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15d (edited) • Discussion 💬
Traffic isn't revenue
I was looking at the current Top 100 Skool communities and compared three things: Traffic, Last 30d MRR and MRR movement.
And the differences are fascinating.
A) LOW TRAFFIC. HIGH REVENUE.
Who generates the most recurring revenue from the least traffic?
I calculated a simple metric I call Earnings per traffic, which is Last 30d MRR divided by traffic.
6. Logan Sendle | Blue-Collar Biz Accelerator | 5,819 traffic | $1,023,620 MRR | $175.91 per traffic
8. João Gonçalves | Programa Investir Imobiliário | 1,431 traffic | $218,463 MRR | $152.63 per traffic
9. Brandon Mulrenin | Reverse Selling - Inner Circle | 1,401 traffic | $169,233 MRR | $120.79 per traffic
The first thing that jumps out is how little traffic some of these communities need to generate meaningful recurring revenue. Danny Seliger is showing $61,200 MRR from just 108 traffic, while David Goldman is at $72,498 MRR from 197 traffic.
The numbers become even more interesting at scale:
Logan Sendle has 5,819 traffic but more than $1M in MRR. The takeaway is not that low traffic is inherently better, but that traffic volume alone tells us very little about the economic value of a community.
There is also an important caveat here. The Earnings per traffic calculation is a directional revenue-efficiency indicator, not a conversion rate. We do not have the underlying data on visitors, leads, trials or paying members, and we do not know exactly how the traffic metric is calculated. So I would use this to identify interesting patterns, not as a precise measure of conversion performance.
B) HIGH TRAFFIC. LOWER REVENUE EFFICIENCY.
These communities attract significant attention but generate relatively less recurring revenue per unit of traffic.
The contrast is striking. Abdulrahman Khalid has 92,755 traffic but $50,484 MRR, while Daniel Riley has 125,875 traffic and $211,211 MRR. Rodrigo Alfaro has almost 95,000 traffic and $119,379 MRR. These are very large audiences, but the amount of recurring revenue generated relative to that traffic varies dramatically.
Again, this should not be interpreted as a judgement about the quality of these communities. Traffic can have value beyond direct subscription revenue, and different businesses can have completely different monetisation models. What the data does show is that attention and monetisation are not the same thing.
C) HIGH TRAFFIC. NEGATIVE MRR MOMENTUM.
This group combines significant traffic with negative MRR movement over the last 30 days.
1. School of Hard Knocks | School of Mentors | 112,628 tr. | $164,911 MRR | $1.46 per tr.| -$18,389 MRR
3. Nate Herk | AI Automation Society Plus | 22,077 tr. | $212,393 MRR | $9.62 per tr. | -$13,082 MRR
6. David Sorensen | Reta Unfiltered Inner Circle | 14,661 tr. | $152,534 MRR | $10.40 per tr. | -$6,654 MRR
This is probably the most interesting group from a Community M&A perspective because it shows that significant attention and meaningful revenue don't automatically translate into positive momentum.
School of Hard Knocks, for example, has more than 112,000 traffic and $164,911 MRR, but its MRR movement is -$18,389. Nate Herk has $212,393 MRR and $9.62 MRR per traffic, yet is still down $13,082 over the last 30 days.
We cannot determine from this dataset why the MRR is falling. It could be related to retention, pricing, membership changes, acquisition channels, seasonality or something else entirely. The interesting point is simply the divergence between attention, current monetisation and recent momentum.
THE COMMUNITY M&A LENS
- Traffic tells us about attention they catched
- Last 30d MRR tells us about current monetisation
- Earnings per traffic gives us a directional view of revenue efficiency
- MRR movement tells us about recent momentum
When you put all four together, you start seeing something very different from a simple leaderboard. A community with huge traffic is not necessarily highly monetised. A community with relatively little traffic can generate substantial recurring revenue. And a community with significant traffic and MRR can still be losing revenue.
For someone looking at communities as an investor or acquirer, this is where the interesting questions begin. Where is the economic value actually being created? Where is it leaking? And where might there be a gap between attention and economic value?
That's the part of Community Investment Intelligence I'm becoming increasingly interested in.
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Traffic isn't revenue
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