A Step-by-Step Guide on How to Set Up a Subscription Site Using Memberpress
The following is a section from my Ultimate Subscription Site Playbook for Service-Based Professionals. You can download the entire 10,000+ word PDF on my website here.
I’ve gone back and forth trying to decide how in-depth and technical I wanted this section to be and I’ve landed on a decision: I’m going to walk you through a distilled version but will include links to in depth tutorials and helpful resources along the way.
I should also preference that I work exclusively with Wordpress and I’m assuming you already have a Wordpress site set up for your business. If not, the following technical sections may be little use.
Glad we cleared that up. Let’s move on.
As you might have guessed by now, setting up a subscription site requires unique capabilities not typically present with ordinary eCommerce stores:
The ability to process recurring payments and deliver access to “protected” content to only those folks who signed up for the subscription.
I have found multiple solutions that address this conundrum, but have found only one worthy of mentioning here: Memberpress (yes, that is an affiliate link, I only promote tools that I use and love). Memberpress is the only premium plugin that provides the functionality, the documentation, support, and integration capabilities we need to make your subscription site a success.
The other tool you will need is a Stripe account (not an affiliate link). Stripe is a payment processing gateway and accepts all major credit and debit cards out. Stripe, not your website, will store the card and customer information and is highly secure (important to know in case anyone asks you). Stripe and Memberpress work hand in hand to make your subscription site function properly.
Stripe has a lot of documentation available to help through any issues however they tend to be a bit on the technical side. I did find YouTube to be helpful in setting up my Stripe account and this 5 minute tutorial video is a great place to start: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ST7BsUeQjvY
