Subscriber Migration Guide: Patreon to Ream

This guide will show you how to migrate your subscribers from Patreon to Ream while maximizing your revenue and minimizing your stress and time spent in this process.

Step 1: Launch Your Ream and Update Any Subscription Links to Direct Readers to Ream

Launching your Ream is something we will cover more in best practices for content and tier migration. But before you begin migrating subscribers, you will want to ensure you have launched your Ream so that new subscribers can join your tiers.

The next crucial step is to update anywhere that you link to Patreon on your site and the back matter of your books to Ream. This way when new potential subscribers click on your subscription, they will see Ream and join there.

Here’s a checklist of places to ensure your links to Ream are updated (or add links to your subscription there if you haven’t already):

• Links in bio sections of social media and serial fiction platforms
• Call to Actions during the back matter of books or at the end of chapters on serial fiction platforms
• Links on the header/footer of your author website
• Links in the footer of your newsletter or in any welcome sequences for new subscribers
• Links in link aggregators/link-in-bio tools such as LinkTree

Step 2: Unpublish Your Tiers on Patreon and Redirect to Ream

This process takes a few minutes to do and makes your tiers invisible on Patreon so new readers can’t subscribe and will instead join your Ream. The good news is that existing subscribers on your Patreon tiers will remain subscribed and continue receiving benefits, that way you can slowly phase out your Patreon in favor of Ream.

You can unpublish your tiers by logging into your creator account on Patreon and:

1. Click on the Page controls “…” button
2. Click the Edit Tiers link from the page editor menu
3. Click the Edit tier button
4. Scroll to the bottom of the tier editor and click on the Unpublish button > Click Unpublish to confirm

You’ll know that your tier was unpublished when you see “Unpublished at [ DATE ]” for that tier.

You can keep a tier unpublished for as long as you’d like and even republish it at a later date.

Now with your Patreon tiers unpublished, you can edit your About Section on Patreon to include a message similar to the following at the very top:

“Thank you so much for checking out my subscription! I have moved my membership to Ream where you can join to continue receiving awesome stories from me. Just click here to become a member: [link to URL of public Ream Page]”

Note: Even after you unpublish your tiers, readers can still click on posts that are gated for specific tiers on Patreon and subscribe to your tiers that way. This is why it’s essential to add a Call To Action at the top of your Patreon About section directing people to your Ream.

Step 3: Announce Ream Migration to Existing Subscribers on Patreon

Things are getting real now! It’s time to announce the launch of your Ream to your existing Patreon subscribers. First things first, do not delete your Patreon or cancel any existing subscriptions. It takes time for audiences to migrate. Sometimes as little as 2-3 weeks and sometimes longer than 2-3 months. In that process we want you to maximize your revenue. That means leaving your Patreon open so that before people migrate, they will still be paying you monthly.

Here’s how the migration process will look like in practice:

1. Reader unsubscribes from your Patreon
2. Reader resubscribes to your Ream. Note: Often times readers upgrade to a higher tier during this switch, especially if they originally joined your Patreon before you set up those higher tiers.

However, the one kink in this process is billing cycles.

On Ream, we bill readers upfront for their subscriptions. So if someone signs up for Ream on April 18, they will be charged upfront for their membership on April 18 and again on May 18.

Billing cycles on Patreon and other platforms vary, but a common billing date is the first of the month.

This leaves us with two options:

1. We can tell all our subscribers to move at or near the first of the month to ensure a smooth transition between existing cycles.
2. Launch on a date that doesn’t line up with our readers' billing cycles and have them pay you again for that tier. Alternatively, you can refund readers for unused time on either Patreon or Ream when billing cycles don’t line up.

The approach you take is up to you, but when it comes to refunds, prorations, and other ways we can make the fairest and most seamless transition for your subscribers possible on Ream — we are always here to help. Just contact us at support@reamstories.com with any specific questions.

As far as announcing your Ream launch to your readers, this will go in 3 waves.

Wave 1: Announcement to Patreon Subscribers

First, export a CSV of your most up-to-date existing subscribers and people who have unsubscribed from you in the past. This will give you a full list of your Patreon subscribers so you can announce your Ream launch to them.

Next, you will email this list to let them know about your Ream.

The most crucial step in this process is picking a date that you will launch your Ream by and a hard deadline for your subscribers to switch to Ream.

