How to Make a Membership Site on WordPress, Step by Step

How to make a membership site on WordPress, step by step. This video walks through the four steps of a WordPress membership site: open sign up, build member areas, add plans and prices, and connect payments.

Transcript

How do you make a membership site? A membership site is a website where people sign up, and members get what visitors do not. That means members-only areas, plans with a price, and access that renews on its own. On WordPress it takes four steps. Open sign up. Build the member areas. Add plans and prices. And connect payments. Here is each one, on a real site, start to finish. Before you begin, you need three things. A WordPress site, a community plugin, and an account that can take payments. The community plugin is free. Plans and payments come with its paid upgrade. Step one. Sign up. Everyone who joins lands on your own member list. You decide who gets in. Anyone, invited people only, or people you approve one at a time. Step two. Member areas. Each one is a group with its own posts, its own members and its own privacy. What goes in a member area? A private group, or posts only members can read. A course, or events for members, if you add those plugins. Step three. Plans and prices. Give each plan a name, a price, and a monthly or yearly period. A plan can start with a free trial, and you can offer a coupon at launch. Step four. Payments. Connect Stripe for cards, or PayPal, or record offline payments yourself. Now look at it as a visitor. A person who is not on the plan sees that this area is for members only. The plans page shows your prices, and lets them compare what each plan includes before they pay. After they pay, access opens straight away. Nobody waits for you to add them. Renewals run on their own, and a failed payment closes the door until it is fixed. Members upgrade, cancel and download invoices themselves, so billing questions do not land on you. A welcome series emails each new member over their first days, so they find their way in. One screen shows how the membership is doing. And the member list stays yours. You can export it whenever you like. Compare that with doing it by hand. Invoices you send yourself, or a checkout on your own site. Chasing late payments, or renewals that run on their own. Adding people one by one, or access that opens when they pay. Names in a spreadsheet, or one member list. Every member you sign up by hand is work you will repeat next month. The sooner the site does it, the sooner your time goes back into the members. BuddyNext is the free community plugin for WordPress. Set up sign up and your first member area this week. Get BuddyNext. The link is below.