The open source Ghost source code shows work recently done on a “Tips & Donations” feature that appears slated to appear in the “Labs” section in the future. Here are the details I see in the code so so far:
Support for suggested amounts
Only backend I see clearly supported is Stripe, the partner already used for subscription payments.
Multiple currencies supported. I did not dig for the complete list, but I imagine it aligns with what Stripe supports.
This may be a solution for people looking for one-time payments instead of subscriptions. I haven’t looked closely to see if admins can force the amount to be a specific value or if tip/donation amount is always something the user can choose.
The feature is essentially generating a redirect link from your portal via /#/portal/support and forwards you to Stripe checkout with pre-defined value and currency you set in new admin settings. Nice thing Stripe allows is ability to set custom donation value within their checkout.
Hope Ghost devs would be encouraged enough to further improve this new feature by providing some kind of template-ability for template developers to pick up newer handles and make it possible to customize the way we could prompt for donations. So far you can already set it up yourself however you want by invoking the /#/portal/support from anywhere, and also Buttons and URL elements pick up new endpoint:
I’m very excited to see this Tips & Donations option
To enhance reader engagement and support content creators, I’d love to see and am wondering the following:
One-time payment option: Include a feature that allows readers to make a one-time payment after reading a post, enabling them to show their appreciation and support for the content.
Pay-per-article access: Offer an option for readers to pay a single fee to access a specific article or post, granting them exclusive content while generating additional revenue for creators.
Customizable tip option for site owners: Provide site owners with the ability to enable and customize a tipping feature at the end of each post, allowing them to tailor the experience to their specific audience and incentivize reader support.
It seems to be only a semantic difference between a one-time payment and one-time donation. Is there a way in which the current functionality won’t work for this?
Customizable tip option for site owners: Provide site owners with the ability to enable and customize a tipping feature at the end of each post, allowing them to tailor the experience to their specific audience and incentivize reader support.
The current implementation already allows you to add a pre-made button, or a Ghost developer for hire could fairly easily reverse-engineer what the button is done, and then provide some alternate snippet which looks different but does the same thing and could be applied to any page.
Thanks for this feature, Ghost. I don’t have many newsletter subscribers-- most of my traffic comes from SEO.
So while a paid subscription model wouldn’t work for me now, I’m interested to experiment to see if maybe some of my search engine visitors would donate a few books for an ad-free post they like.
I was thinking more along the lines of users paying once to view one article, for example. That is, giving users the option to pay for just a single article instead of signing up for a subscription. And so, when users pay, it then unlocks that particular post for them.
Some folks want to let people get lifetime tier/paid access by making a one-time payment. From the official announcement, it doesn’t appear that the donations are connected to memberships.
Yep, just tried it. You can make a donation without having a Ghost membership, and although it prompts you to make one after you donate (which is a nice touch!), that language might actually make it less useful for folks who’d like to take one-time payment and use a cloud function to put users on the right tier.
@ROY , I agree with @markstos that you could do #3 with this feature already. There’s not really anything missing for a CTA to tip.
If you need to provide paid access to a single article, consider taking payment in Stripe, then using a webhook from Stripe to send the article to the user by email. (Or to send them a preview link to the article.)
Since the lack of LMS Ghost themes, this new feature is great to make a learning website. Once payment has been done user gets access to certain post with gated content. Great news from Ghost crew.
P.d: Sorry for my English.
