Not sure if the right sort of question for here, but for folks that have a Patreon (or run something Patreon-like), is there somewhere I should be looking that offers folks the choice of joining yearly and integrates nicely with your own website? I use Bandzoogle for my site and they only let you run a club as monthly, so I have a very convoluted workaround to join, which looks confusing, plus an option to join yearly via Bandcamp (which has limited functionality and involves me sending a link to login to my website as well). Itās a bit of a jumble. Patreon have messed around with fees, by all accounts, Ghost wonāt let you set yearly as the only option, other site builders arenāt well-equipped for musician sites, Bandcamp is, well Bandcamp and everything else is kind of beyond my technical knowledge.
I ask because, Iām thinking of merging my own music into the label imprint Iām trying to get up and running with my partner (with the aim of posting more things out to people and doing zines, mixes and so on with us and a few friends) and the options are so limited when you want to run it as a yearly thing. Does anyone run theirs setup as monthly? The disadvantage there is all the extra fees, from what Iāve read.
Is this something that any Fedi folks are working on potentially? Or any suggestions for making this work better?
Oh, good point! I have monthly and yearly options on my Ghost, with the yearly offering a discount (which I think is the default). Hmm, maybe Ghost might be open to a feature request for āyearly onlyā?
Otherwise nope sorry, havenāt seen it anywhere. Just had another look at Liberapay ā but they are weekly/monthly/yearly
Thanks, Iāve been feeling like Iām going mad. There doesnāt seem to be an ethical and/or simple way to host it. Itās quite frustrating with Bandzoogle that I can pay for my hosting /site yearly but I canāt set up a label club thatās yearly through them. Aside from that theyāre really good as a site builder and host.
It should be fairly easy to set it up with Stripe. I had a quick look at the settings there, and it looks like you can do subscriptions with yearly billing.
I have a Stripe widget (not subscription) on my Faircamp, and it wasnāt that hard to set up. Click the + in the top right of the Stripe dashboard, and select the options you want, and it spits out some HTML/javascript which you copy/paste. As an ethical alternative, itās not great, but at least itās not PayPal.
Ah, thanks! Last time I looked this up on Stripe (a long time ago, admittedly), it seemed like a bit of a nightmare to get going, but Iāll do some digging and see if theyāve made it easierā¦
(we do genuinely look at the feature requests here to determine if something should be implemented, and we have one for yearly subscription). Squeeky wheels get greased etc.
Ooh, yes. This would be brilliant and seeing as thereās all the page customisation now, I could actually match it to the site and it be fairly seamless between the two. Excellent news and squeak squeak!
I run a small behind-the-scenes newsletter (should be weekly sendout but i never manage), but I managed to create Stripe buttons for people to subscribe - monthly or yearly:
Itās quite a complex beast, Stripe, but after a while you start to get more knowledgable after sticking your head into their docs for some days. But thatās just one element you put on the page. Oh and I also sell downloads via Stripe:
Thanks very much for these. Does Stripe let you create only yearly too? I started trying to set up a subscription in their dashboard and it wanted me to add a customer before setting it up and I think maybe I didnāt do the steps correctly (completely agree with it being complex).
The issue Iāve got is that I post stuff to people, so yearly makes more sense but so few places seem to offer it without making you give a monthly option too. I checked out Ghost as well but same thing.
You need to create a new product in the Product catalogue, set the price and recurring (thereās a great choice there, weekly, monthly, yearly, 6 months, etc). set the price and type of tax.
This is now already a subscription that you are āsellingā. Anyone who will buy it, will appear under subscriptions.
After this is created, in the product catalogue click on that subscription to enter it. you can see three dots at the end of the āpriceā row - clicking it opens a menu with option āCreate payment linkā
this will take you to a screen to adjust everying how you want that payment screen to look like. after clicking ācreate payment linkā you will get a link that you can share anywere (via email, IM, online etc). thereās also an option to create a [Buy button]. it will create a small piece of html code that you can add to anywhere where you can paste/embed some html.
Once created and left, you can manage the payment link under āPayment Linksā - itās separate from Product Catalogueā
One more useful thing is a ācustomer portalā for members to manage their subscription (like unsubcribing) - itās a single link for everyone for this membership/subscription - and you can find it under Billing > Subscriptions > [ā¦] menu next to [Create subscription] will give you āCustomer portalā - itās actually also directly at Stripe Login | Sign in to the Stripe Dashboard in the dashboard. It might be that it has to be created first.
Your subscribers will appear under Subscriptions. You can export the active ones (those who have a paid subscription) for sending out. Automation (newsletter subscription email is automatically un/subscribed from the mailing list) has to be managed separately. Stripe offers tools for that (webhooks), but itās another process dependent on your newsletter provider. Zapier might be helpful here. And there are self-hostable free/floss alternatives to zapier which might also help in bridging Stripe and something like Keila, Listmonk, Mailtrain etc..
Ugh, wow this is almost like a half of āhow to run a membership with Stripe onlyā.
Thank you so, so much for this. I have actually got it working (I canāt believe it) after so much bumbling around trying to set something up, researching numerous other services and doing the most long-winded workarounds.
If this isnāt a guide on Be Your Own Platform, it absolutely should be and it would also make a great cross-post to NHAM as I reckon so many other folks would find it useful. Thanks again!
