How Ill Gotten Games, a 3D printer, migrated from per-creation billing to subscription billing

Jeremy, Laurel, and Arian started Ill Gotten Games back in 2012 by just sharing their designs online for free. They quickly realized there was a market for what they were creating, and started selling their work through different sites, eventually launching a Patreon in 2015. They were one of the first 3D printers on Patreon — a category that’s now extremely popular. “To this day, Patreon is our bread and butter because of the regularity that comes with subscription billing,” Laurel says.

The issues with charging per creation

The team launched with a per-creation billing model, and while they were successfully growing their business, they found two main problems with that billing cadence.

1. Member confusion around how per-creation billing works: The team loves to create a LOT. And while that sounds like a member’s dream, many Patreon members didn’t realize they had to set a cap on their payment to control how much they spent each month on Ill Gotten Games’s Patreon. No matter how much they explained the process, many people did not select a maximum amount, and they were confused when they saw double or triple the amount they expected to pay that month on their credit card bill.

2. Hours of extra work for the creators to ensure secure benefit delivery: With members not being billed until the first of the month, it was possible for people to sign up for Patreon at the end of the month, download Ill Gotten Games’s archives and leave without ever paying. Because of this, Laurel would go through the extremely time-consuming task of sending out benefit links to individual members each month.

Making the switch to subscription billing

To solve these two issues, the team decided to switch to a subscription billing model.
What is subscription billing? Subscription billing is when members get charged on the day they sign up and that same day every month going forward.

So, how did switching to subscription billing fix Ill Gotten Games’s pain points?

1. No more member confusion: Subscription billing means members can “set it and forget it.” They don’t need to select a monthly cap, because they’ll be charged one flat amount every month.

2. Quicker, easier benefit delivery: Now, Laurel uses the Membership tab to share benefit links each month instead of individually emailing them out. It saves her hours and streamlines their business. Here’s how she manages monthly benefits using subscription billing:

• At the beginning of every month, Laurel creates a new Dropbox link with the new 3D files they’re sharing.
• She goes to the Membership tab and clicks the Edit button on the welcome note.
• Then, she removes old Dropbox links from each tier’s welcome note and adds the new one.
• That’s it! Now members can easily find their benefits whenever they want without scrolling through posts or looking through their emails.

Takeaways from Ill Gotten Games’s experience:

• Subscription billing helps solve a lot of member confusion. Because it’s an upfront cost, there are no misunderstandings from members on how much they’ll spend each month.
• The Membership tab is a great way to deliver benefit links. It’s easy for creators to switch out a link each month, and it’s simple for members to find those links whenever they want.

How to maintain your earnings while switching to subscription billing

When migrating from per-creation payments to a monthly membership model, we use a multiplier tool to help you maintain your earnings. Here’s how it works:

• The multiplier is determined by your paid post history, and is applied to the per-creation price to create equivalent monthly tier prices your existing members will be billed monthly.
• We take the maximum amount of paid posts you’ve made over the past three months, and this will be your potential multiplier.
• We use this approach to ensure that your existing members are billed a fair monthly price similar to what they are used to from being charged per creation, so we don’t give them sticker shock.
• If your members specified a maximum number of paid posts, we will honor this cap post-migration.

More resources to help you switch

For more help and FAQs on how to switch the subscription billing, please head to our Help Center. If you’re ready to migrate to subscription billing from a per-creation billing model, fill out this form to get 1-1 support from our team. Our team is here to make the migration as seamless as possible, and we have more case studies, articles, and videos to share throughout the rest of the year.