Create a membership site with wordpress

Are you looking to make an extra income?

Is there a topic, idea or product that can easily be taught to others?

Than creating a membership site might the right thing for you!

I will show you a step by step process of how to create a membership website with WordPress. 

Let’s get started:

A membership site can be explained as a website that allows users with subscriptions or membership to access information that they otherwise would not have access to.

What Do You Need To Start A WordPress Membership Website?

Let’s start by talking about what you actually need to build a WordPress Membership site.

You’re going to need:

1. A domain Name
2. A hosting Account
3. A Beautiful Theme
4. A Membership Plugin

You also need a unique domain name to put the site on. If you don’t pay for one, WordPress will create one for you -usually something like yourwebsite.wordpress.com or yourwebsite.com/subfolder -neither of which is going to look good on an e-commerce site.

Number 2 on that list is probably the most important, since that’s what your site lives on. Without a good hosting provider, you’re going to have a bad time.

I’ve seen some terrible hosts in my day and it makes me want to pull out my hair when they advertise like they’re the best thing since sliced bread.

I’ll get into what you should look for in a host later, but keep it in mind while we’re going through this process.

Number 3 is important because there are a lot of free themes out there that are terrible. They look great when you first install them, but if you try to change anything -or worse update the theme- then you’ll end up in a mess.

You don’t want your theme to be the thing that holds your website back, you want it to complement everything else that’s already there.

The plugin that you use is another important one. There are a lot of free ones out there, but all they’re doing is linking up two or three different plugins and giving you access to their code repository. On top of that, they’re often half-functional.

Now that you know all the bare minimums to get started, let’s take a quick look at what you should consider if you want your website to be perfect.

If you’ve got everything so far, now you need to sell something. This could be anything from digital goods like eBooks, to an actual physical item someone could hold in their hands. If you’re selling either one of those types of products, then it’s time to start building your own website -which is the same as any other site.

Creating Membership Site Levels

Creating membership site levels can be one of the most intimidating tasks for a new website owner to take on. How do you charge people? What types of content should be available at each level? Do I charge monthly, yearly or otherwise? These are all questions that need an answer before taking on creating membership site levels.

There are many different ways to create membership site levels, but here are a few ways to get you started. *This article is not aimed at any one person or website in particular, I am simply trying to help new entrepreneurs with their future ventures.

The first thing that needs to be sorted out before creating membership site levels is the type of content available on each level – how much information, how many downloads, etc. The reason for this is that you don’t want to make your lowest membership level so high in content it discourages any one person from signing up. Nor do you want to restrict too much of your contents when creating membership site levels either because once a member pays for a subscription they will expect access to everything.

One way of allowing for this is to think about your content and create a grid that sorts it into low, medium and high information depending on the membership level. If you don’t know how much content to add then consider what you would expect or hope to be able to view if signing up each member. Then set out creating membership site levels so that you can offer a little more information or content for your premium membership.

One benefit of taking the extra time to sort out how much content is available at each level is that it will both allow members to feel they are receiving value (that they are getting what they pay for) and also helps with marketing your site – allowing them see what they are potentially missing out on.

Before creating your membership site levels, you need to decide how much to charge and what methods of payment will be accepted. This decision should ultimately be based upon your business plan and objectives: what is the maximum amount that can be charged for access? What do you hope to gain from the website in the long term? These are both questions you need to know the answer to before creating membership site levels.

Creating content for membership site

Creating content for a membership site is a big challenge. Actually, it’s probably the biggest struggle that I have faced since I started writing SEO-focused articles back in 2011. It doesn’t matter if you’re writing an article or an eBook, creating content can be difficult either way, but with a membership site, there are unique challenges that you must account for.

That’s why I’m writing this article, to help you in your quest of creating content that is valuable to your members and at the same time optimized in every way possible in order to drive traffic, increase subscribers and earn more money.

The best place to start when trying to determine what kind of content you should be writing is to ask yourself this question: “What are the pain points of my target audience?”

For example, let’s say you have a website about fitness. When it comes to writing content for that site, think about what your members want or need help with – losing weight? Staying motivated to exercise every day? Which exercises should I be doing?

