One of the best ways to make money online is to sell a digital product, namely a subscription-based product. A subscription-based product, such as a paid private group hosted on Discord, can provide a number of benefits, including recurring revenue and high profit margins.
So, if you have experience with making money online, creating a paid group will be incredibly rewarding, not just financially, but personally.
In this guide, we will go over what a private Discord community is and the steps you need to take to create and launch one today.
What is a Private Discord Community?
A private Discord community or group is a Discord server with restricted channels that can only be seen by specified members. In a paid Discord group, experts are elected as admins of a members-only Discord channel which has paywalled premium options.
But why are people paying to join a Discord community? Well, when looking for advice on various topics, Googling or going through YouTube rabbit holes can prove both tiresome and confusing. Having a go-to resource in the form of a community is not only appealing, it is sometimes preferred. This is why so many people are paying to join these dedicated groups. Not only are people open to joining a paid Discord group, many of these people are actively seeking them.
The private content within the group can vary depending on the group's niche. For some Discord groups, the server is essentially a fan club where members can access early or premium content that the creator releases only for their community. Some people are even happy simply to see exclusive behind the scenes content in an exclusive members-only environment, or to have the chance to interact with the creator on a more personal basis in the intimate setting of a Discord group.
Other paid Discord groups, such as many on Whop’s marketplace, are focused around business opportunities, which cover a whole spectrum of online money activities including reselling, trading stocks, sports betting, lifehacks, price errors, and more.
In addition to general help and advice within the group’s niche, group members will often benefit from software such as monitors or extensions that assist the user in achieving the goal that they were hoping to achieve when they signed up, whether it is success in reselling, trading or finding unique and profitable price errors.
The main goal of a private Discord community is for everyone involved to be a winner: the group creator collects revenue from the subscriptions which they share with staff, and the members will profit in both knowledge and money thanks to the insights that the group provides. Let's take a closer look at why you should consider creating a paid Discord group.
Why Create a Paid Discord Group?
Making a paid Discord group will provide you a number of benefits, namely that you will own an online business with the potential to earn you a healthy amount of recurring income with good profits and the potential to scale.
Here are a few of the benefits to creating a paid Discord community:
Recurring Revenue from a Subscription-Based Business
The nature of a paid group is that it is built on a business model that is based on a subscription, which generates recurring revenue. There are many benefits to owning a subscription based business, particularly one that sells digital products, which is why this exact business model is often considered the holy grail of all types of businesses.
Brand Reputation and Customer Loyalty
With a high-quality Discord group you should expect to maintain and grow your membership levels. You’ll also be able to enjoy the other perks of customer loyalty and a good brand reputation, which includes reviews that increase your conversion rate, and word of mouth that organically grows your business, in addition to the trust which will allow you to launch other products such as courses or affiliate products that you can sell to your group.
Passive Income Potential
While it’s considered somewhat of a unicorn in business outside of real estate or dividend-paying investments, a private Discord community has immense potential to be a vehicle of passive income. Since the membership is paid on an ongoing monthly basis, you will have predictable revenue, and with the right team set up and a strong history, you’ll be able to step away from time to time and still collect income without putting in much active work.
Establish Yourself as an Expert
When you own a Discord community that ends up being successful, not only will you make a good living, but you’ll inevitably solidify your reputation as an expert in whatever niche your group is in. As a topical authority in your realm, many roads will open for you, including the possibility to quickly launch a personal brand complete with its own products, or to launch a podcast or something similar.
Build a Vibrant Community
Apart from the money, building a vibrant community from scratch is incredibly rewarding in itself. You’ll likely create bonds within the group, including potential lifelong business connections or friendships that happen all because you took the step to create the group in the first place. This community will be incredibly rewarding, which will fuel you with further motivation to continue your operation and growth of your Discord group.
Getting Ready to Launch Your Paid Discord Group
Ready to launch your private Discord community? First, you must lay out a solid foundation that will allow you the potential to both launch and scale.
