The movie “Field of Dreams” taught us that if you build a baseball diamond in a cornfield, people will come. But that same strategy probably won’t work for your membership site. You can’t just build it and expect people to show up. Having proven strategies to grow memberships is a great way to turn your membership site into a thriving community and profitable venture.
A coaching membership site can be a great way to expand your offerings and bring in more income. Understanding the reasons for launching and the different coaching models can help you decide if a coaching membership site is right for your business.
Are you thinking about creating a new membership website? The start of a new year is a great time to begin.
Around this time, people are thinking about investing in themselves, new skills, and taking up new hobbies—and they’re looking for resources, courses, and communities to help them get there.
Plus, in a post-pandemic world, it’s more important than ever to choose a business model that can give you reliable income, long-term stability, and growth opportunities.
All of this makes a membership website an excellent business idea for the start of 2023.
But what kind of membership site should you start?
There are countless business niches you’ll encounter when looking for a membership idea. But to transform an idea into a profitable business, you’ll need to choose something that suits your skills and interests.
To help you get started, we’ve put together the best new membership site ideas for 2023.
If you have ever monetized a WordPress website, chances are you’ve heard of WooCommerce. No matter what product or service you’re selling, WooCommerce can help you build an e-commerce store. And with the WooCommerce membership extension, you can build a membership website. But how does WooCommerce Memberships stack up against Paid Memberships Pro?
Are you thinking about creating video content, or do you already create your own videos? There are various ways you can sell videos online. In case you haven’t heard, video is the thing these days. In fact, YouTube has evolved into the second largest search engine on the planet—and for good reason!
Video is the single most engaging type of content that exists. It adds tremendous value to many different areas of life, from education and social causes to entertainment and business.
But you don’t have to rely on advertising and sponsorship in order to make money with video content. You can sell videos online to members only—and it can be extremely lucrative.
For example, running a private video membership site allows you to:
- Monetize video content you’re already creating
- Increase community engagement around your own interests
- Build a foundation for expanding your business with related products and services
Interested? Let’s talk about how to sell videos online, set up a paywall, and restrict your video content to members only.
Membership sites that also operate a WooCommerce store may want to offer exclusive product pricing to members. While the WooCommerce Integration Add On supports sitewide or per-product discounts for members, this recipe sets all products in a specific category to be free when viewed by logged-in members.
This approach avoids editing each product manually and adjusts pricing in bulk based on product category and membership status.
People tend to join memberships for the sense of belonging, not just the content itself. That means they’re looking to feel like they’re a part of something.
One of the best ways to create this feeling is to reward loyal members with gifts—or “swag”. But what types of swag should you give your members?
In this post, we’ve put together 8 swag ideas that are sure to delight your members.
Plugins make it easy to build a membership on your WordPress site. But before you pick one, you need to think about what your membership needs, how scalable the plugin is, and how much flexibility it offers. This post reviews two membership plugins: Paid Memberships Pro vs. MemberPress.
If everyone else is doing it, would you? Well, maybe not, but you’ll want to, and you’ll probably at least consider it. That’s the power of social proof. And knowing how to grow association membership using social proof can help you hit your organization’s goals during the next enrollment period.
Create Your Paid Newsletter on a Platform That Grows With You You’ve found it: Paid Memberships Pro is the most robust membership plugin to sell paid newsletters. Build and grow your paid newsletter business on a platform that you fully control. Whether you are adding a newsletter to your existing membership site or starting from (more…)
Give your customers the option to select a membership duration and offer them a discount for a longer term when selling non-recurring memberships. This is a great way to collect a larger up-front payment from members and offer an incentive to pay for membership in advance.
In this code recipe, we demonstrate how to offer a 20% discount when members prepay for 2 years of membership and a 25% discount for members that purchase a 3 year membership in advance. If you have a membership level with a recurring subscription and would like to configure something similar we recommend using the Payment Plans Add On.
Running a membership business can certainly keep you busy. From creating and publishing content to managing members, subscriptions, and a website, it might feel like your list of tasks is never-ending.
If you find yourself agreeing with that statement, you’re not alone.
Fortunately, there are a variety of ways to make managing your membership business easier and more efficient. Want to learn how? Keep reading.
In this post, we’ve put together a list of 10 PMPro Add Ons that save you time and money—so you can get the most out of your membership efforts and put more of your energy where you want it to go.
The Presto Player plugin for WordPress makes it quick and easy to embed videos in your website. But where do you host your video files to get the most optimized streaming speed and protected video source files?
In this guide, we cover how to use Paid Memberships Pro, Presto Player, and Bunny.net, a low-cost video hosting service, to create a members-only video library.
Keep reading to learn how these three tools enable faster streaming and rich media analytics, with the built-in content protection to control who can see your videos.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) are coming up. This post summarizes some of my thoughts on massive sales, as well as a few tips for running a successful BFCM campaign.
Membership sites have become incredibly popular when it comes to making money online, but how do you actually take your membership idea from zero to reality?
Learning how to launch a membership site can take your business and earning potential to the next level, no matter what type of clothes are in fashion. 🚀
Whether you’re just starting a membership site or you want to grow your existing membership business, you need specific goals. If you want to actually reach those goals, it’s important to make sure you’re using the right WordPress members-only plugin for your needs.
