Gift memberships for the Academy: a prepaid pass with a smooth handoff to paying
Harvested 30 Oct 2026 ~20:12Z. Before this run, "gift membership" and "gift subscription" had 0 hits in INDEX.md. Existing skill ebook-gifting-christmas-gift-path-guide-email.md covers gifting e-books, and comp-family-access-separate-from-paying-members.md covers free family access. This skill covers a paid gift of the £49.99/mo academy. Status: PROPOSAL. Prices are fixed, so a gift pass is a new product and needs the project lead's GO before it goes on sale.
What the platforms that already do this have settled on (primary docs, read)
- Ghost (ghost.org, read 30 Oct):
- A gift is a one-time Stripe payment, paid at purchase "regardless of when (or whether) the recipient redeems".
- The recipient redeems through a link by entering a name and email, with no card.
- The gift must be redeemed within 365 days.
- One active gift per member, and gifts can't be stacked.
- A member who already has an active paid subscription cannot redeem a gift. They see a message saying so, and the buyer asks for a refund through Stripe.
- Gift members show in paid-member metrics, but you can filter them, and staff get a notification when a gift is bought or redeemed.
- Memberful (docs/discounts-and-gifting/gifts, read): there is a single gift purchase link per plan. The buyer enters the recipient's name, email and a delivery date. The recipient gets an email invitation to activate.
- Substack, via the WriteStack guide (6 Sep 2026, read; it's a third-party guide built on Substack's help docs):
- Gifts live at a permanent /gift URL.
- The buyer can tick "Schedule for later" so the gift arrives on Christmas morning, and most buyers don't know this option exists.
- Renewal reminders go out about a week before the gift ends and again the day before.
- Gift recipients who don't renew are warm leads for a later offer, not lost readers.
- Mistakes it lists: mentioning the gift link once and never again, treating it as December-only, and not telling the buyer what the recipient receives.
- The handoff problem: Matt Cronin (LinkedIn, ~Nov 2025, read) puts it this way: "gains are often short-lived because they break at the handoff". When the gift ends, the recipient can't take over payment without starting from scratch. A commenter describes the familiar call: "the confirmation email came to me, but you should get one too?"
Numbers: none of these sources publish gift-to-paid conversion rates. One magazine-publisher guide assertions a "20% revenue gain" for publishers that push gifts hard. I saw that only as a search snippet, from an unknown source, and didn't check it. Don't quote any number. Measure our own instead.
How to do it (the pattern)
- Sell a fixed term, not a recurring gift. Charge once for 1, 3 or 12 months. There's no subscription on the buyer's card, so a forgotten auto-renew can't come back as a dispute; Stripe charges £20 for each dispute (stripe.com, read).
- Give the buyer a code and a link, and let them choose when it's delivered. Default to "I'll hand it over myself" (they print or forward it), with a dated email as the option. Tell the buyer on the page exactly what the recipient gets.
- Make redemption take no card: name and email only. Refuse the code if that browser or email already has paid access, and offer a refund instead.
- Count it separately. A gift is revenue at purchase, but it isn't a recurring member. Keep three counts: paying members, gift members, family members.
- Plan the handoff before you sell. Send a reminder 7 days before the end and again the day before. Each reminder has a one-tap "continue at £49.99/mo" link that pre-fills the recipient's email. If they don't continue, they keep any free tier and get one later email, and that's it.
- Keep one permanent link (for example /learn/gift/). Mention it in December, and around St David's Day and 28 July if the academy is still running then.
How we apply it to Cedwyn (PROPOSAL, needs GO)
- Reuse what's already built. The /learn/ redeem endpoint already validates a hashed code and gives a browser 400 days of access (FAMILY-CODE.md). A gift is the same mechanism with three differences: a single-use code, an expiry matching the paid term, and plan:"gift".
- Mint the code server-side after a paid Stripe Checkout session, using the same {CHECKOUT_SESSION_ID} pattern as stripe-payment-link-per-scene-access-codes-own-entitlements.md.
- Show the code once on the thank-you page, and email it via the receipt.
- Options to put to the project lead, with no prices invented here: a 1-month gift at the current £49.99, or a 3-month gift at 3 × £49.99. Both keep the price fixed. Any discounted gift price would be a price change, so it's his call.
- member_sync.py: add a "gift" class beside "family" and keep it out of the sales alert. A gift purchase is still a sale, so alert on the Stripe payment, not on the redeem.
- Wording: neutral. Something like "Give the Academy: 1 month of full access, redeemed with a code, no card needed for the recipient." No explanatory block on shop pages (the project lead's 19:18 rule): put the details behind the ⓘ dialog, as in shelf-first-ebook-shop-info-modal.md.
- UK cancellation: the gift gives immediate digital access, so the same consent tick applies as for the per-scene codes. It's the buyer who agrees, at checkout (see the UK digital-content right-to-cancel skill).
- Before building, decide: whether a recipient who already has paid access gets a refund or the gift added to the end of their membership. Ghost refuses and refunds; adding the time is kinder but harder to build.
Sources
- ghost.org (read 30 Oct 2026)
- memberful.com (read)
- writestack.io (read; third-party guide, 6 Sep 2026)
- linkedin.com (read)
- stripe.com (dispute fee, read 30 Oct 2026)
Raw Markdown: academy-gift-membership-prepaid-pass-handoff.md · version and changes: changelog · machine index: agents.json