Behind the Scenes: How We Attracted 17,958 Attendees and $39K Revenue From One Virtual Summit
In September 2025, our HobbyScool brand hosted one of its biggest virtual events yet: The Art of Handmade Summit.
The numbers looked like this:
17,958 attendees
$39,041 in gross revenue
$22,341 in profit (after commissions, refunds, and ads)
Not bad for four days of free workshops. But as with any event, the real story is in the details: what worked, what didn’t, and the lessons we’ll carry forward.
In this post, I’ll give you a snapshot of how we pulled it off and why summits have become the growth engine behind HobbyScool. If you want the complete breakdown, every funnel number, ad strategy, affiliate insight, and behind-the-scenes lesson, I shared all of that inside my paid Substack.
👉 Read the full case study here on Substack »
From a $12 Domain to 17K Attendees
HobbyScool started with a whim purchase: a $12 domain name I bought on vacation in 2021.
I had no business plan. Just curiosity. My first experiments with paid bundles fizzled: low sales, low list growth. But then I tried hosting a virtual summit, and everything changed.
The very first HobbyScool Summit in 2022 pulled in more registrations than both bundles combined. It gave me proof that summits could work, and more importantly, a model to build on.
Fast forward to this September, and we just wrapped an event that attracted nearly 18,000 people.
The Pivot That Changed Everything
If you take one lesson from this story, let it be this: test fast, pivot fast.
Bundles didn’t scale → I let them go.
Summits clicked → I doubled down.
Parenting and back-to-school themes were “meh” → I leaned hard into creative niches like journaling, crochet, quilting, and DIY.
That willingness to test, measure, and adjust quickly has been the key driver of HobbyScool’s growth.
Community Shifts: From Facebook to Skool
For years, our summit community lived inside a Facebook group that grew to nearly 10,000 members. On paper, it looked great. In reality, engagement was slipping. Posts got buried in the algorithm and the group felt noisy.
This year, we moved the community to Skool. And the difference was immediate:
Daily logins and focused conversations
Attendees posting finished projects (crochet, macramé, quilting, coloring pages)
Speakers feeling more connected to participants
Fun engagement activities like bingo and code words
Instead of fighting an algorithm, I could finally design the experience. That shift alone transformed the feel of the summit.
A Peek at the Numbers
I’ll save the full funnel analysis for my paid report, but here are a few highlights:
51% registration page conversion rate (excluding Facebook lead forms)
1,001 VIP pass buyers (5.57% upgrade rate)
3,185 registrants from ads (two different campaigns with very different goals)
Affiliate and speaker promotion drove ~70% of sales
And here’s the most important part: profit margin was 57%.
Summits aren’t just big list-builders. They’re profitable engines that keep compounding when done right.
Lessons Learned
Low-cost offers matter. A $7 order bump doesn’t sound like much, but it added revenue.
Community is the heartbeat. Engagement makes or breaks an event. Skool gave us control we never had on Facebook.
Speakers aren’t just presenters — they’re distribution partners. Collectively, they drove 35,000+ clicks into the funnel.
Ads can fund themselves. One campaign gave us cheap signups; the other essentially broke even with purchases while still delivering hundreds of new leads.
Tech always breaks. We had buffering issues, affiliate tracking hiccups, and support emails galore. The key is fixing quickly and keeping momentum.
The Bigger Picture
This summit is one chapter in what I’m calling the $1M HobbyScool Experiment, my journey to scale HobbyScool into a brand that’s not just profitable, but sellable.
That means building predictable revenue, testing new verticals, and creating an ecosystem of summits, shop products, and memberships that can run with or without me.
I believe this brand has the potential to go beyond online summits — maybe even into local HobbyScool clubs one day, like a franchise for creative workshops.
Want the Full Breakdown?
In this blog, I’ve shared the overview. But the full, meaty breakdown lives in my Substack:
Complete funnel results (VIPs, bumps, upsells, memberships)
Detailed ad campaigns and ROI math
Affiliate performance and lessons
Email experiments (what worked, what annoyed people)
Tech stack, snags, and fixes
Community feedback and testimonials
My commentary on what’s next
👉 Read the full paid case study on Substack »
Final Thought:
This all started with a $12 domain bought on vacation. Two years later, nearly 18,000 people showed up to an event I built from that tiny seed.
If you’re building your own digital product business, let this be proof: sometimes it only takes one experiment that clicks to change everything.
