Instagram. It’s great, isn’t it?
It allows you to share lots of lovely pictures of your products and your team.
But there’s a catch: You can only add links to your bio and Stories… So what do you do when you need to share a monetization link from your posts?
What is Linktree?
Linktree is a tool that allows you to share multiple links on social media, but it rose to prominence on Instagram. This is because Instagram does not allow you to share web links anywhere apart from in Stories and in the ‘bio’ section of your profile page, which has a strict character limit. Users therefore had to find another way to direct their followers to their websites or other social channels.
What does Linktree do?
It basically creates a simple landing page that hosts multiple links. You then pop the link to this landing page in your Instagram bio in order to drive traffic to specific areas of your site. (See example)
Linktree’s available features are divided into two tiers:
- Free features
- A free account gives you a decent haul of features. Without paying a penny, you can embed as many links as you wish onto your Linktree landing page, including links to TikTok, YouTube, and Clubhouse Rooms.
- You can also use it to collect payments from your followers. This is particularly useful if you are trying to cultivate your followers into giving you tips and donations for your content.
- A certain amount of customisation is also permitted for free thanks to a selection of built-in themes.
- Analytics haven’t been forgotten either and you can easily track how many views and clicks your Linktree page is collecting.
- Paid-for features
- In addition to all of the free goodies, you can also tailor your page more specifically with advanced customisation and access to some more upmarket themes. For instance, you could add a video or animated background, or remove the Linktree logo for a stronger brand focus.
- Greater control of your links is also handed to you. With ‘pro’, you can take advantage of link scheduling and animated styling to draw attention to priority links.
- Tracking and analysing your followers is even more thorough too, allowing you to measure your performance and see which channels are driving traffic and where your audience lives. You can even use your Google Analytics ID to gain even deeper insights.
- If you want greater link integration, you will also need to opt for this tier. By paying for the tool, you can not only embed social videos but also Mailchimp, Google Sheets, Zapier, and the Amazon Influencer Program.
Source: https://www.methodmarketing.org/
How Payhip Works
What We Do
Payhip is an e-commerce platform that enables anyone to sell their work directly to their fans and followers. We provide all the tools you need to get up and running, including your own unique storefront where you can showcase your products – from ebooks, software, clothing, art, music, you name it. (See example)
If you have a digital, physical, subscription product, coaching service, or course that you want to sell, then Payhip can help you with:
- Creating a store your customers can purchase from
- Communicating with your customers
- Powerful marketing tools to incentivize sales
- Building a following
It’s Easy
Super easy. There’s no need for you to do anything technical or time-consuming. Simply add your own products, set up checkout with PayPal or Stripe for accepting payments, and customize the look-and-feel of your store to match your branding. We handle the rest.
The Process for Digital Products
- Your customer visits your digital product page and completes their purchase.
- We automatically send them to their download page where they can instantly download the files they’ve purchased.
- We also email them an email receipt that includes the link to their download page for safe-keeping. They can use that link to download in the future if they still haven’t downloaded.
- The payment is deposited to your PayPal/Stripe account. We also email you to notify you of the sale.
The Process for Physical Products
- Your customer visits your physical product page and completes their purchase.
- The customer is shown a message thanking them for the purchase and saying your order will be shipped to you soon. An email receipt is also sent to them.
- The payment is deposited to your PayPal/Stripe account.
- We email you a notification of the sale. When you log in to your Payhip account, you’ll see another notification prompting you to ship the order items.
- We show you the customer’s shipping address and what they purchased.
- Using DHL or any other shipping company you can send the items to the customer. You can then mark the order as “shipped” and finally send a notification email to the customer letting them know the order is on the way with their shipment tracking number.
The Process for Subscriptions/Memberships
- Your customer visits your subscription product page and completes their purchase. At the same time, they set up a password for access to their user account.
- The customer is taken to their subscription page, from which they can manage their billing information, access any associated digital products, etc.
- We send the customer an email receipt and a link to the subscription page, which they can revisit to log in later.
- Each installment of the subscription is deposited to your Stripe account. We also email you to notify you each time a payment is processed.
The Process for Coaching Services
- Your customer visits your coaching product page and completes their purchase. At the same time, they set up a password for access to their user account.
- The customer is taken to a thank you page, from which they can log into their dashboard to access the coaching and see their first milestone.
- We send the customer an email receipt with a link to their login page.
- Payment is deposited to your PayPal/Stripe account, and we send you an email to let you know that you’ve got a new coaching client.
- You can manage your coaching from your Payhip dashboard; e.g., add new milestones, etc.
The Process for Courses
- Your customer visits your course sales page and completes their purchase. At the same time, they set up a password for access to their user account.
- The customer is taken to a thank you page, from which they can log into their dashboard to access the course.
- We send the customer an email receipt with a link to their login page.
- Payment is deposited to your PayPal/Stripe account, and we send you an email to let you know that you’ve got a new course student.
