WordPress is one of the most popular website-building systems available. It has evolved into a platform that can serve almost every requirement, despite its initial focus on blogging alone.
Want to utilize WordPress to create a section of your website just for members i.e. members only content? You’re in luck because creating a WordPress membership site is not particularly challenging. This is due to the fact that you may create a membership site far more easily using a few alternative methods.
You can earn money online by charging visitors for access to a community, premium services, and content on a membership website.
We’re going to walk you through the process of making a WordPress members-only area in this post. To cut a long tale short, unless you are an expert programmer, you will require a plugin.
Millions of companies, including e-commerce sites, news sites, gallery sites, restaurants, agencies, affiliate marketers, etc., use plugins for members-only content for WordPress areas. They are the ideal method for creating exclusive communities and generating ongoing revenue.
Although creating a WordPress membership website might seem difficult, it isn’t. Simply pick the best membership plugin, install it, and set it up, and your membership section will be ready in no time!
Well, WordPress plugins for members only content are widely available. We’ll review the top membership plugins in this article so you can pick the one that works best for your company. We’ll also show you how to use the best plugins to create a membership area.
Now let’s begin with…
What All Are We Covering:
What Is a Membership Site?
Before we get started, let’s quickly discuss what membership sites are and all of its advantages.
A secret component of a website that is only accessible by authorized users is known as a members-only area. For instance, MasterClass is a well-known membership website where students can access recorded lectures from professionals in a variety of subjects by paying a membership fee.
Let’s define some words clearly…
An area of your website that is exclusively available to members is known as a members-only area. These are often paid members. Additionally, a site is often referred to as a membership site if it features a members-only section.
Websites that sell physical products or digital downloads frequently include membership areas. It gives sellers the ability to limit all or a portion of the website’s content, services, or goods.
A WordPress membership area is the ideal approach to make a secret space on your website for whatever purpose you need it.
Several key elements make up members only content websites. Which are:
Restricted Content
Content is the key component of a membership website. The concept is to limit access to content according to a user’s level of membership. The cost of access increases with how premium the content is.
When it comes to content…the possibilities are endless. You may provide digital downloads (podcasts are a well-liked option, for instance) or simply content for a WordPress post or page. Even better, you could use a membership model to develop and market online courses.
Membership/ User Registration
You need a user registration system so that users may access the content they want. WordPress does have one of them built-in, but it isn’t strong enough to handle member-only material on its own. Sadly, it’s a little trickier than just making a signup form.
There are several access tiers for many member only content websites. Free trials are occasionally available. Sometimes, they request an email address in exchange for free stuff. Whatever the arrangement, it will require a membership system to function.
Online Forms
Of course, you’ll need a mechanism for users to sign up for your website. Forms are crucial for members only content websites because of this.
Some WordPress form builders include the capability to independently establish a membership website.
On the other hand, certain membership plugins come with excellent forms. And for those of you who wish to design your users’ ideal membership experience? A fantastic form builder and a great membership plugin combined is the best solution!
Payment Methods
Forms are one thing, but you’ll also need to think about payment options based on the size of your membership region. There are two perspectives to consider:
- Payment gateways
- Payment structure
The technology that enables you and your online forms to receive payments is known as a payment gateway. Authorize.net, Stripe, and PayPal are a few such examples. Even though most individuals have credit cards, not everyone has a PayPal account, which makes it occasionally problematic.
The manner you will charge users to access your restricted material is referred to as your payment structure. You occasionally give a free trial before switching to a paying membership. Users may occasionally be charged a fixed rate for unlimited access.
Regarding the payment structure, there are numerous options.
What all matters In the end is that you want to maximize profits. Use a payment method that offers value for the money spent and a gateway that your clients are familiar with.
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What Are the Benefits of Having a Membership Sites
Most Common Categories of the Membership Market
Source: profitpermonth
A growing number of people are using membership websites due to the various advantages they provide. Companies create membership spaces to get the following advantages:
- Increased traffic and income
- Encourage community
- Make a lead list
Let’s dive into each of these advantages in more detail.
1. Monetary Benefits
A members only content site is one of the most consistently successful ways to generate cash. Almost anything can be sold in membership areas, including guides, e-books, articles, cloud-based services, and even exclusive discount codes.
One-time payments or recurring payments can be made for goods, content, or services.
Businesses benefit greatly from recurring payments. Recurring payments don’t require any active marketing efforts, unlike other marketing tactics (like email marketing and social media marketing) where you have to actively work to get clients to buy again. Businesses can concentrate only on satisfying their clients.
2. Community Building
Communities can be used to maintain consumer interest in and engagement with your brand. To create a community, forums, Slack groups, and Facebook groups are frequently used.
3. Collecting Leads
Users that sign up for access to your membership area give you vital information like their names and email addresses in addition to making a financial contribution. For sales efforts like Black Friday sales, new product releases, brand awareness drives, etc., you can use this data.
It should be noted that you can gather leads without providing a paid membership service. Many companies put restrictions on certain sections of their websites to encourage visitors to register if they want to access hidden content.
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4. Grow Your Email List
Your email list will be populated by interested individuals who are already familiar with your website and more likely to respond to your emails when you add registered users to it. Your attempts at email marketing will benefit from this.
