‍Introduction

Founded in 2013, Ghost is a popular blogging platform for writers and creators. It is an open-source, non-profit organization with a mission “...to create the best open source tools for independent journalists and writers across the world, and have a real impact on the future of online media.” With our web3 ethos and focus on interoperability here at Loop, we love Ghost’s open-source mission and have been excited to see crypto writers head there to write about the industry. Now those writers can use Loop's crypto autopay to collect on-chain crypto subscriptions to support their work. 

We want to give a special thanks to 0xTrends who was our initial pilot client for this crypto payments integration. The founder of 0xTrends, Kofi puts out incredibly useful content week after week helping his readers understand the crypto world and build their own skillsets as data analysts.

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Background 

Much has been made of crypto’s ability to enable small-scale creators to monetize their efforts, particularly in the world of blogging. We wanted to support that initiative. The majority of crypto bloggers are still beholden to credit card payments where they are losing 3% or more on transaction fees every time a subscriber makes a payment. This is a lot of money over time!

While crypto rails may be cheaper, using them has not always been easy. That’s why we built Loop, to simplify crypto payments. Loop Crypto brings automation to crypto payments and streamlines subscription payments with autopay. This allows writers to spend more time writing and less time chasing down payments or managing subscribers.

With Loop’s crypto autopay, your subscribers can use our web2-like checkout process and sign just one on-chain transaction. Crypto autopay is then enabled so that authorized funds are pulled from your subscribers’ wallets at the configured cadence. Loop automatically captures the payment metadata and pushes that information to Ghost, allowing you to manage all of your subscribers in Ghost, regardless of their payment method.

As you integrate Loop and use it alongside Ghost, please reach out if there are additional features you would like to see. You can email us at hello@loopcrypto.xyz or send us a note on Telegram.

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Technical Details

At the moment, we are using Zapier to enable the automation between Loop Crypto and Ghost. Using a Zap from Zapier is a great lightweight solution that will have you up and running in minutes.

At a high level, you will use Loop to power your checkout experience, just as you would Stripe or PayPal for fiat. Your customer will land on a Loop checkout page, authorize funds to be debited from their wallet, and complete the checkout. In the background, Loop will notify Ghost via webhooks pushed to Zapier that a new subscriber has signed up and paid. Ghost will then know to add that subscriber and unlock access to your content. Follow the five steps below to get started.

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Setup Process

1) Get setup on Loop:  Reach out to Loop and request an account. We will have you up and running in minutes. You will simply need a wallet address where you want your subscribers’ payments to be directed. Loop supports payment in most ERC-20 tokens and is available on Ethereum, Polygon, BNB Smart Chain, and Arbitrum with more chains coming soon. You can find the most up-to-date information on the networks we support in our documentation.

2) Create your first subscription: Log into your Loop Company Dashboard and navigate to the “Subscriptions” page. Create your subscription plan on Loop Crypto’s dashboard. (Note: You can also do this step via the Loop API.)

• Set plan name, amount, billing frequency, and tokens accepted

• Ensure that auto-invoicing is set to “On.” This means that customers will be automatically billed each pay period (e.g., monthly, annually, etc.)

• A unique checkout link will be created for your subscription plan

Subscriptions page on the Loop company dashboard

Loop automatically generates receipts, upcoming payment reminders, and late payment notifications. These updates will be sent to the email associated with the wallet address that a customer uses to pay.

3) Embed the checkout link within the Ghost site: You can use some basic HTML code to embed the checkout link into your Ghost site using the website editor box in Ghost.

Select the HTML card.

Here is some sample HTML code. Update the href to your unique Loop Crypto checkout item link.

4) Configure Zapier account: Navigate to Zapier. We have already built a Zap that will listen to Loop Crypto’s payment webhook and then create a new member in Ghost. 

• If you do not already have a Zapier account, you will need to create one. Zapier is free to get started.

• No need to worry about the Trigger portion of the Zap. Loop will configure its TransferProcessed webhook to send to the Zapier endpoint for this trigger.

5) Add Ghost API key to Zapier: For the Action side of the Zap, you will need to add your Ghost site. Within Ghost, you will need to retrieve your Admin API Key and API URL, and then enter them into the Zap.

• To retrieve your Admin API Key and the API URL within Ghost, go to Settings > Integrations > Zapier

• Enter the credentials into the Zapier account access popup

That’s it! Once a new customer goes through the Loop checkout flow and successfully makes a payment, a new member will be created in Ghost. After subscribing, a member will receive an email from Ghost where they need to click a button in the email to confirm the subscription.

Happy writing and please reach out if you have questions!

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About Loop

At Loop Crypto, we build infrastructure to unlock truly programmable money and create an open financial system. We enable crypto payments for 50+ of the top web3 companies, including Pinata, Neynar, Paragraph, Kaito, ETHGlobal, and ENS, supporting millions of dollars transacted and saving thousands of hours.

Whether the payment is one-time or recurring, Loop supports a broad range of payment use cases: subscriptions, one-time charges, recurring bill pay, loan repayments, and donations. Our integrations with Stripe, QuickBooks, and Xero make it easy to implement crypto payments within your existing operations. 

If you’re ready to get started, book a call with our team to get started in minutes.

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