How to Create Your Skool Community

Skool is one of the simplest ways to run a paid community: a feed, a classroom, a calendar and a leaderboard in one place, with payments built in. Setting one up takes an afternoon.

If you have watched creators launch on Skool, you have probably seen groups that look great on day one and stay empty for months.

But the setup is the easy part. What fills a group is the first 100 members, and the funnel at the end of this guide is how I bring them in.

Affiliate disclosure: Some links on this page are affiliate links. If you buy through them, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. I will appreciate if you use them.

What you need before you start

You need a clear idea of who the community is for and the one outcome it helps them reach. Everything else, from the About page to your first course, follows from it.

Before you open Skool, it helps to have a group name, a square logo, a cover image, a short welcome video and three to five posts ready to publish. The purpose comes first, because a community built around one clear outcome is easier to name, price and fill.

Skool works best for creators who sell courses, coaching and memberships around a community. If you need a store or heavy branding, one of the Skool alternatives will fit better.

Choose Hobby or Pro

Skool has two plans, and both start with a 14-day free trial.

Hobby: $9 a month plus 10% + 30¢ per sale. Unlimited members, courses, videos and live calls.
Pro: $99 a month plus 2.9% + 30¢ per sale (3.9% + 30¢ on sales above $900). Adds a custom URL, member affiliates, AutoDM, an onboarding video, the Zapier plugin and webinars.

Card processing is included in both fees. Hobby is cheaper while your group earns less than about $1,270 a month, and Pro is cheaper above that.

You can start on Hobby and upgrade later without rebuilding anything. Start your Skool trial.

Step 1: Create your group

You sign up at Skool, choose Create a community, name your group and start the trial. If you joined through someone’s referral link, the signup page shows who referred you.

The name can change later, so a clear, descriptive name beats a clever one. People search Skool by topic, and Skool Discovery shows the name next to your price and member count.

Step 2: Fill in the settings

The General settings hold your group name, description, logo and cover image. The description shows in search and on Discovery, so its first line should say who the group is for.

You also choose whether the group is public or private. Public groups let anyone read posts, which can bring traffic from Google. Private groups hide everything until someone joins, which suits paid or sensitive topics.

Step 3: Write your About page

The About page is your sales page. A short video, a line on who the group is for, what members get each week and a few testimonials turn visitors into members.

The first line matters most, because Skool shows it in search results. Skool also reviews the About page before listing a group on Discovery, so images and a complete description also help your listing.

Step 4: Add categories and seed your first posts

Categories, set under Settings > Community > Categories, sort the feed into topics like Introductions, Wins and Questions. Skool allows up to 10, and three to five is plenty at the start.

Before you invite anyone, 10 to 15 useful posts mean the first member never lands in an empty room. A pinned welcome post that asks new members to introduce themselves gives everyone an easy first action.

Step 5: Build your Classroom

The Classroom holds your courses, made of modules with video, text and files. Each course can be open to everyone, unlocked at a level, unlocked after a set time, sold with a Buy now button or kept private for selected members or tiers.

Level unlocks are Skool’s most distinctive tool. Members earn points when others like their posts and comments, level up, and unlock more of the Classroom, which ties learning to participation.

Step 6: Set your price

Under Pricing, a group can be:

Free, with no charge to join
Subscription, monthly or yearly
Freemium, free to join with one or two paid upgrade tiers
Tiers, two or three paid tiers
1-time payment, a single charge for lifetime access

Individual courses can also be sold separately, through the Buy now option under Edit course in the Classroom.

A free group with one paid course is the gentlest start. Paid tiers, events and higher prices can follow once members are active, which is the usual path to making money from your community.

Step 7: Turn on the plugins

Plugins sit under Settings > Plugins:

Membership questions (both plans): up to three questions, such as email, why they want to join and how they found you.
AutoDM (Pro): a welcome message sent a few minutes after someone joins.
Onboarding video (Pro): a video new members see first.
Zapier (Pro): connects Skool to your email tool and other apps.

Membership questions double as a filter. People who answer thoughtfully tend to engage, and the email field feeds your list.

Step 8: Set up gamification

Under the Levels tab in Settings, you can rename the nine levels and decide which courses unlock at each one. Members see the leaderboard for the last 7 days, 30 days and all time, which keeps posting a habit.