We recommend a 30-day window for most authors making this switch so that your readers are incentivized to take action as soon as possible. During this 30-day migration period, we recommend you update on both Ream and Patreon like normal, but after the 30 days begin slowly phasing out your Patreon (more on this in the next step).

This means you would send your readers a message similar to the following:

"Hey everyone!

As some of you may already know, I’ll be switching to Ream from Patreon starting on May 7, 2023. Ream is a subscription platform built specifically for fiction authors and readers and makes my life a lot easier as a storyteller and your life a lot better as a reader.

It would be great if you could make this switch starting on May 7. All the tier rewards that I have will be identical on Ream and be priced the same as well. The only difference is an even better experience for you!

If you don’t make this switch by June 7, then you will begin to see fewer updates on Patreon.

Why is that?

It takes time to manage a subscription platform and having to post content in two places adds hours of work per month into my schedule which means fewer awesome stories and other content for you.

So, please sign up to Ream at your desired tier here: before June 7.

It means so much that you would continue to support me! As we make this transition, I am here to help in any way. I recommend making the switch as soon as possible, and if you were billed recently on Patreon, I’d be happy to refund you for unused time on your subscription for this month.

In addition, if you’d like to know more about using Ream or have any questions about the platform, never hesitate to reach out to their support team of fellow authors and readers just like us at support@reamstories.com.

I hope to see you all on Ream soon!"

Wave 2: Announcement to All Readers

This is when you will share that you have launched on Ream to your entire mailing list, social media accounts, and other places you can reach your readers.

This message will serve both as a reminder to existing subscribers on Patreon to make the switch and as a way to promote your subscription to potential new subscribers in your fanbase.

Wave 3: Follow-up with Existing Subscribers

This last Ream migration wave is another email to your existing readers on Patreon (those who have not made the switch yet). I recommend following up with them close to the end of the migration period you set. So if you have a migration period of 30 days, you can send this communication sometime in the final week of that period.

This message can be similar to your first message but with the added caveat of mentioning that the deadline to move to Ream is coming up soon and you recommend switching now so that your readers don’t miss any valuable chapters or benefits.

Which about that… just how do you phase out your Patreon benefits? That’s the next step :).

Step 4: Sunset Your Patreon

This is the final step in your migration process. The goal here is to continue moving any stragglers who did not move during the initial migration phase from Patreon to Ream.

If the initial launch was completed successfully, all new subscribers should now be joining your Ream and the majority of your existing audience should also now be on Ream.

For many authors, they will choose to run Ream and Patreon in concurrence with one another for an extended period of time. That is completely allowed! Both Ream and Patreon’s TOS allow creators to have multiple subscription platforms.

But if you are tired of updating on multiple platforms and having to spend the extra time to manage two subscription platforms — then sunsetting your Patreon may be for you.

In this step, you will start to update on Ream before you do so on Patreon. The best method I’ve seen is to only login to Patreon every other week or once a month to make new chapter posts and respond to comments. When you do this, you can also remind your readers that you will be on Ream more often and that your readers on Ream will receive chapter updates and other news earlier because that’s the subscription platform you are moving to.

You can then set a final drop dead date when you will stop updating on Patreon entirely. You want to set this date when you are confident that almost everyone will be moved over to your Ream except for the last few stragglers who may not even check their subscription for updates.

Typically an additional 60 days is a good time frame for most authors, but based on your individual circumstance, you may want to do shorter or longer than that.

On the drop dead date, you can make one final post on Patreon directing existing subscribers to Ream. At this point, hopefully, nearly everyone on Patreon is now on Ream. You may have some readers who are still subscribed to you on Patreon and have not moved to Ream. That is okay! For those readers, you can send them a final email letting them know about the switch. Some may not respond and will be happy to continue supporting you on Patreon even without the benefits. That’s great!

Unless you have 0 subscribers on Patreon, you should keep your subscription open so that you can keep making revenue from your last straggler subscribers.

With this process complete, you have now migrated your subscribers to Ream. Yay! If done correctly, 90-100% of your Patreon subscribers will now be on Ream and existing subscribers may have upgraded + gained new subscribers on Ream to actually increase your overall subscription revenue.

To top it off, you still will generate revenue from any stragglers on Patreon, but won’t have to update on that platform and can instead spend your time on Ream and ultimately more time writing amazing stories.

If you have any questions about this guide, please email us at support@reamstories.com.

We’d love feedback from authors on how we can improve and create other guides that would be helpful.