So, how do you actually get traffic to your school about page? There are, let me tell you, many, many ways to drive traffic to your school about page, and I have a strong preference for free of them, and I can also back it up. If we haven't met before, hi there. My name is Evan Vice. I've generated over 8 million online, over 65,000 customers, 35,000 paid subscribers. I am pretty big on school, have multiple communities, biggest one is over 50,000 a month. I'm also a school investor, school affiliate, and I run the ads for the platform. And in this video, I want to walk you through the three top best ways to drive traffic to your about page. The first one is pretty obvious actually if you think about it, and that is drive traffic from within school. Think about it. the people that are currently users on school, even creators that either have their own community or experience community in someone else's setup and group. They are your prime potential customers. First off, they have shown that they're willing to take action. They already know how communities work. They have card on file, right? They appreciate like the platform. They use it. A lot of them are pretty active. Keep logging back in. So this environment, the source of traffic already is really really high quality and it's also an organic way to drive traffic. So how do you actually do that? In my community grow with Evelyn, I do get a ton of school internal traffic and the first place from where I get the school internal traffic is actually from the discovery. So, my community is in the money category. And here you can see I've just fallen off, but don't worry, I'll be back soon enough. The first page of discovery and I do get a lot of traffic just from the discovery. And you can see when we check out school's traffic in general, right? So, school here, it ranks on the,369 placed worldwide, right? So this is the global traffic rank and it has 34 million visits which is pretty crazy right? So it gets a lot of traffic and it distributes this traffic across its community owners with this about page already. So I do get a lot of people here from the discovery. How do you rank up in discovery? Well, school tells you here under your settings, you have this discovery tab. And here you can see get discovered by millions of active users. I am showing a discovery. I am in the money category. I rank on page 35 for the language English. Showing in discoveries group need a minimum threshold of members post and activity to show in discovery. So that would be the first thing that you'd want to check. You also need a group description, about page description, images, and a cover image. Discovery rank. Groups are ranked by member growth, engagement, and retention. If you consistently grow your group, get members to engage, and keep them coming back, your rank will increase. Boosts and penalties. To prevent people from gaming the system, we have a human in the loop to manually review rankings and apply boosts and penalties. Boosts: high quality artwork on the about page. Interesting niche, authentic human engagement, active owner. penalties, bots or fake accounts, spam or lowquality engagement, lowquality artwork or about page, payments off platform, right? So, they incentivize you to take payments through school, which is even cheaper than taking payments through Stripe. So, I'd highly recommend it. Anyways, also because they're really good with rebuilds, etc. That's a topic for another video. Bad customer support in active owner. So, you as the owner also need to be active on the platform. And here you can see this on my flame. So when I go to my profile, I've had an activity streak right here. You see the flame uh you get for 30 days streak of at least 10 activities per day. On many days, I'll have significantly more than just 10 activities. So this is the activity of the group owner. Let's dive into this a little bit more though. Okay, so it literally tells you what you need to do. High quality artwork on the about page, interesting niche, authentic human engagement, active owner. So active owner, you can do this just by showing up on school, right? Authentic human engagement. Reach out to your group members, chat with them, build authentic relationship, make it valuable. Interesting niche. This is such a cool one because it also helps you with your community growth. So what's really a good idea for you in the beginning if you don't have a lot of audience, let me just come to Canva quickly to break this down for you. You want to actually think of your niche like an hourglass. So in the beginning it does make a ton of sense for you to actually go from a broader positioning to niche down into a certain area and then branch out from that. So when you're thinking about your niche, right, you create this small like loop here to bundle interest and that makes it also more interesting. And you can do this in different ways. You can cross combine interests. You can just further niche down by who your community is for. But an interesting because specific niche is an advantage for you for your traffic as well. If you have not seen it yet, I highly recommend that you check out my tutorial on how to find your school community niche, which is this one here. How to find your perfect school niche because it is also an advantage when it comes to driving traffic. And then the high quality artwork on the about page. What you're aiming for is high contrast. Ideally, be on there as the group owner. It also builds your brand and it makes it more interesting in itself. High contrasting colors and be on there as the community owner. This is something that you can also hire out, right? So, can be done relatively affordable on Fiverr or on another platform if you're not particularly good with it. But those are the things you can do with relatively low effort. Now I assume that you avoid bots and uh