Step 9: Get listed on Skool Discovery

Skool Discovery can send you members who are already looking for a group like yours. A group needs a minimum number of members, posts and activity, plus a description, an About page with images and a cover image, before Skool’s team reviews it.

Once listed, groups are ranked by growth, engagement and retention, and Growth Boost can promote yours for a commission on the members it brings.

Your first 100 members: two models

How you fill the group depends on whether you already have an audience.

Model 1: you already have an audience. Your followers, subscribers or email list get a direct invite into the group. On Instagram, ManyChat or a cheaper alternative can send that invite automatically when someone comments a keyword. Membership questions or a price act as the filter, and the community becomes your central hub, where you offer courses, coaching, software or affiliate products. I call this MSI: multiple sources of income from one place.

Model 2: you are starting from scratch. A simple funnel does the work:

An opt-in page offers something free, like a 10-minute video or a PDF, in exchange for a name and email.
The thank-you page plays a short video that invites people into your Skool group.
An email sequence follows up over a few days for anyone who didn’t join, with more detail and a fresh invite.

Kit (formerly ConvertKit) handles the opt-in page, thank-you page and emails in one tool, so the same funnel keeps building your email list long after launch. Past the first 100, onboarding and referrals do more of the work as you grow your community to 1,000 members.

Skool community FAQ

How do I create a Skool community?

You sign up at skool.com, choose Create a community, name your group and start the 14-day free trial. The settings, About page, categories, a first course and your price all come before the first invite.

How much does it cost to start a Skool community?

Hobby costs $9 a month plus 10% + 30¢ per sale, and Pro costs $99 a month plus 2.9% + 30¢. Card processing is included in both. Pro becomes cheaper than Hobby once your group earns about $1,270 a month.

Is Skool free to create a community?

No. Joining groups as a member is free, but owners pay for Hobby or Pro after a 14-day free trial. You can still run a free group on either plan and charge nothing to your members.

Should my Skool community be public or private?

Public groups let anyone read posts, and those posts can show up on Google. Private groups hide the content until someone joins, which suits paid or sensitive communities. Both can be listed on Skool Discovery.

How long does it take to set up a Skool community?

The basic setup takes an afternoon: settings, About page, categories and a welcome post. Building a first course and seeding 10 to 15 posts usually takes another few days.

How do I get my Skool community listed on Discovery?

Skool lists a group once it reaches a minimum number of members, posts and activity and has a description, an About page with images and a cover image. Skool’s team then reviews it, usually within an hour or two.

Full video transcript (February 2024)

