How I Went From 0 To 102 Skool Members In 30 Days With 1 Free Reddit Post (And No Audience)

In this case study I'll show you how my Skool community went from 0 to 102 members in 30 days with 1 free Reddit Post.

The best part?

This strategy works perfectly if you don't have an audience or authority in your market.

Plus, after the 30 days, the member requests didn't stop.

That same post has been sending new members to my community for the past year (and it will continue to do so).

How did I do it?

The Reddit Magnet Technique.

Let me show you how it works, step-by-step, so you can copy my exact strategy.

How I Used The Reddit Magnet Technique To Go From 0 To 102 Skool Members in 30 Days

The Reddit Magnet Technique helped me launch my Skool community and grow it to 102 members in 30 days:

This strategy helped me figure out what my niche is struggling with and turn that into a piece of content. Now, they'll happily join my community:

Then, after my reddit magnet did its work, they look around my community and realise they want to keep hanging around:

As a nice bonus, I'm still getting new members from the same Reddit post almost a year later:

Now it's time for me to show you how you can use a Reddit Magnet to get members for your Skool group.

Let's dive right in.

The 3 Steps To Using "The Reddit Magnet Technique" To Get Members For Your Skool Group

Here are the 3 steps:

Step 1: Find a common problem your audience has

Step 2: Solve the problem and turn it into a lead magnet

Step 3: Post your lead magnet on Reddit (the right way)

Step 1/3: Find a common problem your audience has

Maybe you already have an assumption of a common problem your audience has, or you maybe aren't sure.

In both cases, you will need to research.

If you have an assumption, you will need to validate it.

If you aren't sure, don't just guess. Do your research and find a common problem in your niche.

Here's how:

Go to Reddit.com and open the subreddits where you potential community members hang out.

If you don't know any, type your community topic in the search bar on Reddit.

For my community (investing in Pokémon cards for people from Europe), /r/PokeInvesting is the most relevant subreddit with 74K members:

In my case, I have an assumption about a widespread problem my niche has.

(I turned my passion into community so it's easy to brainstorm potential problems. I simply think back to problems I had).

Here's the problem I'm focussing on:

Tracking the value of your collection automatically in Excel or Google sheets.

I used to spend hours looking up prices, manually updating my Google sheet, and wish this process could be automated.

Maybe my niche has the same problem and desired outcome as me?

It didn't take long to find out that other collectors also want to track the value of their collection:

They currently manually enter prices which takes a lot of time:

They are trying to automatically load prices, but can't seem to find a solution:

Other Redditors suggest solutions like paid apps, but those only work for people from the US.

This is great news for me, because it confirms the assumption I had and it's the exact same problem I ran into myself.

💡 Unsure about a common problem in your niche? Read posts/comments and look for one. If you can't find any clues or want more information, post a non-leading question. Like this: Hey [niche], what is a current challenge and what are you doing to solve this challenge right now?

Step 2/3: Solve the problem and turn it into a lead magnet

Now it's time to craft a solution to the problem you found and turn it into an irresistible piece of content (a lead magnet).

The lead magnet will be added to the classroom of your community, and to get it, people have to join your community.

Here's how I did it:

My niche's problem:

They can't automatically track the value of their collection, it costs them hours each week to update their Google sheets manually. They tried different softwares, but none of them work for the European market.

My solution:

A Google sheet that automatically scrapes prices in real-time from the biggest marketplace in Europe.

Why is this a good lead magnet?

Let me break it down (using Ryan Deiss' lead magnet checklist):

It's ultra specific

Lead magnets should never be vague.

I offer a specific solution to a specific problem.

It covers one big thing

It makes and delivers one big promise instead of a lot of little ones.

My lead magnet helps to track prices of your investments automatically.

It doesn't give investment advice, it doesn't cover anything else that my niche might want.

It just solves one big thing, and it does it really well.

It speaks to a known desired end result

In step 1 we uncovered what my niche struggles with and what desired end result they want.

