How to Make Money With a Skool Community: Pricing, the Monthly Fee, Referrals and What Really Sells

You make money with a Skool community the same way you make money with any membership: people pay you every month for access to you, your material and each other. Skool itself is just the room. It costs $9 or $99 a month depending on the plan, takes a cut of every payment, and pays its own affiliates 40% of what referred owners pay, for as long as they stay. Whether you earn depends on one thing the platform can't give you: people who already trust you.

I've been making money online since 2010, and two of my projects are SaaS businesses that live on monthly subscriptions, so recurring revenue, churn and "why did they cancel?" are things I think about a lot. That's the lens for this guide. I don't have a Skool community of my own to show you, and I won't pretend otherwise. What I can do is take the platform apart: the real fees, including one that many reviews skip, the member math at $9, $29 and $99 a month, how the 40% affiliate program works, and an honest look at the "make money with Skool" wave on your feeds.

What is Skool, and why is everyone suddenly on it?

Skool is a paid-community platform: one page that combines a discussion feed, a course area (Skool calls it the Classroom), a calendar for live calls, a member map and a points-and-levels leaderboard. Members pay inside Skool, so you don't need a separate checkout, course host or Facebook group.

Sam Ovens and Daniel Kang founded it in 2019. It went from a quiet tool to a creator-economy buzzword after Alex Hormozi, a business author with a huge following, took a stake through his company Acquisition.com and started promoting it. Since then you've probably seen a wave of videos with Skool dashboards in the background and captions like "I make $30K a month from my community".

The design is deliberately simple. You can't customize much, which annoys designers and makes life easier for everyone else. And the gamification really works on people: members earn points when others like their posts, climb levels, and owners can lock a course until someone reaches, say, level 3. That one setting turns lurkers into posters better than any "please introduce yourself" pinned post.

What Skool is not: a traffic source. Members don't fall from the sky because you opened a group. Skool has a Discovery page where people browse groups, and since mid-2026 it can even run ads for you (more on what that costs below), but the communities that earn well almost always bring an audience from YouTube, a podcast, a newsletter, Instagram or a client list.

How much does Skool cost? Plans, transaction fees and payouts

Skool has two plans for owners: Hobby at $9 a month and Pro at $99 a month, both with a 14-day free trial, and each community needs its own plan. The real difference is the transaction fee, the cut Skool takes from each payment your members make.

Two details people miss. First, Skool handles the payments itself and its fee covers card processing, so there's no separate Stripe bill on top. That makes the 2.9% on Pro genuinely cheap compared with platforms that charge a platform fee plus processing. Second, the pricing card shows the percentages, but the $0.30 per payment lives in the payments FAQ. On a $9 membership, that 30 cents alone is more than 3% of the price.

Beyond the fee, Pro unlocks a few extras Hobby doesn't have. The one that matters for income is the member affiliate program (more on it below), which Skool's help center lists as Pro-only. Reviews also put a custom group URL among the Pro extras, but neither plan gives you a fully custom domain. Check the plan card for the add-ons you care about when you sign up; the fee table above is what drives your money.

You can start a Skool group with the 14-day trial (affiliate link). Assume it will ask for a card, and put a reminder in your calendar for day 12. That's not a dig at Skool, it's a rule for every trial on the internet.

The 30% fee many reviews skip: Growth Boost and Discovery

Growth Boost is a Skool setting that lets Skool promote your group, with higher placement in Discovery results and off-site ads that Skool pays for (owners report Facebook and Instagram), and in exchange Skool takes a 30% commission on paying members it brings you, on top of the usual fees. It appeared in June 2026, and it's on by default; you'll find the switch under Settings, then Discovery.

Is it a bad deal? Not necessarily. Skool takes the ad risk, and a member who wouldn't have found you otherwise at 70% of the price is still more than zero. But run the numbers before you leave it on, because the commission applies to that member's recurring payments, not just the first one. Skool's own help center also says Growth Boost isn't recommended for high-ticket sales.

Example, not a result: on Pro, a $29-a-month member you brought yourself leaves you about $27.86 after the transaction fee. The same member arriving through Growth Boost leaves about $19.16, roughly a third less, every month they stay. If your price is low and your margins are thin (paid guest experts, an assistant, ad spend of your own), that gap matters. If you have no audience yet and the group is otherwise empty, it may be the cheapest test you can buy.

How do Skool communities actually make money?