Setting the Foundation:
Before you launch your group you must have a strong base for your business. Here is what you need to have in place before launching your paid group:
- Topical expertise in an in-demand niche
In order to sell access to your knowledge then you must have a skill that people are willing to pay for. Think about what qualifications or experience you have that make you an expert in your niche. - Staff to assist you
If you want to create a fully functional community that can support a decent amount of members, you will need to have staff ready to assist you in the overall upkeep and moderation of your server. You can assign roles and permissions within Discord to formalize everything for staff and make it clear to members who the staff are–we’ll go over these specifics later. - The right software and tools to make your group professional
Your members will be paying you a monthly fee that could be considered substantial for them, so you’ll want to ensure that they feel good about getting a professional solution complete with software and tools that many other groups have. At the minimum, you’ll want to be similarly equipped in this realm compared to other groups in your niche, but having an advantage such as a proprietary tool (such as a custom monitor) can make you stand out. - Commitment, consistency and willingness to grow
Apart from all the actual tools and other operational components that you’ll want to have ready before you set out to launch a private Discord community, the most important ingredient to have is the correct mindset, which includes total commitment. If you want to justify an ongoing monthly fee where you will retain long-term members, you will need to be consistent with the delivery of value inside of your community. Additionally, you have to be willing and able to grow and change as your audience, the market, or technology might ask as the landscape inevitably changes.
Launching Your Paid Discord Server
With a strong foundation established you're now ready to launch your group. Here is the seven-step process to launching your paid Discord community:
Step One: Set Up Your Discord Server
The first step is simply having a Discord account. A regular Discord account is fine - you don’t need to do anything special or pay for another membership to gain the right to create a server, anyone can do it.
Once you have signed into your Discord account (create one if you don’t have one already), simply scroll to the bottom of the server list on the left hand side and you will see an option to add a server.
Click the 'add a server' button and you’ll be presented with the option to create a server.
You will have the option to choose a template, but you’re probably better off customizing the server from scratch if you want to make a paid private community.
The final part of setting up your server is picking a name and uploading a logo. Don’t think too hard about this as you can always change the name of your server later.
Step Two: Create and Set Up Channels and Threads
After you’ve done the basic setup of your server, you’ll have a default “general” text and voice channel. Now, it's time to add channels specific to your server. Create channels that are in line with what your group is offering so that you will be able to organize your advice threads and keep each of these channels on topic.
Simply click the “+” sign next to your intended channel type (text or voice), and you’ll be brought to a page where you can create your channel and name it.
Different types of channels you can create:
There are many different types of channels that you can create in Discord.
- Text Channels
The text channel will be the most used channel inside of your Discord community, as the majority of people are most comfortable chatting with text within the platform. Different types of text include links and attachments, and you can prevent messages from being sent based on role. - Voice Channels
A voice channel serves multiple functions inside of a Discord group, including the ability to open video and screen sharing in addition to voice sharing. A recent update allowed text channels within voice channels for an even more diversified experience. - Private Channels
You have the ability to make channels private based on a member’s role. We will talk more about roles in the next part of this guide. - Forum Channel
The forum channel allows for a user experience similar to a site like Reddit, where each post will automatically have its own discussion in the form of threads organized below the parent post. This can allow you to automatically organize posts into threads without manually having to create them. - Announcement Channel
An announcement channel allows your members to receive messages inside of this channel as they come in the form of notifications in their own server. In order to receive announcements, the member will choose to “Follow” the content inside of the announcement channel. - Stage Channel
A stage channel is a live broadcast, similar to the Clubhouse app, where those with permission to be on stage will have speaking rights. Audience members can also raise their hand to be allowed on stage. The stage channel also has a feature that allows you to create events, which is especially helpful for hosting scheduled weekly calls.
Creating threads
Within text channels, you have the option to make threads to further organize each channel.
Simply click the thread icon and you’ll be able to create a thread within a text channel based on your needs.
Step Three: Assign Roles
Every private Discord community has assigned roles that help to differentiate the staff from other members.
Creating and assigning roles will allow you to grant permissions to members in certain roles, which can let you separate admins from ordinary members. Additionally, you can separate different types of members and grant different permissions to access channels. For example, you can create private channels that only members of certain roles can access. This is especially handy if you have a free version of your group and you want to grant or prevent access to private channels that only paid members can access.
Step Four: Establish Rules
Since Discord members are known to be largely anonymous, hiding behind usernames and profile pictures that are often far from their real-life identity, unfortunately, scammers will sometimes pop into servers.
So, when creating any private community, it is important to lay out guidelines and the overall ground rules so that the quality of the members remains high even as the group scales. This can be done with Discord’s settings and also by posting rules manually.
Discord’s safety setup can be used to require a certain verification level before anyone can send messages in text channels or initiate a direct message with another member, which will protect your group from outright scammers.
It’s also possible to prevent direct messaging between group members altogether so that any and all communication between members is public.
Additionally, you should create a starting guide with rules posted in a welcome channel. Every member should follow these rules knowing that the penalty for violating any such important rule will be removal from the group. Standard rules might include no soliciting in DMs (or no DMs altogether), no offensive or aggressive messaging, and no asking or revealing of personal details.
