How I Hit Top 1% on Skool in 30 Days (Without Paying for Ads)

If you’re thinking about creating a Skool community, this article will show you exactly what groundwork you need to lay first before spending a dollar. I’m going to reveal why some people earn five figures per month on Skool while others struggle to get their first member—and how you can position yourself for success from day one.

The difference comes down to building a network before you launch, not after.

In my video, I break down the strategies I used to rank my community in the top 27 in its category within 30 days and earn a top 1% community builder badge on Skool.

My Results After 30 Days on Skool

I want to start by showing you what’s possible when you approach Skool with the right strategy. In my video, I show my community called Evolve Now Social, which has achieved some significant milestones in just one month. I earned two badges next to my name: the fire badge, which indicates 30 days of consistent daily activity, and the star badge, which represents being a top 1% community builder on Skool.

When I navigate to the Discovery section and filter by hobbies, my group appears at rank 27 in its category with over 102 members. But here’s what matters more than total member count: I explain that we have about 88 active members, and that activity metric is climbing. Active members are the lifeblood of any community—not just the vanity number of total signups.

Why Most People Will Fail With Their Skool Community

I need to be honest with you: what I achieved won’t happen to everybody. In my video, I stress that success requires work and consistency, and most importantly, it requires a network. There is enormous money to be made on Skool—it’s an absolute gold mine for online income if you use it correctly. However, if you don’t have a current network, if you don’t have people ready to support you, you’re going to be spending months grinding away trying to attract members.

The brutal truth is that many people will create a Skool community off the hype and buzz, work it for a week, maybe two weeks, perhaps a month or even two months, and then give up entirely. The reason they quit is because they didn’t lay any groundwork first. They jumped in expecting immediate results without building the foundation that makes those results possible.

The Secret: Build Your Network First

Here’s what I recommend in my video for anyone on the fence about creating a Skool community: don’t start by creating a paid group. Instead, join the Skool platform in some free groups first. I built Evolve Now Social specifically for this purpose—to give people a place to collaborate, make friends, build networks, and prepare for their own community launch.

I show several examples of members in my community who are positioning themselves for success. One member named Archie B has ranked up to level five and is actively engaging. I explain that he will be able to create a successful community in a couple of months because he’s being seen, building a network, and staying active. Another member, Sean Zen, is starting a community soon, and I know he’s going to succeed because he’s been very active and has earned that fire badge showing 30 days of consistent engagement.

In my video, I scroll through multiple posts showing member after member at level five and level six, all actively engaging and building relationships. These are the people who will succeed when they launch their own communities. They’re showing up every day, posting content, commenting on others’ posts, and building genuine friendships within the platform.

What the Fire Badge Really Means

A lot of people underestimate the power of the fire badge on Skool. This badge appears when you’ve been active for 30 consecutive days, and it’s a visible signal of consistency. I explain in my video that if I were considering joining someone’s community, I would want to see that fire badge first. It tells me they’re not going to disappear in a couple of weeks—they’re committed.

I’d join someone with a fire badge well before I’d join someone I didn’t know without one. This badge is proof that you can show up consistently, which is exactly what community leadership requires. You can’t expect your members to stay consistent if you’re only logging in once a week or whenever you feel like it.

The Proven Strategy: Engage for 2-3 Months First

My recommendation is clear: spend two to three months engaging in free Skool communities before launching your own. In my video, I demonstrate how to find these communities using the Discovery feature. Let’s say you’re planning to create a fitness community—you’d go to the health category and find free communities with thousands of members, like one with 20,000 members I show in the video.

You would engage daily in these communities. Make friends. Collaborate. Build your network. After two or three months, when you have a huge backing and a network of people who regularly engage with your posts, then you launch your own fitness or health group. The same strategy applies no matter your niche—I show examples with spirituality communities that have 75,000 members where you could build relationships before launching your own manifestation or mindfulness group.

Understanding the Financial Investment

When you do create a Skool community, you have two pricing options. There’s a nine-dollar-per-month hobby option and a 99-dollar-per-month pro option. In my video, I explain that your best chance for success is the 99-dollar option if you’re creating a paid group, because it allows you to offer affiliate commissions to your members at 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, or even 50%.

This means your members become your marketing team. If you’re in the making-money-online space or working with people who understand online business, that extra 90 dollars per month could potentially bring you an extra ten thousand dollars per month with your members helping you grow. The hobby plan works better if you’re creating a community around something like BMX riding or another hobby where monetization isn’t the focus.

I stress in my video that there are communities earning six thousand, nine thousand, thirty thousand, and even forty-nine thousand dollars per month on Skool. However, these creators more than likely had large YouTube channels, significant social media followings, insider networking groups, or popular blogs before they launched. They did the groundwork to succeed with these high numbers well before they created their community.

Managing the Financial Outflow

One critical point I make in my video is about managing your cash flow. That 99 dollars per month creates an outflow from your finances. Can you afford to have this outflow for four months before you start getting traction? If not, you need to build your network first within free Skool communities like the members in Evolve Now Social are doing.

When you build your network first and then launch your group, your outflow might only last one or two months before you get profitable—not five or six months while you’re struggling to pay the monthly fee. I explain that rushing into a community without this preparation is what causes people to struggle and eventually give up, wondering if they’ll be able to earn enough to cover next month’s payment.

Why Skool is the Best Online Business Opportunity

In my video, I make it clear: there is no business online that I recommend more than creating a Skool community. Nothing. There is not one thing online that I could possibly recommend more if you want to earn online. The price might look high at first glance, but for the tools you’re getting, this is very, very cheap. I know because I’ve paid a lot more for a lot less in the past.

For the value you get for the price, for the potential of what you could possibly earn if you put in the groundwork and stay consistent, the opportunity is absolutely huge. However, I also emphasize that if you’re not showing up and putting in the work, good luck getting the results you want. You’ll more than likely be struggling and stressed about finances rather than celebrating your success.

The Simple Daily Actions That Build Success

Building networks online is actually the easiest thing in the world, yet the majority of people simply don’t do it. They lurk in the shadows. They don’t act. They don’t engage. They don’t even like posts. In my video, I explain that many people have a sense of envy or other mental blocks that prevent them from taking these simple actions.

The reality is that showing up each day, making a post here and there, commenting on other people’s posts, and giving support where it’s due is very easy to do. It’s as simple as being present, being genuine, and being consistent. When you do this in free communities, it becomes much easier to bring someone from one Skool community to look at your new community than it is to bring someone onto a completely new platform they’ve never heard of before.

Resources to Get Started

If you want to learn more about mastering Skool and maximizing your results, I recommend checking out AAA Wealth Builders where I go deeper into these strategies. You can also join my free group, Evolve Now Social, which is specifically designed to help people build their networks and prepare for launching their own communities. In my video, I mention that this is exactly why we’re growing so fast—because people with dreams and the intent to one day have their own group are showing up every day and preparing themselves for success.

The whole idea behind Evolve Now Social is collaboration, making friends, building networks, and succeeding online. When you engage in communities like this for two or three months and earn that fire badge, you’ll have the backing you need to launch successfully. You’ll have people who recognize your name, trust your consistency, and are ready to support your new venture. That’s the difference between launching to crickets and launching to an engaged audience ready to help you grow.