How to Create a Membership Website

Setting up a membership model for your special content and services is a rewarding way to monetize a website. You need a strong community that will pay to access your expertise and creativity, alongside a website with membership functionality. Blending these two into a coherent structure makes a membership website successful. 

In today’s module, let’s learn how to create a membership website to convert your visitors into paid members. 

Determine Your Needs and Wants

Start by thoroughly understanding your motivation for starting a membership website. After that, analyze what you have and determine what else you need. You should also envision a goal for your membership website to measure its performance. 

1. What benefits can you offer to your community members? Brainstorm and jot them down. Pick things that align with your passion, current offerings, brand image, and goal.  
2. Do you already have a budding community (perhaps in socials)? Then, research if they would be interested in your offerings, how much they would be prepared to pay, etc. If you are building from scratch, use tools like Google Trends to find your target audience, then learn about them through socials. 
3. What resources and setup do you have? If you have a WordPress website, you can easily convert it into a membership website with plugins. You can also create a WordPress website from scratch offering membership registration and community features. Using a dedicated membership website builder like SubHub or YourMembership is another option. 

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While one-size-fits-all solutions like SubHub can be excellent for a specific purpose, I prefer using WordPress for its unmatched customization. You can choose from numerous membership-supported themes, while the plugins can help you set it up. 

Choose a Membership Model

Once you know what you want to offer and through which platform, you can ponder the best membership model for your needs. Choose wisely as various models work for different types of content and community. The primary determinants should be: 

• What content, service, or perks are you offering? 
• How much are you going to charge for membership? 
• Is multi-tiered membership viable for your community? 

Subscription-based Model

This is the most common membership model, offering subscribers site-wide access for a recurring monthly or annual fee. You can publish all your content behind a paywall, so only the paid members can access it. The subscription-based model is perfect for an online learning platform like Coursera, newspapers, or niche magazines with regular updates. 

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Lifetime Membership Model

It is a model whereby a customer pays only once to get lifetime access to your product or services. This model guarantees instant cash flow and is often preferred by software developers and subject-matter experts. This can also work as an alternative to monthly subscriptions. 

Multi-Tiered Membership Model

You can offer a multi-tiered membership package if you have a wide variety of content for different target groups. Within this model, you can create different levels with particular layers of restrictions, access, and perks. It is perfect to attract new members at a lower cost before intriguing them to upgrade to a higher level. Website hosting platforms are a perfect example. 

Freemium Membership Model

Offering free membership is another way to attract new members to your community. Generally, these models offer some basic features for free with exclusive items restricted to pro users. Canva is an excellent example, where you must pay additional money or a subscription fee to access crucial features like image background remover. 

Free Membership Model

Unlike the freemium model, you can offer a community-focused system where members don’t have to pay anything. It is particularly effective if your main purpose is to capture email and other leads possibly for other revenue streams. It is also essential for community forums where you need an ID to distinguish different activities. Free membership models can also include paid-for features for extra revenue (i.e., Reddit). 

Set Up Your Website

Choosing a membership model should paint a clear picture regarding how you need to set up your membership website. As mentioned before, you can use a membership website builder, or turn your WordPress website into a membership site. 

Build a Website from Scratch

If you don’t have a WordPress website, you can build one quickly and without much cost. Check out my guide on how to create a WordPress website. A membership site requires relatively more bandwidth and enhanced security features than a blog, so make sure to choose a managed WordPress hosting provider. You can also find themes (i.e., Membershiply) with in-built community features that will eliminate some steps later. 

Toggle the WordPress Settings

WordPress has a function to enable new user registration. Simply log in to the WordPress dashboard, then, click “Settings > General.” Look for “Membership” and click on the box next to it. This enables the “Anyone can register” option. After that, hit the “Save Changes” button to finish. 

Technically, any visitor can now register on your site. Nevertheless, you still have to complete a few more steps to make the feature available on the front end of your site. 

Choose a Membership Plugin 

Like other WordPress plugins, a membership plugin can enhance your site with comprehensive community management features. Many plugins are available with different features and functionalities, making it difficult for beginners to make the right decision. While choosing a membership plugin, you should consider the following: 

• Does it offer the functionalities required for your specific membership model? 
• How many of the features do you find useful? Does it have good reviews?
• What’s the cost of using the plugin? Is it within your means? 

Based on these criteria, the following are my recommendations for the three best membership plugins for WordPress: 

1. Members by MemberPress

Why spend money when you can set up a multi-tiered membership restriction using Members? And it’s all for free. The plugin can also restrict your entire website for members or create an entirely separate private portal. It also has a “Login” widget that you can put at your site’s header so members can access the restricted area from any page. 

2. MemberPress

The pro version of the above free plugin, MemberPress is the most favorite solution for an advanced membership site. It has all the functionalities required to restrict content with a paywall, bill subscribers, create a members-only dashboard, etc. 

