Membership has become an increasingly popular business model for coaches in recent years.
What is membership?
Membership can be viewed as a program where the coach offers exclusive content and services to the members.
Members can interact with other members in a community setting, thus providing support and fostering growth.
Members pay a recurring monthly fee to be a part of the membership.
Benefits of the membership model
The membership model gives a great level of flexibility to the coach to scale from 1:1 to 1:many, thus saving time and resources.
There is a constant flow of cash in the form of recurring monthly revenue.
Here are some of the benefits coaches gain when they add members to their business model
1. Ideal Client
Members already have experience with your services and teaching style.
They are like a group of your ideal clients. You get to know their problems and pain points firsthand.
You can offer a referral or affiliate program to your existing members to bring in new members. Thus increasing your membership program.
2. Recurring cash flow
The best part of the membership model is the recurring cash flow. A constant cash flow is the lifeline of any business.
A successful membership program, even with a relatively small number of members, can prove to be a great revenue generator.
3. Greater Impact
Membership is not about getting quick results. It is about long-term solutions.
The coach can provide ongoing support to a group of members at the same time.
Also, the members are constantly in groups of like-minded people under the guidance of the coach.
Thus, it is a win-win for both, thus having a greater impact.
4. No more trading time for money
Using the membership model, the coach can train more people at the same time in exchange for a recurring membership fee.
The membership model is less intensive than 1:1 coaching and group programs.
The coach can have various levels in their membership program and different fees and value are provided at each level.
This will help in scaling the membership program.
5. Scalable
The membership model is flexible and offers a great avenue for scaling your business.
Membership programs are filled with your ideal clients.
The coach can offer tiers in the membership with different levels of support and benefits at each tier. The tiers can have varying prices.
It is easier to sell more high-level programs or masterminds to your members, as they already like your teaching style and have trust in you.
The coach can sell digital as well as physical products like merchandise to its members, thereby scaling their business.
Now that we know the many advantages of including membership in your coaching business, let’s dive in to see how we can implement it.
WordPress for Membership
Given the fact that two out of every five websites use WordPress, this shows that WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS).
Cost efficiency, ease of use, and flexibility make it the preferred choice.
The capabilities of WordPress can be extended with the use of plugins.
It has a vast library of plugins for almost all major needs.
One such type of plugin is the membership plugin.
A membership plugin helps you to run your membership program from your website in WordPress.
The plugin can be free or paid, depending on your needs and the plugin you choose.
Most membership plugins can help you restrict access to certain content on your website to only the registered and logged-in users.
You also have the setting to disable the membership content from showing up in the search engine.
Even if it shows up in the search, the content will be shown as private, thereby giving you organic traffic to your website.
To help you select the right plugin, we’ve put together a comprehensive guide to the best membership plugins for WordPress.
Let’s dive in to see which one suits your needs.
Best Membership Plugins for WordPress
MemberPress is the most popular and well-regarded membership plugin available for WordPress.
Due to its simple setup and ease of use, it is the most preferred membership plugin.
Some of its features include:
- It offers the ability to restrict access to posts, pages, custom post types, and much more.
- Easy to create courses and use them either within your membership or sell it separately.
- Integrated with customizable coupons so that you can keep your loyal customers keep coming back for more.
- A membership is incomplete without the community. This plugin comes integrated with the community feature that makes the membership program so desirable.
- Plan and create content ahead of time and use the drip content feature to release it at a specific time drip by drip to avoid overwhelming the members.
- Easily integrate with the WordPress affiliate and subscription plugin to make your members your affiliate and handle joining and updating the members effectively.
- Different payment methods including cash and check in addition to the standard Google Wallet, Apple Pay, Credit/Debit card, PayPal, Stripe, etc so that you don’t miss out on any sale.
- Includes a custom dashboard with analytics to help track your membership and payment data.
With more than 70,000+ installs and 4.6 ratings. It is the original free and open-source membership plugin, which is well-maintained and works with the majority of WordPress versions.
WP-Members allows restricted access to specific content and also supports membership levels and custom registration fields.
This is your go-to plugin if you are looking for simple to use, easy to set up, and flexible in every way.
In addition to the main functionality, it is easily scalable with more than 120 action and filter hooks and a library of API functions.
With these options, you can tailor the look and feel of your membership site to match your brand.
Does this feel overwhelming, don’t worry, they do offer support and many more features for a small fee.
3. s2Member
s2Member is another popular freemium and well-regarded membership plugin for WordPress.
In addition to the ability to restrict access to specific content, support for multiple membership levels, and a wide range of customization options with filter hooks, it also offers the below-mentioned features:
- Integrate with bbPress and BuddyPress for member communities.
- Tracking software implementation (for affiliates, subscription)
- Integrates with a payment gateway like PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.net
- Notifications for payment and signup
- Integrates well with email service providers like MailChimp.
- Integrated with reporting and analytics tools to track membership data.
4. Paid Memberships Pro
Paid Membership Pro is the most complete membership plugin for WordPress.
Restricting content, managing membership subscriptions with recurring payments, having robust member management, and creating custom profile fields are some of the main features of Paid Membership Pro.
In addition, it has a wide variety of add-ons that help you easily integrate additional functionalities into your membership.
This membership plugin is a comprehensive membership plugin and is suited to a wide variety of businesses, like associations and nonprofits, communities, blogs and news, directories and listings, paid newsletters, podcasts, videos, courses, and coaching.
It can be easily integrated with most page builders, payment gateways, plugins, and third-party services.
And the best part is, the core plugin with the most necessary add-ons are free. You need to pay for the premium add-ons and support.
For the premium add-ons and support, the pricing range from $247/year for a standard license to $697/year for a builder license which can be used on multiple sites most suitable for agencies.
If you are looking for a free option to get started, Paid Membership Pro is your go-to plugin.
Conclusion
Choosing the membership plugin for your website depends on the specific needs and requirements of your business.
However, if you are looking for a complete solution, ease of use, and don’t mind paying for it, then MemberPress is the best.
Paid Membership Pro, on the other hand, is your best bet if you’re looking for a free plugin with the most features to help you get started.
If you need help getting your membership site up and running, we are here to help you.
Email us or leave a message on the messenger, and we will get back to you as soon as possible.
