🌟 Editor's Note
👋 Hey What’s up! My name is Shawn, but you can call me “Paps”. I am a Music Producer, Software Dev and Creative based out of Central Florida. This newsletter is all about bridging the gap between tech & creativity, and helping you build your creative life and/or career. If you’re new here, thanks for looking. Consider subscribing if you like this week’s article!
🤝 Community

My friend Justin teaching creatives how to turn their art into business. Photo shot by me!
It’s been quite some time since I last made an entry into this series. Unleash Your Art, Grow Your Audience is an exploration in helping creatives use technology to build an audience around their art.
Community is a word I use often in Riffs Code Coffee because it is the most important piece of this creative pie. These words, my musings — none of it serves it’s purpose if you aren’t here to read them, which thank you by the way 🙂
Sure, I could write just for me, but what’s the fun in that? I have a personal journal already. This writing serves the purpose of using my experience and skills to help creatives like you grow your brand, your audience, and create real business out of doing what you love — creating.
I had a call last night with a friend who is getting ready to launch their most ambitious music project yet — and even more challenging — independently.
This person has achieved success in the music industry before, and understands the importance of community to back this project.
They wanted me to consult them on platforms that they could use or even build for their VIP experience, where the most fanatical of their audience could pay a monthly subscription and receive exclusive benefits such as merch discounts, and special access to the artist by way of messaging, streaming, zoom calls, and more.
We landed on a couple different options, and I wanted to share them here for the Riffs Code Community fam. There will be something for everyone here, from the established creative business owner to the local band, so pick the one that works best for you.
Platforms
Beehiiv
No better place to start than the platform that Riffs Code Coffee is built on! A weekly newsletter keeps your audience in the know, while also allowing you to show some personality behind the scenes. People want to connect with people, so a newsletter is a great way to start cultivating that relationship with your fanbase.
Beehiiv is incredibly easy to set up, free to use, and even allows you to build a website around your newsletter. Interesting enough, I didn’t code riffscodecoffee.com — that was all courtesy of beehiiv. Imagine yours being newsletter.yourbandname.com, or something like that. Pretty cool stuff.
BuyMeACoffee
Not so much a community page, but a great way to allow others to support what you do! Buy me a coffee is, well exactly that! Nothing like caffeinating your favorite creator to show some love. BuyMeACoffee also has a membership platform, where you can test the waters on tiered memberships for your super fans. It also has integrations with Discord and Twitter. Pretty cool stuff.
If you want to try this platform, use my referral link.
Which reminds me…i do love coffee → buymeacoffee.com/riffscodecoffee
Circle
This one is going to be for more established creatives that want the most from their platform. Circle does all of the things the aforementioned platforms do, but also blends in a social media aspect. There are chats, discussions forums, and you host your exclusive content here too such as courses, media, merch, and more.
Circle is a bit pricey for growing creators, coming in at 89/mo for it’s lowest tier, and 200/mo for the professional tier, but I figured I’d include it because I think that this is an extremely feature-rich powerful platform once your audience is big enough to offset the cost.
Discord
I can’t mention community and not mention a discord server! This is probably the best way to start building a community quickly, and for free! For anyone that doesn’t know, Discord was a platform designed with gamers in mind — however, that has evolved over the years into a hub for creative people, friends, and online communities to thrive.
Discord has a small learning curve, but that can be quickly overcome with AI and a few youtube videos. I highly recommend checking it out.
Would you join a discord community for Riffs Code Coffee? Reply or comment and let me know!
I hope that these platforms got the creative ideas flowing on how you can build a community around what you love. Don’t forget to check out part I and part II of this series if you haven’t, and I’ll catch you in the next one!
Did You Know? I help creatives and brands up their online presence with tech, and visual media. If you need better photography, want your website to stand out, or need assistance in optimizing your creative workflow, click here!
Build Fast. Break Stuff. Have Fun.