A subscription website can be an incredible way to make money online. Subscription websites are very flexible and can be customized to fit a variety of different websites and niches.
You can create a subscription website with gated content, a private members community, membership-based products, and more.
Reading: How to create a subscription website
In this article, you will learn the different directions you can take with a subscription website and how to create a subscription website step by step using WordPress and the Paid Membership Plugin.
Why creating a subscription website is a great idea
Your subscription website can take many forms. You can choose to create a subscription website from scratch or use it as an add-on to your existing website.
Here are three of the most common forms of subscription websites:
Sell Goods or Membership Services
If you run a WooCommerce website, you can create subscriptions for your products. A simple method is to bundle products that visitors normally buy together.
Instead of adding them to their shopping cart, they can choose to buy the bundle of goods together. They can even offer an option for a 10% monthly discount if they opt for a monthly subscription.
This works great for consumables that users need to reorder every month, such as coffee, dog food, supplements, etc.
You can also create an e-commerce site where certain products are reserved and available only for subscribers.
Create a community-oriented site (like Patreon)
Some types of websites can benefit from adding a community of members. This can take many forms, such as a subscribers-only forum, a monthly mastermind group, a freelancer network, and more.
You can also create a membership page that allows your readers to support your work and engage with them on a more intimate level, similar to Patreon.
Your visitors can subscribe to a specific tier of subscribers and receive specific “rewards” every single month. This can be exclusive content, monthly live webinars and more.
Restrict content with different subscription levels
If you have a large content-driven website, you can restrict certain parts of your website to paid ones subscribers. Remember how The New York Times offers a certain number of free articles per month before a user has to subscribe.
You can create areas of your website that only VIP -Subscribers can access. Or you can even create online courses that restrict you behind a paywall.
Another great example of this is blogger and author Mark Manson, who regularly publishes blog posts that are accessible to everyone who visits his website and offers additional monthly articles, audio commentary and courses for a monthly membership fee.
A quick and easy way to add subscription functionality to your website is through the paid membership subscription plugin.
How to create a subscription website
Creating a subscription website does not have to be complicated. With the right tools, you can create a subscription website even if you don’t have any technical skills.
You can follow three steps to create a subscription website using the Paid Membership Plugin and WordPress.
Choose the right platform
There are many different website building tools and platforms that you can use to build your subscription website. But there is one tool that holds a 37% share of the website builder market, WordPress.
Of course, you can use other tools like Wix, Joomla or Drupal. But WordPress is flexible, easy to customize and can grow with you.
- WordPress is completely free to use and install
- WordPress is an open source CMS, and that gives there is a large and vibrant community around the platform
- WordPress is the most popular website builder and has a huge community of contributors, so it’s very easy to find support for any issues you’re having
- The most popular e-commerce platform in the world, WooCommerce, is built on top of WordPress
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This guide will focus on building a website with user accounts, user profiles and membership options using WordPress .
Establish your website foundation
To lay the foundation of your website you need four things:
- A domain name
- A hosting provider
- A WordPress membership theme
- A free installation of WordPress
If you haven’t decided on a domain name or hosting, SiteGround is a great choice.Not only is SiteGround beginner-friendly and features WordPress one-click installation, you can also buy your domain name there.
Your choice of host is crucial as it affects your site’s speed and performance, and their team is the one you can count on when you’re having technical issues with your website.
When it comes to WordPress themes, there are thousands of different themes to choose from. The theme you choose will form the basis of your web design.
For your convenience, we’ve compiled a list of some of the best WordPress membership themes. These themes enhance the functionality of the paid membership subscription plugin and make it incredibly easy to create a functional subscription website.
Determine what type of subscription website you are building
Before As you start building your subscription website you need to determine what type of subscription website you want to develop, for example:
- You can sell members-only e-commerce products (physical or digital)
- You can create a community-oriented membership site like Patreon
- You can create different levels of subscription and grant access to different levels of content
- You can even create a whole one Store available to paid subscribers only
The type of WordPress site you build will change the type of functionality you need.
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Generally, a subscription has -Site other than requirements a standard WordPress website.
Here are some of the features you’ll need:
- Create and manage member subscriptions
- Individual pages or products only restrict for registered users
- Restrict access to an entire shop/site for members
- Create multiple membership tiers and price points
- Create user accounts with easy member management
The Paid Membership Subscription Plugin can help you with all of this and more.
Create Your Subscription Website
When you take care of your hosting and your domain name, installed WordPress and activated your theme, it’s time to start building your subscription website.
1. Install and configure the Paid Member Subscriptions plugin
The very first step is to install the Paid Member Subscriptions plugin. Once you have purchased the plugin, download a ZIP file containing the plugin.
Then open your WordPress dashboard and navigate to Plugins → Add new strong> and upload the ZIP file.
Once you click Activate, the plugin will be on your site gone live and you can start adding subscription features.
2. Set up a basic subscription website
We’ll start by setting up a basic subscription website.
To create your first subscription plan, navigate to Paid Member Subscriptions → Subscriptions and click Add New.
The first subscription you create is your main subscription. Any other plan you create is either a downgrade or an upgrade of this main plan.
When creating a new subscription plan, you have access to the following options:
- Subscription name. The name of the subscription plan. This will be displayed on the front-end and back-end of your website.
