A few months ago, I found myselfi in a tricky spot. For only the second time in my life, I was let go from a job. And on a Friday, 4 days before Christmas. Instead of letting it weigh me down, I set out on a challenge: build five online communities in five weeks.
1. Why I Took on This Challenge
. The goal was twofold:
- Mental health: Keeping my mind busy and focused on something productive.
- Learning: Gaining hands-on experience in online communities, automation tools, AI, and digital marketing.
Why five? Because repetition is the foundation of mastery. One project alone wouldn’t teach me much—it would be too circumstantial. Three would start revealing patterns. Five meant more than a month of structured, high-intensity learning.
I thrive under pressure and prefer doing over talking—this challenge forced me to execute rather than theorize. Inspired by Pieter Levels’ 12 Startups in 12 Months, I wanted to push myself to the limit.
And spoiler: It turned out to be 4 communities in 5 weeks, thanks to a flu virus on week 4 that had me laying in bed.
2. The Difference Between a Community and a Site
One thing that became clearer along the way is the distinction between a community and a website. Many people assume they’re the same, but they’re not:
- A website is usually focused on monetization or passive content consumption.
- A community is about fostering interaction between its members.
That doesn’t mean a community can’t be profitable—it just means engagement comes first, monetization second. Successful communities grow organically: someone stumbles upon an Instagram reel, a Reddit discussion, a YouTube vide or a LinkedIn post, interacts with it, and suddenly, they start seeing more of it. Given time, they might become an active member.
Building these communities for me meant mastering WordPress, project management, AI, automation, social media, and content generation—skills I knew were essential, but I underestimated how much content I’d actually have to create.
3. The Process: A Week Per Community
Each week, I followed a structured routine:
- Monday: Choose a niche, research about competitors (Claude was great at it for the first couple of communities) define the brand values & brand voice, buy the domain, install WordPress, and set up the basics (Google Workspace, themes, create a logo). At the end this was a straight forward process.
- Tuesday-Wednesday: Build content. This was way more time-consuming than I expected, even with automation.
- Thursday: Social media setup, asset creation (templates, podcasts, job boards), refining the website.
- Friday: Final touches, launching, and announcing the community.
This was relentless. And because I was doing everything alone, I had zero feedback loops. No teammates to say, “Yes, that’s a great idea,” or “No, that’s terrible.” As it turns out, I happen to be a team player. Who would have known.
4. What Surprised Me the Most
- Content is king (and also a time-sink). No matter how much I automated, fine-tuning content was necessary. PuroMMA.com came closest to full automation, but even then, it required setup and tweaking.
- The amount of trial and error. I had to scrap and restart multiple processes. Whether it was automation workflows, choosing the right hosting provider, or figuring out Reddit’s community limits, I hit obstacles every week.
- The sheer power of modern tools. AI is evolving fast. Claude’s long-term reasoning, Gemini’s image generation, Google AI Studio’s live screen sharing, and Make’s automation capabilities all exceeded my expectations. Even free tools like HubSpot’s CRM outperformed some paid alternatives.
It wasn’t a full surprise but boy are my design skills terrible. I think this is pretty obvious looking at what I put out there, but there were moments that I would just think “I suck at designing”. It is a vital part of community building, and something that I should work on more.
5. What I Would Do Differently
- Automate more. While I did a lot, I could have gone even further.
- Choose different communities. I wanted a mix of B2B and B2C, but all ended up being one or the other.
- Focus more on social media. The biggest growth for TriboPet came from actively adding people, not just posting content.
- Forget monetization (for now). With such tight deadlines, trying to make revenue too soon was a distraction.
- Spend 10 days per community instead of 5. Five was too intense. A bit more breathing room would have made a big difference.
6. The Future of These Communities
It’s hard to say which one has the most potential:
- TriboPet has a passionate audience and is growing organically.
- ComSpor taps into my love for sports marketing, and I’d love to write a book about it.
- PuroMMA is nearly self-sustaining thanks to content automation.
- MarketingTools captures a booming market in AI and automation.
I don’t have a clear favorite. And that’s okay—this challenge was never about picking one perfect project. It was about learning, experimenting, and improving processes.
Final Thoughts
This experiment confirmed what I already suspected: the best way to learn is by doing. While I’m still not great at design (and probably never will be), I’ve built four communities, mastered countless tools, and fine-tuned a system that could be replicated in the future.
This challenge pushed me beyond my comfort zone, forced me to iterate fast, and gave me a deep understanding of community building, automation, and AI tools. Was it perfect? No. But that was never the goal.
The goal was to learn. And I did.
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