My substack: monetize yes or no?
I'm picking your collective brains in the spinster-hive-mind!
So I've been non-monetized on substack for 2 years, and in the New Year as I head into my poverty-stricken state pension years, I'm thinking of adding "subscriber" buttons.
It doesn't mean people can't subscribe for free (tier 1, like they already do. I have 182 free subscribers and about 300 followers). It just means you give paid subs as an option.
I think substack allows a minimum monthly fee for tier 2 of £5 a month (or an annual £60 a year).
On this tier people would get the free posts, plus whatever else the author offers as a "thank-you" for subscribing.
There's also a higher tier 3 rate if you want to offer something exclusive to serious fans.
So I thought of offering subscribers something practical.
For example:
*For every year of your subscription you can claim a free original A4 or A5 cartoon or illo from me, to your specification. You would get the digital copy for your use in perpetuity, plus the original artwork in the post (I would have to charge for post & packing).
The artwork could be for eg a personalised birthday card, any greetings card etc or for your own stationary, website, publication. Whatever you want it for. No copyright issues, you could share/use/sell it.
I think that's a good offer.
*The higher rate subscribers (usually £100 a year or whatever they choose, for a "founding member", some substack authors call these "VIP" subscribers) - if there are any - would get all that, plus a 4 times a year Terfy zoom call, I'm thinking about a Terfy book club chat.
4 times a year would give time for finding and reading the book chosen by participants for the next one. I could also do write-ups of the book club discussions as an extra post just to those subscribers.
I don't see anyone online, like YouTube, doing a Terfy book club, (we were asking about separate spaces for stuff like this on spinster, years ago, but they never happened) so I'd like to set up my own.
Substack collects £s via stripe. (It's just like PayPal, you don't need your own account to pay someone).
For transparency, if anyone paid me £100 a year through substack, stripe takes 4% and substack takes 10%.
What do you think of my idea of offers to subscribers?
