One founder shared a challenge they’re facing with their community. Engagement is growing, but they’re trying to figure out how to turn some of that interest into customers without making the community feel overly commercial.

How do you turn community members into customers without ruining the community?

I think this is really hard. The second every post starts ending with "buy our thing", people are going to disappear 😂

Yeah, I'd hate that.

I think the community has to be useful even if nobody buys anything. Otherwise it's basically just a mailing list pretending to be a community.

I agree, but you still need to sell.

"Never promote anything" isn't a community strategy either.

1 hour ago, Amelia Attwood said:

I agree, but you still need to sell.

"Never promote anything" isn't a community strategy either.

No, definitely not. I'm more against forcing it into every conversation.

I'd probably make the offer relevant to the conversation instead. If someone has already said "I'm struggling with X", that's a very different situation from randomly dropping a sales pitch.

Yep. And I'd actually track whether those people buy again.

Community engagement looks great on a dashboard, but if nobody ever becomes a customer you're basically running a very successful hobby 😂

On 01/10/2026 at 23:24, Amelia Attwood said:

Yep. And I'd actually track whether those people buy again.

Community engagement looks great on a dashboard, but if nobody ever becomes a customer you're basically running a very successful hobby 😂

😂 That's harsh but fair.

This is the bit I think founders get backwards. Build something people want to come back to first. Then figure out where the commercial bit fits. Not the other way around.