Why Do You Need A Membership Plugin?
The base of your WordPress site are plugins. Whether you need to add contact forms, enhance SEO, speed up your website, build an online store, or provide email opt-ins, they add crucial features. With a plugin, your website can accomplish anything you need it to.
What does a plugin for memberships do?
- Limit who has access to your content
- Use drip content to maintain readers
- Accept dues from members
- Offer specials and promo codes
- Change user profiles or revoke user access
There are many more reasons to utilize a membership plugin on your WordPress site in addition to the principal ones mentioned above:
- Automated notifications and emails
- Welcome and login pages
- Integrated third-parties
- Responsive and mobile-friendly design
- Website protection and SSL payment methods
- Analytics for members
- Public forums
- Friendly user interface
A membership plugin is always designed with one thing in mind: helping you build and run your WordPress member only content site.
So while you can piece together a membership site with an assortment of other WordPress plugins, it often makes sense to bite the bullet and pay for a full-scale solution.
The Best WordPress Membership Plugins
You require a membership plugin in order to build a WordPress members section. This section will cover 4 well-liked WordPress membership plugins that thousands of companies have used and evaluated.
Take a backup of your complete website before continuing. Your safety net is your backup. Installing plugins is required in the subsequent steps, and as you may already be aware, doing so increases the risk of a website crash. If that occurs, you can use that backup to swiftly restore service to your website.
The best WordPress plugins for members only content websites are:
Membership For WooCommerce
The Membership For WooCommerce plugin is feature-rich, well-supported, and easy-to-use premium solution for all eCommerce store owners to sell and manage membership plans. You can build a WooCommerce membership website for revenue creation using this WooCommerce plugin.
- Allow individual product discounts for membership owners only
- Select product tags, categories, and sections for WooCommerce members-only content
- Combine multiple membership plans benefits into one
- Send membership plan actions related to Emails
WooCommerce Memberships
Another well-liked membership plugin is WooCommerce Memberships by SkyVerge, although as you can see, it’s made specifically for WooCommerce websites.
You may create invite-only member areas, invite-only reward programmes, free trials, and much more with this plugin. The fact that this plugin is an e-commerce plugin is the main selling feature of the members section. As a result, you will be selling membership to the members area, and to power the payment gateways, taxes, products, and other features, you must use the WooCommerce plugin.
Subscription for WooCommerce Plugin
With a Subscription for WooCommerce plugin, the admin can enable subscription prices for a one-time purchase of products. With the Subscriptions for WooCommerce plugin, merchants can create special WooCommerce subscription coupons for subscription-based products that are valid exclusively on all products for WooCommerce subscription products.
Store owners will be able to sell subscription services and products through membership subscriptions and customers will be able to leverage membership discounts in the same interval.
Paid Member Subscriptions
With the help of this Paid Member Subscriptions plugin, you can build a fully functional membership website with options like content restriction, lifetime memberships, levels of membership, PayPal and Stripe payment processing, etc.
How to Set up a Members-only Area on WordPress Websites
With the popular plugins in mind, here’s how to go about setting up a members-only area on WordPress websites.
1. Start a WordPress Site
This ought to be the obvious first step! If you haven’t set up hosting or a WordPress site yet, take into account the following advice:
Select a URL that appeals to your potential members and has SEO potential.
Look for a host that focuses on WordPress. Many hosts will automatically install WordPress for you!
You need to be sure you are utilizing the appropriate WordPress platform before you start building a membership site. It’s true that WordPress comes in two of its attires.
Since self-hosted WordPress.org allows you unlimited access to all the features and tools you require, we strongly advise using it.
You will require a WordPress hosting account, domain name, and SSL certificate for a self-hosted WordPress website.
And tada! Now you have a website of your own🤩.
2. Choose a Membership Plugin
You’ll probably need a plugin to assist in creating your members-only area, as we hinted earlier. Except if you know how to programme a login form or registration pages, of course! You may easily set up your site using a premium membership plugin, as previously mentioned. You can get started by configuring the plugin’s options page.
Additionally, you may get away with using a reliable plugin if all you want is a basic members-only section.
3. Create Your Restricted Members-Only Content
You will need to start working on the content, regardless of whether you are creating posts, pages, courses, audio, or video. In all honesty, this will be the most challenging aspect of your membership website.
You might also want to think about including a membership directory on your website. This increases value and aids in member retention.
4. Build Your Audience
They’ll come if you build it, they say. While Kevin Costner and the guys may have found success with this, it will most definitely fail online! Additionally, it will take some time and effort to grow your following. As a kind of advertising, several membership websites provide free content to pique users’ interest.
Others produce blog posts with SEO potential in order to attract members. You might even consider advertising.
Expecting the audience to find you overnight is totally unrealistic.
Eg- To join the member only content for YouTube you can refer here (join, pay and you can be part)
Grow Your Business to the next Level
There you have it, then. You now understand how to use a WordPress membership plugin to construct a membership website.
Would you like to learn about additional strategies to increase your online income? View more of our articles to expand your online business.
So why are you still waiting? Start using the most potent WordPress plugin right now.
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About the Author: Rashmeet Kaur
