As a media maker, you can offer benefits as a thank-you to your members. These benefits are part of your plans and help motivate your community to support you.

There are so many different things you can offer. Some media makers are able to collect members without having to offer any benefits. Others offer their members a little thank-you in return, like a personal shout-out in a podcast. Other media makers want to be a little more exclusive, asking visitors to become members in order to access their content.

Media maker strategies – what will work best for your project?

Which strategy you pursue depends entirely on what will suit your project best.

A good place to start is by asking yourself what you can realistically achieve. Does exclusive content make sense for your project? How much dialogue are you prepared to have with your members? Should they be able to have a say in the content you produce?

On the other hand, you need to think about your members and their likely motivations. Are they people who would become members in order to gain access to exclusive content? Or might they support you even without any concrete benefits, simply because they want your project to continue?

Once you've got these questions answered, you can match your project with one – or more – of the following strategies:

General information for benefits

• The benefits should not be based on your goals, but on how you want to engage your members and what you can realistically achieve.

• You shouldn’t offer physical items, but focus on digital benefits, like early or exclusive access to content, an exclusive hangout or something similar. (Small physical gifts like postcards or printed versions of what you offer digitally are fine).

• Competitions and lotteries are not permitted as benefits.