A Group Subscription allows one person to buy a subscription to your Ghost site for a group of friends, other family members, co-workers, etc. These can be used by publishers as promotions (for example, two for one) or as a family plan. They allow one person to buy the subscription and invite other people without you having to do any extra work.
How do Outpost's Group Subscriptions for Ghost work?
First, you need to create a group subscription offer (or added a group subscription benefit to an existing tier) in the Outpost Control Center.
You can then share links to the group subscription offer in emails, posts or on social channels. You can also choose to have some or all of your group subscription offers available on a page on your site.
Outpost handles all of the notifications and the interfaces for creating, buying, and managing group subscriptions.
We do this, in part, by creating two new pages on your site: Extra Account Settings, and a Group Subscription Purchase page. You can see examples of those on our Outpost Ghost Demo site.
Users who buy a group subscription will be sent an email with a link to the Extra Accounts Settings page on your site, where they can send and revoke invites.
That page also lets them see how many of their group slots are being used and by who.
Recipients only have to click the link in that email to accept the group subscription, and they will then have a complimentary subscription that ends the exact same time as the group subscription buyer.
Outpost handles the renewal process so that you don’t have to keep track of anything.
Kinds of Group Subscriptions
Group subscriptions come in two main flavors:
- Group subscription offers
- As a benefit to an existing tier
Group subscription offers are the best place to start. This lets you create a group offer, get a url that you can share in an email or in post, and, if you like, have shown on a group subscription page on your site.
The group benefit applies only to that offer, and doesn't change your membership tier at all.
All group subscription members are currently on the same tier, except that people who get invited to a group membership don't get to invite other people to a group membership.
Group subscription benefits on Ghost membership tiers: This is a powerful way to add additional benefits to one or more of your membership tiers.
So, for example, you could give your top tier members the ability to give away 2 or 3 memberships, which could be a powerful incentive for people to pay for your top tiers.
If you add a group benefit to an existing tier, don't forget to add it as one of the benefits listed in the Tiers under membership.
A word of warning, however, once you add this benefit to a tier, it's extremely hard to undo if anyone on that tier has actually used the benefit.
The new group benefit will also apply to anyone already signed up on that tier.
Group Subscriptions are very flexible, so feel free to experiment with things like a two or three for one offer or something special for an upcoming holiday.
Due to the need to have user controls for invitations that live on your own website, the Group Subscription feature is Luna+ level only. If you are on the Space Station tier, you will need to upgrade.
Image Credit: NASA, Michelle Bouchard using Landsat data from USGS
Go to the main documentation page. Or contact support@outpost.pub if you have questions.