Building Your Niche Directory, Online Community or "Authority Site" style business on Circle

Hey all - as many of you already know, we're building our new private community on the Circle platform.

Here are some of the reasons I picked Circle for our new community - and if you have a similar use case, why you may want to consider it for your platform as well. (it's not ideal for all - but for us, it's a slam dunk for creating community around our courses, content, products and platform)

1. Circle allows you to build a great looking member directory. Your members will have their own profiles, links, and the ability to add an unlimited amount of their own content (think events, products, coupons, "blog" updates, etc - much like integrating Buddypress within a WP based directory like Mylisting, one of the initial reasons I loved that particular framework in 2018)

2. Circle handles all of the tech, the software, the updates and improvements on THEIR SIDE - you don't need to do a thing, other than create content, attract an audience and promote your platform.

(Something that unfortunately, far too many "authority sites" relegate to the bottom rung of the ladder of importance. It's actually the MOST important piece of building this sort of asset, and yet.....far too many of us waste our time wrangling and wresting with Wordpress - themes, tools and tech - plugins, headaches, etc.)

3. Circle has a great community of entrepreneurs already using the platform with a ton of success. (you can see some of the videos i've done on some Circle communities that actually inspired me to take a a closer look - and i've had some great conversations with both one of the founders of Circle by email - and some other platforms who are using their software - and the "directory/marketplace/community" use cases are going to explode over the next 6 months or so - as they add more and more features and functionality that supports this vision. (better search and surfacing options, custom fields, landing pages that segment members interest, etc)

Circle is NOT great option if community is not your primary goal. If you are looking for a WP style theme or solution that is more "yelp like" - rather than Facebook like - I think you'd be better off sticking with WP, or using something like Glide (or a proper marketplace solution like Sharetribe - which is much more expensive and a lot less flexible for beginners)

Also, Hivepress is a great option for WP enthusiasts, and we are also using Taskhive (a premium marketplace multi-vendor style solution that allows your members to sell products on your platform) on a current project as well - which is part of our Circle platform. (in other words, you can obviously combine the best of both - Wordpress or Glide or Sharetribe or whatever CMS you want.....with robust community functionality that Circle offers)

I like to think about all of these projects as having two distinct buckets.

1. Asset (the value of the site itself - this evolves and appreciates over time like any other piece of real estate you own)

2. Income (the cash flow you need to succeed in the short term, and the #1 thing that keeps most of these sorts of sites from EVER becoming valuable assets - if you don't have the cash flow you need to keep the project going, it's hard to get to the point in the future where your platform is valuable - as folks give up, or let the sites wither away and die on the vine.......as it's hard to maintain enthusiasm for something that may only see it's true worth 12-36 months down the road)

Circle offers you the ability to both build the asset piece ​- while offering us all tons of creative ways to monetize our communities in the short term. I'm super excited about our own community - and think for many digital media brands, publishing platforms and niche communities, it's the game changer we've been waiting for.
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