Product Update - Memberships for Creators

It's been a long year for many of us, but finally, we are able to officially announce the first of a series of biggest changes that will be coming to Inkspired from now until the end of the year: Memberships for all creators!

If you are an active user on Inkspired, you may have noticed a few changes around the dashboard's user interface around this feature. We have compacted the "Followers and Following users" section into one core page called Audience, where you will be able to check who is following you, who are you following, and also the list of all of the Paid Subscribers you may have gotten and even a list of e-mails for your future newsletters. This is a big change! But let's explain what is Paid Subscribers and how does that relates to Memberships.

Paid Subscribers & Memberships

Paid Subscribers are like followers who are paying you a monthly or annual membership fee directly to you. As a creator or author on Inkspired, you can set up your own membership, and have people subscribe to you directly from your user profile for a fee, in exchange to access to exclusive content you produce.

Using the new Monetization section on the dashboard, you can create as many memberships as you want, set the price you want for each month or as a yearly payment, and then include your stories among any memberships. It's also possible to leave your stories for free (like always), or put them at a one-off sales price, or even combine pricing (one-off payment) for non-subscribers with a membership, which means that anyone who is subscribed to you can access that story without extra payment. If you get creative, you can even create multiple memberships with tiered access. It's really up to you as an author!

Furthermore, you can now activate payments and pricing directly from the new Monetization section, and after a one-time application request, you will no longer need to "apply" to put your stories on sale. From now on, it's just as easy as "activate" or "deactivate" payments, set up the price, and start monetizing your audience, and also view all of your sales in the "Sales" tab on top of that page. We have also reduced the number of requirements needed to activate them: we eliminated the exclusivity clause and reduced the minimum amount of followers needed. Premium members also benefit from even fewer requirements and fewer administration fees as well ;-)

How my readers can subscribe to my Memberships?

Readers can find the memberships you are offering directly in your User Profile. They can also see them whenever they reach the paywall in your stories that require a membership to keep reading. For them, it's just as easy to click on the "Subscribe" button. On the checkout page, they just need to choose between a Monthly or Annual payment plan, choose the payment method and hit confirm payment to fill in the billing information. They can also cancel the automatic membership renewal at any time in Preferences - Subscriptions.

How do I get paid as an author?

Getting paid as an author or creator on Inkspired never has been that easy. Using the "sales" tab in the Monetization section, you can be in total control of how many sales you are making each month, what status they have, and where they come from. You can see if the sale is a one-time payment for a story or a payment part of one of your recurring memberships.

Fees remain the same on Inkspired, and you can see your brut and net price, and how much are you going to get in the payout in total at the end of the payout cycle. At the moment we are accepting payouts via Bank Transfer for bank accounts in the US, the European Union, Canada, Australia, Singapur, UK, Ecuador, plus transfers via PayPal, Revolut, Payoneer, and Wise. It is also possible to go self-service and transfer your funds to your Inkspired Wallet. All funds stored in your wallet can be used anytime inside the platform to purchase anything.

Pre-sales

Pre-sales are coming on Inkspired too in the next couple of weeks, and you will be able to manage them in the same place where you manage everything else related to selling your content: that's right, you guessed it! It's on the same Monetization section.

Pre-sales work differently on Inkspired compared to all previous Selling Options. As a standard, having your story published and verified is required for selling. However, stories that are eligible for pre-sale must have never been published before, but have all their future chapters in an advanced state of writing (at least with titles) as they will count as the table of contents. Pre-sales also come with the chance to have bundles and limited-time pricing. You can also set up a countdown to the publishing date, and when the countdown runs out, it's up to you as an author to decide what happens next: the story goes live on Inkspired, a download link is activated or set up a redirection link to elsewhere.

Pre-sales are cool to create momentum, raise awareness and start selling before even releasing your product!

New Premium plans

Inkspired is evolving into a professional publishing/authoring tool for creators and writers alike. In the same line, we felt we could enhance our value proposition, even more, to cater to more advanced authors and help them manage their content with more flexibility, sell more, and grow their audience. We have revamped our Premium page. From today, our former Writer Premium becomes only "Premium", same pricing and same good ol' subscription :-) However, we have added two new plans called Premium Plus and Premium Pro, aimed at the most ambitious authors with a mission to sell their content, and monetize their audience by converting their followers into paying subscribers. They also come with the introduction of the new amazing benefit of newsletters for creators. You can upgrade today in monthly or annual plans (2 months free)!

Check our new premium plans at this link.

A list of other minor fixes and announcements

With the latest update, we have had the chance to make many fixes and small tweaks to improve the overall user experience of Inkspired. While they are not as "shinny" as memberships and the new premium plans, they indeed make a difference to a lot of people:

• Interactive Stories can now have chapters linking to old chapters, allowing you to re-use previous chapters and create circular stories.
• We have increased the price limit for one-off sales of your stories from 9.99 to 49.99.
• Access (and apply) to your BETA reading requests directly from your Library.
• In your account section, under preferences, now allows you to add your Instagram and Youtube account, bank details for payouts, and business information.
• Simplified the application process to activate payments. You just need to do it once now!
• New $10 bonus for you and your friend whenever a referral you invite upgrades to an annual premium plan.
• Earlier this summer we introduced the ability to apply to a priority verification for your author's profile.
• We have fixed a bug when creating Visual Stories.
• VAT handling for EU customers.
• Upcoming Pre-sales as a sales method and Newsletters to reach your paying subscribers and e-mailing lists.
• We have made the Story's performance metrics for free! Non Premium members just need to have a Level 3 to access it from now, without purchasing the service.
• More actions to give you Rewards Credits.