to live stream in slack. Because live streaming is like live streaming has the. It has. I can't think of the word it's like in people's minds the idea of when you live stream it's for video games and slack is more a professional channel. Right. Okay. I'm searchable. Your discord community is searchable and discord, so they have this feature and I forget what it's called but it lets you search for a bunch of communities. You have to qualify for it though. Revenue research doesn't qualify for it yet. So that way people will be able to find revenue research through discord and maybe join the email list, which I think is always good. Right. developer friendly. So, you can build bots, and those bots will help you out in the community. I built one that can kick members. There's also a welcome bot to. There's just a bunch of functions that these bots can do, and when I tried to build a telegram bot. It was super confusing. And when I built my discord bot, it was like 20 lines at the most of JavaScript, and there was 1111 file right, I didn't have to have a whole setup. It's one file, And then I think you there's like, there's like a command line. No, I think you import it. Um, there's like an important function in your toolbar. And that's how the bot gets added to your telegram channel or telegram. So, are not your Discord server, sorry. Okay. Um, right, and then the vs discord or vs telegram discord has so many more features. Right. There's a voice channel, which is where you would host your, your live stream. You can video chat. I did a video chat with Ross and Brandon, you can integrate different. I'm like different tools like your, your Twitch, your YouTube channel. I integrated buy me a coffee. Um, there's an announcements channel. There's other channels right you can create different channels. It's, it's great. And so, the benefits of discord and not just in terms of like verse telegram. But for the revenue research community, is it gives me a direct line to my readers, which I think will help improve the content, because I'd be able to get feedback from my, my, from the people in the community. I'd be able to get content ideas. I did, I'd be able to get to know subscribers like have calls with them, and, you know, voice chat with them video chat with them. And then I'd be able to bounce ideas off some of the members. So like, I think if I get content ideas, then that will that will make them more interested in my content like revenue research maybe in general. So if someone wants me to write about Black Friday. And then I go and I write a revenue research, blog posts about Black Friday. They might share it with their friends or they might donate money. And that, that makes them. That will make them more interested in revenue research as a whole. Right. Yeah. Um. Another benefit is that bots will help me run the community. Right. Um, I can have a bot that every time a certain phrase is said, or like, let's say I have a bot that every time. Christmas tree lifecycle. Get some is in chat it, the bot will send them a link to the Christmas tree life cycle blog post. Right. So that's one thing that I wouldn't have to worry about. Right. And then, um, I have a theory that. Well, not a theory but like I think that there are people that might not read, email, or like check their email, but they don't check their Discord. So, when I promote the latest blog post in Discord. They won't read it through the email but they'll see it in discord and then read it. Right. So that's one thing. Um, and there's less spam so far. So, in telegram. I would get random spam messages from like bots. And then there was spam in the group. So like, there was this one bot that it looks real. But I could tell it was a bot. And the reason why I thought it was real because this. They joined spot joined, and it was a woman in the picture, and she would basically just post memes. And that was it. There was no real conversation, she'd be like haha this is really funny. And then post some meme. It wasn't like real behavior. Right. Okay. Um, how to promote the discord server. So the first thing you can do is put the link in the email, and this is what I've done. I just. So, the revenue research, emails, they, they start out with like, hey you signed up for this newsletter. Because this is revenue research and I'm Alex admins. And then I do a little, like, two sentences about myself. So, I'm talking about how, like this is the first email and I'm writing 10. This is the seventh email and I'm out of the 10th. And then I talk a little bit about like why I wrote this one. So I was like, for the, for the Christmas tree when I was just like, Hey, this is the ninth one. I wrote this one because it was Christmas time and I was really interested in how the Christmas tree industry was, what was that like, right. And then I go into the. I go into the, the blog posts, I copy and pasted it into the email. So these emails are super long right. And then I have like little colored boxes and ones a link to the blog post itself so I'm like hey if you want to share this with someone here's the link. And then I have another box and it's to the discord community. I'm like hey, there's a discord community, but I'm not