What is a membership site, and is it the right business for you?

What is a membership site, and why might it be the ideal choice for your business venture?

At its heart, a membership site offers a gated area where exclusive content and community interaction shine. Whether you’re an expert, artist, educator, or entrepreneur, this guide is designed to teach you the core principles of a membership site.

You’ll learn about 8 common membership site use cases to help you understand all the ways you can monetize and grow your audience online. And finally, we’ll cover factors to consider when choosing a technology partner for your new online business.

What is a membership site?

At its core, a membership site is a place where members sign up to get access to members-only benefits.

Membership Site Sign Ups

Signing up for a membership site involves creating an account and setting up a free or paid recurring subscription.

• Your membership site can capture unique profile information during the checkout process, such as a member’s location, job title, or pet name.
• All members will be required to set up a unique account email address and password, used for future logins to your site.
• For paid memberships, registration also involves setting up a recurring payment, so that member dues can be automatically paid each month.
• For free memberships, registration might involve additional approval or email address confirmation before the account is active.

Benefits of Membership

In exchange for that member signup, you as the site owner are making a promise to deliver value to your members. But what kind of value?

Let’s assume that you create content, like educational courses, informational videos, news articles, exclusive interviews, or podcasts. As a creator, you need to get paid for your work. Your work is valuable. A membership site offers a way for your audience to pay you before accessing that valuable content.

If you aren’t a content creator, maybe you are instead someone that wants to create connections through community. Community-driven membership sites offer a safe, inclusive place for groups of people to get together, have discussions, and make connections.

How a Membership Site Works

To deliver all of this value, you need a membership site. Membership sites restrict access to content behind a paywall, and force existing members to log in or new members to sign up.

That’s it. The most basic definition of what a membership is and how it works. The rest of this guide focused on the next steps:

• Why a membership site is the right business for you.
• Specific needs for 8 common membership site use cases.
• Things to consider when choosing a technology partner for your new business.

Why start a membership site?

A membership business model is a powerful force for personal growth, financial independence, and fostering community. Here’s why:

• Predictable monthly or annual revenue through recurring subscriptions helps you manage cash flow and plan for the future.
• Going online means you aren’t bound by location. Members can join your community from halfway around the world and interact asynchronously during their daytime hours.
• A focus on accessibility and the use of instant translations means that you’re actively removing the barriers to who you can impact.
• Members can take some of the administrative burden off you by helping each other. This is especially true for membership sites with an interactive component, like a community forum, message boards, or through online events.
• It’s easier to charge a realistic, worldwide accessible price when you remove the need for physical meeting space and paper mailings.

The membership model is extremely forgiving and gives nearly instant feedback. Try some videos, host an online meetup event, or focus on courses and content marketing. Your audience will show up for what they like—so you can double down on the formats that deliver the most value.

8 Popular Use Cases for Membership Sites

Paid Memberships Pro has supported online membership businesses for over 12 years. In that time, we’ve identified 8 specific membership site use cases.

While some sites do double dip on features, at their core, each site we’ve worked with fits neatly into one of these use cases. As you can see from our own user data, there’s a wide spread of users in each of these types of sites, all finding their own freedoms through memberships.

Now that you know what a membership site is and how it benefits you, let’s explore the 8 types of sites we see among our most successful customers. Once you know your “best fit” membership site use case, you can jump into a Content Hub we’ve created to help creators like you move from idea to launch.

Associations and NPO’s 

Whether you run an association, club, or non-profit organization, admins and members alike are happily moving away from paper applications and going digital. Membership sites have become the go-to option to meet a complex member association’s requirements.

The associations we work with see explosive growth by moving their membership to a virtual space. With an online platform like PMPro, you’re no longer limited by your local or regional reach.

PMPro features a built-in CRM with everything you need to effectively manage member interactions, collect dues, and provide exclusive content to different member segments. See how The International Association of Workforce Professionals (IAWP) leverages Paid Memberships Pro for their association. 

Blogs and News 

Businesses with a focus on content creation, like a niche blog or news publisher, are using memberships as a way to monetize free content sites and ditch the ad-supported path.

This approach not only generates more reliable revenue streams, but also has the power to grow publishing beyond a one-way conversation. We often see our blog and news creators add on things like community discussion boards, business directories, and paid newsletters. All features that further strengthen loyalty and your memberships’ intrinsic value.

