Query - have you considered Skool

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Summary

Hi Zsolt,

I just came across your video and community today - been a long time user of the Excalidraw plugin and Obsidian, so thanks for putting this together.

From my initial impressions, you’ve created an effective, self hosted version of Skool. For the quality of your content and reach inside the Obsidian user base, I was wondering if you’ve considered onboarding a free community with premium content upgrades in Skool or a similar community site? I’ve been involved in a number of skool communities, and while managing a large community base can take up some time, I believe you are wanting to build and foster an active community of supporters, users and early adopters, who can support you and build the community with you.

What do you like?

You’ve curated a comprehensive and well designed set of tools, materials and courses, that I believe can not only be accessible to more people, but should attract a much bigger audience and community, not just of supporters but Obsidian users.

What could be improved?

The content is well curated, but feels difficult to navigate, and the sophisticated structure feels a bit intimidating to someone new, or just exploring your community site and content.

I believe engaging with your active user community will drive broader adoption and conversations, if it’s in a familiar, easy to access and readily available community (like Skool).

Suggested Solution (Optional)

I suggest having a free + premium Skool community (or similar platform), to potentially make your content more accessible and activate your users, supporters and early adopters, and potentially have this community as a beta testing or early access for those who want to actively engage and provide feedback for the plugin and Sketch Your Mind program.

I know these platforms take a cut of the subscription, but I think it’s worth considering since it provides the financial infrastructure that could support and help you manage a large active community. You definitely have the potential to be draw a big community on Skool if it’s something you’re working towards.

3 Answers

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Hi @JvP, thanks for the suggestion! I really appreciate it.

Before we jump into a conversation about technology and solutions, help me better understand what you are missing. Is the navigation of the community not clear? Was there an issue with the registration or checkout process? Is it that you feel the “Sketch Your Mind” brand is not well known, and therefore not trusted? Is the content, such as the self-paced courses hard to access? I’d love to know which aspect of Skool you miss.

As context, I have researched Skool, Circle, Mighty Networks, Podia, and many-many more. I subscribed to Podia based on some references (e.g. Nicole van Der Hoeven hosts her Obsidian is for Everyone course on Podia). After 2.5 years on Podia I decided to move off the platform. In general, I have two issues with all of these platforms:

  • Considering the level of “business” I am able to attract; I find all of these services grossly overpriced. The issue is not a single service, but when you stack all of them. Stripe takes a cut, Skool takes a cut, Vimeo takes a cut, Convert Kit takes a cut, ko-fi takes a cut, PayPal takes a BIG cut, Discourse takes a cut… the many cuts in the end add up to a significant expense. For reference, this community site has a running cost of $0. The only investment was my time (which I enjoyed, as it was an amazing learning journey).
  • Even if I pay (like I did for Podia), I constantly run into limitations of the providers… and if there is one thing you can know me for, is that I do not like limitations imposed by the platforms (That is partially why Excalidraw now gets lower scores on the new Obsidian Community Site (~80% is the theoretical max I can reach with the current rules). I have solved all the limitations that bothered me with Obsidian, but that means using solutions that are considered as a risk factor). As context: I ran into only one real gap when setting up Discourse (the platform supporting the SYM-Community), the support for course progress tracking, but that I was able to solve that with a few hours of research, and by writing my own little plugin.
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@Zsolt

I completely understand where you’re coming from, and your sentiments from your recent video. I don’t see a “trust” problem, and honestly I wouldn’t be too focused on that - since like you said it’s a free “community plugin” - it’s more an accessibility and content discovery / navigation issue.

I’ve been part of a few groups on the networks you mentioned (except Podia), and can see from an administrative perspective, they can get laborious and you’re dependent on those platforms, their T&C and system updates.

Personally, I’m quite comfortable navigating your community, but know it’s definitely not “beginner friendly”. I’m not suggesting you have to switch over, and Discord may also be an option - there are quite a few AI plugin and service communities on Discord as well, and you can set that up for free - unless you want to unlock more advanced features. I know Discord can attract scammers / spammers and it has it’s own issues, but for a small, dedicated user community around Obsidian, I don’t think it’ll be a big issue for your target audience.

A few suggestions:

  • I would separate the Obsidian Excalidraw plugin discussion and support section as it’s own heading, so those who are just here for info on what & how of the plugin can look there

- I would have the dedicated paid section featured more prominently & the main focus of key sections, banners or footnotes in other areas (I know there’s a sort of Member’s area - but it’s buried under a bunch of links and posts)

- with premium member forums, discussions, tutorials, guides, wikis etc in one place, and a dedicated free / open forum section with the free resources and discussions grouped.

- Have the focus on new features & detailed tutorials reserved for the paid features, and have basic information and tutorials freely available, but drive detailed or specific requests or feature discussions in the premium section - you already have your youtube channel, so you don’t really need this community to be a troubleshooting or support site for Excalidraw.

I would make a small beginner / basic tutorial or guides for setting up and navigating the basic features of Excalidraw in Obsidian and link to other youtubers who showcase Excalidraw for Obsidian, if you don’t want to do your own tutorials,

- have some teaser material about other features and advanced programs, especially your Sketch Your Mind system and how it builds on top of Excalidraw - then drive sign up - and showcase benefits of the members lounge area prominently as landing page for the premium section

I almost commented that I couldn’t find the subscription section (but then found it) - it’s not very clear or obvious and buried under various links, and not easily accessible in the navigation - there’s no dedicated Subscriptions / Members or Premium section headings - and generally, it’s not clear what you get for subscribing and the value or benefits of joining.

I only suggested Skool because there are already quite a few active learning and utilising AI communities on there who active discuss features and functionality you’re already offering (except they are not in the Obsidian ecosystem, so aren’t familiar with your work). Discord is also a viable alternative, that is free and is also easily manageable for community engagement. Since you have an active Youtube channel, those can drive a really active and engaging community - check out the BMAD Method channel - I would say you guys are equivalent, but they have very active ecosystem driven by community engagement on discord https://www.youtube.com/@BMadCode - they did agentic skills framework for non-coding "agents’ over a year ago before it became a thing with Claude Code etc.

With the recent focus and attention on Karpathy’s llm wiki - many new people will learn about Obsidian as a second brain for AI agents and agentic workflows, and naturally find out about your Excalidraw plugin - so there’s a natural audience of active like minded communities (AI practitioners / early adopters / diy), who may be curious or want to explore the Obsidian / Excalidraw space more for their AI and regular workflows.

If you want to keep the community on this site, having a familiar and easily accessible structure / navigation with fewer top level navigation areas, grouping related sections and keeping most of the important information in the members section.

I hope this helps

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This is amazingly helpful. I will need a bit of time to go through all your suggestions in detail, but all are very valuable.

Regarding Discord, that is where the community was until now, but Discord was not very good for many reasons. Happy to talk about it over a coffee.

I like your distinction between trust and discoverability.