Step Five: Paywall Your Group
With your group set up it is time to turn your community into a paid Discord group. To do this, create private channels that only members with an assigned role can access. This role will be exclusive to paid members. Then, you can use Whop to handle all aspects of the membership payments.
Once you make a Whop account, you can connect to Discord, where you can create a pass and even assign Discord roles so that you can grant access to those private channels that only paid members can access.
Step Six: Set Up Integrations and Discord Bots
To ensure that your group is ready to accept payments with Whop, you’ll need to make sure your Discord account is connected inside of your Whop dashboard.
Once you set up the integrations, you’ll then be able to use the Whop Bot, which is a Discord bot, to automate every step of the paid membership management. This includes granting access to paying members, rescinding access to those who don’t pay, and creating authorization keys to accurately maintain memberships all within an easy to use dashboard with handy reports.
Additionally, you’ll want to set up any software integrations, including monitors or other bots for pushing information or performing automated moderation.
Step Seven: Launch and Market Your Group
Now that you’ve set everything up, it’s time to launch your group! Given that you have done all that was previously laid out in this guide, you can simply list your group on Whop’s marketplace, which will give you a dedicated group landing page and professionally designed checkout page that you can configure with any options, including monthly, multi-month, yearly or lifetime memberships.
For a more in depth guide on how to make a members-only, paid Discord group using Whop, including precise steps for integration and payments, read: How to Create a Paid Discord Server.
Using Whop to Launch Your Group
Here’s a quick guide on how you can launch your paid Discord community with Whop today in just four simple steps:
1: Input Your Group Name and Branding
If you have been following the steps in this guide then you will have already prepared these. However, if you need a little extra help with your branding - specifically your logo - then Whop can help! Just open a ticket in our free Discord server for sellers and we’ve got you covered.
2: Select a Discord Membership as Your Product
You’ll be prompted to choose what type of product you’ll be selling, and choose Discord membership as your product.
3: Test Integrations to Manage Paid Memberships
Whop’s powerful API can integrate with existing platforms like Discord, Telegram, or your own custom software. Make sure the integrations, particularly the Whop Discord Bot, are set up before going live. Additionally, test any supplementary software such as monitors to make sure they are functioning and organized as needed within Discord. You can read more about Whop’s software and API here.
4: Launch!
Simply mark your community as published and that’s it, you’re live on Whop’s marketplace! You’re now ready to go out there and tell the world about it.
Sell Access To Your Paid Discord Group With Whop!
When it comes to launching digital products of all kinds, including Discord groups, Whop reigns supreme.
In addition to the ultra-responsive and helpful support for several different types of digital products, you will get exposure in our public marketplace which is gaining more and more active users by the day.
It takes less than 10 minutes to go from having no prior account to having a paid Discord community that is live on Whop’s marketplace.
FAQs
What type of Discord groups do people pay for?
Generally speaking, most paid communities are in money-making niches, and often more focused on a single aspect of business rather than being too broad. Examples of groups that people currently pay for include general and specific reselling groups, stocks and investment groups, and sports betting related groups.
How should I price my private Discord community?
While it’s up to you to pick the amount you want to charge for your Discord community, you should pick an amount that is a fair market value based on what the competition is charging and what features and tools you offer. A ballpark range for most groups is in the $20-$99 range for a monthly subscription, with more expensive groups offering more premium and bespoke tools and features in addition to highly specific and hard to find advice.
How much money can I make with a paid Discord group?
There are a number of factors that go into how much money you can make with your paid Discord group, including how effectively you are able to market it and gain new members and retain old ones. To do some rough math of how much you in particular can make with your Discord group, multiply the price of your membership by the amount of members you expect to have in it, and subtract any ongoing expenses, including staff and software. Performing this equation will give you both a goal and a monetary figure that you will hit if you achieve that goal.
What should I offer inside of my private Discord community?
Perhaps the biggest thing you should offer inside of your private Discord community is genuine help and a strong intention to provide success for every one of the members. From that basis, you will naturally want to offer the best advice and tools, this will come in the form of a support staff that is there to answer any group questions quickly, and tools such as monitors or other software that give your members an informational or functional edge for whatever niche your group is in.
How do I know if I am ready to launch my own paid private Discord community?
Once you have laid the correct foundation as explained in this guide, you’ll be ready to launch your own paid private Discord community. This includes a good level of topical expertise in your group niche, staff and the right tools to help run your group at scale, and commitment and willingness to innovate as the landscape within your group inevitably changes.
