
Building a membership website is one of the best methods to make money from your website. It allows you to earn unlimited income from your articles, online courses, and products.
From affiliate marketing through sponsored product reviews to ad placements, there are many ways to monetize your pages. Out of them, membership is most effective to establish a successful online business and pump a stable, recurring revenue to your bank accounts. But unfortunately, you can’t handle this task manually.
A dedicated WordPress membership plugin is required to convert your open website to a gated community. It helps you to restrict visitors from accessing your content without choosing a membership level and offer them exclusive discounts to save money in purchases.
Today, we’ll tell you what a membership website is and how you can create it easily.
Are you ready?
What is a Membership Website?

There are thousands of websites out there to spread the news and sell products. Anyone can rely on them to learn more about contemporary events and buy the latest products. But what if the service of such websites is restricted to premium members only? The functionality of membership websites can be easily defined in this way.
Creating informative content or courses requires a long period of research and dedication to the subject. As long as affiliate promotion is not possible, CPC ads are the only way to monetize them. But with the advent of ad blockers, it may not be as useful as intended. So what’s next?
Convert your free website into a members-only area. Ask visitors to choose a membership plan to access contents and buy products at a discount rate. Offer them exclusive coupons to enjoy a VIP status in your gated community and save more money in digital shopping. Integrate with popular payment gateways to collect subscription charges and send them to your bank accounts instantly.
Many top-level websites are switching to the membership platform these days. It helps them to apply effective monetization strategies on their business and meet new challenges.
Now it’s your turn. Will you keep up with existing monetization methods, or will you change over time?
Disclosure: Your support helps keep the site running! We earn a referral fee for some of the services we recommend on this page (at no extra cost to you). |
What is MemberPress?

MemberPress is the #1 membership plugin for WordPress. It is secure and easy to configure. Build and sell online courses, run premium community forums, sell digital products, and much more—everything is possible with this plugin.
It allows you to lock almost any part of the site such as posts, pages, categories, videos, and files to prevent visitors from accessing them freely. MemberPress is page-builder friendly and works with any theme. Integrated with over 60 third-party services, it helps you to collect payments and automate many other tasks to save your time.
Pricing: Starts at $249/yr
Key Features
- Unlimited members
- Unlimited content
- Unlimited access rules
- Subscription billing
- Ability to run your own affiliate program
- Content dripping
- Content expiry
- Course creation
- Coupons
- Email reminders
- Reports
- Premium customer support
- 14-days money-back guarantee
Click here to buy MemberPress and start making recurring income from your WordPress website ($200 off-Limited period offer)
How to Create an Online Membership Website with WordPress (2023 Edition)
Now you know the benefits of creating a WordPress Membership Website. Follow these steps to convert your existing website in to a membership model in a few minutes.
1. Visit MemberPress and choose a subscription plan. After purchase, you can download plugin files from the account dashboard.
Then, sign in to your WordPress and upload MemberPress as a new plugin. Upon activation, it will create a new top-level menu with the plugin name on the left pane.

Expand the menu to view various options to configure membership levels, access rules, reminders, and more.
Firstly, set up a payment method for your membership website. Open Settings and visit the Payments tab on the top. Select a payment gateway from the drop-down list and assign a name to it. Fill up the required information.
Click the ‘+’ icon to add more payment gateways. MemberPress supports leading payment services such as PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.net to collect money safely.
2. Next, set up your membership levels. MemberPress allows you to create unlimited membership levels and add unlimited members to the site. Go to MemberPress > Memberships > Add new to create a plan.

On the top, enter a name for your plan. On the right-sidebar, you will see options to set a price, billing type, and others. Decide whether it is a lifetime plan or need recurring payments.
The one-time payment plan is best to attract more members to your platform. On the other hand, recurring plans are best to ensure a stable monthly or annual income for your business.
MemberPress can send a welcome email message to greet new members. Customize it as you like using the built-in email template and add an image or a video if needed.
Finally, click on publish. Repeat these steps to create more membership levels.
3. Now you need to restrict content access by access rules. Move to MemberPress > Rules > Add New to create a new rule.

Choose a content type from the Protected Content drop-down box. In Access Conditions, select Membership from the first drop-down box and assign a membership level from the second box.
Click ‘+” to add more membership levels. Only selected membership levels can access the content type mentioned on the top.
Save rule.
4. It’s time to create a pricing page. It helps visitors to compare all your plans based on the features offered and pick the right plan for them.
Head to MemberPress > Groups > Add New. Scroll down to the bottom to view Group Options.

Add all your membership levels one by one by clicking the + icon. Drag them to the up or down to reorder.
Next, choose a pricing page theme for your page. Finally, hit on publish. Add your pricing page to the main navigation menu and footer to encourage visitors to become a paid member in a few clicks.
Final thoughts
Offering memberships is the best method to make a huge income from your WordPress website. Usually, we discuss how to convert visitors to email subscribers and then, your regular customers. But this method is more simple and powerful that make them your clients directly.
MemberPress is highly customizable and gives you full control over setting up a membership website. It is best for high-traffic news websites, blogs, digital learning platforms, and many others. The plugin has a fast customer support to answer your questions and fix complaints if any before they affect your business.
So why are you waiting for?
Click here to buy MemberPress and create a membership website in less than 30 minutes ($200 off-Limited period offer + 14 days money-back guarantee)
MemberPress

MemberPress is the #1 membership plugin for WordPress. It is the ultimate choice to convert your website in to a money making machine. Create restricted content, Add member-only products, and offer exclusive discounts to your community members.
This plugin is perfect to create premium social communities, forums, and more. It also allows you to design online courses and offer it in step-by-step (dripping) on subscription basis. Thus it ensures a monthly recurring income and monetize your skills efficiently.
MemberPress is integrated with several third-party services to accept payments and send email notifications. It is page-builder friendly also. They have a premium customer support and 14-days money-back guarantee in all subscription plans.