Most profitable Skool groups use one of four models, and the best ones combine two: a paid membership, a free group that sells something expensive, a course sold inside the group, or tiers. Here's how each works and where it usually breaks.

1. A paid monthly membership

The classic: members pay $9–$99 a month for access. It works when the community itself is the product, people who are a step ahead answering questions, weekly calls, accountability, templates you keep adding. It fails when the "community" is really a course with a comment box, because people binge the content and cancel in month two.

Price is a positioning decision, not a math problem. $9 attracts the curious and gets you volume; $99 attracts people with a problem that costs them money. A $99 group with 30 committed members usually has better conversations than a $9 group with 300 tourists, and it's far less moderation work.

2. A free community that sells something high-ticket

This is the model many of the big names actually use: the group is free, it fills up with people who like your content, and a small share of them buy coaching, a done-for-you service or a mastermind, often for thousands. The community is the warm-up, the real business happens on a sales call.

It's powerful, and it's also where the hype lives (see below). It works only if you have a service worth thousands and the skills to deliver it. One note on fees: a big one-time payment on Pro falls into the higher 3.9% + $0.30 band, so a $2,000 sale costs you somewhere in the $70–$80 range. Still cheap for a sale that size. If high-ticket selling is your thing, I covered how those funnels work in high-ticket affiliate offers.

3. A course inside the group

Skool lets you sell a single course as a one-time purchase inside a group, or keep the course as a perk of the membership. The trick here is the level lock: put the foundation course behind level 2 or 3, so people have to participate before they get it. It turns a passive buyer into someone who posts, and people who post stick around much longer.

If your product is really a standalone course with little interaction, compare Skool with dedicated course platforms first. I compared ten of them in platforms to sell online courses; Skool wins when the community matters more than the course.

4. Tiers: free, standard, premium, VIP

Skool added membership tiers in late 2025: up to three paid levels (Standard, Premium and VIP), where each higher tier includes everything below it. If you want a free level too, that's a separate option Skool calls freemium: one free plan plus one paid plan in the same group. The usual tier pattern: Standard gets the feed and the courses, Premium adds group calls, and a small VIP level gets personal reviews or a few one-on-one slots.

Freemium or tiers are the most sensible structure for most people, because they let you start cheap or free, prove value, and still have a price for the 5% who want more of you. Just don't build five levels on day one when you have twelve members. Add the VIP tier when people start asking for it.

Break-even math: how many members do you need at $9, $29 and $99?

Short answer: to cover the plan itself you need almost nobody. On Pro, 12 members at $9 or 4 members at $29 pay the $99 fee. To clear $1,000 a month after all Skool fees, you need about 130 members at $9, about 40 at $29, or about 12 at $99. The numbers below are examples I calculated from the fee table, not results from a real group.

"Net" here means after Skool's plan price and transaction fees, before taxes, Growth Boost commissions and anything else you pay for. Look at the $9 rows for a second: 386 paying members to clear $3,000. That's a lot of people to keep happy for the price of a sandwich. It's why so many owners who start cheap raise prices within a few months.

When should you switch from Hobby to Pro?

Pro costs $90 more per month and takes about 7.1 percentage points less per payment, so it pays off once your members pay you roughly $1,270 a month. In members, that's about 141 at $9, 44 at $29 or 13 at $99. Below that, Hobby is cheaper; above it, every extra member makes Pro look better. Start on Hobby, put a note in your calendar to check revenue monthly, and switch when you cross the line.

The number that actually decides your income: churn

Churn is the share of members who cancel each month, and it matters more than your price. This is the part I know from running subscription software: you don't get rich by signing people up, you get rich by not losing them.

Example: say you add 20 new members a month and 10% of your members cancel every month. Your group doesn't grow forever, it levels off around 200 members, the point where 20 leave each month as 20 arrive. At $29 on Pro, 10% churn means an average member stays about 10 months and is worth roughly $279 to you. Cut churn to 5% and the same 20 signups a month level off at around 400 members. Same marketing, double the business.

So what reduces churn in a community? Things that make leaving feel like a loss: weekly live calls people plan around, a member's progress visible on the leaderboard, wins posted by other members, small cohorts that start together. Content alone rarely does it, because content can be downloaded in a weekend.

