Howdy all. I am working on the tiers for my local news site. I’m starting with a free tier and a paid tier. Should the free tier be called Member and the paid tier be called Subscriber?
I want to match whatever the default terminology the Ghost platform uses so I’m not confusing my readers. Thanks
I didn’t feel the need to match anything, but I did think the terminology was confusing. They’re all members, and the vast majority subscribe, just some also pay.
I ended up using subscribers to indicate anyone subscribing to the newsletter, and sponsors for those kind enough to pay me for premium content. Sponsors are therefore assumed to be subscribers.
When I started there was no premium content, just the promise that it was to come, so I also felt that sponsors had an implied gifting element, simply supporting my writing. My membership tiers continue to make this distinction, and I try and reinforce the terminology at the end of ‘free’ posts, encouraging more to become sponsors.
Of course, there are some odd cases … sponsors who unsubscribe from the newsletter but visit the site directly and/or use RSS feeds.
If and when I ever get round to posting draft book chapters, I’ll probably have to create an additional tier of gold sponsors or something, but I have to write the darn things first ;-)
Thanks for the response. Originally I wanted to have free subscribers and then paid members but some of the default language in the members portal said the opposite.
My content is local news reports. And because of the precedence set by newspaper subscriptions I feel like Subscriber is probably the natural term for a paid tier. However, younger people are used to being a no-cost subscriber to email newsletters.
Or I could just keep things simple and say I have a Free Subscription and a Paid Subscription.