Add Paid Membership To An Email List You Already Have

This article is about the Proxi admin app at app.proxi.co.

You've spent a couple of years building a list. Eight hundred people share their email to see your downtown map and your member deals, and it works. Now the board wants dues — a real paid membership, monthly or yearly, with something worth paying for behind it.

The worry is obvious: don't break what's already working. Eight hundred people who gave you an email shouldn't wake up locked out. This guide adds the paid level on top without touching them.

Open your program, go to Who Can Join, and click Add a Level → Ask for payment. Name it something with a bit of warmth — "Patron," "Supporter," "Champion" — and set the monthly price. Add the yearly price in the same step if you want one; people pick when they join, and the saving is worked out for them.

You'll need a connected payout account before this will take a payment. If you haven't done that, it's a one-time setup in Settings → Payments.

Everything you'd already put behind the email level is still on the email level, and only there. Your eight hundred people still see all of it. This is deliberate — adding a level never re-files your content or downgrades anyone. It also means your new paid level opens nothing yet: a level only opens what you put on it.

Now the real decision, and it's an editorial one rather than a technical one. Go to What's Included and tick the paid level on one or two things. Something new works better than something you've been giving away, because taking things away from a list you built on goodwill costs more than it earns.

Good candidates: a shop-local guide with real discounts, a members-only event series, a benefit card with a code your businesses honor. Leave the walking map and the deals list where they are — and if paying members should keep seeing the deals list too, tick the paid level on it as well. A level doesn't include the others, so what a paid member sees is exactly what you've ticked on Patron.

Associations rarely charge everyone the same. An individual pays one rate, a nonprofit another, a storefront another, and all of them get identical benefits. Open the menu on your paid level and choose Add a Way to Pay for each, naming them the way your board does. They sit side by side on the join page, and whichever someone picks, they land on the same level.

Your existing sign-ups are already an audience under Audiences, so this is one message away. Say what's new, what it costs, and what stays free — being plain that their current access isn't changing is the part that keeps trust. A signed-in member sees the paid level still on offer on the join page, so upgrading is a click rather than a new sign-up.

Open the join page in a private browser window with a test email. Join at the email level and confirm you see everything you saw before and nothing you shouldn't. Then check the paid items are still locked. As the owner you bypass everything, so this is the only honest way to look at it.

A founding rate for the first fifty people doesn't have to sit on the page for everyone — mark it Link Only and send it to the people you want on it. And if you'd rather steer newcomers to yearly, mark it the Default so it's the one already selected when the page opens.