Offering perks for paid subscribers

Buttondown gives you several ways to share content with paid subscribers — pick one with the flowchart below.

flowchart TD
    teaser["Send some content to non-paying customers?"] -->|"Yes"| A
    teaser["Send some content to non-paying customers?"] -->|"No"| audience@{ shape: stadium, label: "Use custom audience" }
    A["Is the premium-only content at the end of the newsletter?"] -->|"Yes"| paywall@{ shape: stadium, label: "Use paywall" }
    A["Is the premium-only content at the end of the newsletter?"] -->|"No"| blocks@{ shape: stadium, label: "Use free/premium blocks" }

    click audience href "api-emails-type"
    click paywall href "fancy-mode#paywall"
    click blocks href "fancy-mode#freepremium-blocks"

At a high level, you have three options:

1. Send explicitly to paid-only subscribers. By filtering the audience of your email to premium subscribers only, you can completely gate off a given email from non-paying subscribers. This is the simplest option and works great if your scheduling cadence is, for example, to send two emails a week: one for all subscribers and one for paid subscribers only.
2. Use a paywall. If you want to only block off a portion of your content for premium subscribers, you can insert a paywall in your newsletter. All content before the paywall is visible by everyone, but only premium subscribers can see content after the paywall. This works great for authors who want to give free subscribers a little teaser of what they're missing out on.
3. Fully customize the content by using free and premium blocks. All content placed inside these blocks are visible only by free or paid subscribers, respectively, giving you really fine-grained control over what your paid subscription affords. For instance, authors can use this to hide ads for paying subscribers or to include custom content in the middle of a newsletter for paid subscribers.

When the entire email is for paid subscribers, the simplest path is to scope the audience itself.

1. Compose your email as you normally would.
2. In the email's sidebar, set the audience to Premium.
3. Send. The email will be delivered to paid subscribers only; free subscribers won't see it at all.

This is the cleanest option when you have a regular cadence of paid-only sends, and it requires no special blocks or paywalls inside the email body. See the full list of audience types for variations like "Premium and trialing".

If you have a paid newsletter, you might want to send a "teaser" version of the email to your free subscribers.

A teaser email displays an abbreviated section of a newsletter email to free subscribers, with a prompt to subscribe to continue reading. This can encourage free subscribers to upgrade to a paid subscription.

Here's how to send a teaser email:

1. Navigate to the "Emails" page of your Buttondown account and start a new email draft.
2. Insert an empty line at the point in your email where you'd like to hide the remainder of the text.
3. Type /paywall and press Enter.
4. Everything below the paywall block will only be visible to Premium subscribers. Regular subscribers will see only the text above the paywall, followed by a link to pay for a subscription.
5. Send the email to a Public audience. This way, the email will be sent to both paid and unpaid subscribers—but the different types of subscribers will see different content.

When premium content is interleaved with free content — rather than placed neatly at the end — use free/premium blocks. These give you per-section control over what each audience sees:

• "Free-only" blocks render for free subscribers only. Useful for ads, upgrade prompts, or alternative copy targeted at non-paying readers.
• "Premium-only" blocks render for paid subscribers only. Useful for bonus content, links, or perks tucked in the middle of an email.

You can use both block types in a single email, and combine them with a paywall if you want. Send the email to a Public audience so both groups receive it; each subscriber will only see the blocks intended for them.