How YouTubers Can Maximize Revenue with Memberships and Digital Products

Patrick Stirling is a YouTuber who offers DaVince Resolve presets, tutorials, and templates. He's also one of the top-selling digital products creators on Fourthwall. In this article, he shares how he uses Memberships to drive engagement, offer additional value to his audience, and connect and grow his various revenue streams in one place.

What made you decide to offer Memberships in the first place?

The way Fourthwall offers memberships was the biggest factor in terms of why I decided to pull the trigger and go for a new platform. 

I already had YouTube Memberships, and the main perk I was offering there was a pack of digital products. For people who wanted to support me, I thought it was a really powerful way to leverage digital tools and provide a lot of value. Unfortunately, there was no way to do that natively on YouTube, so I was running the distribution through Discord. That meant there were several hoops my members had to jump through just to get the main perk. I also have some people in my audience that had never used Discord, so it made the process even more cumbersome for them. 

The option to have memberships on the same platform where I was offering those products, and to be able to easily create a members-only product or discount was a no brainer for me. 

How did you initially launch and promote your memberships to your community?

I actually promoted my memberships first, even before my store. I think I initially did a community post on YouTube as well as marketing to my existing members on Discord to say “Hey, this isn't like a hard switch deal, but going forward this is a platform I want to develop my memberships on a lot more,” so I quickly shifted some current members over then. I also just wanted to test the platform, so getting them over was great in terms of initial feedback. Those people were the ones who wanted to support me the most, so knowing I had a better cut on Fourthwall was a real early motivator for them. 

Whenever I update or release a new digital products pack, I’ll be sure to feature that in my videos and shout out that if you want this pack, you can also just become a member and get that pack and more included in the membership. 

I use Fourthwall’s integration with YouTube Merch Shelf to make sure all my digital products are showcased right where my content is hosted so when people are watching they can easily browse what I have available and purchase without having to leave the channel. 

I also make sure to feature my general tier of paid products on almost all of my videos, so that especially when I do a video or tutorial that's a little bit more basic about the software, then there's always that option right there to take it to the next level, and if you’re not ready for the premium stuff, here’s some free products you can check out for now. 

Why was it important for you to have your homepage, shop, and memberships all in one place?

Most people are very used to digital storefronts, so if they’re browsing the store, then see the option to just click over and sign up for a membership to be able to access all these additional products, that’s a good incentive. 

Previously, I had completely separate platforms for my free downloads versus my paid products, so the appeal of having a one-stop-shop for everything was very nice. Even just having analytics for my free products, plus payouts for both paid products and memberships in one place made tracking and managing the business side so much easier. There are certainly perks to having memberships natively on a platform like YouTube, but the benefits of hosting my memberships on Fourthwall, including the significantly better revenue split, made that a pretty easy choice for me.

I also have a lot of different ways that people come to the site. If I just had a members-specific platform, it would be a tougher sell to get people who watch my content to go somewhere off-platform. I'm sure a large number of people who watch my channel and ultimately become members didn't necessarily go to my website to become a member. I push people to my site for different reasons, and Memberships is just one of the channels that benefits from that.

Encouraging natural cross-promotion across all my products by having them all in one place makes sense. When you come to my site and see tabs for free products, premium products, and memberships, it's easy for people to click around (I also have links directly back to the YouTube videos where I initially released everything) and become interested in things other than maybe what drew them to my site initially. I can actually see in my YouTube analytics that a significant source of external traffic to my channel is coming from my website, and that’s definitely not something I saw on other platforms.  

How did you decide on a single tier strategy to start? 

Honestly, my initial strategy was just about replacing what I already had and giving my members a better experience. There weren't really any downsides to that – I thought “OK, let’s look at what I have on YouTube memberships and, as much as I can, 1:1 replace that while making the experience better for my members and getting a better cut on top of that.” So that was kind of obvious, and then I knew that down the road it was something I could choose to expand upon.

