Two key things determine your success as a creator or an affiliate —

• The first is your ability to create something valuable, or your ability to find something valuable if you’re an affiliate marketer.
• The second is your ability to sell it.

Most people have the first one figured out. The second part is where things get complicated. 

You see, beyond advertising, you need people who are listening, invested, and primed for purchase. Not just followers but a real online community that’s made up of people who trust you, talk to each other, and recommend your products without even being asked.

In this guide, we’re going deep into online community building to help you find those people and bring them together. We’ll cover what it means in context, why it matters, and how to build one in a way that compounds your growth as a creator or an affiliate. 

Why Creators and Affiliates Need a Community, Not Just a Digital Audience

For starters, let’s understand what both mean in the context of this conversation —

• A community, or your community in this case, is a group of people who actively joined a communication channel you created (think email lists, WhatsApp/Telegram channels, Facebook groups, etc.) because they desired to be active participants or receivers of the things you create or plan.
• An audience, on the other hand, is a group of people who simply wish to be on your page (Instagram, Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, etc.) because they find you entertaining, educating, or engaging.

For clarity, it is absolutely important to build an audience and a decent follower count, as it typically serves as the funnel for a community.

But, attention from your social media audience is often rented. 

To put that in context, have you ever seen a post where someone was trying to rebuild their follower count after their page was taken down? It’s a painful reality that many vendors/creators have to deal with.

In addition, an audience simply wants to be entertained or engaged.

That means they want to consume your content and enjoy watching or listening to you talk. But they might not necessarily be primed for a purchase, and the whole point is to convert knowledge into income.

Why does a community matter?

In contrast to a large audience, a community is, first of all, owned. 

Your email list, built carefully one signup after the other, is yours. Unless someone unsubscribes, it will always be yours, even if Instagram or X changes their rules or algorithms.

Secondly, people who actively move from following you and passively consuming your content to joining your WhatsApp or Telegram group/channel are interested in more than just scrolling through your content. 

Hence, it’s safe to say that they’re primed to buy.

Summarily, an audience gets you seen. A community gets you paid.

How to Build an Online Community from Scratch

Your community-building efforts do not need to start with a big budget, an impeccable content calendar, or 10,000 followers on every social channel you’re on. What you need are a few basics. 

1. Decide Who You’re Building Your Community For

The first thing you must decide is what your community is going to be anchored on and who it’ll be for. The path here is very straightforward.

Just take your current niche that you’re already passionate about and outline who you believe will need your resources there. 

• If you’re an online fitness coach, your community can be built for young people between the ages of 18 and 35 who are tech-savvy enough to look online for advice and need fitness coaching.
• If you run an immigration consultancy, your community can be narrowed down to people in your home country looking to travel for school, work, or leisure.

The list goes on. But the advice is simple — identify what you do and then match it with people who’ll reasonably need it.

A quick tip in this regard is to keep it as specific as possible and be contextually strict about who you let in. 

For example, let’s assume that you run a real estate consultancy for people looking to erect family homes and commercial buildings. To help them make the best decisions, you have a high-ticket AMA (ask me anything) listed on Selar and an accompanying ebook that’s been programmed as an upsell. 

In this scenario, you should not be allowing undergrads who are looking for off-campus accommodation into your community. Yes, they need house hunting (or real estate) advice, but that’s not the market you’re targeting, and they cannot be profitable to you.

2. Select a Channel

One of the key points of a community is direct access to its members. You want to pick a platform that helps you achieve that, but you don’t want to overthink it.

For most creators and affiliates, the options are:

• WhatsApp
• Telegram
• Facebook groups
• Email list

If you find that your target community members are typically on WhatsApp, use that as your primary membership/application channel. In the alternative, if your work appeals more to older individuals who might appreciate Facebook a little better, use Facebook groups instead.

Regardless of what channel you choose, you want to optimize for efficiency. Specifically, you can use a tool like Selar’s page builder to create a landing page people can use to sign up for your community. With that, you can collect relevant details and even include a link to your preferred channel.