sure if people get to the bottom of those emails. So, next time for the digital art one. I'm going to put that put the box at the top right before the blog post starts, and see if that changes anything, because right now. There's five members of the group. And they're all from people that I invited they're not. They're not organic or they're not organic people that have joined. Like, I have invited those people. Right. Okay. And then another way to promote the discord channel or Discord server telegram channel Discord server is to invite your friends to it right so that's what I've done. There's Brennan, there's Ross, there's Josh Rosen, there's David Shaw. There's, there's one other subscriber in the group. And I'm in my brother, right, my brothers in the group. So that, that's the extent of the group right now. So I've seeded the group with people. And that's just to make it look active, a little bit. So we sometimes have conversations. I really just post the stuff though, I need to get more members in the group. So if you have an interest in revenue research content. Come join the telegram or the discord server links in the show notes. Okay. Um, yeah. So, another idea I have is to host discord only events, and this would be like, instead of streaming on YouTube or twitch you stream in the discord server. And then you tweet about it. And you're like, Hey, I'm streaming in the discord server. Come join in join the group and post the link on Twitter. Right. So that's another option. And then I want to host, ask me any things. So like if I interview someone for revenue research. I'm going to invite them to do an Ask me anything. In Discord server and promote that and have them promote it. And that way if anyone has a question for them. They have to join revenue research to ask them a question. And maybe they'll read the other content and stay in the group. Right. So yeah, that's one thing. Okay. And then you could join other discord communities. And that way, like, you get to know people that are already on the platform. And so when you say hey, I have revenue research. Come join my server. And if they have an interest in the content, it's just one click away to join your community. So, there's not a lot of barriers to entry you've just removed one, because some people might not be on Discord. So, to create a Discord server, and then have them join they have to create an account and that's a whole new thing right there were some people that created a telegram to join open podcasts, but that was very rare. Right, it's easier to get someone who's already on discord to join your community. Right. And then surveys. That is one way to promote a community. So, you, you have your survey, and then you're like hey, do you know that there's a discord community. And that way, for sure. If they don't know, they will know after the survey. Right. And then you could put a link to it in the survey. Okay, put it on your website. Right. So right now, if you look at the revenue research website. On the homepage. There's, give me your email. And then there's in the corner. Join us on Discord. So that's one thing I did, because if there's. If I don't get your email, I'd rather have you join the discord community. If anything, because that that's. It's so the point of having the email is to send them direct messages. And if they're big discord user, then that's basically the same thing. Right. Okay, so the final way to promote your discord community is through directories, there's a bunch of directories that list. Different discord servers. Put them on, put your server on those directories, and so that way. People can organically find your Discord server. Okay. Finally, problems with Discord. Okay. It's a separate platform, you don't have full control, compared to if you were to run your own website. So for example, Wall Street bets on discord banned that the group Wall Street bets. And that can happen to revenue research because I don't have full control, I'm on someone's platform. Right. If I built my own forum, then no one could mess with me. But that's the risk you take. Right. And then the problem is, someone might have platform fatigue. Right. And they're tired of signing up for different platforms like they might not be on discord and they don't want to join the community, because it's on Discord. Right. Personally, I have platform fatigue if I'm being honest, I, I want to stop signing up for apps. So like the next community app. I'm just not going to join it. Um, okay. And then I see discord for, like, the communities I find on discord, they're not really financial. It's gamers and artists. So, I'm not sure how many financial. People are already on discord and I have to find them. Okay. Finally, I'm less users, than telegram. So, I think, telegram has like a billion users right now, and discord has like 250 million. So, the more native users that use the platform. Then, the more likely people will join the community, but when there's less people on the platform, there's less people to join my community. Right. So that's one thing, but the number is growing every year. So maybe revenue research will grow with it. Okay. Thank you for listening. Have a nice day. Bye. Okay.