in this video, you are going to learn how to launch your community on Skool. if you are new to Skool, 📍 it’s a community building platform where you can host your courses, engage with people sell your products and services and build this tribe and own any topic that you want.So in this video, I’m going to go to my screen and I’m going to show you step by step, how you can launch your community. And also I’m going to give you a framework that will help you go from. zero members to first a hundred community members, because it is very important that if you are launching a community, you are turning it profitable. ’cause I know a lot of people are launching community right now on Skool. just to realize that they do not really have any members inside. So I’m going to give you a strategy; I’m going to go to my iPad screen. I’m going to show you how you can do that. But before that, let me show you some of the successful examples of communities right now. And also right now, I’m launching my own community. So it’s a very good time to show you behind the scene and how it will actually look like when you launch yours. So the first community I wanted to show you is this one that’s, a born fee community. It is about helping men quit this addiction. from hunter Ortiz. And he is into one-to-one coaching. So, this is a very successful model and I have been observing this for a while. People who are into one-to-one coaching. They are launching their community. And then they are inviting people for their one-to-one coaching service . No.another example is I don’t as gang. And this is from Hamza. He is one of the most successful creators in personal development niche. And this community is all about helping men grow personally and professionally. So people talk about business and personality development and all different kinds of stuff. And the model that Hamza is using is very interesting he’s closing over $180,000 per month while I’m recording this video. So a very successful use case. he’s bringing all these people into this free community. And then some people who want to grow for that and who want to take that education to the next level. They are upgrading to a premium price, which is a separate community. So this is another model that people are using. And another community that I can give you an example of is this one it’s called manifestation. he is definitely inviting people to a premium community and it costs $49 per month. So you see, there are three different models of making money with your Skool community. I’m launching my community right now. And this is conscious entrepreneur hub. You can see that are already people. Who have started joining in. So this is going to be a premium community where I will be personally coaching. And I’ll put the link in the description where you can actually go through and see what is inside. So you will have personal access to me. You can ask any doubts that you have. You can also connect with other people like you, and you can collaborate with them, grow with them. And also there will be a weekly coaching call that you can be a part of. right now, I’m offering a fee excess, if you use my referral link to start your Skool community. So you will have all the access that people will pay money for and you can get all of it for free. All you need to do is click on the link. In the description and join Skool with my reference link. Now, coming back to the video, let me show you behind the scene of launching a community. So, if you will go to with himanshu.com/Skool, what is going to happen is it will take you to Skool signup page. And the sign up page will look. Something like this. So You can see you are referred by “this is my name”, and then you need to fill your first name, last name, email password. This is necessary, whether you want to join as a member or as uh, a community admin. So this you will need Now if you are launching a community. What do you can do is you can go to create a community. Then, if you are using my referral link, you need to make sure that you are seeing this. You were referred by option. And then you need to add your group name. Okay. then you can add your card number and you can start free trial. So you get a 14 days of free trial. You can always cancel before 14 days and you do not need to pay anything. Now, the next thing that I want to show you is how this actually looks like as a community. Manager. So that is the first section, which is community where you can start. The discussion. People can comment on it. You can create polls and you can add videos and you can also add links and you can also select the categories. So these categories that you can create inside the Setting tab. So if I’ll go to categories, I have some categories for my community. And then you have this classroom option Where you can create courses. And then you can unlock them based on the criteria. So for example, that is the scores. We have Niche Tribe model, where I go step by step on how you can create a community, how you can monetize it. And if I go to edit course option. either. I can unlock the scores for anyone Or I can select only some members have access. I would select this option. If I want to create a premium course. So I do not want anyone to have this access. I might charge something in the backend, maybe a hundred dollars, $500, $1,000. For giving access to this specific course, but right now, inside. My community I’m giving all of it for free. And then there is this calendar option. Where you can create new events for your community. And then people can see when this event is there Now another feature of the platform is leaderboard, which is my favorite feature. So what are you going to do is you can have these different levels. And these levels are based on how much people are engaging. So if people create a very valuable post inside the community and other people like it, or other people comment on it, What’s going to happen is people will get points and based on the points, they can unlock different levels and you can choose on which level they will have access to which courses. so you see that is a gamification integrated inside the platform, which makes community management much more fun. And it kind of gives people a healthy competition. So people will engage more and you will grow your. Community naturally. And then in the end you have this about section Where you can add a video explaining what your community is about, if you have any testimonials from the past. That you can add to it. And this will give people a fair idea of What they are going to get once they joined the community. So this is a very simple platform. And one of the reasons I love Skool is because it’s a minimalist platform. The entire focus is on things that matter and not into creating some discord, like channels, where people get confused where to go and which channel they should be engaging in. And what happens when you build community in this way, is you can focus on what matters So launching a community on Skool is very simple. You sign up You click on, create a community and then you fill simple details in setting option. You can start with this general tab. Where you can add a logo That is a colored image that you can add. Then you can have this group name here. And then group description. The brand color. And then you can have this option either to make community private, or you can make it public. if