3. Create Specific Reasons to Join and Use Clear CTAs

People don’t join communities for the sake of it, and they certainly will not join if you aren’t clearly telling them where and how to join. 

So, for starters, promise them something that you can deliver that’ll serve as motivation for them to join. Here are a few examples you could consider:

• Immediate Win: Something they get right when they join. e.g. “Join and immediately receive my NGN5,000 client proposal template.”
• Ongoing Benefit: Regular value they can expect. e.g. “Get weekly high-paying job leads sent directly to your inbox.”
• Exclusive Access: Something they can’t get anywhere else. e.g. “First access to my client negotiation scripts before anyone else”
• Community Benefit: Value from connecting with other members. e.g. “Connect with 200+ other professionals landing projects internationally.”

Secondly, and very importantly, use CTAs often and in places with high visibility. You cannot write “click the link in my bio to join my community” as a footnote under an otherwise lengthy caption on Instagram and expect to get any real traction from there.

Instead, it’s necessary for you to repeat the CTA across your posts on social media, put the link in your bio, and actively discuss it even in your videos, if you make those. That way, those who skip your captions will hear you say it out loud.

As a bonus, you can use Selar to offer a free lead magnet that’ll drive signups to your community. Be sure to make said resource good, though. That way, they’re inclined to come back when you want them to pay for valuable knowledge. 

Useful Tips for Converting Within Your Community

Having the community is only the first step. You still need to monetize them. Here are a few tips that would help in that regard:

1. Be Consistent with Your Defined Niche 

Trust is a fickle thing that can be lost faster than it is earned online. If people already know you as a fitness enthusiast or professional, do not stray randomly out of that.

That is not to say you cannot be known for more than one thing. You could build separate brands that are either tangentially related or even entirely unrelated. But, unless you plan on diversifying, do not simply throw whatever you feel like at your audience as a creator or an affiliate. They joined you for a reason, and straying from it at your whim might do more harm than good.

In the best-case scenario, one or more of those products will suffer in terms of conversions. In the worst-case scenario, you’ll lose your community and their trust.

2. Educate and Engage Before Pushing for Sales on Your Product

As an affiliate, even if you have a large audience already, it’s best to make your content as focused on their benefit as possible. So, instead of simply asking them to buy, create content that educates them about what you’re trying to recommend.

A simple framework for that could look a little like this:

• First, summarize and amplify the problem. If you’re promoting a diet-friendly recipe book, you could start by sparking conversations about how difficult it can be to track calories for Nigerian meals. 
• Second, present a few options that could help, including your diet-friendly recipe book, and then mention that the excellence of your recommended book is why you’ve chosen it personally. 
• Finally, push it as a recommendation with your affiliate link and repeat over time to stay top of mind.

Of course, all of this will not happen in one day or in a single post. You’ll have to stretch it out over a series of interactions, with the first potentially starting as a simple poll.

As a creator, build a buzz around the product you’re trying to get conversions on. Simply announcing “I have a new ebook/course, click here to get it” will not do. 

Ahead of time, drop teasers, get your community to be a part of the creation process by interviewing them, adding polls, and sparking conversations. If they feel like they’re a part of the process, they’ll be more motivated to buy from you.

3. Do Not Neglect Your Community

They are not simply a place for you to put links and expect purchases. They are actual people who joined with specific expectations. Meet them. 

Even if you do not currently have a product to sell or recommend, consider doing something they could potentially look forward to. It could be a weekly customer spotlight or Q&A session. 

You could also invite them to contribute to your creation process outside of the community. This would be especially great if you create content tailored to a specific niche on Instagram, TikTok, or any number of platforms. 

Final Thoughts — Grow Your Community, Grow Your Income

As a creator or an affiliate, online community building isn’t just another task designed to make you seem busy. It’s a smart, scalable way to drive real results. 

When you build a group of people who trust your voice, care about what you share, and engage with your work, monetization becomes a natural next step, not a hard sell you have to fight tooth and nail for.

So, whether you’re a digital product creator or an affiliate, your community is your competitive edge. Start with the right members, nurture them with value, and watch your reach turn into revenue.

Start by using Selar’s landing page builder to drive memberships for your community.