Aimee Erickson's Paint Club: 707 Members, $21/Month and One Admin, Built on a Published Author's Name

Aimee Erickson's Paint Club is a private Skool community for oil painters, with acrylic and gouache welcome, run by the painter, teacher and author Aimee Erickson. It has 707 members at $21/month with a free trial, more than 50 lessons plus two new ones every month, live sessions on the first and third Mondays, and exactly one admin. This breakdown looks at why that combination works, not at brush technique.

The founder does the selling

Aimee Erickson

Painter, teacher and author. Her book, Plein Air Techniques for Artists, is name-checked inside the community's own lesson list, and her name is on the product itself: the community is literally called Aimee Erickson's Paint Club.

The credential here is a publisher's, not a platform's. A published instructional book is a third-party filter the buyer already trusts, and the about page uses it quietly: the Painting Makeovers lessons are described as "like the ones in Aimee's book," which converts the book from a bio line into a product sample. Anyone who has flipped through it in a bookstore already knows what the membership feels like.

What Paint Club sells

Below is their about page word for word, with the key parts numbered. Hover a number to see what each line is doing.

Read as a builder, the most striking thing is what is missing. There is no urgency device, no income promise, no transformation arc. In a hobby niche where the buyer's alternative is simply not joining, the page sells atmosphere and reliability, and prices low enough that the decision needs no persuading.

Paint Club vs workshops and free YouTube instruction

An oil painter deciding where to invest sees roughly this landscape.

The pattern: workshops deliver intensity in bursts and courses deliver content once, but painting improves through years of steady practice with occasional correction. A low-priced always-on membership matches the actual shape of progress in this craft, which is why it retains at a price that feels almost incidental.

The funnel, step by step

One admin serving 707 members deserves a closer look. The delivery load is bounded by design: two live sessions a month on a fixed schedule, a lesson drip, and a chat group where members answer each other. Nothing in the promise scales with headcount, so the roster can grow without the workload following it. That is the exact opposite trade from the schedule-heavy staffing we covered in communities that promise daily live delivery, and both work because the team matches the promise.

The formula you can copy

Put your strongest credential inside the deliverables. A book, a championship, a body of work persuades hardest when it appears as part of what the buyer receives, the same move we saw with the credential-in-the-deliverable pattern in Accion Inspirada, the Etsy club.

Design the promise so it does not scale with members. Fixed live schedule, drip content, peer chat: every element costs the same at 70 members as at 700. That is what makes a one-admin community durable rather than heroic, a structure we also unpacked in how to price a Skool community.

Let calm be the positioning. A hobby buyer is often escaping pressure, not seeking it. A page with no countdowns and a welcome instead of a close reads as confidence, and in a low-ticket recurring model the renewal decision matters far more than the join decision, something the wider data across the best Skool communities keeps confirming.

Frequently asked questions

What is Aimee Erickson's Paint Club?

Paint Club is a private Skool community for oil painters run by painter, teacher and author Aimee Erickson, with acrylic and gouache painters also welcome. Members get a library of 50+ lessons with two added monthly, live paint-along sessions on the first and third Mondays with recordings, a critique-friendly chat group, and a library of handouts, for $21 per month after a free trial.

Who is Aimee Erickson?

Aimee Erickson is a painter, teacher and the author of Plein Air Techniques for Artists. Her community's Painting Makeovers lessons follow the format of the makeovers in her book, and she is the named instructor in the live sessions.

How much does Paint Club cost?

Paint Club costs $21 per month, and the Skool page offers a free trial before the first charge. There is a single admin and one tier: no premium level and no annual-only lock-in appear on the about page.

What are the best oil painting classes online?

It depends on the shape of instruction you need. One-time courses suit painters who want a fixed curriculum, in-person workshops suit intensive bursts, and membership communities like Paint Club suit painters who want ongoing lessons, live demonstration and feedback on their work at a monthly price below the cost of materials.

Does Paint Club require attending live sessions?

No. The about page states members can join the live sessions on the first and third Mondays, 9 to 11 a.m. Pacific, or watch the recordings and post their work afterward, which keeps the membership usable across timezones.

What is the lesson for other community builders?

Bound your delivery promise. Paint Club's entire offer, live schedule, lesson drip and peer chat, costs the founder the same effort regardless of member count, which is why one admin can serve 707 people. If your promise scales with headcount, your price or your team must scale with it.

Updated August 2026. Member counts and prices reflect what the community's public Skool pages displayed at the time of writing and change over time; confirm current status on skool.com/a-paint-club.