spam on and all of this. If you can take payments through the school platform, offer brilliant customer support that's good for you as well and be active. Right? So they're very very clear in what they want from us. Now another thing is groups are ranked by members growth, engagement and retention. Right? So, while you can take care of this relatively easily, here is something where you probably need to do more than just, you know, setting up a nice group and inviting the friends that you have and and being active on the platform. You probably need to do more to grow it from yourself as well, right? Because school rewards you when you also bring users to the platform. So, there's a little bit more work that needs to go in from your end. And I'm going to show you what you can do still without paid traffic. Right? So, what else can you do on the platform? Well, the discovery page is not the only place where you get traffic from the platform. Another place where you automatically get traffic from is actually school recommendations. And let me just show you this here. So, here is on school. There's two plans. There's a pro plan for $99 a month. And then there's a hobby plan. And in the hobby plan, what happens here is that you actually get this batch that you're powered by school. You don't have your custom URL and communities are suggested in here. So you can also get traffic from other people's communities. Still something that school takes care of that you cannot directly influence. And then there's the schoolers community. In the schoolers community, you can be a valuable member and contribute and share from your growth journey and your efforts with your community and through that people will check out your profile and then see what you do and from there can also see your communities. I do get a lot of traffic from people who are just looking me up because of my contributions in the school community and then are interested in my communities. Now, of course, I'm in a position of an advantage here because my community is related to make money. I teach skills relevant for growing your school, right? So, obviously, I'll get more people from posting in the community. But what I believe is a totally underrated and overlooked opportunity here is to find other community owners that are doing something in a niche similar to yours that also don't have a massive audience size and where you guys can do freebie swaps, pushing it each other to each other's email list, guest training in each other's communities, right? So I think there's a lot of school community owners that have already, you know, a few hundred people maybe in the audience, right? or a couple thousand whatever um you have a smaller community you I think you should really really focus on getting those collaborations on school with other community owners and I would also go in and I would seek out communities in the discovery that maybe are already much much bigger than you but you offer complimentary knowledge. you can join as a member first of you can learn a ton from them but then you can also offer to do something like a guest training or something in their communities right so what is true for me for schoolers here is true for a lot of members when they join bigger active communities that are centered around their topic of interest as well so their ideal client hangs out in there and they are a valuable member and contribute the thing is the bigger your community is, the less you typically answer directly in the community because you also want to give the community space and you want to have community stars emerging. You want to make that space as a community owner so people can really form connections with each other, not just be with you and you're like the sun with the rays. You really want to have a network. That also means that you're staying out a little bit of your own community to let members help members and you let you willingly let those stars rise up, right? And for me, for example, it's a very acceptable trade-off that I have people in here that do things very complimentary to what I do and they do get members from my community. And that's the case with almost every community owner. Obviously, you want to check what's wanted in the community, but when you join, you'll relatively quickly learn that from how everybody is engaging and becoming a valuable member of highly engaged larger communities first of to get the connection with the immediate members, right? That might turn into your clients relatively quickly as well as building the relationship with the community owner that then can push people towards your community, right? like I for example did it with Ben or with Jamie or here with Jack, right? So I do offer these opportunities for people as well. Uh and I think that's so so overlooked. Also look out for summit opportunities on the platform. So here you can see for example um Brenda Rnney is hosting this AIdriven business summit, right? And so she offers for a lot of people the opportunity to basically leverage their audiences. So just immerse yourself in school. Check out what's going on. Be in the communities where your ideal clients hang out. So you also learn about when those things happen on the platform and use that as a way to grow your community with school internal traffic. Now beyond that, right, you just read that you are rewarded for growth. Now, for me, the best way to kickstart that growth if you have nothing else is to actually run ads, right? And this is what I'm known for. I've built my business with ads. And I also when I started a fresh community with zero audience, I tried to erase all touch points of familiarity or or of my brand as much as possible. Delete or started with a new Facebook group, new Instagram page, new pixel. Um, so I can have a case study like what would I really do if I would was to create an completely new