But choosing isn’t always easy, but you can start by evaluating your business. This will help you understand the features that you need in order to grow.
Let’s talk about how to go about it.
Selecting the best-fit WordPress membership plugin is crucial for the success of your membership site. Among the many of options on the market today, Paid Memberships Pro and Ultimate Member stand out as leading choices. But how do you know which the choose?
- You need a plugin that helps you establish a membership site to meet your immediate business goals and get launched in no time—all without the need for a web developer.
- Then, as your business grows or shifts, you need a plugin that ensures you won’t hit roadblocks or be forced to switch platforms.
To guide you through this decision, this post offers a deep comparison of Paid Memberships Pro vs. Ultimate Member. Let’s figure out the right choice for your business now and down the road.
Directions on installing Paid Memberships Pro Add Ons via your membership site’s WordPress admin.
There are three types of Add Ons available for Paid Memberships Pro:
- Free Add Ons are available to download on the Add On pages.
- Standard Add Ons that can be installed and updated through the WordPress admin for any site with a Standard or higher license.
- Plus Add Ons that can be installed and updated through the WordPress admin for any site with a Plus or higher license.
Continue reading to learn how to install and update Add Ons based on the license type.
Running a membership website is a lot like taking care of a plant; Just as a gardener must ensure a plant gets enough sun and water, site owners must manage membership engagement to encourage growth and long-term success.
Fortunately, unlike gardening, keeping your members engaged is pretty straightforward when you have the right tools and strategies.
We’ve rounded up some of our best tips for managing membership engagement in this post.
You’ll learn:
- Why membership engagement is so important
- Essential elements for building an extraordinary member experience
- Strategies to manage membership sites
Paid Memberships Pro gives you a lot of flexibility when it comes to structuring and controlling access to your memberships—including unlimited levels with unique pricing and content access for each one. However, there are scenarios where you might want to disable signups for an existing membership level.
Here are two examples:
- You’re creating new levels for cohorts or other groups of members. These memberships start on a set schedule and you want to keep new members from signing up after that date, so you disable new signups.
- You want to set up a new level structure for your site. Rather than adjust the current levels, you disable the old levels and create new ones.
If you want to grow your business and create a recurring source of income, starting a membership site is a great way to do it. But a membership site won’t be successful if people can’t find it.
So, how do you attract members and get them to subscribe to your site? With so much competition across the eCommerce landscape, it can be a challenge to cut through the noise.
This is why it’s important to make your membership site (and your offer) unique and compelling. In this post, we’ll talk about how to start a membership site that stands out.
Regardless of your affiliation or area of interest, you can create your own association online. In fact, people running association websites represent our largest user base here at Paid Memberships Pro.
Seven out of every 10 adults belong to at least one association.
Empire State Society of Association Executives
For professionals and enthusiasts alike, being a part of an association can be extremely beneficial. From continued education and helpful resources to the ability to connect with like minds and industry experts, associations help individuals and communities thrive in their chosen areas of interest.
Running an association enables you to empower people within a niche community.
It’s also a great way to:
- Monetize your niche expertise and/or organizational skills
- Increase community engagement around your own interests
- Build a foundation for expanding your business with related products and services
Associations can be simple, or they can form the main infrastructure for growing movements and missions. Ultimately, associations can be powerful forces for self-development, career development, community, business—or just good old-fashioned fun.
If you’re thinking about building your own association website, you might have questions like:
- Why is it important to build a website for my association?
- What kind of software do I need?
- Will a website increase my association revenue?
- What is Association Management Software (AMS) and should I use it?
- How do I collect monthly dues?
In this guide, we will answer these questions and more to help you get started with building an association website—so you can start earning income by selling memberships that serve a niche community.
Let’s get started.
Entrepreneurs and freelancers usually have plenty of ideas and expertise—but they’re sometimes short on cash. If you relate to this, you’ve probably spent your fair share of time searching for tools that will get the job done with the least upfront costs.
Well, you can’t get more cost-effective than free.
Fortunately, there are a lot of money-saving options if you’re a WordPress user. So, we’ve put together this list to help you find the best free membership plugins for WordPress.
PayPal is one of the most popular payment gateways that membership businesses use to process recurring subscription payments. But what happens when you want to make changes to user subscriptions?
If you use Paid Memberships Pro to run your membership site, everything can be edited directly from the merchant’s PayPal account. This means that administrators can change a subscription’s billing amount or next payment date without having to make any changes in Paid Memberships Pro.
You might want to modify payment subscriptions in PayPal in order to do things like:
- Let members pause their subscriptions
- Give discounts to your members
- Upgrade or downgrade subscriptions
- Change the price for individual members
- Fix payment subscriptions for anyone who may have paid the wrong price at the checkout
If you run a Paid Memberships Pro membership site using PayPal to accept recurring payments, read on to learn how to modify payment subscription directly in PayPal.
So you’ve created something pretty extraordinary and you’re ready to share it with the world. Now, you’d like to get paid for your time, talent, and content. To do this, you may be looking at Patreon or companies like Patreon.
After all, no one wants to be a “starving artist.”
Patreon was the first platform to allow creatives everywhere to make a living doing what they love. But like anything that comes first, alternatives emerged in the marketplace.
In this post, we’ll explore the best companies like Patreon that you can use to reach your audience—and get paid.
