Paragraph

Recurring Subscriptions

Monetize your newsletter with recurring subscriptions, backed by NFTs

Colin Armstrong

Colin Armstrong

We're excited to announce the launch of recurring subscriptions!

Creators on Paragraph can now monetize their newsletter with recurring subscriptions that are optionally backed by NFTs. The NFT stays 'active' for as long as the user is paying, granting access to whatever the creator wants - gated content, private Discord communities, and more.

Combining subscriptions & NFTs

Recurring subscriptions have made it easier for creators to build sustainable businesses around their passions. Creators can produce some type of content on a recurring basis - newsletters, art, music - and fans can pay a monthly or yearly fee to get perks including exclusive access.

Web3 primitives, like the NFTs we use for collectible content, introduce an additional revenue stream for creators and a new form of engagement & digital ownership that rewards fans.

With NFT-backed subscriptions, we're combining the best of both worlds: creators can rely on a stream of predictable revenue, while still ensuring they reap all the benefits of NFTs including interoperability, provenance, ownership, composability & more.

Subscriptions Memberships on Paragraph

We're calling this feature memberships instead of subscriptions, since NFTs have excelled at fostering community and increasing engagement beyond just regular web2 subscriptions.

On Paragraph, creators can connect their Stripe account and create any number of membership tiers.

With each membership tier, creators can set:

  • A monthly and/or yearly price

  • A description of the membership and list of benefits

  • An image, used for the NFT

  • A chain for the NFT to be minted on. We support Optimism and Polygon right now, with more coming soon.

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When users subscribe to your newsletter, we'll prompt them to choose a membership tier. After they successfully pay, they can connect their wallet and claim your NFT. (The wallet is added to their Paragraph account, meaning you can also deliver newsletters directly to their wallet!). We airdrop NFTs to the user, meaning they don't need to cover gas to claim.

At any point, readers can visit /@your-publication-name/memberships to subscribe to your newsletter, purchase a paid membership and claim your NFT.

The NFT metadata changes depending on if the holder's paid subscription is currently active or not: attributes are set on the NFT indicating the status (eg 'active' and 'expiresAt') and the NFT name changes if it's expired. Memberships can be used natively on Paragraph for gating; or, you can set up attribute-based gating using guild.xyz for gating elsewhere.

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Case Study: Web3Academy

Web3Academy is building a community centered around their newsletter, podcast, and Discord. They offered free and paid subscriptions on Substack. After users purchased a paid subscription, Web3Academy sent them an email containing a link to a Google Form asking readers to input their wallet address so they can manually airdrop them an NFT. This UX and onboarding flow was clunky and error-prone, causing less than 50% of paid subscribers to actually mint the NFT.

When they migrated to Paragraph and began offering paid, NFT-backed memberships, the process was streamlined for them & their users:

  • NFT minting is part of the checkout flow, meaning conversion rates from purchase to mint are substantially higher

  • Reader's wallets & emails are connected to their Paragraph accounts, meaning Web3Academy can send wallet-based newsletters and offer other wallet-based incentives (like airdrops)

  • They can now turn posts into collectibles, giving ownership to their biggest supporters even beyond their paid memberships

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Future Improvements

Over the next few weeks we'll be launching crypto-paid recurring memberships. We'll also be adding support for NFT-backed free memberships, letting anyone build a community around their content no matter if it's paid/gated or freely accessible.

Ready to get started?

NFT-backed memberships are usable today by anyone. Read the docs for more info on getting started.

Any questions or feedback? Swing by our Discord, say hello to us on X or Farcaster, or reach out at hello@paragraph.xyz.

Collect this post as an NFT.

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Over 2.5k subscribers

Stephenxt
Stephenxt
Commented 1 year ago

NFT is great

0xHelena
0xHelena
Commented 2 years ago

Another killer update!

ColinFarcaster
Colin
Commented 1 year ago

Upcoming Paragraph features: - Post import - Subscriber NFTs - Better metrics (CTRs, growth rate etc) - Recurring crypto payments - Author recommendation network

Nounish Prof ⌐◧-◧🎩Farcaster
Nounish Prof ⌐◧-◧🎩
Commented 1 year ago

What do you mean subscriber NFTs? Say more

ColinFarcaster
Colin
Commented 1 year ago

Basically this, but for all subscriptions, not just paid ones: https://paragraph.xyz/@blog/recurring-subscriptions User subscribes to newsletter -> can optionally mint newsletter NFT -> creators can use that NFT for gated Discords, permissionless channels on FC (in the future), etc etc

Nounish Prof ⌐◧-◧🎩Farcaster
Nounish Prof ⌐◧-◧🎩
Commented 1 year ago

Oh cool! That would be helpful for sure.

Lawson.fmFarcaster
Lawson.fm
Commented 1 year ago

Can I bring in my mirror posts? Do you support subdomains? https://lwsnbaker.mirror.xyz/

ColinFarcaster
Colin
Commented 1 year ago

- not yet, that's the first bulletpoint in my post above - we support subdomains on custom domains, or just regular top-level custom domains (we don't support Paragraph subdomains)

MetaEnd🎩Farcaster
MetaEnd🎩
Commented 1 year ago

Awesome for metrics. Next sponsorship network? ✌️

ColinFarcaster
Colin
Commented 1 year ago

What did you have in mind for sponsorship network? Marketplace to connect sponsors with newsletter writers?

MetaEnd🎩Farcaster
MetaEnd🎩
Commented 1 year ago

Would be dope (similar to beehive). On top there could be a widget for posts offering ad space or something

ColinFarcaster
Colin
Commented 2 years ago

New feature from Paragraph: recurring paid subscriptions! - backed by NFTs: the NFT is active for as long as the subscription is active - create multiple tiers offering different perks - set monthly/yearly prices per tier Coming soon: pay with crypto. Read more: https://paragraph.xyz/@blog/recurring-subscriptions

ColinFarcaster
Colin
Commented 2 years ago

@launch

LaunchcasterFarcaster
Launchcaster
Commented 2 years ago

You launched! https://www.launchcaster.xyz/p/64f23016f16e46cc78ace2c5 Connect your wallet to edit the title and add a Launch NFT 🚀 Remember, anyone with a wallet can upvote. The top 10 launches go in the weekly digest 💌

Ben Adamsky 💭Farcaster
Ben Adamsky 💭
Commented 2 years ago

Woah love this 👀 congrats on launch!!

Gabriel AyusoFarcaster
Gabriel Ayuso
Commented 2 years ago

This is awesome! Love to see it.

dylanFarcaster
dylan
Commented 2 years ago

Woah! Not sure how I missed this, but *very* cool and well done 👏 👏 👏 Really like the idea of NFT-backed recurring subscriptions

Giuliano Giacaglia 🌲Farcaster
Giuliano Giacaglia 🌲
Commented 2 years ago

Nice!

kazani.base.eth 🦂 Farcaster
kazani.base.eth 🦂
Commented 2 years ago

Nice! 🔥

jamFarcaster
jam
Commented 2 years ago

Love this, congrats in the launch!

Jw 🎩Farcaster
Jw 🎩
Commented 2 years ago

💪💪💪

kylereidheadFarcaster
kylereidhead
Commented 2 years ago

Great work @paragraph team. You guys are machines! Moving off substack was such a good decision 🙌🏼

Web3 Academy Farcaster
Web3 Academy
Commented 2 years ago

Oh look? That’s us 🫡💜

KryptoShrimp.eth bio/accFarcaster
KryptoShrimp.eth bio/acc
Commented 2 years ago

PRO TIP: Get the Founders Pass and the get free access to a masterclass in investing from @kylereidhead

Recurring Subscriptions