Member Areas: Need Ideas/Workarounds for Blog Posts

Our site isn't live yet, but it is ALMOST there.  After chatting with support today, I am hoping someone here could give me some ideas to try. We're using Clarkson theme.

We have a subscription/membership with three tiers of pricing - monthly, annually, or the third tier. They all get the same "base" level content, but tier three gets a couple of higher value options. The bulk of our product is an email newsletter every week, but our subscribers are mostly 60+ and (because of our other successful product on another platform) they are accustomed to logging into a dashboard to read the content. Thus, we began the great migration to Squarespace.

What I would like, that support tells me is absolutely not possible, is that when I write one blog/article, it gets posted to all three member areas at the same time. I've been advised that my only option is to duplicate each post and then move it every time to the other two member areas. 

I originally set it up so that there was a button upon log-in to their member area that they could just click and go to the "blog" where all the articles are. However, I can't duplicate that specific page, and therefore, that page would be outside of the gated/paid area and able to be seen and shared. 

Any ideas for workarounds? I'm well-versed (though rusty) in Wordpress, but this is my first site here. Between this and our other large membership site we have close to 100k subscribers and I had hoped we'd be able to move everything over here. But, if I can't find a workaround, we'll likely have to go to another platform, which I don't want to do because of the otherwise easy use and integration here.

Any plug-ins, Zaps, or other ideas would be welcome, and thank you in advance!

 

9 hours ago, amkaylor said:

We have a subscription/membership with three tiers of pricing - monthly, annually, or the third tier. What I would like, that support tells me is absolutely not possible, is that when I write one blog/article, it gets posted to all three member areas at the same time. I've been advised that my only option is to duplicate each post and then move it every time to the other two member areas.

There isn't any good news on the duplicated content front. Support are correct.

Member Areas have been structured as independent entities, with no overlap between them, so it isn't possible to share content between them. You must duplicate it manually. It isn't possible to change this with code, plugins or third party services. I've covered this and other limitations in my post Squarespace Member Areas and their limitations as I'd love to see Squarespace  improve Member Areas with a few little tweaks.

You mentioned having three tiers and it sounds like two of these are the same except for the payment frequency? If that's the case, you shouldn't need both of these because you can have both fee options (monthly and annually) on the same Member Area 🙂. That said, you can't migrate members from one plan to another, so if you already have subscribers to both, some of them would need to cancel and resubscribe.

4 hours ago, paul2009 said:

You mentioned having three tiers and it sounds like two of these are the same except for the payment frequency? If that's the case, you shouldn't need both of these because you can have both fee options (monthly and annually) on the same Member Area 🙂. That said, you can't migrate members from one plan to another, so if you already have subscribers to both, some of them would need to cancel and resubscribe.

Thank you so much for the quick and detailed response (and the link) - I appreciate you being generous with your time. 

I did see that we could do the split pricing option, but on our other platform (which used the same model), our conversion rate tripled when we had each one listed out instead of using the toggle visual to let them choose which payment method. We'd much prefer to do it that way!

We did A/B testing of a handful of features and layouts over about 12 months, and every single thing that was more "old school" and basic converted better and got better feedback. We didn't even want to build out an archive on a website like this, but the audience for us doesn't really connect with the idea of paying for an email-only newsletter, so here we are.

It surprises me that there is no way to upgrade or offer the same content to multiple member structures. Those two things all seem like very obvious features in the subscription/membership market, especially with a company as robust as Squarespace.

I do appreciate the links and the review of limitations, though. I wish I would have seen your write-up before investing so much time and money into building this out. It's looking like we'll probably have to abandon this platform. We're nomadic and are often off-the-grid in our work, so if our scheduled posts can't go to all three areas (since we can't update them every week manually), or offer automated upgrades, then Member Areas create more problems than they solve.

Again, thank you so much for your answer!

22 minutes ago, amkaylor said:

I did see that we could do the split pricing option, but on our other platform (which used the same model), our conversion rate tripled when we had each one listed out instead of using the toggle visual to let them choose which payment method. We did A/B testing of a handful of features and layouts over about 12 months, and every single thing that was more "old school" and basic converted better and got better feedback.

Thanks for the insight. I'd say this is typical for a service targeted at the 60+ age group (I've had similar experiences when setting up a service for retirees) but it's good to hear more real world evidence. It sounds like you've tried all the right things 🙂

@amkaylor we're working on something similar and are already facing the same challenge.  We were going to embed google links into a blog (so they can access content but not share the link to others who have not paid). Not sure if this is the direction you're going with additional content of yours.  Would you be open to connecting 1:1 to learn more about how you set up your membership areas?

I'm having this problem too.

Most of my subscribers are single individuals from small businesses, and the subscription plan works fine for them.
However I have some corporate customers who want individual logins for eg 70 of their people, all paid for with one payment via purchase order and invoice.

I can't give those 70 people a 100% discount code as they still have to enter credit card details to create.

I've created an additional free plan and will give those corporate people access this way. But it means I have to duplicate every single page of the two membership blogs. 

It's an awkward solution, compared to just allowing different membership types to access the same pages.