Once you know what your members want answers to, write a content piece that covers all of those issues.

Include visuals whenever possible. When I’m writing an article for my membership site, I always have one or two images to help guide the user through the information and add some flair. People love infographics because they are visually appealing and make it easier to digest information.

I also like to mix things up and mix text with video whenever possible. A blog post with a video embedded in the blog post itself is sometimes more effective than just an article about that topic because it can be easier for users to watch and listen instead of reading all of the tips and tricks at once.

Mixing things up is a great way to create content that makes your site stand out from the competition. And remember this, you are competing with every site on the Internet for visitors so certainly keep them coming back for more.

And once your members have taken some action or solved some of their pain points through your useful content then never stop creating.

If writing is something that you’re not good at, then you can always outsource it to a professional. You’ll find lots of people on upwork and fiverr who are great writers and will be able to create content for your website at a fraction of the cost of hiring an in-house writer.

The most important thing is to just start writing. The hardest part is actually getting started and once you begin, it becomes much easier to keep going.

How to market your new membership site

One of the most important parts of running a successful membership, is promoting it.  Before you launch your site, make sure that you have a strategy in mind for how to market your new membership site.  In this article I will cover specific activities you can do before launching a website and once a website has been launched.

• Decide on what marketing activities you will do before launching
• Decide on what marketing activities you will do after launching your website

Before You Launch Your Membership Site: 

The main goal of these activities is to get potential members excited about the launch of your membership site.  These are some examples of things that can be done before launch:

Facebook Page

You can create a Facebook page dedicated to your membership site.  This provides potential members with an easy place to go where they can ask questions, leave comments, and read other testimonials about the membership site.   

Create a List of Potential Members

You should have some sort of list of people you want to invite to join your membership site.  To create this list you should go through the following steps:

• Gather emails for everyone who has bought something from you in the past
• Create a list of people who have shown interest in your niche but haven’t bought anything yet
• Create a list of friends and family members who might be interested
• Create a list of blogs, forums, or other sites you have mentioned your membership site on

You should email these people about the pre-launch.  This will get them excited and ready to join by the time it is actually launched.

Launch Social Media Site

One thing you can do to promote your new site before launch is to launch a page on the social media site of your choice.  This can be done quickly and easily in many cases.  You simply need to create an account for your website, update it with relevant information about your membership site, and send out a few tweets or Facebook message informing people that the site is up.

After You Launch You’re Membership Site:

After your website has launched, you are ready to start sharing it with the world.  This is something that can be done quite quickly and inexpensively with some creativity.  Here are some ideas for marketing activities after launching your membership site:

Email Your List Again

Once your website is launched, you should email the same people you emailed before launch to get them excited about your membership site.  You can also email everyone on your list again letting them know about the new features of the membership site, any special sales promotions you are running, and upcoming events. 

What is Mailchimp?

Mailchimp is an email marketing platform that includes features such as sending newsletters or other electronic mailings, building subscriber lists, creating reports of email campaign results, and more. It is popular for its easy-to-use interface, but it also has many other valuable features that are unmatched by most of the competition. Another unique feature is how Mailchimp offers templates to its customers without any extra charge.

Run Ads in Related Niches

One great way to get potential members is by advertising in other related niches.  For example, if you run a membership site on fly fishing, you can advertise in other related niches like outdoor sports and hobbies.  A good way to find out what type of sites are the most related is by using the Google AdWords Keyword Tool. You can get this tool for free by creating an account with Google.  Once you have an account, you can use the keyword tool to get an idea of what other sites are related to your website.  You should contact these websites and ask if it is ok for you to advertise on their site. 

Guest Posting

One great way to get links back to your website is through guest posting.  There are countless websites that allow people to sign up and write articles for them.  You can contact these sites and offer your expertise as a writer on their website.

All of the techniques described in this article require little or no technical knowledge, which means you can go from having no marketing plan to having one immediately with very little time invested.  Even better, all of the strategies are very inexpensive so you can market your website without spending lots of money.

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