With Paid Memberships Pro, you can offer exclusive access to over 28 types of content using your choice of content syndication method. Plus, a PMPro site’s flexible subscription pricing models means you can run promotions like discounted trials, pay per view, gated access limits, annual discounts, and more.

Communities

Online communities are the first thing people picture when you ask the question: what is a membership site? That’s because humans can connect the idea of membership to an in-person community. It’s easy for most people to imagine that same experience for an online format.

In the past 20 years, the world has seen massive growth in all purpose community sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. We’re now seeing a similar explosion in super niche community sites—online communities that are built around a hyper-focused topic, specialized interest, or for a single city or region.

These micro-communities connect people that would otherwise never find each other due to location, language, ability, age, or income.

Online platforms like PMPro create member-exclusive areas, integrate with various plugins for private forums, support live chat, and social features like groups, messaging, and friending.

Courses and Coaching

Online learning is one of the most popular use cases we see among PMPro site creators. For instructors and coaches, a membership site is the perfect format to educate the world.

Courses are that dream model to “make money when you sleep”. They transform small, in-person group teaching and one-on-one services into exponential revenue possibilities.

With a membership site, you can deliver educational content through:

• Free introductory courses
• Course bundle subscriptions
• Single courses sold a la carte
• Corporate group training groups
• And add-ons like premium monthly coaching, accountability groups, or cohorts

PMPro has everything you need to create courses with lessons, manage member enrollment, and process course payments. You can build your course natively with PMPro’s included features, or go big and integrate with the most popular LMS plugins, like LifterLMS.

Directories, Public Profiles, and Listings Sites

Member directories are a common request in the Association use case, specifically as an added benefit to the primary membership features.

Directories give your individual members and member businesses a way to publicly validate their membership in your organization.

Take, for example, a professional association of lawyers. Your member directory can provide a searchable list for the local community to  find a reputable law firm or individual practitioner. Their single profile page can include notable awards, a bio, and contact info.

Directories aren’t just for professional organizations. Here’s a handful of the types of directories and listings sites people are building with a membership model. 

Common Types of Member Directories

• Business Directories: Focused on listing member businesses, often categorized by industry, services, or location.
• Service Provider Directories: For professionals like consultants, therapists, trainers, etc. Profiles often feature qualifications, services offered, and client testimonials.
• Alumni Directories: For schools, colleges, and universities, listing their alumni with professional achievements and contact details.
• Trade Association Directories: Listing member companies, professionals, or both, often with information about industry expertise and services.
• Artists and Creatives Directories: Showcasing portfolios, biographies, and contact information for artists, writers, designers, etc.
• Non-Profit Organization Volunteer Directories: Private directories for members-only that provide information about volunteers, their skills, availability, and areas of interest.

We cover even more directory types and decisions to make in this companion guide on how to create a WordPress member directory here.

Paid Newsletters

Paid Newsletters are a growing use case for membership sites. With platforms like Substack and tools like ConvertKit’s Creator Network and SparkLoop, email newsletters are making a major comeback in 2024.

A paid newsletter membership gives you, as a content creator, a way to monetize your work beyond selling ads and sponsorships.

Using PMPro for your paid newsletter business? You’ve partnered with a team that deeply understands what you are trying to achieve. We have an entire Paid Newsletters Content Hub that helps know where to start and find new ways to grow.

Podcasting

While primarily used for audience growth and lead gen, Podcasters are also using the membership model to grow revenue. Whether through an additional private podcast, or as supplemental content to your free stream, a membership site is a profitable model to consider.

Private podcasts and companion membership sites unlock a lot of opportunities, like:

• Additional premium content for listeners to go beyond the episode.
• Community features for your audience to debrief and debate.
• A way to deliver early access “sneak peeks” and insider “behind the scenes” content.
• Ad-free episodes for people that prefer a focused listening experience.

Your PMPro-powered membership site comes with pre-built integration for popular podcast hosting platforms. You can add any of the membership opportunities just described without having to redo your current publishing processes or automations.

Private Video

Membership sites offer a way for video content creators to monetize their work beyond YouTube ad payouts or direct sponsorships.

Much like podcasting, video creators are using membership sites to not only offer private, members-only video, but also to provide exclusive access to other stuff. Stuff like written tutorials, downloadable companion assets, and even education.

If private video streaming is what you’re after, PMPro supports many popular video hosting platforms and live stream embedding. Check out our companion guide on how to sell videos to members-only, or learn how to put it all together in the Private Video Content Hub.

Core Features of the Right Membership Site Platform

When it comes to choosing the right software partner for your new membership site idea, we like to focus on a few core features. They’re all covered below.

