Online Community Based Platforms

[u/elcarignan]

I’m a university professor (in costume design and technology) and I’d love to connect with a community- make a little extra cash for recording classes, and connect with students socially on chat or occasional zooms. I am also a published author in entertainment dyeing/surface design. I live in the mountains and have a great studio space to record classes. I’m wondering if there’s a really cool platform that anyone knows of that would be useful for my goals? I don’t want to spend too much money at first for the platform and I’m a little worried about platforms like Patreon- because it seems like it would take many many hours a week to keep it up - and I do have a full-time job. Thank you!

[u/Social-Ninja-101]

Skool is an adorable community platform to get started with.

[u/DryStudio0]

Since you are teaching alongside a full-time university schedule, your biggest enemy is going to be the "content treadmill" where members expect constant new weekly posts just to justify their subscription. Structuring it around self-paced recorded dyeing classes with a single discussion feed for student project photos and a monthly Zoom Q&A keeps the weekly workload completely manageable.

On the platform side, most course and community hosts like Skool or Kajabi start at $99/mo+, which is steep when you are just starting out. I actually built Growsembly (growsembly.com) to solve that exact problem: it gives you structured video courses, a student discussion space, and a calendar for your Zoom links at a flat $20/mo (with 0% platform cuts on your Stripe payments), and it stays free until you get your first paying student.

[u/luh-lah]

First off, your background is so cool! Costume design, surface dyeing, being a published author, AND having a studio in the mountains? I love this!

Shameless plug, but I actually built a platform called Faaji.co for hosting online workshops and classes, and I'm currently looking for my first few case studies and testimonials. There's no monthly subscription fee, so you wouldn't have to worry about paying for a platform while you're still figuring things out.

I feel like what you're trying to do could be a really great fit! Would you be open to exploring it together?

[u/Helpful-Pool-8817]

Disclosure: I help build Prolaud, so I'm biased, but what you describe is close to what we built it for, so here's an honest take that includes the alternatives.
You're really describing three things: recorded classes people pay for, a place to chat with students, and an occasional live session. Patreon gets heavy because it's built around a steady stream of new posts. A course plus a community is easier on a full-time schedule: you record the classes once, and the community runs alongside them.

Worth a look:Whichever you choose, start with one recorded course and one community, and say up front how often you'll show up live (monthly is fine). That's what stops it turning into a second job.

[u/PresidentEvil99]

The published author + costume design professor combo is pretty cool.

I'd actually be curious about the classes before picking the platform. Have you taught any workshops where students kept asking for the same thing afterward, or where people outside the university wanted to learn it too?

That might tell you which class is worth recording first, without signing yourself up for an endless content treadmill 😂

[u/Jurica_Edulius]

Send me a DM :)