Where do you think the highest-paying customers are right now — YouTube, X, Instagram, or somewhere else? I'm planning to start a school community teaching people how to build high-end, animation-heavy websites (not generic template sites) while still covering the fundamentals — where should I focus for finding customers?
Are you asking where to market a school community? I think you've put the cart before the horse — you're starting with 'I want to build a community, where do I find customers?' instead of already having customers. I never start with a product in mind and then figure out how to build a brand around it — I build the brand first, then make the product successful. If you haven't already consistently done something like $10-20K/month, I wouldn't try building a school community right now — it's a poor monetization lever for someone who doesn't already understand the business/audience side. I'm part of a school community called Platinum where people with huge audiences (4M-20M+ followers) get advice on scaling their communities, and a common pattern I see is brands trying to monetize an audience they don't actually have yet.
community buildingaudience firstmonetizationschool community
I would never launch a community without first securing distribution; I frontloaded that distribution through my YouTube channel. Once the channel had reach, I started the school group. The biggest factor in its growth is simply showing up every day — I’ve posted consistently for over 300 days, missing only a handful of days for travel. That daily consistency builds trust and goodwill, which has translated into strong momentum: in the last week alone I added 25 K monthly recurring revenue, far outpacing other communities that only managed a fifth of that. The steady presence, not any ad spend, is what drives the growth.
Fausto RDS says, 'Nick, how would you to about growing an audience starting from zero? I'm thinking Facebook and Instagram and YouTube. My ICP are service businesses, home services, and I sell custom software and automations. I got a lot of people asking questions like, how do I start my own brand and what's the best way to build an audience? Cuz they look at the way that I built my audience and they're like, well, Nick obviously puts a lot of time, effort, and care into it, so um you know, he'll he'll know. But I'll be honest, I just I just tried 10 different approaches and then I found one that happened to work. Um I did not come with like a highly strategic approach. What I did was I simply asked myself, what provides me the lowest CPMs, costs per meeting? >> [gasps] >> Which platform, if I test it for 30 to 60 to 90 days, will get me the lowest CPMs uh comparatively? And it turns out it was YouTube. So, rather than start at the end, which you're doing right now, which is growing an audience and starting from zero, start at the beginning, which is, hm, why do I want to grow an audience? Well, I work in the home service businesses uh niche. My current CPMs are $45. And that's not very scalable because our lifetime values are, you know, at some ratio where the cost of acquiring the customer to the lifetime value just doesn't make sense. So, how can I get lower CPMs? And then, rather than choosing Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, like you have here, uh just try a bunch and then determine which ones work after the fact. Pre-commit yourself to some sort of test. Cuz that's what I always do and uh that tends to work pretty well. But yeah, man, it's all 100% just about your cost per meeting, if I'm honest, or your cost per, you know, uh intent. In my case now with Maker School, driving a chunk of my revenue, it's it's cost per intent. It's cost per like, basically, each person visiting my landing page. >> [gasps] >> And that's way better than through cold email.'
That's impressive—54K TikTok followers and 4–5M monthly views. Ad revenue at that level is likely a few thousand dollars per month, similar to what you'd get from 200K views on other platforms. To monetize, stay adjacent to your movie-editing niche: offer services or products that complement it, like teaching how to edit like you do, selling editing services, or creating a community around high-quality edits. Avoid unrelated offers like personal development, which would feel off‑brand. Instead, leverage the quality of your edits as the differentiator—give email subscribers or community members exclusive editing tutorials, tips, or access to your process. You could also highlight that the channel is AI‑driven, but be cautious as that might affect viewer perception. In short, sell what’s closely related to movie editing, not something completely different.
I’ve thought about creating an info product, but it feels too circular and I don’t want to be part of that AI‑economy‑joke where everyone’s investing in each other’s pockets. High‑ticket products also don’t appeal to me; they’re annoying and would make me unhappy even if they could generate millions. I prefer hands‑on work that directly helps people, especially beginners who are starting from zero. Building something from the ground up and watching newcomers succeed is far more fulfilling than adding a little extra revenue for already wealthy owners. So I’m steering clear of high‑ticket offers and focusing on low‑ticket, high‑impact education that serves a broader audience.