But first, know that your vision (what your membership site looks like today) is going to evolve—probably daily. Eventually you will settle in on the specific thing that your audience values and is willing to pay you for.

Choose a platform that has the right features to get you started, but also has the means to grow with you as you shift your vision to find product-market fit.

Content Protection Flexibility 

Based on your membership use case, you need to consider which plugin or software allows you to deliver and protect the content you plan to produce.

In the use cases above, this ranges from news articles, blog posts, courses, private videos, and even downloadable content.

Choose a platform that integrates with various content types—even the content types you may not be considering today. Paid Memberships Pro allows you to protect access to 28 different types of content. This flexibility ensures you can continuously evolve your content strategy, without having to slow down and switch platforms.

Ease of Use

Consider your level of technical expertise and how much you want to be involved in building your membership site.

Each plugin or software solution out there has varying needs for initial setup and ongoing maintenance.

• Does your solution of choice require you to hire a developer?
• Could you get by without a developer by putting off some ‘nice-to-have’ features until once the business is launched?

PMPro’s onboarding wizard, admin settings screens, and extensive documentation allows users with basic technical skills to manage their membership site without the help of a developer.

Customer Support

We know that membership sites fall into 8 broad use cases. Consider the customer support the plugin or software offers. Does the platform really know the best practices for each of the site types? Or is it a general Ecommerce platform you’re trying to fit into a membership model.

PMPro’s dedicated support team has over 20 years combined experience with membership site creators like you. Our support covers everything from technical troubleshooting to strategic advice on how to maximize the potential of your membership site. We also offer live stream events twice per month to answer your questions.

Flexible Subscription Plans

Each membership site has their own unique model for getting paid. In our companion guide on how to price a membership site, we provide a few exercises you can use to test whether a pricing model fits your market’s expectations and your personal financial needs.

PMPro supports many subscription models, like freemium, one-time payments, recurring subscriptions, trials, and lifetime deals. This flexibility means you can design a membership plan today, and also adjust your pricing as you run pricing experiments, sales, or shift models.

Payment Gateway Support

Your choice of payment gateway is most often determined by what is available in your region. Before selecting a platform, make sure that they offer the right payment methods for you as the owner, but also the methods that are available for your members.

Choose a platform that integrates with the world’s leading payment gateways, like Stripe and PayPal, while also offering unique gateways like:

• Paystack, a preferred method for payments in Africa.
• Buy Now Pay Later, to give members flexible payment options for high-ticket memberships.
• Apple Pay or Google Pay, to make payments a one-click event.

Customization Options

Each membership site creator we work with has their own vision for their project, not only in how things appear, but also how they function. Choose a platform that gives you the no-code tools to:

• Customize member interfaces
• Set up different content access rules
• Install additional feature plugins
• Add integrations

All with the goal of getting your end product as close as possible to the site you set out to build.

Functionality and features aside, you also will want to customize the appearance of your membership site. With a WordPress-based membership site, you have the freedom to choose from over 11,000 open source themes to help you: 

• Display your logo
• Adjust the site’s colors to your palette
• Add design elements that align the site’s look with your brand identity.

Comprehensive Reporting

While metrics and reports shouldn’t dictate all business decisions, it’s important to choose a platform that offers the types of reports you expect you’ll need in your new business.

PMPro, for example, integrates with popular analytics platforms like Google Analytics 4. We include reports on sales, revenue, signups, and cancellations.

With PMPro, you own all of your data. We provide direct CSV downloads of your membership database, order history, and the raw data for built-in reports. You can even build custom reports into your membership site admin or download data from your website’s database for offline analysis in a spreadsheet.

Compare WordPresss Membership Plugins and Platform

Within this post, we highlighted some examples of membership sites that have been built with PMPro (want more? check out all of our Membership Site Case Studies here).

PMPro isn’t the only platform that you can use to build a membership site, and for some people we can honestly say that it isn’t the right choice for their business.

• Choose PMPro when members are the heart of your business.
• With PMPro, you get a membership platform that grows with you—we don’t tax your membership growth with higher fees.
• We fully embrace open source, which means anyone can get started—and keep growing their membership site—for free. There are no upfront costs to give that membership site idea your best shot.

Choosing an all-around membership site plugin like Paid Memberships Pro means that you can customize it to suit nearly all the business models you can think of. 

For more help understanding the various plugins and platforms for membership sites, here’s a list of our most popular comparison guides: