Hey everyone,
I’m part of an established podcast that’s up on Patreon with a modest number of supporters from our audience. We’re exploring expanding our brand to include a content website/blog and newsletter. I just discovered Ghost and it appears to be perfect for our needs - as I’m digging into this, I’m attempting to wrap my head around how we handle memberships and hoping some folks here can weigh in. Here’s what I’m considering:
Patreon for memberships - would not use the Ghost memberships and rely 100% on Patreon and continue to use Patreon’s merch offering
Pros: No need to migrate, have one source for customer billing etc, use the Zapier links to give members access to members only content on the Ghost powered site
Cons: Would want to have free content on the Ghost powered site, so woudln’t want to turn off Free/Public posts (this is an issue with the Patreon/Zapier integration, right), Likely paying more in fees to Patreon
Ghost for memberships - would migrate off of Patreon completely and own all the memberships via the website
Pros: Pay less in fees, have members in one place, can still provide a special podcast RSS feed for members
Cons: Lose the Patreon merch fulfillment option, lose member direct interaction functionality (i.e. Messages etc).
Use BOTH Patreon and Ghost - remain on Patreon and link those members to access member only content
Pros: Best of both worlds, right? Zapier integration allows me to give access to the Patreon supporters to members only content
Cons: Confusing in the marketing to the audience to have TWO places to support. Website membership wouldn’t have the merch component but could have the special podcast RSS. Paying for both Patreon fees and Ghost
Any thoughts or examples of other creators or sites who are in a similar situation?
thanks in advance!
I’m not sure I understand this one. You can have a mix of free and paid content on Ghost. Oh… you want to have some content that’s free-with-registration and some that’s only for paying members? I think in that case, you link to Stripe to make a ‘paid’ tier available, and then give members comp access when they pay on Patreon. I’m not sure if there’s a Zap that does that, but it’s definitely possible with a cloud function.
I’ll add to your “Ghost for memberships” list:
Pros: Don’t need to deal with Zapier and keeping two databases sync’d.
Right, sorry if I didn’t clarify it well but the plan for the website is to have:
Totally free content - no membership required
Some content that’s partially visible - unlocked with a membership
Content that’s totally gated - unlocked with a membership
So we’d basically need to make sure that the Patreon members can access all the gated content. I don’t think option #2 above would be available if we’re only using Patreon
And I like your addition of a Pro for Ghost only as not having to keep two databases in sync - definitely a pro.
I am no pro on either Patreon nor Ghost membership sites but I did try to set up a Patreon but gave up, it is too clonky and doesn’t attach to ones brand the way things to on Ghost. On Patreon any news comes into people’s inbox as from Patreon.
On Ghost it is connected to your brand either on a subdomain from Ghost or your own domain. Which in my opinion makes it way better if one like to build up a website. Also the whole admin interface is way easier in Ghost.
Plus like @Cathy_Sarisky already said you can always comp membership tiers in Ghost (which one cannot do in Patreon) .
Thanks - I’ve been active on Patreon in one way or another for 8 years now across other projects and it’s good for it does - gives you a way to get people to pay you in exchange for your content/stuff - works great if you’re just a podcast or a musician or something like that.
BUT - if you want to do like a “real” website or newsletter - it’s not that. Which is why I’m eyeing Ghost or Wordpress. So the question still stands is how the website exists with the podcast. As far as I can tell there are compelling pros and cons on either way, it’s just a matter of what’s more important to us as creators.
