Membership Website Ideas: 7 Paid Communities You Can Start

Seven membership site ideas, with membership websites you can copy: a hobby club, a course academy, a professional network, a local guide, a customer community, a paid inner circle and a creator fan club. Each one is shown on a real WordPress site.

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Looking for membership site ideas? Here are seven membership websites you can start, each one shown on a real WordPress site. Every one of them sells the same three things. Access to people, access to knowledge, and access to you. The first four. A hobby club, a course academy, a professional network and a local guide. Idea one. A hobby club. This running club votes on the weekend route inside its own group. The weekly run is an event that members sign up for. People pay to belong to a club like this. Idea two. A course academy. Members work through lessons, and their progress is saved. A course membership is billed monthly or yearly, with its own plans. Idea three. A professional network. Members search a directory of people in their field and connect. Add a job board, and membership pays for itself the day someone finds work. Idea four. A local guide. A map of the places worth knowing, with a community of neighbours around it. Each place has a page with reviews, and business owners can claim their own. Three more, and these fit you if you already sell something. A customer community, a paid inner circle, and a creator fan club. Idea five. A customer community. Buyers of your product ask questions once, and the answers stay findable. Idea six. A paid inner circle. One private room that only people on your plan can enter. Idea seven. A creator fan club. Your news goes to the people who follow your work, on your site, not on a social page. And all seven get paid the same way. A plans page, with your own prices. The steps are the same for every idea. You set a plan and a price. You lock a room, or a single post, behind that plan. Members pay online, by card or PayPal, into your own payment account. And access opens straight away, with nobody adding people by hand. To pick yours, ask who already comes to you with questions, and what they ask for most. Then start with one room for those people. You can add the rest later, when members ask for it. One last comparison. An audience on a platform follows you. Members on your site join you. The platform holds the list, or you do. Their address, or your own domain. And what you earn is decided by them, or by the plans you set. Somebody will build the paid community for your subject. Every month you wait, your people get used to meeting somewhere else. BuddyNext is the free community plugin for WordPress. Pick one idea and open your first members room this week. Get BuddyNext. The link is below.