About the Episode:
Eugene Khayman is the COO of Million Dollar Sellers (MDS), an exclusive community for top Amazon entrepreneurs that he helped grow from a humble Facebook group into a thriving six-figure membership of 700 members generating $11 billion in annual sales.
In this episode of "Uploading...", Eugene shares the organic journey of building MDS alongside running his own Amazon brand. He discusses key strategies that made MDS successful, such as their "give more, get more" philosophy, setting a high bar for membership to filter out noise, and delivering immense value that justifies the $7,500 annual membership fee.
Eugene also unpacks the business model powering MDS, including multiple revenue streams from membership, partnerships, affiliates, and events. He emphasizes the importance of member-only perks, local chapters, and a robust software platform to organize resources and drive engagement in a community.
Finally, Eugene offers advice for content creators looking to launch their own paid communities.
Today, we'll cover:
- How MDS grew organically from a humble Facebook group to a thriving community
- The "Give More, Get More" philosophy that drives member engagement and success
- Strategies for filtering out noise and maintaining a high-quality, focused community
- The business model behind MDS and why people pay over $7,000 a year to be part of the network
- Eugene's insights on scaling communities while maintaining their identity and core values
- Tips for building and monetizing your own niche membership community
What You'll Learn
1. How to Start a Community from Scratch
2. Strategies for Organic Community Growth
3. How to Filter Noise in Early Stages of Community
4. When and How to Monetize a Community
5. Thriving vs. Dead Communities
6. Software for Managing Communities
7. Application and Onboarding Process for Established Communities
8. Tips for Creators on Building and Monetizing a Community
Timestamps
00:00 Intro and background on Eugene and Million Dollar Sellers (MDS)
04:45 Current stats of MDS community: revenue, members, ticket price
06:45 Starting a community organically and verifying/filtering members
08:33 Monetization: when to do it and how to create value
14:44 Where to host a new community and who to bring in
17:53 Seeding a new community: starting conversations and keeping it alive
24:02 Application process and onboarding new members to MDS now
26:55 Where MDS community is going; chapters for local connections
30:30 Platforms used to run MDS community; GroupOS app development
33:44 Opportunities for content creators to monetize via communities
38:33 Q&A: Strategies for specific community examples from audience
44:00 Building a wait list and leveraging existing audience for a community
46:02 Options for immediately monetizing a new community
50:44 Turning virality into community; setting criteria and values
55:15 Wrap-up; where to find Eugene on social
Building Engaged Communities: “I think your first objective should always be like that core group of the founding members. For us I think it was like 150 members before we started actually monetizing. But you know, I would say you want to get to 100 members, you want to have at least 40, 50 die hard members that are engaging in there every single day. You want to get at least five to 10 conversations happening a day. If somebody can ask a question and have it answered that same day like that, that's the value creation right there, right? You don't want to be the one, you yourself answering every single question because you yourself, you don't know everything.” — Eugene Khayman, 00:08:33 → 00:09:25
Monetizing and Scaling a Community: “Whenever somebody starts making a profit because of others, there's going to be some level of, like, why are we doing this? And there's also going to be that, that hesitation to grow. Everybody's going to be like, ’We're so great, we don't need more people.’ Right? And we've crossed that bar—100 members, 200 members, 400 members—there's always that, ‘Oh, we're too big, we're too big, we're too big.’ And you're going to get that pushback. The biggest thing that I think that helped us do it together is one, once we started monetizing, we started putting all of that money back into more events and more resources, building a team… Once you start adding back value by hiring people that help keep things organized, putting on calls regularly, doing events regularly, you'll get that respect from those members, those existing members. And then the new people that are coming in, you have to show that these new people actually bring value to the community.” — Eugene Khayman, 00:11:33 → 00:13:03
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Blaine Bolus - Co-Founder of Castmagic
Ramon Berrios - Co-Founder of Castmagic
Eugene Khayman - COO of Million Dollar Sellers