You may have heard of platforms like Substack and MasterClass. They have popularized a powerful concept in digital content delivery: the membership site.
These membership platforms enable individuals across various fields, from actors to artists, to share their unique skills with their members in as a pay per view content.
Your membership site with the genuine fans are eager to dive deeper into your expertise, willing to pay for exclusive access to your content.
Table of contents:
What are membership sites?
A membership site is an online platform where you offer subscriber-only content, products, or services to members. The protected, private content can be video tutorials, blog posts, e-books, or exclusive webinars.
When you create a membership site, you protect your content so that only your subscribers – members can view it.
You can offer a free membership plan, or paid membership plans to monetize your WordPress blog.
Membership VS subscription
Subscription is primarily a payment model with an emphasis on transactions of recurring payments; whereas, membership sites emphasize a sense of belonging by offering exclusive content and special benefits to subscribers.
Case study: Is my business a good fit for a subscription membership model?
Plugin to create membership site on WordPress
To transform your WordPress site into subscriber-only content website you’ll need to install a plugin.
If you are a Stripe user, you can use a membership plugin like WP Full Pay to make your content private and create membership tiers with Stripe.
WP Full Pay is a WordPress plugin to accept Stripe payments. With its membership addon, WP Full Members, you can create a membership site on your existing WordPress site.
With WP Full Pay, you can create the following payment forms:
Learn how to integrate Stripe to WordPress with WP Full Pay.
WP Full Members addon overview
WP Full Members is a fully-featured membership add-on for the WP Full Pay.
It’s a WordPress membership plugin with that allows you to accept recurring revenue for your subscriber-only content with Stripe
WP Full Members allows you to create and manage protected content that only your subscribed members can access. You can offer a variety of membership options, each linked to different subscription plans you create on Stripe.
Moreover, you can also send customizable registration emails to new members.
With the customer portal you create, you allow members to upgrade or downgrade their subscription plan.
WP Full Members plugin for WordPress
Now you’re familiar with the features of the WP Full Members, let’s see how we can create a membership site with it and make content private with it.
How do membership – pay per view sites work?
Jump to:
The general signup flow of membership forms
- Your potential members start by signing up using the WP Full Pay forms you create.
- Once they do, WP Full Pay creates a subscription and customer profile in Stripe.
- WP Full Members then creates a WordPress user and assign roles to this user, and creates a member profile that links the user with their Stripe customer profile and subscription. It also sends login details to the new subscriber.
- Finally, WP Full Pay displays a success message or a thank you page to complete the process.
How do members access the protected content?
- The Full Members checks if the visitor is logged into WordPress.
- If they are not logged in, it redirects them to the WordPress login page.
- After logging in, the plugin directs the members back to the protected content.
- The plugin also verifies if the visitor has the appropriate membership level to access the content. If they do not have access, it redirects them to a “You are not allowed to view this page” message.
- If everything checks out, the visitor is able to see your protected content.
How do members manage their subscriptions?
Your members will use WP Full Pay’s customer portal you create to manage their subscriptions.
On the customer portal, they can:
- Change subscription levels (upgrade/downgrade).
- Cancel subscriptions.
- Update payment card details.
- Download invoices.
If a member changes their subscription, their membership level updates automatically.
Check the guide for instructions on how to set up a customer portal page.
Revoking access to protected content
- If a member cancels their subscription, their membership ends automatically.
- If a payment fails and after trying again a few times, the membership ends automatically too.
How to create a membership site on WordPress with WP Full Member?
Considering you’ve installed WP Full Pay and installed WP Full Members addon, you can create membership site following these following steps:
Learn how to configure WP Full Pay for your WordPress site.
Learn also how to configure WP Full Members.
1. Create subscription plans
On your Stripe dashboard, navigate to Products -> All Products
Here you should create a subscription product to collect recurring payments from your members.
Here’s an example of 3 pricing tiers for membership levels named Bronze, Silver, Gold:
Once you’ve created the subscription product on Stripe, you need to create a subscription form to add to your page where members will subscribe.
You can create an inline or checkout subscription form from WP Full Pay -> Forms -> Add form.
Learn step-by-step guide on how to create a subscription form.
Next, you should insert the subscription form to the page where you want to subscribe to your membership site.
To embed the form, you just need to copy the shortcode form the WP Full Pay -> Forms page.
Copy the shortcode and embed it to a page:
4. Assign subscription plans to membership levels
In this step, you need to create membership levels.
To assign a subscription plans you’ve created on the step 1, navigate to WP Full Pay -> Settings -> Add ons -> Full Members -> Roles in your WP admin panel.
Hit the Save settings button.
5. Customize the email template sent with login credentials
When a member subscribes to access your paid content, WP Full Members sends a registration email with login credentials to new members.
In this step, you may need to customize the email.
To tweak the email, navigate to WP Full Pay -> Settings -> Email Notifications -> Templates on your admin panel.
6. Tweak the settings
It is optional but recommended step to finalize settings and make your membership site live.
Head to the WP Full Pay -> Settings -> Add-ons -> Full Stripe Members -> Settings page on WP admin to review the default settings.
Wrap up
By using WP Full Members plugin, you can create protected content and turn your WordPress site to a membership site.
WP Full Members is an addon for WP Full Pay, which is a WordPress plugin that handles Stripe payments for creating membership payment forms.
You can buy WP Full Pay + WP Full Members bundle which is more cost-effective. You can learn more about it here.