The Skool affiliate program: 40% for life, and the catch

Skool pays affiliates 40% of the monthly subscription of every group owner they refer, for life, according to its affiliate page. Refer someone who stays on Pro and you get $39.60 a month; refer a Hobby owner and you get $3.60. Ten Pro owners who stay is about $396 a month in recurring commissions.

There's a second, smarter mechanic on the same page: if a member of your group creates their own Skool group, Skool attributes them to you automatically. That's the real engine. Teach something adjacent to community building (coaching, consulting, courses, local services going online) and some of your members will open groups of their own. Every one of them pays you 40% of their plan without a single affiliate link.

Separately, on the Pro plan Skool lets owners run an affiliate program for their own group: members get a referral link and you set the commission percentage for bringing in new paying members. You can change it at any time, but the new rate applies to all current affiliates too, so pick a number you can live with. Word of mouth from happy members is the cheapest acquisition you'll ever get, so it's worth turning on early.

Now the catch, and it's a big one. A 40% lifetime commission is exactly why so much "how to make money with Skool" content exists. When you see someone recommending Skool, assume they may earn from your signup. I do too, and I say so: the Skool links in this article are affiliate links. That doesn't make the advice wrong, but it should make you read it with your own calculator open.

The "make money with Skool" hype: who really earns?

Here's my honest view: Skool is a good tool, and a big part of the money in the Skool world comes from teaching other people how to make money with Skool. Browse Discovery and you'll notice how many popular groups are about starting, growing or monetizing a Skool community, or about "making money online" in general.

It's a loop. Group A teaches you to start a group; you start Group B and earn affiliate commissions when your members start Groups C and D. Somewhere in that chain there has to be someone selling a real skill to a real customer who isn't trying to build another community. If you can't name that person in your own plan, you're probably buying a ticket to the loop rather than building a business.

The warning signs are the same as for any money program. The FTC put out a fresh guide to spotting business coaching scams in April 2026: promises of a "proven system" with quick or guaranteed income, big returns for little work, pressure to join now, and testimonials or reviews that might be fake. Map that onto Skool content and you'll recognize a lot of it:

• Revenue screenshots with no costs. A dashboard showing $40K in a month says nothing about ad spend, refunds, team salaries or the 30% Growth Boost cut.
• A $997 "Skool accelerator" that teaches the free help docs. Most of the setup fits in an afternoon of tinkering during the trial.
• "You don't need an audience." You need someone who wants what you sell. Either you have their attention, or you pay for it with ads or with Skool's 30% commission.
• Members-only income claims. If the proof is "look at our wins channel", remember that only the winners post there.

I wrote a longer piece on this pattern in are expensive make-money-online courses worth it. The short version: pay for a skill or a shortcut you can name, not for a dream of passive income.

The fear that stops people: "What if nobody joins?"

The fear behind every unlaunched community is posting into an empty room: you set everything up, pay $99, and three people join, one of them your cousin. It's a real risk, and "just believe in yourself" doesn't help. What helps is making the test small enough that failing costs almost nothing.

1. Sell before you build. Post to your audience (even 500 people on Instagram or an email list) that you're opening a small group on a specific topic at a founding price, and ask people to reply or pay a deposit. Ten yeses is a launch. Zero is information that cost you nothing.
2. Start on Hobby, not Pro. The 10% fee hurts only when you have revenue, and then you can switch. Paying $99 a month for an empty room is how the sunk-cost trap starts: you keep the group alive because you already paid for it, not because it works.
3. Expect most members to stay quiet. The old "90-9-1" rule of online communities, Jakob Nielsen's observation that most people read, few comment and very few create, still holds. A group with 40 members and 4 regular posters is normal, not a failure. Seed the feed yourself with questions, not announcements.
4. Give it a deadline. Decide in advance: "If I don't have 20 paying members in 60 days, I change the topic or close it." A deadline turns a vague fear into a measurable experiment.

Skool vs Circle vs Mighty Networks vs Discord vs Telegram

Skool is the simplest way to run a paid community with courses and payments in one place; Circle and Mighty Networks give you more design and features for more money; Discord and Telegram are free to run and great for chat, but weaker for structured courses. Here's how they compare on what affects your income.

A few honest notes the table can't hold. Circle and Mighty Networks change plans and prices often, and their own pages and reviews don't always agree, so check the live pricing page and do the fee math for your price point. Discord and Telegram cost nothing, but you give up the "everything in one place" feel, and Telegram's Stars are an in-app currency with a payout delay. A 250-Star monthly subscription works out to about $3.25 in rewards, so it suits low-price, high-volume channels. For Telegram's paid options and the ways to grow a channel, see how to create and monetize a Telegram channel community.

