With Podia, accepting recurring donations is just the beginning... Build your own website, offer free and paid membership tiers, sell standalone products, and leave transaction fees in the dust as you grow 🚀
Podia lets you build free and paid communities for your audience, so that you can spark conversations around your work as a creator - whether you are a podcaster, gamer, or video creator!
Here's how to re-create your Patreon membership using Podia's community feature.
Introduction
Podia's community features offer everything you need to create free and paid memberships and connect with your audience - all from one place.
In addition to all the features you like using at Patreon, you'll be able to create digital downloads, courses, sell coaching, access to livestreams/webinars, and more.
Creating your community & setting up its details
The first step to creating your membership on Podia is to access the Community area: this is where you will give your community area a name and activate this feature on your account.
In the sidebar menu, click on Community.
Give your community area a name (don’t worry, you’ll be able to change it later) and activate it by clicking on “Create your community.”
Once you activate your community area, a few things will be automatically created:
Introductory posts explaining how things work. You can delete this once you are ready to launch your community.
A "General" & "Random" topic: Topics are a way to organize the content of your membership area. We will create two topics for you to get started. Feel free to modify these based on your needs.
A free plan: A subscription plan is how people gain access to your community. We will create one free plan for you to get started.
Setting up your membership tiers
Plans (or tiers/levels) are how people gain access to your membership on Podia.
You can create multiple subscription plans/tiers depending on what you have in mind for your community - and they can be either free or paid.
In the sidebar menu, click on Community.
Select Plans.
To add a new plan, click on “+ New plan”.
Give your tier a name and write a description telling people what this plan offers. Make sure to also upload an image to give potential customers a visual representation of your offer.
Under Price, you can set if you'd like this tier to be free or paid - as well as add a trial period.
Note: Make sure to connect your Stripe account before setting up a paid subscription plan.
Under Included products, you'll have the option to include products on this particular plan - this will grant free access to members of this plan.
In addition to that, you can also adjust Availability settings - such as visibility and access options - for this tier.
Once you're done, hit Create Plan!
Creator tip! 💡
Creating multiple plans allows you to set up different levels of subscriptions with different prices and offers.
Basic plans can contain fewer products and access to areas of your community, while more expensive plans can benefit from additional products and exclusive topics.
Creating topics
Topics are where your posts and updates live. Topics will help you to organize them within your community.
Members can join one or multiple topics - as well as write new posts, comment, and interact with other members once inside those plans.
Topics will vary based on the type of content you’ll be offering in your membership.
You can organize topics based on your tiers, the type of content you want to host - or else!
Creator tip! 💡
Here's how you could organize topics taking into account your current tiers:
Or you could also organize them by the type of content you'll be publishing:
Here's how to create topics for your community:
From the sidebar menu, click on Community and select Topics.
To add a new topic, click on “+ New topic.”
Give your topic a name, description, and optional banner image.
Make sure to also modify your topic options - this is where you'll get to control which plans or members will be able to access this particular topic.
You'll also get to control who can create new posts as well as default notification options.
Once you're done, hit Create topic.
Posting in your community area
Publishing posts helps you to stay in touch with your members, post updates to your community area and deliver value.
You can use posts to share updates, upload individual files, or spark discussion among the members of your membership.
To create a post, click on “New post” in your Home feed.
Give your post a title, write a description, or add a video! You can also add images, GIFs, or files.
Before you can publish your post you will need to select a topic where the post will be published to.
Once you’re finished, click on Done to publish it immediately or Schedule… to publish it in the future.
Customizing your community sales page
After you’re done creating your subscription plans and posts, it’s time to edit your community sales page!
Your community sales page is where people can subscribe to your community area! You would display your subscription plans so members can pick the one that works for them.
From the Home Feed, click on “...” and select Edit page.
This will open up the Site Builder, which is the tool you'll use to customize your sales page.
When you first get started, the page will be empty. Click on the “+” to add sections to your page and populate it with content!
Creator tip! 💡
For your community sales page, it is important that you add a Plans section to your page, so people can pick and join the plan that best fits their needs.
Here's an example of how plans could display on your site pages:
Make sure to create a beautiful sales page and list all the benefits people would get from becoming a member!
After you’re done, click on “Publish!” in the top-right corner.
You can also use the Site Builder to change the URL of your community page. Simply access the Page Settings for your Community Page and change the URL from there:
Launching your community! 🚀
After you've finalized your community, it’s time to open it up for people to join!
To do so, click on Launch Community in the top right of your Home feed:
Amazing job! Your community is now live and potential members can now join.
You can share it with your audience by using the Share community option.
Importing members
If you already have members on Patreon it might also be a good idea to import them into your Podia community.
Right now you can import members into a free subscription plan here on Podia.
Importing members into a paid plan is not possible at this time due to Stripe limitations.
Click on Audience > Imports from the sidebar menu.
Once you click through New Import, you will have a few options.
Select "Import people and give them community access (free plans only)", choose if you'd like to send a registration email and click on Prepare import.
Follow the steps and upload your list.
For members who are paid members on Patreon, here's what we would recommend:
Create a hidden free subscription plan and import them into this plan
Post a message and instruct them to change their plan in their account settings ✨
If you don't want to import them, you can tell them to sign up for a plan directly by sharing your community sales page.
Still need help? Check out our comprehensive community help docs here. If you have any questions, send an email to [email protected] or click the purple help icon to send us a message 😄