How to switch from Patreon, Gumroad or BuyMeCoffee to Opuna

Built an audience at a mainstream monetisation platform but looking for more flexibility and freedom of your revenue and content?

Creator platforms like Patreon had allowed thousands of creators to generate revenue from their work, reaching sky high numbers no one could imagine a couple of decades ago.

But, as the creator economy matures, and AI is changing the landscape, creators realize that not all platforms are created equal.

In this article, you'll learn why these platforms might be limiting your business potential. We’ll also bring up some clear steps to move your business to a new era platform like Opuna - digital marketplace, offering more control, flexibility, and profit.

The pros and cons of Patreon

With more than 214,000 creators and millions in monthly payouts, creators of all kinds use Patreon to ask their biggest fans to support their creative work.

Patreon payout growth over time. Source: Graphtreon

It can be a great way to get started as it's relatively easy to create a profile and start growing your paid audience. But as your business grows you may start looking for more flexibility, and this is where some of the limitations of Patreon begin to show. 

Here are some of the reasons why people decide to switch from Patreon to other tools:

• Patreon takes 5 – 12% of creator’s revenue, plus transaction fees.
• As a company funded by venture capital and directed by investors, Patreon has the power to change its rules, fees, and your ability to access your audience at any time.
• As a closed subscription data platform, it's not possible to migrate your business elsewhere without asking your fans to re-subscribe, which is a risky business decision.
• There are limited customization options.

When you're getting started, the appeal of convenience and visibility on Patreon is attractive, but once you start generating revenue on the platform, you're locked in.

So, are there better options outside?

The advantages of Opuna

Opuna offers a more flexible future for independent creators and publishers, because it gives you full transparency and ownership.

Opuna is an emerging tool for creators. Caring for our users, and not our investors (we don’t have any), is always the priority.

Here are a few things about Opuna that matter for your business:

• Opuna commission is just 3% so you get to keep all of your revenue (Stripe transaction fees apply, larger businesses can negotiate these fees). We’d be happy to charge zero, but that’s reserved for the future - see previous point about investors.
• You have complete access to all of your content, contacts, and customer data, which means you're always in control of your destiny.
• Opuna is very much built around AI products, we did our best to make the process of selling your GPTs and expert materials as simple and transparent as possible.

Interested in participating? Learn how to make money with AI and start your journey to passive income.

Considerations of switching platforms

Switching between platforms is as much of a business decision as it is a technical one, and requires careful planning. 

There are challenges involved, since Patreon and others give you no ownership of your subscription data. This means you need to make some decisions on how to handle your existing paid customer base.

This comes with some risk of churn (subscribers canceling or falling out because they no longer sign in or read your emails). However, the benefits are that once you've made the change, you'll retain all of your future revenue and have a flexible, customizable home for your creative work.

In practice, you have two options:

1. Run Patreon and Opuna alongside each other

2. Redirect your audience to an Opuna publication

Below, we're going to walk through all of the considerations you need to think about to redirect your audience from any other platform to Opuna.

How to switch to Opuna

This process requires a long-term strategy to minimize risk and make sure your existing audience is well informed. There is no one timeline to suit all, but the guidelines below will help you build a strategy that works for you.

Step 1 — Set up your new Opuna account

The first step is to create a new Opuna page and customize it to suit your content and brand. While this does take a bit of time up front, it is time well spent. Don't worry — you don't need to write any code and there are plenty of guides to help you along the way.

• If you haven't already, sign up. This gives you access to all features in Opuna and you won't be billed at the end, so you have all the time to figure out what's best for you. 
• Follow the initial setup steps to get your new publication up and running. We recommend keeping things simple and using a pre-built theme to start with — you can always modify things later.
• Add some content to your site so your subscribers don't visit an empty space when you move to the next steps. The simplest route would be to copy and paste some of your content from Patreon to Opuna, or you could consider using our concierge migration option. Read more about publishing your first post.

💡Consider creating an about page to share more about you and your work.  

Step 2 — Replicate your tiers in Opuna

Once your page is ready, create your membership product in Opuna to attract new paid members moving forward. 

Next, replicate your Patreon tiers in Opuna. This way, existing supporters will be able to proceed in the same manner as they were used to paying for on Patreon.

• Once your membership tiers are in place, head to the Portal settings page to offer all of this to your visitors.

Step 3 — Import Patrons as free members

At Opuna, it's possible to have both free and paid members. The great thing about this is that you can deliver email newsletters to free members and encourage them to buy your digital content. It is useful later on to be able to deliver emails to your clients from your new Opuna publication, so to begin with, let's go ahead and encourage everyone in Patreon to join as a free member in Opuna.

Step 4 — Create & communicate your offer

Now that you're ready to make the switch, it's time to start communicating the changes with your existing audience. 

There are a few ways to approach this, here are some ideas to consider for your strategy:

• Create a post at your Patreon account announcing the shift. Be open and transparent, and let people know why you're moving, and what they need to do to continue to support your work.
• Send an email to your supporters from Patreon. Again, let them know what to expect and be as clear as possible about the next steps. 
• An incentive is always a great way to encourage subscribers to make the leap. After all, you are asking them to cancel a subscription in one place, and subscribe again in another. Opuna has an Airdrop feature which you can use to offer a bonus when they make the switch.

An example of a Patreon account after completing the steps so far.

Step 5 — Ongoing maintenance

Now that the initial announcement has been made, you'll need to implement a plan for what you're going to do while you have paid subscribers on both Opuna and Patreon. 

Here's a few things to think about: 

✍️ Publishing schedule. To begin with, you could publish new content on both Opuna and Patreon, with a goal to move all new content to Opuna in the future once your paid audience has switched. 

Alternatively, try posting new content on Opuna only, and create a new post in Patreon each time with links to your Opuna site and instructions on how (and why) supporters should consider switching. This provides more incentives for people to move over.

🗓️ Switch over deadline. You could keep Patreon and Opuna running like this indefinitely. Alternatively, try setting a strict deadline, and encouraging people to switch before then, otherwise their subscription will be canceled and they will no longer have access to paid content. This is obviously more of a risky route, but it does offer more of a sense of urgency.

📮 Ongoing communication. While you still have paid subscribers in Patreon, it is a good idea to create a communication plan and outline how and when you're going to continue to communicate about your move, and offer discounts or incentives. 

Going independent for long-term success 

Thanks to the growth of the creator economy, individuals are now more empowered than ever.

If you’d like more creative and financial control over your work, leaving Patreon may very well be the right option for you.

Opuna, like the most successful creators, is built with the long game in mind. Fiercely independent, investor-free, and ready to help you share your work with the world.