- Description. This is the description of your plan and will be displayed on the user registration page.
- Duration. This is the time your subscription is valid. If you want the subscription to be unlimited, leave the number at 0. The longest available subscription is one year.
- Price. This is the amount you charge users bill Subscribe to the plan. Leave this number at 0 if you want the plan to be free.
- User role. Here you can select which user role should be assigned to the plan. The best option is to create a new user role based on the subscription plan name.
Here is the registration page your front-end users will see to sign up for a simple subscription plan to register:
3. Set up content limits with subscription tiers
With paid member subscriptions, you can easily create a tiered pricing structure that allows your users to upgrade from their members area.
To subscribe to a subscription plan Create, Navigate to Paid Member Subscriptions → Subscription Plans.
You must create at least two subscription tiers for your visitors to choose from.
On the Subscription Plans screen, click Add new, here you can fill in all details about this membership level:
After you’ve created a few different tiers of membership, users can sign up for their preferred tier of membership through your registration form.
Here is your user registration form to be shown to your frontend visitors:
4. Set up different payment options
There are a few ve Various payment options and gateways that you can set up with this plugin. The main ones are adding a free registration, offering a free trial or offering recurring payments.
Registration fee
Registration fees are a Feature where you can charge your users an additional fee on top of the existing subscription fee.
To set it up, navigate to Paid Member Subscriptions → Subscription Plans → Edit your subscription plan → Set up registration fee.
Based on the above For example, users must pay a $10 registration fee in addition to the existing $14.99 membership fee. The sign-up fee only applies when a user creates their account for the first time.
Free Trial
You can offer your new users a free trial before incurring your membership fees. A free trial can be one of the best ways to encourage new users to sign up and eventually switch to a paid plan.
To set up the free trial, navigate to Paid Member Subscriptions → Subscription plans → Edit your subscription plan → Set up a free trial.
You can change the duration of the free trial specify court hearing. Once the free trial expires, users can upgrade to a paid plan if they wish to continue having access.
Recurring Payments
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You can use the PayPal Standard Payment Gateway to purchase recurring subscriptions to process payments. To use this feature, you need the PayPal Standard add-on.
To enable the renewal feature, navigate to Paid Member Subscriptions → Settings → Payments → Renewal.
Here are a few different recurring and renewal options to choose from:
- Customer opts for automatic renewal
- Always auto-renew
- Never auto-renew
5. Create a WooCommerce-Based Subscription Store
If you’re running a WooCommerce store, you have a few different options for adding subscriptions.
There’s a lot you can do with WooCommerce, and paid ones Member subscriptions, such as:
- Restrict individual products to paying subscribers
- Make your entire store members-only
- Offer discounts to your premium subscribers
- Add custom messages for non-members to encourage sign-ups
Restrict individual products
If you are a WooCommerce -Shop with many products, you may want to restrict some of them for non-members. Only members subscribed to the correct membership level can view or purchase these products.
To restrict product viewing, open one of your WooCommerce products. Scroll down until you see a box labeled Content Limitation.
Here you can specify which user level the product should display. In this case, the product will only be displayed for “Gold” subscribers. Users who are not signed in or do not have the correct subscription will see a screen like this:
Your other product restriction option is to only allow subscribers to purchase a specific product. This allows everyone to see the product, but only subscribers can buy the product.
This can lead to more subscribers as people who genuinely want to buy what you’re selling become members.
To restrict product purchases, open the product you want to restrict. Under the Content Limitation option, you will see an option titled Purchase Options.
Here you can select the membership levels that will allow you to purchase the product If you are not subscribed to the correct membership package, you will see:
Create a members-only store
Maybe restricting individual products isn’t enough, you might want to instead set up your entire WooCommerce store for members only.
This means that your WooCommerce store page will only be visible to users who are subscribed to one of your plans. Non-members can view those on your store page do not see the products listed.
To create a members-only shop, navigate to your shop page and click Edit Page en. Below the page content area you will find the Content Limitation field, here you can set which subscription levels can access your shop.
Just select which subscriptions you want to access the want to access the store page.
Members who are not logged in A screen like the following will appear on the right:
Additional advanced features
Besides the above features, here are some additional features that might be useful for your membership page:
1. Email Integration
Email integration allows you to send automated emails to users under various circumstances, for example:
- Automated emails about User registration
- Automated emails when a subscription is activated
- Expiry emails
- Unsubscribe emails
You can also use the email reminder add-on to send automated emails before specific times when events take place. For example, before a subscription expires, you can send a reminder email for your users to renew.
2. Stop account sharing
Account sharing is when multiple users use the same login instead of registering separately. This alone costs streaming giant Netflix over $135 million every month.
Enabling this setting will prevent users from being logged into the same account from multiple locations at the same time.
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3. Forum with bbPress
bbPress is a popular WordPress forum software. If you’re looking to create a members-only forum, this is most likely the software you’re using. You need the bbPress add-on for this feature to work.
They use the same Restrict Content metabox. When you are on your forum page, select the user groups you want to give access to the forum.
4. Taxes and EU VAT
If you run a WooCommerce store, you should calculate taxes based on your user’s location. Within WooCommerce itself, you can set up your tax rates for products.
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But if you want to charge and collect taxes on your subscriptions, you need the tax
