Annual memberships creator overview

The Annual membership is moving from the Edit Page settings to the Autopilot service under the Promotions tab. All the criteria remain the same. From now on, the creators who aren’t eligible at the moment will have the option to pre-enroll. Once they meet the criteria, Annual memberships will be automatically available to their members. In this article, you will learn how to set up Annual memberships.

With Patreon, you can offer members yearly membership access. You receive one yearly payment from members cutting down on member processing fees and payment method upkeep.

Annual membership eligibility

• Creators must already offer charge upfront billing or enable subscription billing to collect the yearly payments upfront.
  • Learn more about switching to subscription billing to find out if this billing model will work for you.
    
• Creator page must have been launched at least three months ago.
• Creator account must have a well-established payment history, including at least $200 earnings/monthly in the previous three months.

Note: These criteria may be subject to more restrictions based on medium and location.

How does annual membership work?

Members signing up for an annual subscription will pay for a year upfront, with VAT, Sales Tax, or GST (if applicable) included — you receive full payment minus applicable fees to Patreon.

Member’s annual membership renewal date depends on the billing model you have selected:

• Subscription billing: If you have subscription billing, your member’s yearly membership renews exactly 1 year from their initial join date
• Example: A member signs up annually on July 8th and pays for an entire year upfront. Their membership auto-renews on July 8th of the following year unless canceled and on July 8th of every year after that
• Charge upfront: If you have charge upfront, your member’s yearly membership renews on the 1st after 12 months from their initial join date
• Example: A member signs up annually on July 8th and pays for an entire year upfront. Their membership auto-renews on August 1st of the following year unless canceled and on August 1st of every year after that

Start offering annual membership

As long as you meet the criteria above, you can start offering annual memberships today — here’s how:

1. While on your creator page, click on the Promotions page button
2. Click on the Autopilot link from the menu bar
3. Select Set Up to turn on the Annual membership. If you meet the criteria, you’ll have the option to enable it. For creators who are not yet eligible for Annual membership, a pre-enroll feature will show-up. Once elegible, creators who opted-in will automatically be enrolled.
4. (Optional) Once you’ve enabled annual memberships, you’ll be able to set a percentage discount for members who choose a yearly plan. Annual members are locked into their price when they join; however, you can adjust your percentage discount for future members whenever you’d like. Offering a limited-time discount is a great way to promote your page and encourage retention!

Existing members can switch to an annual membership at any point. We’ve included a section below to help you with sample messaging to help you spread the word about yearly memberships.

How do I manage my annual members?

You can continue to deliver benefits to all members on a monthly cadence. When a member joins with an annual plan, they’ll show as active on your Relationship manager for an entire year. Their last charge date will be the date they joined.

How to filter by annual members:

1. Click on the Audience button from the left navigation bar, then click on the Relationship manager option
2. From here, click on the Filters button
3. Scroll down to the Charge frequency section and click the checkbox for Annually

You can download the CSV report of your Relationship manager to break down annual versus monthly subscriptions.

Managing benefits on Patreon

If you use Patreon’s benefits delivery tool, here’s what you need to know about annual members:

• Annual members populate on your benefit lists that they are eligible for when they sign up.
• Annual members appear on your monthly benefit lists just like monthly members. Since they’ve paid for the year in full, they’ll be eligible for any benefits you offer for that year.

Reviewing my annual membership earnings

Let’s break down how to review your annual membership earnings on each of your income reports.

Earnings insights

When a member subscribes annually, their payment is available to you in their join month. Your earnings from their yearly membership will be listed on your Earnings insights, in total, in their join month as well. We do not report your earnings across other months within the year; just the annual members' join month.

Membership insights

Annual members are only counted as New in your Membership insights in their join month. After their initial sign-up month, they'll be accounted for as active members. At the bottom of your membership insights, you'll see a breakdown of monthly and annually paying members. 

Let existing members know that they can switch to an annual membership!

We’ve put together messaging you can use to let existing members know that you now have annual membership as an option.

• Sample post or message copy

  Post Title/Subject Line: Join annually and save!

  Hi everyone,

  You can now choose to pay for Patreon on an annual basis. It’s a great way to show your support to me, and in return, you’ll get a discount of [x months free] when you do. In addition to reducing transaction fees, you’ll help me create quality content faster and reduce the chance your credit card declines in the future. Optional: Lock in this discount now before it ends!

  For existing members, the following steps will help you switch over your membership to annual.

  1. Log in, hover over your profile icon in the top right corner, and select Manage  memberships
  2. From your Active Memberships page, click Edit next to the membership you want to change
  3. Select the Annual option (if available) on the checkout page
  4. Click the Update button. You’ll be charged upfront for the discounted price

  New members, visit my Patreon page, where you’ll have an annual option below your chosen tier’s “Join” button.

  Check out this help center article if you have any questions about how it works.

• Sample social copy

  Now is a great time to join my Patreon, where you can get [x months free] when you subscribe annually! Check it out here [link to creator page].

Members who want to sign up for an annual subscription need to be on the desktop or mobile web, as this option is not yet available on the Patreon app for iOS, only for Android users.

FAQ

• If a member increases their annual subscription, they pay the difference to upgrade their membership. They instantly get access to content and benefits for their new membership. Their year membership term extends 1 year from their upgrade date.

  At the moment, members won’t be able to downgrade or decrease the amount of an annual membership.

  members have membership access for the remainder of their term. Once their year of membership ends, they’ll no longer have access to your Patreon posts or other benefits, like Discord.

• When you offer annual memberships, your members get to decide between a yearly or monthly subscription. About 1/3 of members we surveyed prefer to pay annually.

• Creators who enable Annual Membership haven’t experienced a significant decline in monthly revenue; on average less than 5% of monthly payments switch.

• Remember, these members are the real MVPs and are choosing to support you for a year. They’ll be with you through changes in your offerings and content. And as a backup, refunds are no problem with our prorated refund tool. We recommend communicating any changes you plan with members ahead of time - they appreciate the transparency.

• We notify members before their next yearly charge, so there are no surprises. Annual members are as much as 50% better for your growth due to monthly members canceling or having a declined payment over a year.

• As long as you have the funds to cover the refund, you can refund an annual member at any time. Here’s a helpful guide to support you with refunding: Refunding annual members

• Yes! You can issue annual members a full refund or a partial refund equivalent to the remainder of their subscription price. Partial refunds are only an option for members who have paid yearly.

  • If you refund the member in full: The members will immediately lose access to your member-only content for their tier. They can rejoin if they’d like; however, they’ll be subject to a new payment as per their new terms.
  • If you issue a partial refund: The member will have access for the remainder of the month. Since the partial refund includes the remaining subscription but not the month you refund, their access ends on the 1st of the following month.

• Note: Patreon reserves the right to remove funds from a creator’s balance under certain circumstances, for example, where the member unintentionally pays the money or if we have reason to suspect fraud, other illegalities, or violations of our Terms of Use. We also reserve the right to change the disbursement schedule to mitigate risk or terminate the program after honoring the existing plans.