My lead magnet speaks exactly to that desired end result and nothing else.

It gives immediate gratification

Your niche wants a solution to their problem right now.

My lead magnet gives my audience a simple Google sheet, they fill a product URL and it scrapes the live price data instantly.

That's it.

They don't have to install anything, they don't have to learn how to write XML code, they don't have to understand how the sheet works on the backend.

It shifts the relationship

The best lead magnets do more than simply provide some information.

They change the way your niche thinks about you and conditions them to engage with you more proactively.

That's why I created a few videos showing exactly how to use it:

They see that I understand their pain, that I'm one of them, and that I worked hard to craft a solution for them.

It makes them feel grateful and excited.

It has a high perceived value

Just because my lead magnet is free, doesn't mean it looks free (and neither should yours).

Make it look professional to establish real monetary value in the mind of the person consuming your lead magnet.

It has high actual value

High perceived value isn't enough, it actually has to be high value as well.

Don't hold back and make sure to over deliver.

Show your niche that the ROI they can get on spending their time in your community is extremely high from the beginning.

It's rapidly consumable

Forget about 300 page ebooks and 14 day video courses.

Make your lead magnet rapidly consumable.

You want to get your niche the result they want as fast as possible, ideally within 5 to 10 minutes.

What if you can't?

Then your lead magnet probably isn't specific enough.

Now that your lead magnet is done, here's what to do next:

Add it to your classroom and only make it available for people that are level one:

Then, create a pinned post about your lead magnet (pin below your welcome post):

In the pinned post, explain what your lead magnet does and how to get it (click here to see my actual post as an example).

Step 3/3: Post your lead magnet on Reddit (the right way)

First, open the subreddits related to your niche that you found during step 1.

Some will have strict rules about what posts are allowed. If you're unsure, I'd say just go for it and see if they delete your post or allow it.

Your post will need a good title, and even better images to attract the attention of your niche as they scroll Reddit while sitting on the toilet.

Here's what my post looks like (you can also check it out on Reddit here):

Base your title on this format:

To [niche] - I created [lead magnet] that gives you [desired result] - see screenshots. If you want to use it, drop a comment and I will share. It gives you [benefit 1], [benefit 2] and [benefit 3].

Then use Canva create visually compelling screenshots that show the desired end result your niche wants.

Add at least two screenshots that show what your lead magnet does.

Then, click post!

Now you might wonder why I didn't add any links to my post.

That's because you want people to comment to get the link.

Any activity on your post will tell Reddit it's doing well, and the algorithm will show it to more people.

Also, any new comment will bump the post, which gives it more views, and then more comments, and so forth.

That's why my post is still getting views and comments almost a year later:

When people comment, you upvote their comment and tell them you sent it over via Reddit chat (this adds even more activity to your post):

Then in the chat message, you send them the link to your community and mention the second pinned post:

(don't DM too many people per day, I got suspended for 7 days cause I sent too many chat requests).

After clicking the link they land on your community, see what it's about, click on the pinned post and request to join to get your lead magnet.

Don't worry about people getting annoyed that the content is gated, if your lead magnet is good, they'll happily join your community to get it and then thank you for creating it:

As more people request your lead magnet, make sure to ask them for feedback and improve it. This optimises the entire process based on actual feedback from your niche.

💡 Some Reddit moderators will delete your post. If you want to be really cheeky, simply turn your post into an ad, and run it in the subreddit where it was removed. The mods that deleted your post won't be able to do anything against that as they've made the mistake of building their community on a platform that runs ads, instead of a platform that's ad free.

Conclusion

You now know how to get free members for your own Skool community using a Reddit Magnet.

Deploy this strategy like explained above, and there's no reason why you shouldn't get new members trickling in almost completely automated for years to come.

Besides that, imagine sharing your new lead magnet on other social media platforms.

Because you built something that your niche desperately wants, getting members from other platforms will be a lot easier too.