My own communities live on Telegram (@affiliatepath) and Reddit (r/AffiliatePath), because my readers want quick tips on their phones, not a classroom. If I were selling a structured program with calls and lessons, Skool is where I'd start, because the setup is a fraction of the work. The right platform follows the format of what you sell, not the other way around.

Tricks most Skool guides don't mention

The difference between a group that limps along and one that grows is usually in small settings and habits, not in the big idea. Here are the ones worth stealing:

• Study a big group from the inside before you build yours. Join a large, active Skool community in your area and watch how the owner runs the feed, the pinned posts, the onboarding and the calls. Online Business Friends (affiliate link) is a big Skool group for founders and people building online businesses, roughly 100,000 members according to a community directory, and it's a good place to see the platform working at scale and to meet people a few steps ahead of you. Check its About page for the current price, since big groups like this often charge a small monthly fee.
• Offer yearly pricing to your members. Annual members can't churn for twelve months, and you get cash up front. "Two months free" works on your members exactly like it works on you.
• Use a free trial for members, carefully. A 7-day trial lowers the barrier, but people who join on a trial need a reason to stay by day 5. Schedule a live call or a "first win" lesson inside that window.
• Use the level lock as onboarding. Put your best resource behind level 2. Members who earn it by posting become your most active people.
• Add your social links to your profile. Members who find you in Skool can follow you elsewhere, and other platforms are where new members come from.
• Run the numbers on Growth Boost every month. Look at how many members came from Skool versus your own channels, and switch it off when your own traffic is strong enough.

Mistakes that kill Skool communities

Most Skool groups that fail don't fail because of the platform. They fail for the same handful of reasons, and you can avoid every one:

• A vague topic. "Success mindset" groups compete with millions of free videos. "Weekly feedback on your first Shopify store" competes with almost nothing.
• Selling content instead of outcomes. People pay monthly for progress and people, not for a video library they can finish in a weekend.
• Disappearing after launch. In month one, the owner is the community. If you post once a week, so will everyone else, and then they'll leave.
• Pricing too low for too long. At $9 you need hundreds of members to make real money, and you have to answer all of them.
• Forgetting the hidden costs. Transaction fees, Growth Boost commissions, refunds, guest experts, tools and taxes add up. I collected the usual suspects in hidden business costs online.
• No email list outside Skool. If Skool changes its rules, algorithm or fees, your members are only reachable through Skool. Build a list on the side; my guide to email marketing shows how.

And one housekeeping rule: income from a community is business income. Keep records and set aside money for taxes from the first sale, and follow the platforms' rules and the laws of the countries where your members live, especially if you make income claims in your marketing.

Your first 30 days with a Skool community

Here's a plan that keeps the test cheap and gives you a clear yes or no by the end of the month:

1. Days 1–3: pick one promise. Write one sentence: who it's for and what they'll get. If you can't, you're not ready to open a group.
2. Days 4–7: presell. Tell your audience about the group and the founding price, and collect replies or deposits. Aim for at least 10 interested people.
3. Days 8–10: set up on the trial. Start the 14-day trial on Hobby, write the About page, add a short welcome course behind level 2, and schedule your first live call. Check the Growth Boost setting and decide on purpose.
4. Days 11–14: open the doors to founders. Let the first members in, welcome each one personally, and post a question a day.
5. Days 15–30: run it like a product. Hold weekly calls, post member wins, ask what's missing, and track three numbers: paying members, members who posted this week, and cancellations.

By day 30 you'll know whether people pay and stay. If they do, raise the price for new members and keep going. If they don't, you've spent the price of a lunch, not the price of a guru's accelerator.

The bottom line

Skool is one of the easiest ways to charge for a community: two simple plans, fees that include processing, payouts every week. The platform is the easy part. The money comes from a specific promise, an audience that trusts you, and members who stay for months, and no platform supplies those for you.

If you have that audience, or the patience to build it, try Skool on the free trial with a presold founding group, start on Hobby, and let the numbers tell you when to move to Pro. If you don't have an audience yet, build one first: a free Telegram channel, a YouTube channel or a newsletter will tell you for free whether people care about your topic. And when someone on your feed promises that a Skool community will make you rich, open the calculator before you open your wallet.