Having a thriving Discord community is great - but if you're not getting paid for your time and effort, what's the point? That's why we're going to teach you how to charge access to Discord today in this complete guide.
Within our other articles, we have covered how to sell access to your Discord community. If you haven't had the chance to read our full explanation on creating a paid Discord server, we encourage you to start there.
Why Charge for Access to Discord Server? The Benefits of Server Subscriptions
At first, the idea of charging people to access your Discord server may seem counterintuitive. After all, why would anyone pay to join a community when there are so many other options available for free? But the truth is, charging for access to your Discord server can actually be a smart business move, and here's why:
You can provide more value to your members👐
When you charge for access to your Discord server, you have the resources to provide your members with more value. This could be in the form of exclusive content, early access to new features or releases, personalized support, or even access to other paid resources or services. When people are paying to be a part of your community, they have higher expectations for the value they receive, and you can use this as motivation to go above and beyond in creating an exceptional experience for them.
You can create a sense of exclusivity and belonging🫂
People love to feel like they're a part of something special and exclusive. By charging for access to your Discord server, you can create a sense of exclusivity and belonging for your members. They'll feel like they're part of an elite group of people who are truly invested in the community and the content you provide. This can lead to a stronger sense of community and loyalty among your members, which can translate into more engagement and support for your brand or business.
You can monetize your community🤑
If you're running a Discord server for your business or brand, charging for access can be an excellent way to monetize your community. You can use the funds generated from membership fees to reinvest in your business, hire new team members, or even provide additional resources or services for your members. By monetizing your community, you can turn your Discord server into a sustainable and profitable business model.
You can better control the quality of your community✅
When you charge for access to your Discord server, you have more control over who joins and how they behave. This can help you create a higher-quality community by weeding out trolls, spammers, and other undesirable members. By ensuring that only people who are truly invested in the community join, you can create a more positive and productive atmosphere for everyone.
The Different Ways That You Can Charge Access to Discord
Whop offers a number of different payment options you can choose from, for when you decide to charge access to your Discord. These include the following:
- Credit and debit payments
- One-time crypto payments
- Renewing crypto payments
- Free-to-join
Let's unpack each of these options 👇
Credit and Debit Payments
The most common payment type on Whop today is card-based payments. We use Stripe to power our backend payment processing systems. With fiat payments, the two ways of charging users are:
- Subscriptions (renewals): A monthly subscription allows you to charge your users on a recurring basis each month to retain access to your Discord server, similar to how you pay for your Netflix subscription.
- One-time payments: This allows you to charge your users one-time for either lifetime access to your Discord server, or a set expiration time period.
The majority of businesses on Whop today use fiat payments as their primary accepted payment method and charge in the form of a monthly renewal.
One-Time Crypto Payments
In addition to enabling users to pay in FIAT currency, Whop enables users to use one-time crypto payments. In order to do this, we have integrated 'Coinbase Commerce'. You can use one-time crypto payments to allow users to pay for lifetime access to your Discord server, or they can pay monthly and manually top up their subscription.
Some of our current support for crypto includes: Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDC, USDT, Ape Coin, and more
Crypto Renewal Payments
Our latest addition to payments is our renewal-based payment option for crypto. To do this we enable users to pay wrapped Ethereum (wETH) to automatically renew their subscription.
What Is wETH? 🤔
wETH is another currency that is tied to the price of Ethereum and will always have the same price. However, wETH is a different type of token, an ERC-20 token; enabling us to automatically withdraw from your wallet.
wETH enables Whop to use an allowance of function and does what it sounds like and pre-sets an amount that the user is okay having charged to their wallet, you can think of this as a spending limit on a debit card. You can set the cap of how much we can withdraw and the rest is history (This can be updated in the hub at any time).
There are two ways you can set up server subscriptions for crypto renewals:
- You can charge a flat rate amount in ETH. ex: 0.1 ETH/month
- Or you can peg the monthly renewal price to USD. Say you want to get paid $100 per month regardless of the price of ETH, at the time of each renewal, it will take the current price of ETH and divide $100 by it, ensuring you always get paid in ETH, but that it's also always $100 worth of ETH.
Free-to-Join
If none of those sound good to you, you can always give away access to your Discord for free! This can be used for groups in beta or as a better way to gateway access to your group if you plan on staying free forever.
And if you plan on selling something else within your server, then a free server subscription likely makes the most sense - it'll help you get prospective customers in the door.
Which Server Subscription Payment Method is Best for My Discord Server?
Now - of all these different server subscription models, which is right for your unique Discord server? Ultimately, this is something only you can answer for yourself. For example - some Discord servers are better suited to a one-time crypto payment, while other servers are best suited to a recurring credit card payment.
Start Making Money with Your Discord Server
Creating and running a Discord server takes a lot of time and effort - time and effort that you should be getting paid for. If you sell access to your Discord server you not only receive payment for all of your hard work, but also create a more engaged community in the process as they want to make the most of their money.
It's never too soon or too late to start monetizing your Discord community - join Whop today and start making money!