community with zero audience. My go-to was ads. And you can watch this video here, how I made my first $1,000 with zero audience on school. In here, I break down for you the exact ads that I tested and what ultimately worked. So, I really take you behind the scenes there so you know how to set up ads to your school directly. Also, how long did I keep it free? When did I make it paid? This community still exists, by the way. I just renamed it. And here you can see it's still going really strong. I've turned off the ads like a while ago. And this is just, by the way, what's coming naturally organically through school, right? Eight signups in the last week. And here you can see churn is also still good. This experiment still makes me $3,400 monthly recurring revenue, right? And I did run the ads in a way that I was breaking even on the front end. So, if you're interested in knowing how to run ads to your school and how to get the school off the ground, this is the video that you want to check out. In there, I really break it down. And if you want to see my exact ads, then check out this video. I ran thousands of ads. This works every single time. I show you there the exact ads that I put for this community in here. But then here, this gives you the bigger picture of the type of first ad that you want to run. Okay? So, in general, just check out the ads videos on my channel about school. They teach you what you need to know, right? They give you the the perfect starting point. For me, if you really really struggle to drive traffic, I think it's worth to put some money in ads just so you can get momentum and the first community members going like you see here. You don't have to keep the ads going forever, right? But you, you know, want to at least establish a community to a certain point, right? you at least want to get it to a minimum viable community where there is some life happening. Okay, so ads is the second best strategy I believe in which you can grow your community. It's also great because you can validate your idea and see if your idea even has community to market fit. For that I want to give you a formula. So if you are running ads to your community and you have zero audience, you start with a free community, right? You don't make it paid, you set up school conversion API, which I show you in this video here, how to set up Facebook meta tracking on school and then you set up a sales campaign optimizing for complete registration. And you use the this is the offer ad from this mirrorboard that we will also link below this video for you. so you know which copy and which creative to use. When you do that, you don't want to spend more than a $1.50 to $3 per free group member. When you spend $10 a day for 7 days, that's the average cost per group member that you want to have to really validate your idea. If you're paying more than that, you might need to still tweak the niche and the positioning and the value model of your community. If you have an existing audience, start with a paid school. Set up conversion API. Set up a sales campaign optimizing for purchase with a similar ad to the one that you see in the mirrorboard. Just add the price clearly on the visual and in the headline of the ad. And then the budget is one to three times the monthly price of your school community. I always recommend to start your school community price below $7 and then increase it. There's a price increase video around that that I highly recommend you check out. How to price your online membership or school. So, you start lower and then you work your way up to really find the sweet spot in your pricing. And then your offer is validated as in this has community tomarket fit if you get daily sales and if you are profitable after 7 days, which means like you're able to break even in the first month and you will turn at least a slight profit from the second month forward. That's how I like to look at it. And this is why I love to use meta ads in Facebook and Instagram ads to drive school traffic because you also can validate your idea and you can have this initial growth push that then helps you to have a community that you can work to get the organic school push. Okay, so that's how I love to think about those. Now, last but not least, the third traffic source for that I want to draw your attention to this graphic, social media traffic tochool.com. I think this is a pretty good distribution as in what I would recommend as well. I highly recommend that you as your longterm traffic driver choose long- form YouTube content. Nothing will build your personal brand and parasocial relationships. Long-term like long- form content on YouTube and you can beautifully link back to your school from there. I'm doing this a lot. It's my main focus right now to really get my YouTube channel off the ground and work it and shape it where I also want to align it with my long-term vision for my brand and for my community. And somebody whose main funnel is YouTube with a link to school in bio is Nick Sarif. I made a YouTube video here breaking down his strategy to making $300,000 per month with his membership basically as a oneman show. So definitely check this out. This is all he does. Long form YouTube content, a video almost every single day. Um, leading back to his school community. And this is also what I would recommend for most of you as the long-term traffic strategy in addition to what school can already do for you and what you can do initially with ads that validate your community, right? And then ideally, you still keep them going, right? Why would you want to turn them off if you can grow your community profitably? This will even be more true once school rolls out tears. And then to help lift your ads, build more trust and long-term have something going for you from the outside. Highly recommend YouTube. I think this trifecta of things is really really