Memberships – what platforms are people using and what do you love about them?

[Lea]

I’m totally overwhelmed by the various membership options – Patreon, Buy Me a Coffee, Glow, Memberful, WordPress membership plugins, etc etc. What do you use and why do you love it? Or what research have you done and what are your conclusions if you haven’t yet moved forward?

[Elsie]

Before I share “all the things” think about what YOU want to do with the membership.

Make a list of what you want to offer.

If it’s as simple as bonus content, or creating a private RSS feed, then something like Patreon or Glow is awesome.

If it’s based on community, then something like Mighty Networks would be great (or WP plug-ins like this)

See what I mean?

There is no one platform that can do all the things, and there’s also a difference between membership and monetary support via crowdsourcing.

[Lea]

I think this is a lot of what I’m sorting right now. The PodHive coaching call last week was useful for trying to sort this a bit – those distinctions between community/information/support/podcast support space.

I don’t think we are ready to take on community as in forums and the like; so for now a FB group for folks who like that sort of thing will be sufficient.

We do want private RSS feed capability, but don’t love Glow (it’s SO expensive!) and Patreon doesn’t feel quite our schtick either.

I’m leaning towards LifterLMS and then seeing if I can find another private RSS feed plugin. We need course capability as well and Lifter can do both.

[Elsie]

Do you want to be able to have them ‘subscribe’ to the show in their podcast app of choice?

Is it only audio that stands alone? then you don’t need an RRS feed

Do you mind using privacy by obscurity vs secure?

I have a private podcast for my mentorship, and it’s basically a libsyn account, without submitting it anywhere and giving them the RSS feed (private by obscurity)

vs

The Libsyn Podcast App which is secure – you get an app and that content is only available via that app and web portal.

[Karen]

Elsie

I like the idea of just having a libsyn feed you don’t add to directories so it remains private. Seems like a straightforward solution and it allows members to use the app of their choice.

• This reply was modified 4 weeks ago by  Karen.