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Membership platforms are sites and apps where creators share exclusive content with paid subscribers. Yes, something like if users needed to pay to follow Instagram or Twitter accounts. 

These content subscription platforms can be a big source of income: for example, the top Patreon earner makes $223,665 monthly. And obviously, creators need constant promotion of their accounts to grow their fanbase and earnings. 

This is where they might need your help — as a media buyer or a marketing specialist. Or maybe you want to set up and promote your own account? So, anyway —  what can you do?

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About Paid Content Subscription Platforms: Quick Overview

Roughly speaking, we can divide all the content subscription platforms into two categories:

• Project Support Platforms (Patreon, Hy.Page, Buy Me a Coffee). These are for people who create content for other platforms: YouTube bloggers, musicians, artists, and writers. They already have an active fanbase that enjoys the art for free — and offer exclusive, non-public paid content for a fee on membership platforms. In other words, this is an extra source of income and an addition to the main creator’s platform.

• Lifestyle Content Platforms (OnlyFans, Boosty, Fansly). This can also work like project support and often does. However, most of the content revolves around a personality: for example, it can be a fitness model sharing her cute selfies, workout plans and videos, and daily routine. So, it’s not always necessary to create anything too special — like compose songs or write books — and it’s possible to start growing a fanbase right from the subscription platform.

This division is not really strict, of course. You can find plenty of artists, cooks, or bloggers at OnlyFans, and lifestyle accounts at Patreon. 

And how do all these creators make money? Pretty obviously, from subscribers, but how does it work? Depending on the platform, there are two possible options (we’ll look at the example of Patreon and OnlyFans):

Platform	Patreon	OnlyFans
Pricing models	A creator adds several membership tiers with various types of benefits. A tier member can go with monthly payments or purchase an annual subscription with a discount.	A creator can activate paid membership that makes all the content fully private. Alternatively, there is a pay-per-view mode: the subscription is free, but some pieces of content require payment.
Service Fee	From 5% to 8%, depending on a chosen plan	20%

So, this is how basically it all works — pretty easy, right? But now it’s time to speak on traffic for paid subscription platforms — and it’s getting a bit more complicated.

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Traffic for Project Support Subscription Platforms

The basics of Patreon and similar platforms is that it is mainly an addition to a creator’s main project. Here is how it is mainly used:

• Exclusive content from bloggers and creators. It can be anything, from music demo tracks to full versions of videos or podcasts.
• Bonuses from bloggers and creators: personal chats, early access to content, gifts, Discord server access
• Private posts about influencers’ lives 
• Donation platform without any content just to support a creator.

An example: YaBoyRoshi is a popular YouTube channel with approximately 750k subscribers. Most of its content is reactions to anime series — so, basically, it’s a trio of creators who are watching and commenting on movies. 

Of course, their YouTube videos are available to everyone for free — but those who want to get more can roll into the Patreon paid subscription and get, for example, early access to new content:

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The Strategy: How to Promote Patreon Membership?

As you see, it makes sense to launch and promote Patreon or similar platforms account as an extra to existing channels — and to distribute the link on social media.

Comment from Mike, an affiliate marketer and Patreon account owner: Patreon does not promote you like, say, YouTube, where you can just upload a video and go viral in a day. It doesn’t provide you with advertising opportunities, too. So, your patrons (Patreon subscribers) are people who already know you and willingly want to pay for your work. 

Thus, your strategy should be based on a massive distribution of content on social media and creating an active fan base.

Here are the main traffic sources and social networks that bring the most traffic to Patreon accounts:

Traffic sources: Direct — 56.20% Social networks — 22.55% Social networks distribution: YouTube — 63.21% Twitter — 18.51% Pinterest — 5.50% Reddit — 3.57%

And some content ideas that are most popular among Patreon active supporters:

Video Games Consoles and Accessories — 37.23% Exotic — 20.77% Lifestyle — 14.46% Animation and Comics — 4.12% Programming and Developer Software — 3.16% Other — 20.26%

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Traffic for Lifestyle Paid Content Subscription Platforms

Fanbase is also essential here, but the trick is that content is based on a creator’s personality or looks more than on what they do. So, a fanbase can be gathered around a membership platform immediately — without years of promoting other accounts.

However, most OnlyFans and similar platform specialists agree that social media is still the essential way to engage users and motivate them to get extra content for some fee.

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The Strategy: How to Promote OnlyFans?

Social Media

Like in the previous case, let’s look at which social media platforms bring most of the traffic to OnlyFans:

Traffic sources: Direct — 56.51% Social — 13.94% Social Networks Distribution: Twitter — 60.32% Instagram — 13.24% Reddit — 13.02% YouTube — 6.79

And, of course, content ideas:

Lifestyle – 44.50% Exotic – 34.84% Business Services -7.01% Graphics Multimedia and Web Design – 4.53% Fashion and Apparel – 1.54% Other -7.58%

As you see, Twitter and Instagram users are those you should target first — so promoting these networks is the important part of the funnel. For example, the Limitless Networks service does it via the Mother-Child strategy. It works like this:

• There is one ‘mother’ account — the main one containing a link to your OnlyFans (or similar membership platform). Here you simply post content and CTAs to join paid subscription.

• Besides, there are several ‘child’ accounts. With the mass-following methods, these accounts subscribe to users sharing similar interests and send DMs with a link to the mother account.

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Forums: OnlyFans Reddit

The most popular one is Reddit — and it’s easy to get some free traffic from there using so-called subreddits: threads on specific interests.

An example: you want to promote a fitness model account. Add the OnlyFans (or similar platform)  link to the Reddit profile description, and then go to the ‘r/FitnessGirls’ subreddit to make a post like this:

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Social Apps

Another option to send free traffic to a membership platform is social apps and websites — where people match, talk, and flirt. Here is a possible funnel:

1. 1. Register at a social app — Tinder or any other similar one
2. 2. Post attractive photos and add a link to any social network in the profile’s bio
3. 3. Match people so that they check out your profile and follow your social media
4. 4. In social media accounts, leave a link to a paid membership platform

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Paid Marketing Campaigns

Paid ads will be a perfect addition to social media marketing efforts — and we at PropellerAds have some great tools that will help. Besides, our traffic is proven to perfectly works for content platforms. The most evident flow looks like this:

• Step 1. You create an offer landing page. It should contain the best photos of the creator and the offer itself — subscription pricing and bonuses a user gets from a membership. Note: the page must meet PropellerAds policies.

Tip: OnlyFans has Free Trial Links that provide users with temporary free access. This can be successfully used in ad campaigns as a part of the engagement strategy.

• Step 2. Then, you create a Push Ads campaign at PropellerAds. Thanks to Push targeting options, you can immediately focus on the Social audience. 

Tip: Your push creative must, of course, contain the account owner’s photo, and it’s a good idea to use badges — small icons proven to boost your CTR. Here is how it can look:

• Step 3. Your Push notifications will lead users to the landing page — and the landing page will have a link to a content subscription platform. 

Tip: You can try out the new Survey Exit ad format — it will be a great addition to the Push campaign, as it brings the most engaged and interested audience. The point is that Survey Exit targets users who filled out surveys on various topics, and these surveys warm them up! You can choose Social in the extra targeting options to get only users after surveys on Social topics.

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To Sum Up

Motivating users to pay for content is hard but rewarding work — remember the earnings we mentioned in the beginning? As an affiliate marketer, you can get a pretty nice share if you help creators gain constant active, relevant traffic. Or, again, maybe you are a creator yourself?

Anyway, you are welcome to do it with us!

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