perfect for driving traffic to your school sustainably. Right? So if you are already of course have a big audience on Instagram or on Facebook or on X or on LinkedIn or on the others look at this look at this distribution of course you want to send your audience from there right you want to double triple 10x down on what's working for you right now at least then get retargeting ads up right and try to work your school and then community engagement so you can benefit from school internal traffic right but keep doing what you do but if you're starting out and you looking at this, where do you think your time is best invested? Where do you think your time is best invested? I believe your time is best invested on YouTube. If you start out, if you have to learn all of those skill sets and platforms from scratch, I'd really focus on YouTube. So, long story short, I'd set up my community and I would try to make it as appealing as possible. That will also help you in the with the school internal traffic. Then I would run ads to it to validate my idea and get the first members in so that I can work the internal engagement and rank up in school. I would make sure I'm a member of all other big communities in my space that you know are within my budget where I can contribute and make meaningful connections and with other members maybe audience swap and do smaller things and maybe for the community owner provide a training. Right? So, I would try to use as much of the school internal potential for traffic as possible because it will always be your highest quality audience. I would keep the ads going as long as they're profitable and scale them as much as I can within them being profitable. If you do nothing else, I at least want you to run retargeting ads to your school, which is a tutorial I have here for you, how to run school retargeting ads. And then beyond that, I would create a YouTube channel and I would provide value for my members through YouTube videos and post those videos in my in my community to help with the engagement to help members understand what we want to talk about here and to also add content in a low pressure way. Why is this important? Most people leave community or membership due to overwhelm. So what you want to avoid is more and more of the paid content that they feel like oh I have to go through and I have to benefit from otherwise I'm I'm wasting my time and more of the optional content that actually sparks the meaningful conversations and the community right and your YouTube content does that it helps with retention which then again helps with discovery right because we know that retention it helps with your members growth with engagement and with retention if You're packaging the answers to your members questions in YouTube videos once a week that you share back with your community and that you use to link back to your community. So all of your content ideally is inspired by your members questions. I just created this free community on school to bundle all of my free content around school, right? So this is just me linking all of my free YouTube videos and there just like I do many times in Grow with Evelyn, I just ask, "Hey, what's holding you back?" Right. And a lot of people said traffic and so I'm making a video about traffic and I'm putting it in here and I'm putting it in row with Evelyn and without, you know, forcing on members. I did this new traffic course and they're like, "Okay, I'm still working on that course." So, I feel like really rushed and I feel like I'm not getting the most out of the community. I'll drop this for the members that are seeking this and for the members that are ready and the other ones, they can check it out. Right? When it's just just on YouTube, it does not feel like work. It for more feels like when I'm ready for a little distraction from the work in front of me, I consume it. But it allows the members to see what are all the things I already have in here. What are all the things that Evelyn can help me with, right? And what can I put for later on my radar? And obviously the members who need it right now, they're like, "Oh yeah, I need this right now. Do we have this training about how I'm setting up this ad in the community?" And I can be like, "Yep, step by step here in the school ads course." Right? So that's how you want to think about it. you you use YouTube basically for all of these things. So all of these traffic sources combined, two organic, one inside of school, right? You really trying to get up in discovery, but you're really also using the different communities to build the meaningful connections between members and leverage audiences within school because it's the highest quality traffic that you can ever get. You strategically using paid traffic to create pushes when you need it, right? And then also just closing holes in your funnel with the retargeting and using YouTube for your ongoing group engagement, growth, and retention. That's for me the best trifecta of driving traffic, getting traffic to your school in a way that does beneficial things, creates synergy all around because it's very good for you to be well connected on school, to experience other communities, to do the things that the platform considers best practices, to have an interesting niche, right? to validate your community idea with cold traffic on the outside to spark engagement and create content around what your members actually need. All of these ways to drive traffic also help you overall in your business and with your community which is why I believe they are the very very best. All right, I hope this video was helpful for you and I've linked I've referenced to quite a few of them. I think what we should do is linking the ones how I got how I made my first thousand dollars with zero audience and maybe also the retargeting one. And then I see you in another one. Bye for now.