How Swiftologist’s tier “glow up” doubled their earnings 💰

Most tier restructuring challenges aren’t really about pricing. It’s about whether your tiers still feel clear and worth it to the fans you’re trying to reach. A few signs you might recognize:

• Your benefits grew over time, and now your tiers feel cluttered or unclear

• Fans don’t know which tier to pick, or why they’d upgrade

• Your pricing no longer reflects the work it takes for you to deliver the benefits

You don’t need a high-traffic moment to refresh your tiers. But when an opportunity does come along, being ready can make a meaningful difference.

All of these signs were front and center for podcasting team Zachary and Madeline, who host several pop-culture podcasts from one page on Patreon, Swiftologist. When they anticipated a surge of attention tied to Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl, they made a deliberate move: they rebuilt their Patreon tiers around what fans actually valued, anchored their membership around a clear $10 tier, and launched their updated tiers with a limited-time discount and free trials.

The strategy paid off: in three months, they more than doubled their monthly earnings.

Here’s what they did, and how you can apply the same principles to your own tier refresh.

Leaning into what their audience actually wanted

For Zachary and Madeline, pop culture commentary is the fun part — and their Patreon is where that fandom energy turns into a real community. After years of podcasting, they launched on Patreon not just as a revenue stream, but as a dedicated home base for listeners (especially Taylor Swift fans) who wanted more ways to engage.

They also learned something important about their audience: when a major Taylor Swift release hits, interest spikes — and Swifties go looking for deeper coverage. So when Swiftologist started to hear that a new Swift album might be coming in late 2025, they didn’t wait for the surge to happen — they planned for it.

“With Life of a Showgirl, we knew that we were going to get a bump… so, we were like, ‘Okay… how can we make it as big as possible?’”

—Madeline Rubicam, Swiftologist

Turning demand into a tier strategy

In anticipation of the album launch, Zachary and Madeline turned to revamping their membership tiers in hopes they could turn that potential traffic spike into a growth opportunity. A few signals informed their approach:

Their $6 tier had become the “everything tier.” Zachary and Madeline were posting a huge volume of content at the lowest price point, which meant the pricing no longer reflected the work they were putting in.

Meanwhile, their $10 tier was under-enrolled and felt superfluous. Members told them they didn’t clearly understand what made it meaningfully different from the $6 one.

Those signals helped them make a focused decision: instead of trying to grow all of their tiers, they kept prices the same across all their tiers but chose one to scale — their $10 tier — and adapted the membership benefits around that goal.

What they changed to make a premium tier an easy “yes”

To make the $10 tier feel clearly like a premium offer (without creating a ton of new work), Swiftologist reshaped it around a few practical moves:

• Create a simple, high-value unlock: video access. The $6 tier kept audio-only access to Patreon-only episodes, while the $10 tier unlocked a video component for that same content — a clear upgrade many fans wanted.

• Add value without adding workload. Instead of inventing brand-new content, Zachary and Madeline repackaged what they already make for the $10 tier: occasional paywalled episodes from Madeline’s The Lizard Review podcast, plus new lower-lift formats like Zachary’s “New Music Friday” reaction videos. The $10 tier became a “little bit of everything” hub across their different content streams — a direct response to fans who wanted access to all three of their podcasts in one membership.

• Rewrite tier descriptions so the value is obvious. Swiftologist recognized their tier copy had become too wordy and “quirky,” which made it hard for new fans to know what they were signing up for. They rewrote benefits to be clear and scannable, then explained the update in a free post so members could quickly grasp what changed.

The guiding principle throughout was simple: evolve the offerings in a way that adds clarity and value. And when something had to change, Zachary and Madeline made sure the overall offer still felt like a net win for members.

Read the full post here.

Pairing tier restructuring with a promotion

Once their tiers were rebuilt around the $10 “hero” tier, Zachary and Madeline added a second lever to capture new demand: a limited-time discount for new members timed to the Life of a Showgirl release. They ran 20% off a first month of membership across all tiers during the release window. They also offered free trials so new fans could experience the “best of” what Swiftologist offers before committing long-term.

Then they promoted it like a launch. Because their YouTube channel is where most people discover them, Swiftologist talked about their Patreon and limited-time offer wherever they could. They mentioned the discount consistently in episodes throughout the lead-up period, with visual overlays edited directly into their videos so the offer was impossible to miss. They also published a content schedule on Patreon ahead of release week, making it easy for potential members to understand what they’d get — and when! — if they joined.

To keep the tone fun (and very on-brand for Swiftie culture), they framed the campaign with a simple tagline: “Every Showgirl needs an entourage.”

The good thing about Swifties is we love drama and making a moment of something… so we would wear ridiculous headpieces in the videos to promote the campaign. We really committed to the bit and made it feel like a very exciting occasion.”

— Zachary Hourihane, Swiftologist

Watch how they promote their Patreon here.

The tradeoff: short-term drop-off, long-term growth

The discount drove a huge influx of new members: Zachary and Madeline said they quadrupled their audience during the campaign month. After the release window ended, some of those new signups dropped off — which felt jarring since they had been used to steady growth. But the long-term growth still held.

As Zachary shared, “It was hard to watch the numbers go up, up, up and then crash really suddenly,” but “that’s the nature of a discount.” What mattered most was their paid membership stabilized at roughly double what it was before — making the campaign “definitely worth it.”

Summary and key takeaways

If you’re considering a tier refresh of your own, here are the three lessons Zachary and Madeline learned along the way:

1) Pricing changes and promotions don’t have to be scary

When you approach changes to your membership with intention — and explain the ‘why’ to your audience — people will usually come along with you. Members (even long-standing ones) respond well when they understand what’s improving and how the change supports the work they value.

There’s always some risk and you may see churn, especially after a discount campaign or a noticeable tier shift. But when changes are thoughtful and communicated clearly, long-term growth often outweighs short-term volatility.

2) Pay attention both to when your audience is energized, and to what they’re showing up for

Swiftologist didn’t just pick a random time to restructure. They aligned their changes with a moment of heightened audience attention, and they designed the tiers around what fans consistently value most (like their reaction content and the video experience).

You don’t have to have a high-traffic moment on the horizon to make a change; what’s important is that the strongest tiers are built around what your fans consistently show up for.

3) When revising tiers, adapt or add: don’t subtract without offering something in return

Tier evolution is normal. As your membership grows, your structure has to evolve with it. But if you do need to remove a benefit, make sure members feel the overall offer is still a net win, through a replacement or clearer value elsewhere.

Swiftologist treated tier repricing as part of building a sustainable membership, one that supports the work, meets fan expectations, and doesn’t drain the creator.