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Paid membership communities are sexy because their business models resemble SaaS products.

But paid communities are SUPER hard to do well over the long term, due to four major differences... (thread)

1. Churn is twice as painful.

Not only does a member churning reduce your MRR/ARR, but it also can have a *huge* impact on the culture of your community.

We stay with communities for the people and friends we create. When they leave, our relationship to the community changes.

2. The value of the "product" is largely out of your hands.

Following up on the first difference, the value of a community often comes from the ideas, generosity, and kindness of other members.

It comes from the relationships built.

You can't completely control that.

3. There aren't sticky "features" that persist month to month.

If I use software to solve a problem, I can often set it up and let it solve problems for me automatically.

When I join a community, its value tied to human effort. That can be fickle and unpredictable.

4. We need subscriptions to prove their value month over month.

Since we don't buy memberships for their set-it-and-forget-it functionality the way we do with SaaS, membership communities need to reprove their value every single month.

"What have you done for me lately?"

All of this make paid communities a VERY tricky and time-intensive "product" to create and market over the long term.

In fact, YOU can't create the perfect product.

You can only curate the best environment possible for the product to create itself.

Bonus #5 from @DruRly.

Negative network effects because scale sometimes damages intimacy, AND churn can trigger an exodus.