Was there anything you found to be particularly successful in getting more people to sign up?

The initial launch was honestly really successful. Beyond that, the biggest thing has always just been cross-promotion. I typically see a spike in members when I release a new product – really anytime I can drive traffic to Fourthwall, in general that benefits every single other thing I have there.

I’m definitely planning to put even more focus on Memberships, especially a higher tier that I’ll market a bit more directly. I'm confident that there are still plenty of people who are regular watchers but have just never clicked through to the right thing, or maybe they’re occasional enough that they've never seen my specific callouts, so I want to more intentionally reach them.  More recently, I tried a 24-hour sale on the site, and the response to that was incredible and helped us get to the 100 active members milestone.

What’s really exciting and surprising is that a solid percentage of those chose to buy an annual membership. I offer a 15% discount for that option, so it was cool to see that apparently that was significant enough to tip people towards that option.

How are you thinking about the next phase of your Memberships strategy?

So I have one $5 tier now and I'm planning on adding a $25 tier soon. That $5 tier is there for people who just vibe with what I do and want to support, and then with this higher tier, I want to be super intentional and offer something to people who really want to invest in learning specific things. 

I think that $25/month may sound like a lot for a standard membership for something like Netflix or YouTube TV, but if you’re getting something really tangible that will help you in your career, it becomes pretty accessible. For people that choose that tier, I’m not trying to entertain you – I'm trying to actively help and provide you with a valuable skill set, so that naturally shifts the value proposition.

I saw that some of my supporters will regularly buy a $5 or $10 product, then also tip $5 on top of that, so that helped me feel confident about the value I'm offering and that there are people who that want to take that next step. This will be a way to give those supporters more of what they want.

What’s your approach to deciding what perks to offer each tier?

So for my $5/month tier, you get a pack of over $100 of my paid products, which are presets, plugins, and templates for DaVinci Resolve (for video editors). So even as much value as that is, that entry-level is also really just the tier of people who like what I do and want to support me. One of the things I find really exciting about Fourthwall Memberships is the option to make supporting your work very accessible. 

At the same time, you also have the flexibility to offer something for a different level of supporter who is engaging with your content from a place of wanting to develop expert knowledge and grow their income, so if you have the tangible value to enable that, you can also offer a different experience for that use case.

It’s okay for every tier of membership to not be right for every person – you might have an audience that likes what you do, but also there may be a percentage of that audience that is motivated to climb the ladder of almost everything you can offer, so I love the ability to offer something to meet their needs as well. 

What’s your favorite Fourthwall Memberships feature?

I think probably the underrated feature of Memberships is probably just notifying members of anything posted in the Feed. That's massive because it’s close to a built-in email list for your most engaged viewers.

I also just did my first member-exclusive livestream stream using an embedded, unlisted YouTube stream posted to my Feed, which was definitely a cool test for what I can offer those higher-tier members. I also think doing looser live streams for all members is a really great idea in terms of giving the community something extra where you know, you don't really need to worry about being “on” because people who are going to show up for that are the people who already know you and support you. It lends itself to a much chiller environment, which is really appealing to me. 

What advice would you give other creators thinking about offering Memberships, especially when it comes to offering digital products as a perk?

Digital products are really powerful because you have the ability to create a huge inventory that costs you very little to offer. Whenever you’re offering something on a recurring basis, it’s definitely important that the revenue you’re receiving is at least equal (ideally greater) than the time and effort you’re putting in, while at the same time making sure you’re providing clear value to your members. 

Finally, retention is key. Fourthwall makes it easy to see when someone signs up and when they cancel. The engagement tools inside of the members area are really valuable for retention. Members automatically get notified whenever you post an update to the Feed, so as much as you can prioritize even smaller “checking in” posts or casual video updates, that will certainly increase that feeling of value and help keep your members engaged.

Again, it really just comes down to creating an all-in-one hub that’s interconnected and creates value for supporters at every stage of their journey with you.