The Question about Membership Sites
Membership sites are a billion dollar business every year. So the question no longer seems to be “should I create a membership site?” but instead, “Should I create a membership site using WordPress?”
As you can imagine, since I tend to write a decent amount about WordPress and about membership sites, my default answer is likely to be “yes, you should.” But wait a minute. I'm not suggesting you step blindly into a membership site project without looking at the competition.
Check out Kajabi, for example. They have a great platform for membership sites and they support the core things I think every solution needs, including the key “drip” feature that let's you release content over time, rather than all at once.
That one feature is missing on a lot of platforms and often the reason many membership sites fail.
But look at the price of that solution! It's $100-300/month. That's not a price point that everyone can adopt.
Would you like to save $100-300/month?
I've written before about MemberPress and it's only $100 for a year. So that's a great deal and it will do everything that Kajabi does.
But today I want to circle back to another solution that is even cheaper than MemberPress – because it's free.
Paid Memberships Pro is a free membership solution that runs on WordPress (which is also free) and delivers a ton of great value. And while it didn't initially deliver drip features, I sponsored the addition of it so that now it does. I've written about it before here and here.
Check out PMP Series
So today I want to share with you a sister plugin to Paid Memberships Pro that you might have missed. And it's the reason I think the answer to the question, “Should I build my membership site on WordPress?” is a clear YES.
PMP Series is currently available via Github. Don't let that scare you. You can download the plugin just like you would anywhere else, and install it like any other .zip file. Just click on the icon to download it.
Of course you'll want to have Paid Memberships Pro installed first. But other than that, just download it, install it, and activate it. Then you can create drip content in the form of “Series.”
Creating the Series
You'll notice you can create a series as easily as you would normally create regular content. It simply let's you create a new post type (“Series”) and then after adding a bit of content, allows you to associate posts in the series. With each, you can define the delay in terms of days.
The result is that posts in the series will all have a message on them telling you it's part of a series.
And this takes people back to the list of the series posts.
It Doesn't Get Easier
So if the question is “Why should I create a membership site using WordPress?” I think the answer is pretty clear.
Now you can create regular posts, put them into a series, manage the drip rate, and protect it all with a Membership Plugin. And wait for it…. all for free.
Now, I'm not one of those guys who thinks you should do and get everything for free. So I think you ought to pony up some cash for this solution. But this isn't a pitch and I'm not looking for your dough.
I just want to suggest that you check out the Pricing page over at Paid Memberships Pro, because you'll find that whichever plan you pick, you'll be saving yourself tons of time and money.
So stop asking questions and get a move on over to Paid Memberships Pro to start building your membership empire.