SadaPay’s Freelancer Community: A PM’s Perspective

Note: SadaSchool is no longer around. After SadaPay’s Papara acquisition, the server was abandoned. I am keeping this piece up as a snapshot of what building a real professional community in Pakistan actually takes. If you want one that is still running, I built The Wandering Pro, A Tribe for Makers.

People who know me have seen the simultaneous ranting and supporting of the SadaPay brand. The thing is clear: they have often messed up, but regardless of the mess ups, I believe they are the best EMI option right now in Pakistan.

Why?

Because they clearly care about the product.

Just take one look at their marketing, design philosophy, branding, and any other metric, companies like them are few and far between.

I have wanted to write about SadaPay many times before, but never had much to add to the general consensus. Until today, because:

SadaPay opened a Discord community dubbed ‘SadaSchool’.

(Coz I like SEO, I will be referring to it as a community for the rest of the article.)

What Is SadaSchool (SadaPay’s Community)?

In their words: We’re excited to have you. Here you’ll be able to connect with other freelancers, join live streams with some of the most notable members of the freelance community, access our own resources designed to polish your skills, and share feedback regarding the SadaPay business account.

In my words: So we have this SadaBiz feature which now actually works. Yes, it does, after you tried to use it for the past 6 months with no success, it really does work now. It works so well that they opened a community around it.

All the snark aside, it is a pretty good basis to open a community around.

Why Is Having a Community Important for SadaPay?

Short answer: social media is dead. Long answer: social media is dying every day.

The thing is, people are tired of jumping between 20 apps to follow what they like and engage in interesting things.

With the rise of Twitter and the fall of X, the dwindling numbers on platforms like Facebook and Instagram with all the focus on Meta, and countless other examples, it feels like the internet is going back to the old age.

We had forums back in the day. We now have Discord servers for every large body of following.

What Matters as a Community?

SadaPay, to my knowledge, will be the first brand in Pakistan to own and operate a Discord. And by a brand I mean a proper in business company, not your branded cotton suit wala brand.

I have massive respect for SadaPay for even attempting this. As usual, most people don’t realize how big of a lift running a community is, but if SadaPay sticks with it, it may very well become the biggest place for people going solo in their careers, using SadaPay as their premier service provider (cough cough StateBank pls no kill).

The biggest thing you need to understand as a Sadanaut, yes you, if you are here:

The 90-9-1 rule, which dictates that 90% of a community only consume content, 9% change or update content, and 1% add content.

Given the roughly 1,500 members right now, that means only 15 people will be willing to push the mountain, especially against the very critical and hard to bear Pakistani audience.

So what can you do right now?

Well, I have some feedback, which I deemed better placed here than in a channel no one might read, so here goes.

My Feedback for SadaSchool

In order of easiest to most complicated.

1. Fix Your Rules ASAP

I am no Discord power user, but I am part of enough online communities to notice some glaring omissions from a channel based community:

• Do not post the same thing on multiple channels, that is a good way to invite a lot of spam
• Self promotion is only allowed in the introductions channel, nowhere else. Just saying ‘no self promotion’ won’t help, people will still do it, so limiting it to one channel is better
• No job postings allowed. Trust me, a lot of scams out there, you don’t want to be held liable for a story. Anything that involves money needs to be kept out, too much liability for the brand and the community
• No sharing of leaked or pirated content. This includes anything not intended for the public domain, or anything illegal
• A rule to specify who to contact, and how, in case of an issue. The current rule doesn’t name anyone, so create a moderator account that can be shared by multiple people

Rules are important. As mentioned, most people want to lurk, and rules keep the space from becoming too lurker unfriendly.

2. Reduce Channels and Make Use of Forums

I had to learn this the hard way running so many Slacks in my life: don’t create a channel unless the need is obvious.

Right now, as you may have noticed, the activity per channel is stupidly low. Everyone just hangs in general mostly.

Cut them down. You don’t need 3 channels per field, you need 3 channels in total, one per job function. My recommendation would be a channel for:

• IT and Development
• Design and UI/UX
• Marketing
• Content Creation
• Product and Project Management

I would highly suggest using ‘forum type’ channels instead of text channels for anything that revolves around a discussion point. That way conversations stay aligned across people’s questions.

Also, why have both intros and networking? Get rid of the bot. A manual intro channel is fine, where people who care can do a writeup. Less spammy.

3. Need a Daily Hook (Every Day, Even Weekends)

The most successful communities are run by content creators. The reason is simple, there is something every day to discuss and deliberate upon.

Their own content is often the discussion point for all the hype going on in the community, and that keeps it alive.

I know this is new for SadaPay, but a daily hook is needed. The weekly events just won’t cut it. It could be as simple as a daily question about freelancing or going solo.

4. Need an In-House Moderator

In a country where ‘power’ is the most sought after drug, I would strongly advise against community volunteer moderators. I understand this is the usual case for Discord, but trust me, you don’t want that here.

Everyone acts in good faith until they have a clash with their ego, and you just don’t want the bad press.

Hiring a full time moderator with a cross functional role between this and managing other social media should not be that hard, but it is a more complex thing to implement, hence number 4.

5. Mission Is Great, Vision Maybe Not

The term ‘freelancer’ is very broad, and broadly mistaken, by the government, by freelancers themselves, and by the working class.

So even though calling SadaSchool a place for freelancers to mingle is fine right now, it won’t guarantee long term success.

In Pakistan, people say freelancer and a bag of cash pops into their eyes, when the actual story is far from that made up reality.

And I want SadaPay to be a more pure brand than just the money aspect.

As someone who has done branding in the past, I would highly suggest revisiting your vision with something more evergreen that aligns with what you set out to do with your payments platform.

Sada Is Not Just Simplicity, It Also Means Humble and Pure

If any of this gets implemented, great. If not, still great. At least I wrote it and someone read it.

SadaPay has my vote of confidence, at least for the near future. Might be a painful admission down the road, might not be.

Over the next few weekends, I will try to dedicate my efforts to sharing knowledge in the community. Let’s make growth Sada, perhaps?

With or without my help – I wish you the best.

---

---