you are making it private, only some people will have access. If you are making it public, your community posts will show up on Google. So if you want to get more traffic to your community through Google, I would suggest to keep it public. Now you have option for adding subscription. So this community is going to be a paid one. Where people will pay $49 per month. I’m still testing on prices, but this is going to be a paid community. I have put the link in the description. So if you are using my referral code, Make sure to comment. Let me know. So I can give access to this community to you. then there are some categories that you can add. And then this is very interesting. So inside plugin section. You have membership questions what you can start asking is what is that email address? Why they want to join. And how did they find out about your community? Oh, this will give you some insight about. Whether they are the right fit for the community or not. A lot of people. Add bunch of people inside the community, just to realize that nobody’s interested to engage in. So you don’t want to, that you want to have people who really cared about the topic And that is the reason you want to fish that out. who are not really serious And that is the reason I do not I want to offer my community just like that. I shared a lot of value inside and I want people who value it. So I would encourage you to ask some membership questions. Now, if you want to automate your community. Management, you can add this Zapier integration. And then there is also the members a lot of times strangers join your community, but they do not know where to start. So, what are you going to do is you can DM people automatically as soon as they join. so you have kind of icebreaker with your newest community member and you can start. Engaging with them. Then you have metrics where you can see how many people are engaging in. And then that is gamification where you can decide. what do you want to call level one, level two, And what kind of benefits people will unlock once they hit these levels? So this is the basic behind the scene of launching a Skool community. Now, if you are still watching this video. Let me. Congratulate you because you have better attention span than most of the people on the internet. And now also, I want to give you a strategy. That you can use to go from zero to hundred community members on Skool. Now inside my hub, I have this five days challenge. That is the detailed version where I have shared different strategies for organically growing your community. So you do not need to pay any money for ads and you can literally go from zero to a hundred. So what I have done is I have created these two models. And depending on which stage of business you are in, you can choose one of them. first model is when you already have an audience on some social media platform. So let’s say you have 10,000, 20,000, a hundred thousand or maybe million subscribers or a million followers. Then you can use this particular model. And then the second model that I’m going to explain is when you do not have any audience and you are starting completely from scratch, or you have been working with people one-to-one and now you want to scale it with community. Then the second model is going to be useful. Okay. So the first model is you already have this audience right now. So you have some kind of filter. Let’s say you are charging $49 a month. If you want to launch a free community, in that case, you had these three questions that you are asking. So there is a little bit of filter here once people have paid this money, they joined the community. Now here’s the fun part. Your community is your central hub on the internet. So, what is going to happen is inside the community, you will talk about your courses. You can offer them one to one coaching. Or do you have group coaching or you have software? Or you can have an affiliate income. So, this is where I call M S I, which is multiple sources of income. This is what you can unlock, when you focus on building a community instead of just relying on YouTube or Facebook groups for it. So, this is a very simple model for people who already have an audience. But what if you are starting completely from scratch and you have no audience at all. Or you have no idea where to begin. In that case. I would suggest you to go for this simple framework. And I have been using it. In other kinds of businesses, but a lot of people are using it for community building and it’s working really well. Currently, I’m also trying both of these models right now. So that is this model I’m trying with the audience that I already have. But I’m also implementing this specific model for the people who do not know me yet. So, what I want you to do is I want you to have this opt in system. Okay. Now open is a simple landing page where you are asking people to put their name, and email. and in exchange, you are giving them something for free. 10 minutes video, or it can be a free PDF, And once people sign up, you can send them to this thank you page, So people signed up for an ebook. Or they got 10 minutes scores on something specific. And what they’re going to do is they will watch the video. And inside you will invite them to join your community. So there was the video, you invited them to join the community. And then again, the filter. All you can offer for free. And then they get enrolled inside the community. You can sell your courses. Or you can have affiliate income. one-to-one coaching. this will work really well, especially if you are new to business. Because you can close high ticket sales. And what else you can do is this: if you are using convert kit, for example, This is one of the tools that I recommend. I’ll put the link in the description. So ConvertKit is an email automation software that allows you to create opt-in page. And thank you page. And at the same time, email campaigns. So let’s say people did not join your community in the first go. What are you going to do is you can launch your email campaign and tell them more about the community. Moving forward. let’s say on day one, you sent some detail. On day two, you send them some other information. On day three, you invited them again to join your community. So, what is going to happen is you are creating this follow-up system. So this is the model that you can use if you are running paid ads, or if you are organically promoting, but people do not know you and you do not have enough credibility in the market. Now, if you are looking for personal support, when you are launching your community. I would highly encourage you to join my community. What you are going to have is personal access to me, where you can ask questions, you can also connect with other like-minded people, grow much faster. All you need to do is use the referral code that I have shared. in the description. I’ll send you the access for free. So I hope you found this video useful. Let me know in the comment box, if you have any questions around it, or if you have any doubts. if you are still watching this video, congratulations for being here at you are in top 1% of people. Most of the people have, deeply messed up attention span, but you are still watching. So let me know in the comment box, by typing 1% if you are still watching the video. And I’ll see you in the next one. by

How to Create Your Skool Community – Complete Funnel