How Buy Me A Coffee Works
If you’re trying to figure out how Buy Me A Coffee works so that you can easily accept donations and tips for your art and content, I’ve thoroughly researched and made this article to help you out.
Buy Me A Coffee works by allowing your audience to support you through donations, tips, or a recurring membership by sending them to a hosted webpage or embedding a button on your website. Payments are transferred immediately to your Stripe or bank account.
At the heart of it, Buy Me A Coffee allows you a simple way for your supporters to more directly support you with one-off donations or recurring memberships.
However, the key to making Buy Me A Coffee work for you is to first build an audience and community around your art or creative endeavor.
Without an audience that wants to support you, there will be no one to donate or tip you in the first place.
To learn more about how Buy Me A Coffee works and how you can make it work for you, simply keep on reading, my friend.
Here is a more detailed look at how Buy Me A Coffee works:
- The website’s currency is “coffees” and you get to set the price for what 1 coffee is worth.
- After setting up your profile, you can then promote your Buy Me A Coffee page by sending people direct links to your profile or by embedding a Buy Me A Coffee button on your pages, posts, and website.
- From there, your potential supporters can choose how many coffees they want to donate to you or if they want to donate on a monthly basis with a recurring membership.
- Although you can create members-only and public posts with Buy Me A Coffee, there is no pressure on you as a creator to provide anything specific in return here such as “bonus content” for a supporter’s donation.
This is a big part of what sets Buy Me A Coffee vs Patreon: Buy Me A Coffee does not force you or your audience to commit to a monthly membership, and your supporters don’t even need to sign up for an account to donate to you.
Buy Me A Coffee can be seen as more of a simple online tip jar that can lead to recurring memberships and is great for any individual who wants to accept donations without a particular project being worked on.
What Does Getting Paid Look Like With Buy Me A Coffee?
Buy Me A Coffee’s pricing is simple:
There is only 1 Buy Me A Coffee plan available which takes 5% and payment processing fees off of any income you generate on Buy Me A Coffee.
Just like with most Patreon alternatives, it is free to create a Buy Me A Coffee account and you only give a cut to them when you are actually making money.
Once someone donates to you on Buy Me A Coffee, you instantly get paid with a direct transfer to your Stripe or bank account.
The amount you get paid will be the donation amount minus Buy Me A Coffee’s 5% fee and any payment processing or banking fees which are usually another 3%.
You do not have to build up a monthly balance or hit a minimum withdrawal threshold as you do with Patreon.
How To Promote Your Buy Me A Coffee Page
First off: you should understand that Buy Me A Coffee is a donation platform and is not a discovery platform.
Buy Me A Coffee does not have any discovery features for helping new supporters find you – they don’t even email the supporters you gain to promote their own stuff.
Just as the case with Patreon and other similar platforms:
You will need to do all of the work bringing people to your Buy Me A Coffee page and convincing them to support you.
With that said, Buy Me A Coffee has 2 main ways for you to promote yourself:
- Buy Me A Coffee profile page
- Buy Me A Coffee buttons
The profile page is pretty straightforward: it’s like a blog except posts can be restricted to paying supporters and it has a donation widget built-in.
The button is where things can get a bit more interesting…
The Buy Me A Coffee button is a stylized button that you can use to accept donations by sending people to your Buy Me A Coffee profile or directly from the button with an overlay widget.
There are 3 ways to install a Buy Me A Coffee button:
- Embeddable code
- Installing the Buy Me A Coffee WordPress plugin
- Adding an image of the button with a link
How To Get Supporters & An Audience That Supports Your Art
The key to making Buy Me A Coffee work for you is to first build an audience and community around your art or creative endeavor.
The best way to get Buy Me A Coffee supporters is to first build an audience and community around your art or creative endeavor off of Buy Me A Coffee and to freely provide that audience and community with overwhelming value.
The important words here are “freely” and “overwhelming value”, and the best way to provide this to your audience is with a solid recurring content strategy.
Remember that Buy Me A Coffee (and most donation platforms in general) don’t have any discovery features, so they won’t bring in new fans. Instead, they simply allow your current fans the opportunity to choose to support you financially.
Although I wrote the following article using Patreon as an example, this article will show you how you can get paying supporters on any platform by growing an audience and community: How To Get Patreon Supporters.
This then perfectly ties into the next step, which is adapting your content plan so that your paying supporters will want to continue to support you over time…
How To Build A Content Plan For Your Membership That Keeps Supporters Coming Back
If supporters don’t feel like they are getting any use out of your membership because you aren’t posting enough or aren’t posting things that they enjoy, it is no secret that they will eventually stop paying for it.
The best way to build a successful membership program is to consistently release new content by combining a recurring content strategy with a content calendar.
Recurring content allows you to build your audience, optimize your membership tiers, and make sure your supporters keep coming back for more!