However, it requires a paid subscription starting at $179.50/ year (after discounts). The plugin also automates the creation of all the essential pages - registration, login, account, password reset, pricing, etc.

3. Paid Membership Subscriptions

With a focus on streamlining membership revenue generation, the Paid Membership Subscriptions plugin is my third favorite WordPress plugin for community building. You can create excerpts of restricted blogs or members-only content subscriptions. It also integrates with WooCommerce seamlessly, enabling e-commerce websites to offer a private store. 

The plugin also generates all the important pages, including a dedicated pricing page to upsell your membership packages. It’s a freemium product, with most key features included in the free plan. 

Install a Membership Plugin

Once you choose a plugin, install it by navigating to “Dashboard > Plugins > Add New Plugins.” Search for your preferred plugin name to find, install, and activate it. 

I am using the Paid Membership Subscriptions plugin as an example. Others except MemberPress work similarly. 

If you want to use MemberPress, buy it from the official site, download the file, and upload it to your website. Simply follow the installation guide on their website.

Set Up the Membership Plugin

With all the tools in your hands, it’s time to give your website a makeover and turn it into a membership network. The Paid Membership Subscriptions plugin has an effortless setup wizard that will walk you through every step. Access it by navigating to your Dashboard and hitting the “Paid Members Subscription” menu from the left sidebar. 

1. Create the Necessary Pages

At first, the tool will prompt you to create some pages for your users. It offers 4 options by default. Simply hit “Continue” after your selection to get ahead. You can manually create other necessary pages like FAQ. 

2. Set Up Payment Gateways

On the third page of the Quick Setup Wizard, you will find the options to set up gateways to receive payment. You can connect Strip, and provide PayPal or other payment information before hitting “Continue.” You can also customize how currencies are displayed. 

You may still have to add some API credentials for PayPal to work. If so, navigate to “Paid Member Subscription > Settings > Payments” and fill out the necessary fields. 

3. Create a Subscription Plan

After a quick setup, navigate to the “Subscription Plans'' section from the left-side menu. You can create a subscription plan and a pricing page to inform visitors in this section. 

Click “Add New” to create a new subscription plan, then fill in the form. You can name and describe your plan, set a price and duration, assign a user role, etc. Setting up a free trial period for new users is also possible. Once done, hit the “Save Subscription” button. 

Create multiple plans by following the same instructions. Most membership websites offer at least three subscription plans. 

You can edit your plans by heading to “Subscription Plans” and clicking “Edit” underneath the designated scheme. You can also add “Upgrade” and “Downgrade” options. 

4. Create a Pricing Page

You need a pricing page to inform your visitors about the costs and benefits of your membership plans. So, after creating the plans required by your membership model, create a pricing page by hitting the designated button. It is next to the “Add New” button on the “Subscription Plans” page. 

The plugins have 4 templates along with the order of display. You can preview the template before selecting it. Once you hit “Submit,” you will be redirected to the newly created page, which you can edit and customize further using the site’s default page editor. 

5. Set Up Content Restriction

Navigate to the ”Settings'' page of Paid Member Subscriptions and hit the “Content Restriction” tab. Here you can establish what happens when a visitor tries to access a page or part of the site restricted for members. You can also edit the default or craft new messages for logged-out users and non-members. 

The tool also offers a nifty setting to customize the restricted content preview. Simply scroll down to the bottom of the page and choose how much (if any) of the premium content will be displayed to non-members. 

Customize User Navigation

With so many new features and pages added to your site, it’s time to redesign the user experience interface. Even if you use a member-focused theme, you should consider the following: 

• Do you have Call-to-Action buttons to encourage new member registration?
• How effortlessly can a non-member find your registration page?
• Does your landing/ pricing page clearly state your offers and benefits?
• Can the members log in from any page on your site? 
• Do you need any additional pages with terms and conditions? 

If not, you should fix these issues from the WordPress Dashboard. For instance, you can navigate to “Appearance > Menus” to add new menu items or restructure your current setup. Creating new pages would require you to visit “Pages > Add New Page.” Once done, you have a fully-fledged membership website ready to generate revenue for your efforts. 

Publish Exclusive Content

As you finish setting up your membership website, you can focus on creating and publishing content that keeps members returning to your site. The process of publishing a post remains the same, except that you now have an additional option to restrict it. 

Once you create a new post or page, you can make it members-only using the “Content Restriction” feature on the editor. Simply scroll to the bottom of the page and toggle the display options – “Display For.” 

Adding a specific restriction message for each post is possible by toggling the “Enable Custom Message” button and adding your desired texts. 

If you want to restrict previously published posts, simply open the post and apply these newly added settings. Don’t forget to hit “Update” to save your changes. Once updated, the page or post will no longer remain available to non-members. 

Well done! You have now created a user-friendly membership website. Now it’s time to announce it to the online community through organic and paid advertising campaigns. You can always chop and change based on the membership website’s performance. 

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