Earn a steady income from your creations by joining a subscription-based service.
From your everyday newspapers to over-the-top (OTT) platforms like Netflix—numerous companies use the subscription-based business model. This model allows businesses to sell subscriptions online, billing customers on a monthly, weekly or yearly basis. This way, businesses can make the most of their customer relationships and build a steady income flow.
Dedicated subscription platforms allow creators—YouTubers, writers, artists—to manage their subscription offerings, collect payments and let subscribers cancel, renew or pause the subscription. A growing number of creators are opting for this business model as it guarantees a steady monthly income. Globally, subscription services are set to surpass a valuation of US$200 billion this year. It’s no wonder that social media app, Twitter, introduced the Super Followers feature, allowing users with over 10,000 followers to offer a subscription service. Startups are following suit, too.
Here is the list of our top subscription platforms for creators:
Patreon
Patreon is one of the most popular membership platforms. It provides financial resources to help your fans and supporters subscribe to your projects. This way, you can create a steady stream of income from your content.
Plus, on the platform, a creator can offer different types of memberships. They can give casual fans the option to pay a lower rate, say, US$1 per month. On the other hand, the more committed supporters can pay more. The creator can also offer exclusive content to the latter.
Chargebee
Founded in 2011, Chargebee became the 11th unicorn in India in 2021. It is a subscription system that automates all your pricing requirements—billing, coupons, offers and more. The best part is that you don’t need to get a developer on board at any point. Chargebee’s offerings also include sending email alerts for payments, follow-up messages, insights and performance metrics.
Pico
Pico is a New York startup that assists you with all your subscription needs. It provides pre-built forms, landing pages and more. This way, you can stay on top of your services (for instance, newsletters) and manage your audience. As per Pico’s co-Founder and CEO Nick Chen, Pico helps creators solve two of the biggest problems: “how to make money more easily” and “how to get to know your audience better”. The platform does so while encouraging creators to retain control of their “brand” and the “relationship” they have with their audience.
Memberful
Memberful—a self-service membership platform—was founded in 2013 and then acquired by Patreon in 2018. In a press release, the Founder of Memberful Drew Strojny noted, “We built Memberful to make selling memberships easy, while at the same time giving creators complete control of their brand.” The creators can build, manage and monetize their website, provide customer service and integrate other tools. The best part is—they can build a one-on-one relationship with their fans. You can also create customized subscription plans.
Recurly
Recurly is a subscription management platform founded by Dan Burkhart in 2009. Using machine learning, it helps businesses that have a huge amount of subscriptions to manage. During an interview, Burkhart expounded, “We founded Recurly on the premise that we needed to provide a platform to companies that wanted to roll out subscription billing or subscription-based services to their customers and not focus on the lower-level infrastructure required in order to present these billing models in an elegant way.” While Recurly takes care of the billing processes, businesses can focus on their “core” aspects.
With these subscription-based services, you can create a steady income stream and customer loyalty. The best part is that you don’t need to be adept at technology to make the most of this.
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